#anya loukianova fink

[nicklloydnow]

“If the war continues to move against the Russians, and particularly if the Ukrainians begin to invade Crimea, they will reach ever greater levels of fear that the future of the Russian regime is at stake. Some genius within the Russian leadership will then put forward the idea that they can reverse the momentum and demonstrate their greater willingness to accept Armageddon by a nuclear demonstration. As Michael Kofman and Anya Lukianov Fink have noted, Russian military analysts have long believed in “a demonstrative use of force, and could subsequently include nuclear use for demonstration purposes.” The West, this Russian optimist will argue, doesn’t really care about Ukraine and will recoil at the real prospect of nuclear war. Lacking better options, or really any other options at all beyond surrender, Russian President Vladmir Putin (or his successor) will seize on this deus ex machina. Such thin hopes of turning defeat into victory are the most effective enemies of peace.

Russian forces will launch a small number of tactical nuclear attacks against Ukrainian troop concentrations or NATO supply lines within Ukraine. If they can’t find any of those, they will use them against Ukrainian civilian targets. The target is not essential because the point of this attack will be to destroy Western will to continue supporting Ukraine, not to directly reverse the military situation. They would additionally put their strategic nuclear forces on alert and begin “unusual movements” of nuclear assets in an effort to warn the United States against responding to the attack.

The United States government has certainly considered this contingency, which is why both National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were recently dispatched to warn the Russians they would suffer “horrific” and “catastrophic” consequences if they used nuclear weapons in Ukraine. In the event, however, the U.S. government will struggle to find a response that reflects the gravity of the Russian use of nuclear weapons but does not represent further escalation toward direct confrontation and all-out nuclear war.

The American equivalent of the Russian genius will argue that a direct, proportionate response aimed at the attack itself will send a signal to the Russian leadership that the United States is seeking to punish the crime of nuclear use, not escalate the war or overthrow the Russian regime. They will see the Russian strategic nuclear alert as a bluff, arguing that to follow through with a strategic nuclear attack would be suicide. Lacking better options, the U.S. leadership will seize on the idea of such a finely calibrated response and launch a conventional NATO attack on Russian troop formations in Ukraine or the military base in Russia where the Russian nuclear strike originated from. As a precaution, they will also put U.S. nuclear forces on alert, put more U.S. nuclear submarines to sea and recommend to the British and French that that they also put their forces on alert — if these two independent powers had not done so already.

Unfortunately, such a subtle message is likely to be lost on a paranoid Kremlin. They will see a direct NATO attack on Russia or Russian forces as confirmation of their view that the West intends to destroy the Russian regime and kill all its leaders. For Russian leaders this is an ever-present reality: Putin reportedly obsessively watches the video of Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi’s death after he was overthrown by NATO forces. Facing the prospect of death if they do not act to save their regime, Russian leaders will risk launching further conventional and tactical nuclear strikes on NATO troop formations and Ukrainian supply operations in bordering NATO states such as Poland and Estonia to signal that Russia is willing and able to defend itself despite the risk of strategic nuclear escalation.

The attacked NATO states will invoke Article 5 and NATO will begin a conventional operation to eliminate Russia’s offensive capability to make such attacks. Fearing that those attacks will destroy the Russian strategic nuclear capability and thus leave them defenseless against NATO conventional forces, the Russians will launch a first-strike strategic nuclear attack on the slim hope that it will weaken the Western resolve or capability to respond and save their regime. I will then have something in the order of a few minutes to send out an email to my colleagues saying, “I told you so.”

This is only a scenario. None of it is inevitable, of course. But this is the path that we are currently on and the likelihood of it coming to pass grows by the day as one side or the other becomes more desperate.”

“Russian nuclear strategy has been the subject of vigorous debates in recent years. Some believe it hides a plan to compel war termination through early use of nuclear arms after a case of aggression, i.e., escalate to de-escalate; others see it primarily as a defensive deterrent to be used in exigent circumstances. Analysts have argued that Russia’s lowered nuclear threshold is a myth, a temporary measure born out of conventional inferiority. Others believe that “escalate to de-escalate” does not exist as a doctrine, or that the term itself should be terminated because the real strategy is escalation control.

