With his nuclear threats, Putin has anchored the figure of the cornered rat in the minds of many people in the West: Whoever presses Russia too hard must reckon with apocalyptic consequences. A strategy that belies the true goals of the Kremlin boss.
The now weekly threat of the use of nuclear weapons by the Russian leadership has not only aroused fears of a nuclear war, but also anchored another argument in people’s minds: Russia should not be pressured too much, because then it would lash out wildly and relentlessly .
President Putin created this figure of thought in his biography. It’s the story of the cornered rat that everyone has heard and read about several times. Two-thirds of the population in Germany fears that hostilities will escalate into a nuclear war. It is possible that the number of those who want to enable Putin to find a “face-saving solution” and thus avoid pressure is just as large.
President Putin is by no means concerned with a face-saving solution. He can define his image in Russia as he pleases, the state media paints the image he wants of him. And other media – a free press and freedom of expression – do not exist.
The image of Putin is enforced in Russia as a prison sentence. In the western states, however, the Russian president no longer has to save face in the eyes of the majority of society, because there he forever wears the features of an aggressor whose armed forces have allegedly committed war crimes. At least that’s how the Human Rights Council of the United Nations sees it. In the West, Putin has no face to save; he lost it irretrievably.
Putin is looking for a power-preserving solution. This is his central goal, after he has failed, and even more so, turned into the opposite of all the other goals he wanted to achieve with the war. Ukraine lost Russia for a long time; NATO has strengthened Russia; Putin has brought the US and Europe closer together than anyone could have imagined after George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
The internal solution that preserves power is now President Putin’s central defensive goal, which is why he must continue to act offensively in Ukraine. Whether that will be successful is an open question. It is impossible to say with any certainty who will win this war and who will win the battles in it.
This uncertainty has to be endured. This is difficult to convey in societies that always expect short-term answers to all questions. The war may go on, and so the argument not to corner Russia and Putin will continue to spread. A cognate form of this is that nuclear powers don’t lose wars. Numerous expressions of opinion have understood it and attributed some argumentative weight to it due to the competence of the writers.
But it is simply wrong, as a look at the history of wars over the past few decades shows. The nuclear power USA lost the war in Vietnam, so ignominiously that it caused a collective trauma. Later, the nuclear-powered Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in full glare of defeat, which was perceived around the world. Even the collapse of the nuclear power of the Soviet Union was not stopped by the threat to use these weapons.
The nuclear power USA, on the other hand, was able to defeat Iraq’s armed forces in a short space of time in 2003 (and with similarly scarce forces, as Russia has now tried in the Ukraine), the war, which later developed as an asymmetric fight, however, the US lost. The nuclear power USA then also withdrew from Afghanistan and anyone who still has the pictures of the withdrawal in mind will have perceived this more as an escape. It was a defeat, the second that Afghanistan inflicted on a nuclear power in a few decades. So the argument that a nuclear power cannot be defeated is wrong.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Jäger has held the Chair for International Politics and Foreign Policy at the University of Cologne since 1999. His research focuses on international relations and American and German foreign policy.
But it can claim that nuclear powers have the ultimate weapons of mass destruction at their disposal until the end. Even the tactical nuclear weapons still have an explosive power that triggers brutal destruction, so that their differentiation from the ICBMs makes sense, but this corresponds to the distinction between world-destroying and region-devastating. And that is why the propaganda of fear from Russia plays such a big role, to deter Western societies from doing what Russia wants to stop.
That is why the prospect of annexing Ukrainian territory is a particularly sensitive development for Russia’s opponents. After all, after annexing the four eastern regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, which would connect Crimea to mainland Russia, Russia could extend nuclear deterrence to these regions. In the Russian understanding, it would be Russian territory. For nuclear deterrence, it is of secondary importance whether the annexation is recognized by third parties. It must now be clarified whether Ukraine’s ongoing attacks to retake its territory will then continue to be supported from outside.
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The war against Ukraine was a mistake. That President Putin started it can be explained. He assumed that Ukraine was divided, the EU was at odds and the US was paralyzed. Those were three overly optimistic assumptions.
The fact that Putin relied on the overly optimistic assumption that all optimistic assumptions will come true at the same time is due to the overconfidence that overtakes all politicians after a few years in office. Because they do not perceive this themselves, democracies set up control mechanisms that unfortunately often do not work. They don’t even exist in autocracies.
Assuming that President Putin continues to make decisions within the framework of his rationality, there is currently neither a political purpose nor a military goal for the use of nuclear weapons. They will remain effective as a deterrent against attacks on Russian territory. This could be the case with the annexation of Ukrainian territory. That does not mean that these weapons will be used, because Russia has to protect the government and administration of the annexed areas with conventional troops.
