With Ukraine’s military success, fears are growing that Putin will escalate and resort to nuclear weapons. Time to change course of the West? “Not yet,” says security expert Frank Sauer from the University of the German Armed Forces in Munich, explaining why we’re happy that Putin didn’t receive birthday greetings from Beijing.
ntv.de: Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader, is happy: On Monday, the Russians attacked several Ukrainian cities, far from the front. People died on the way to work. A new level of brutality?
Frank Sauer conducts research at the Bundeswehr University in Munich and is an expert on security policy, which he also regularly discusses in the “Sicherheitshalber” podcast.
Frank Sauer: We already know the pattern behind these attacks. Military defeats are answered in a targeted manner with medium-range missiles or cruise missiles against civilian infrastructure and against the civilian population, as we have experienced several times in recent weeks and months. In this respect, the current attacks fit the pattern of Russian aggressive behavior – together with forms of hybrid warfare that we may have been observing for the past few days. Such forms of aggression offer Russia escalation opportunities below the nuclear threshold, which we are currently discussing intensively again.
Well-known researchers and politicians, including the US President, see the growing danger that Putin will use a nuclear weapon. If he believes that “there is no other option than a total escalation,” as security expert Peter R. Neumann writes in “Spiegel.”
Indeed, compared to the situation on February 24, the threat of Putin using nuclear weapons in this war has increased. With the attempt to annex the four partially occupied regions in the Ukraine, he also brought them under the nuclear “threatening umbrella”. In this way he wants to secure his invasion with nuclear power. At the same time, through the partial mobilization, Putin has signaled that he will not back away from his war goals. In doing so, he tied his own political survival more closely to the outcome of the war.
Putin cut himself off from declaring the failed invasion a success and then over with a handful of propaganda lies on Russian television. This means that an exit strategy is no longer necessary. Are those who say we need a new strategy to prevent nuclear escalation right?
It is currently very common to “foresee” two or three plausible ends of this conflict and to deduce from this what is to be done politically now. I’m not convinced by this approach, by “thinking the conflict from the end”. Because the hypotheses that are being put forward are, in my opinion, not at all resilient enough to be linked to political action. Seriously, we don’t know how this war will continue, nor how it will end. We, including myself, have been surprised again and again, beginning on February 24th. Did I expect the Russian armed forces to fail like this? no Did I expect Ukraine to hit back so successfully? no With its complex operations, it writes military history almost every week. Did anyone see that coming? no We have no choice but to accept the moments of surprise in the war and, instead of constantly daring to make new forecasts, we continue to grope our way forward, firmly in principle. By the way, Putin is no different.
But isn’t it already clear that the only way the war can end is for Putin to have a way of withdrawing his troops without completely losing face? So that he doesn’t think there is no other option than nuclear escalation?
Do you know the story of the “cornered rat”?
no
As a boy, Vladimir Putin is said to have encountered a rat, which he then cornered. When she couldn’t dodge anymore, she attacked him. It’s one of those typical Putin stories that he tells about himself and that have a system. The man is a KGB fox who cultivates a myth about himself that we too have greedily absorbed over the years. This includes the message: Don’t back me into a corner, otherwise I’ll escalate more than you can handle. But Putin has never been asked in the way we are doing now.
This means that we lack the empirical values to assess his behavior.
At least we have the empiricism of the last seven months. Before we keep coming up with new hypotheses about the future, let’s first look at how Putin has behaved in the context of his previous failures. And after that it seems very unlikely that Putin will suddenly and surprisingly escalate to nuclear power.
He has threatened to do so many times.
He’s threatened it so many times that last time he had to say he wasn’t bluffing. But he is looking for escalation below the nuclear threshold: through terror against the civilian population, through hybrid forms of operation, for example in the information space, Russia is very active there. It is conceivable that the attacks on Nord Stream and Deutsche Bahn could also be attributed to Russia. This has not yet been proven, but Russia has the potential. All of that doesn’t mean I’m nonchalant about nuclear risk, not at all. And it is important to discuss this risk. But I believe the moment has not yet come when we in the West should doubt our course because of this.
What parameters do you think we can use to make our decisions?
Instead of setting up hypotheses about the course of events, we should set clear goals for ourselves and help Ukraine to shape its future. This does not mean that we have to make their interests ours one-to-one and implement them, we have our own interests. And that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t think about the future – on the contrary, that’s actually my job. But the mode would have to be: who, in this case, endure considerable uncertainty about the future and develop the will to shape it.
Does our debate possibly bring Putin more than it could ever do for him to actually carry out his nuclear threat?
He would then have relinquished the instrument of covering up his conventional war of aggression with a nuclear threat, yes. So far, however, he has only been moderately successful. Crucially, once Putin crosses the nuclear threshold, a whole new chapter will be opened in this war. It might sound a bit over the top, but it’s a fact: we would be entering a new chapter in human history. For 77 years we have been able – sometimes only just – to avoid nuclear weapons being detonated for war purposes. If Putin did that, the deck would be reshuffled.
In that case, one might expect a strong military response from NATO. How important is how China would react?
How China positions itself on this conflict is extremely important overall, and not only with regard to the nuclear issue. Encouragingly, from our Western perspective, in one recent conversation with Putin, excerpts of which were made public, Xi Jinping did not seem overly amused by the way things were going. There is also the rumor, which I was not able to verify conclusively, that Xi did not congratulate Putin on his 70th birthday, as was customary in previous years.
Such a soft factor has such importance?
In any case, the Russian media only spoke of a telegram of congratulations and a gift. If it’s true that Xi didn’t personally congratulate Putin on his milestone birthday, then that’s a clear signal, yes. Because remember the joint statement that Putin and Xi made in late 2020: They swore their partnership…
… In the December video slot, Xi called Putin “my old friend” and waved from the screen.
We in the West were conducting debates about the emerging era of system competition – autocracies versus democracies, even the possible formation of new blocs. Something else is in the air now, namely that nobody wants to be seen with a loser like Putin anymore. Putin’s strategic mistake in starting this war is really costing him his reputation. This effect would be massively intensified if the nuclear taboo were broken. After all, China naturally has no interest in lowering its nuclear inhibition threshold.
In the debate about Putin’s “face-saving exit,” you said early on that the humiliation will take place on the battlefield anyway, regardless of what the West would then call it. Are we already seeing that? How Putin is humiliated in Cherson, in Kharkiv, in the queues of cars on the border with Georgia?
The answer to this question has something to do with the nature of authoritarian rule. Putin embodies the strength of the new, “revived” Russian state. His homemade legend tells how he got Russia, humiliated by the West, off its knees and made it strong. He has cultivated this machismo for years: Putin shirtless, Putin playing ice hockey, driving submarines and flying fighter jets. This strength, on which Putin’s authoritarian rule is based, is reflected in the state by the strength of the Russian armed forces.
A strength that does not really exist to the extent that is now evident.
Even in Russia itself, people have long been convinced that the army is the largest land force in the world with miracle weapons and soldiers who are unbeatable in courage and willingness to fight. It is now becoming apparent that it is a force with blatant weaknesses that cannot generate any quality even from its enormous size. And that scratches at this image of strength. It is Putin who is routed at the front, looking bloated and in poor health. In the video booth with Xi Jinping, he seemed downright sheepish. In that sense, yes, we are already seeing the humiliation.
Frauke Niemeyer spoke to Frank Sauer