(…)

CNA’s Russia Studies Program recently concluded a study on Russia’s strategy for escalation management, or intra-war deterrence, across the conflict spectrum from peacetime to nuclear war. The research consulted a representative sample of over 700 Russian-language articles from authoritative military publications over the past three decades. Delving into the current state of Russian military strategy and thinking on these subjects, we found that the Russian defense establishment has developed a mature system of deterrence and a coherent escalation management strategy, integrating conventional, strategic, and nonstrategic nuclear weapons. Russian thinking on deterrence and escalation management is the result of decades of debates and concept development. Official policies, strategies, and doctrines offer glints of the thinking behind Russian nuclear strategy, using refereed terms and concepts whose actual contents are discussed extensively in military writings.

(…)

Russian strategy, integrating nonnuclear and nuclear deterrence, is intended to solve a straightforward escalation dilemma stemming from a lack of force flexibility and capability in the 1990s: The United States could inflict unacceptable damage on Russia with conventional capabilities and attain victory with precision-guided weapons in the initial period of war while making minimal contact with Russian forces. Moscow’s answer would necessitate large-scale use of nonstrategic nuclear weapons in theater. This was an untenable situation, which led to the Russian military’s quest for both the ways and means to build a “deterrence ladder” with multiple rungs, and flexibility in conventional and nuclear options, to manage escalation. Conventional force modernization has not altered Russian thinking on the importance of nuclear weapons at higher thresholds of conflict, for intra-war deterrence, and ultimately for warfighting.

The Russian military sees an independent conventional war as possible, but believes conflict is unlikely to remain conventional as it escalates. This is not a departure from late-Soviet military thought. The military expects a great-power war between nuclear peers to eventually involve nuclear weapons, and is comfortable with this reality, unlike U.S. strategists. However, in contrast with Soviet thinking, the Russian military does not believe that limited nuclear use necessarily leads to uncontrolled escalation. The Russian military believes that calibrated use of conventional and nuclear capability is not only possible but may have decisive deterrent effects. This is not an enthusiastically embraced strategy, but an establishment’s answers to wicked problems, in the context of a great-power conflict, which have no easy or ideal solutions.

(…)

Russian stratagems can be divided up into phases of demonstrative actions operating under the principle of deterrence by fear-inducement (устрашение), and progressive infliction of damage, which is deterrence through limited use of force (силовое сдерживание). Deterrence by fear-inducement operates through demonstrative acts, which, during peacetime or a period of perceived military threat, communicate that Russian forces have the means and resolve to inflict damage against an opponent’s vitally important targets. These objects — for example, nuclear and hydroelectric power plants, chemical and petroleum industry facilities, and others — are those that might lead to significant economic losses or loss of life, or impact the target nation’s way of life.

(…)

If escalation cannot be managed, then capabilities are employed en masse for warfighting and retaliation. Generally, the Russian military sees escalation management as possible up to larger-scale employment of nuclear weapons. Subsequent use of force falls primarily into the retaliation category.

As a regional or large-scale conflict escalates, the Russian military could follow the employment of nonnuclear capabilities with single and grouped nuclear strikes using nonstrategic nuclear weapons, either for the purposes of demonstration; against a target in a third country; or against deployed adversary forces. As prospects for managing escalation decline, use of force intensifies with extensive use of precision-guided conventional weapons in a regional war. In a large-scale war, the Russian military expects that its forces will use nonstrategic nuclear weapons in warfighting, together with limited use of strategic nuclear weapons.

The purpose of limited strikes is to shock or otherwise stun opponents, making them realize the economic, political, and military costs they will pay for further aggression, but also to offer them off-ramps. The approaches described above are not mechanistic. Military science may give the impression that these actions are preprogrammed, but much depends on the context and what Russian political leadership authorizes (and the manner in which that authority is given). The figure below offers one representation of the potential courses of action.

(…)

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has largely disarmed of tactical nuclear weapons save the B-61 variants of gravity bombs, while Russia reduced its nonstrategic nuclear arsenal by about 75 percent. However, the Russian military has been modernizing and expanding nonstrategic nuclear weapons alongside strategic conventional ones. This suggests a different philosophy at work in terms of the balance between conventional and nuclear capabilities in Russian military strategy. Russia sees nuclear weapons as essential because their psychological impact, and deterrent effect, cannot be supplanted by conventional capabilities. They are an asymmetric investment to neutralize U.S. conventional advantages, representing a competitive strategy. Simply put, conventional weapons cannot match the deterrence bang for the ruble spent on nuclear weapons.

No less important is the theory that binds Russian conventional, nonstrategic, and strategic nuclear weapons. Limited use of conventional weapons has added coercive effect if nuclear use is expected to follow, and it lends credibility to follow-on nuclear threats, which by themselves might prove unconvincing in early phases of escalation. A large strategic nuclear arsenal is not just important as a survivable nuclear deterrent. It raises the fear of uncontrolled nuclear escalation once nuclear weapons are used. This nuclear dread generates psychological pressure on the elites and population of a targeted state to avoid escalation once nuclear weapons are used.

(…)

Compared to Russian military considerations of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the criteria for use of nuclear forces remains unchanged, and if anything the thinking has been refined over the last two decades, as has declaratory policy. The role of nonstrategic nuclear weapons has been pushed further into regional or large-scale war, with Russia preferring conventional options in a crisis and the initial period of conflict. What has changed in the last two decades is not so much the threshold, but more so the timing when nuclear weapons might come into play. There is strong doubt in Russian military circles that political leadership will authorize early, preemptive use of nuclear weapons. In general, despite some marginal voices who consistently call for early nuclear use, the consensus is that attempts to coerce with nuclear weapons early on will not be credible. This is precisely why the Russian military invested in complementary means of nonnuclear deterrence. However, Russia’s strategy of deterrence by fear-inducement when under military threat makes heavy use of nuclear signaling, which serves to create the impression that the country is far looser with its thinking on nuclear use than is actually the case.

Important differences exist between Russian military thinking on escalation management and what some have characterized as Russia’s early war-termination strategy, nicknamed “escalate to de-escalate,” where Moscow acts aggressively and seeks to terminate the war with preemptive nuclear use. De-escalation as envisioned by the Russian military means escalation management, which includes containing conflict to a specified threshold — for example, keeping a limited war from becoming a regional war — or deterring other states from becoming involved; containing the war geographically; attaining a cessation of hostilities on acceptable but not necessarily victorious terms; or simply generating an operational pause. It includes more than simply war termination. Successful escalation management results in escalation control, because escalation control is not something you do, but something you get as the result.

Single or grouped strikes may or may not result in follow-on nuclear escalation, but widespread use of nuclear weapons is not about escalation management. It is for general warfighting as a last-ditch effort in cases where the military is losing a war and the state is under threat. Can Russia find itself fighting a war that it perceives to be defensive in nature, and then resort to nuclear first use as the conflict escalates? Absolutely, but this proposition assumes a host of military and nonmilitary actions taken on both sides prior to nuclear escalation, rather than an attempt at preemptive nuclear coercion. There is no gimmicky “escalate to win” strategy, in which military strategists believe they can start and quickly end a conflict on their terms thanks to the wonders of nuclear weapons. The U.S. defense strategy community needs to put away this boogeyman and stop telling this scary tale like some kind of nuclear ghost story. The Russian military has a visibly different comfort level with nuclear weapons than the United States, and arguably always will, but it does not write of nuclear escalation in recklessly optimistic terms, incognizant of the associated risks.

(…)

The challenge posed by Russian nuclear strategy is not just a capability gap, but a cognitive gap. The Russian military establishment has spent decades thinking and arguing about escalation management, the role of conventional and nuclear weapons, targeting, damage, etc. In the United States, precious little attention has been paid to the question of escalation management, which is overshadowed by planning for warfighting. Thinking on escalation management and limited nuclear war should take priority, because the political leadership of any state entering a crisis with a nuclear peer will inevitably wish to be assured that a plausible strategy for escalation management and war termination exists. Otherwise, leaders may back down because the risks may simply outweigh U.S. interests at stake, and the defense establishment’s ideas for managing that potential escalation prove unconvincing.

(…)

Any conflict with Russia will always be implicitly nuclear in nature. If it is not managed, then the logic of such a war is to escalate to nuclear use. The United States needs to develop its own strategy for escalation management, and a stronger comfort level with the realities of nuclear war.”

“The president is the ultimate decision maker when it comes to using Russian nuclear weapons, both strategic and non-strategic, according to Russia's nuclear doctrine.

The so-called nuclear briefcase, or "Cheget" (named after Mount Cheget in the Caucasus Mountains), is with the president at all times. The Russian defence minister, currently Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of the general staff, currently Valery Gerasimov, are also thought to have such briefcases.

Essentially, the briefcase is a communication tool which links the president to his military top brass and thence to rocket forces via the highly secret "Kazbek" electronic command-and-control network. Kazbek supports another system known as "Kavkaz".

Footage shown by Russia's Zvezda television channel in 2019 showed what it said was one of the briefcases with an array of buttons. In a section called "command" there are two buttons: a white "launch" button and a red "cancel" button. The briefcase is activated by a special flashcard, according to Zvezda.

If Russia thought it faced a strategic nuclear attack, the president, via the briefcases, would send a direct launch order to general staff command and reserve command units which hold nuclear codes. Such orders cascade swiftly down different communications systems to strategic rocket force units which then fire at the United States and Europe.

If a nuclear attack were confirmed, Putin could activate the so-called "Dead Hand" or "Perimetr" system of last resort: essentially computers would decide doomsday. A control rocket would order nuclear strikes from across Russia's vast armoury.

(…)

To prepare a TNW strike, it is likely that Putin would consult with senior allies from the Russian Security Council before ordering, via the general staff, that a warhead be joined with a delivery vehicle and prepared for a potential launch order.

These steps could be picked up by Western intelligence, as would unusual Russian troop movements away from any potential target in Ukraine or change to Russia's nuclear posture.

"I think Putin would signal and would want us to see that he was moving towards nuclear weapons because he would like to get whatever he wants for free," said Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at The Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

"If you are going to use a nuclear weapon to send a very costly signal, the first thing you do is say: ‘You know what I am going to do, right?’. And then you might get what you are asking for and if you don’t then you go through with it."

Because Putin could not predict the U.S. response, Russia's entire nuclear posture would change: submarines would go to sea, missile forces would be put on full alert and strategic bombers would be visible at bases, ready for immediate takeoff.

Then, at his leisure, Putin could use his nuclear briefcase to give, or not to give, a launch order.

"You can imagine that Putin might want to have a slow process so that Ukraine and West would sweat as they watched the preparations," said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists.”

“'It is a common joke among nuclear experts that the best advice in the event of a strike is to make sure you die in the first wave,' Dr Lewis says, grimly.”

[mariacallous]

Russia’s military doctrine relies heavily on nuclear weapons — but less on their use itself than on the ability they give Moscow to put pressure on opponents. It’s difficult to judge whether that’s what Putin is doing when he hints at his willingness to launch a nuclear strike in Ukraine, and it's even harder to guess exactly what he would target if he did. But there are a few things most experts agree on: first, that the risk of Russia using nuclear weapons is currently low but not zero, and second, that Moscow hasn’t begun preparations to launch a nuclear strike yet, because if it had, Western intelligence agencies would almost certainly know. Meduza takes a look at what nuclear weapons experts have said about the odds of Russia pushing the red button — and what the West should do if it does.

What do experts know about Russia’s nuclear strategy?

In short: Even people who have spent years studying Russia’s nuclear weapons strategy acknowledge that there’s little they can say for certain about it. The problem is that nuclear powers intentionally try to mislead each other about their true plans for various scenarios, while the world’s experience with the use of nuclear weapons is limited to the U.S. strikes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Details: Most documentation regarding Russia’s weapons and strategic plans, including its policies for nuclear weapons use, is classified. The unclassified information we have is limited to:

Certain official documents, including the Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence; Russia’s National Security Strategy for 2009–2020; and Russia’s Military Doctrine;

The fairly extensive literature published by Russian academics, which analyzes theoretical possibilities for using nuclear weapons;

Classified documents from Western intelligence agencies, which occasionally leak to the media;

Studies based on war games that model the behavior of military opponents in various escalatory scenarios.

The Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence is the most important publicly available document on Russia’s nuclear weapons policy. Only six pages long, the text lays out the conditions under which Russia would potentially use nuclear weapons. If Russia uses a nuclear weapon, according to the document, it will be in one of two cases:

A retaliatory nuclear strike

A nuclear response to a non-nuclear war, defined as “aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of regular weapons, when the existence of the state itself is threatened.” The document doesn’t provide details about how to determine whether a threat qualifies, leaving wide room for interpretation.

In any case, the decision to use nuclear weapons must be made by the Russian president.

Outside of official sources, academic papers published by Russian military theorists may reflect, to some degree, the nuclear strategy that forms the basis for other, confidential documents on Russia’s nuclear policies.

In 2020, American military analysts Michael Kofman, Anya Loukianova Fink, and Jeffrey Edmonds conducted a systematic analysis of more than 700 publications dedicated to deterrence strategies and produced an extensive report about how Russian military leaders imagine a theoretical case of nuclear weapons use. At the same time, the authors acknowledge that drawing conclusions from the documents officially published by the Russian government requires extreme care as these texts are often written primarily with potential opponents in mind and are intended to hide more than they reveal.

In what case would Russia be most likely to use nuclear weapons?

In short: We don’t know.

Details: In their analysis, Kofman and his coauthors tell the origin story of modern Russia’s nuclear doctrine. In the 1980s, Soviet leaders and military strategists were met with a challenge in the form of the “precision revolution,” or the invention of satellite navigation and the development of digital technology in the West.

The Russian authorities started to worry about the possibility of a massive aerospace attack in which the U.S. would use long-range high-precision weapons, electronic warfare systems, and tactical and long-range aviation — all launched from U.S. territory. By the mid-2000s, the Russian authorities’ main fear was the risk of a prolonged air campaign capable of paralyzing the Russian Armed Forces and doing unacceptable damage to critical infrastructure in the country. In response to this threat, Russia developed a modern deterrence strategy in which nuclear weapons play a key role, the analysts write.

Because the U.S. was now capable of doing unacceptable damage with conventional weapons and achieving victory with high-precision weapons at the start of a war, Moscow’s response would have to involve a “deterrence ladder” with multiple rungs as well as flexibility in its conventional and nuclear options for managing escalation. Thus, unlike American strategists, Russia strategists now expect that any war between the world’s largest nuclear powers would include use of nuclear weapons. Soviet strategists also thought this, although modern Russian strategists, unlike their Soviet predecessors, don’t believe the limited use of nuclear weapons will necessarily lead to uncontrolled escalation. In fact, they think the calibrated and balanced use of conventional and nuclear weapons is not only realistic but can also be a key deterrent. According to Kofman, this approach isn’t one Russia's military would be excited to implement, but they do view it as a possible necessary measure.

If Russian leaders decide to use nuclear weapons, what will they target?

In short: We don’t know this, either. Some experts are inclined to believe they would launch a demonstrative strike in an unpopulated area, while others think they’d be more likely to strike a major military target in the theater of operations. Finding a suitable target, however, will be difficult.

Details: What experts do agree on is that the main goal of a hypothetical first nuclear strike would be to demonstrate Russia’s determination to use nuclear weapons, which fully complies with Russia’s nuclear doctrine.

Theoretically, Russia could demonstrate its resolve without causing any casualties by launching a strike in an uninhabited area. Kofman and a number of other experts have written about this possibility. Former U.S. Undersecretary of State and NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller considers this the most likely possibility: in her view, “a single strike over the Black Sea, or perhaps a strike at a Ukrainian military facility” would “strike terror not only into the hearts of the Ukrainians," but also Ukraine’s allies.

On the other hand, British historian and foreign policy expert Lawrence Freedman argued in a recent article that a strike on uninhabited territory is less likely because it would send an ambiguous signal:

The problem with a demonstration is that the message may be unclear. It will show that Russia is ready to ignore the strong normative prohibition on any nuclear use yet is still cautious on making the most of the explosive power.

And indeed, if Russia’s leadership decides a demonstrative strike on a deserted area isn’t enough, they have plenty of other options to choose from, as Anya Fink and Michael Kofman have outlined:

Political, economic, and military-related targets often include nonnuclear power plants, administrative centers (political), civilian airports, roads and rail bridges, ports, key economic objects related to livelihood, important components of the defense-industrial complex, and sources of mass media and information. Military targets tend to include command and control centers; space-based assets; key communication nodes; systems for reconnaissance, targeting, navigation, and information processing; and targets where means of delivery for ballistic or cruise missiles are based.

But experts are split about how effective a tactical nuclear strike on a military target could be. 

Russia has a wide range of options for conducting nonstrategic nuclear attacks by using one or more of the thousands of low-yield, battlefield nuclear weapons it already possesses. Russia could employ such nuclear weapons in a limited way against Ukrainian forces, bases, logistics hubs, and even cities. Such a strike could [...] deal a crippling blow to the Ukrainian military.

Caitlin Talmadge, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University, holds a similar view: in a recent analysis for the Washington Post, she noted that Russia’s nonstrategic nuclear weapons arsenal “looks tailor-made to break up large concentrations of Ukrainian forces — the type, for instance, that could threaten to take back Russian-held territory near Kherson in the south just as they have recently done around Kharkiv in the east.”

Freedman disagrees. Unlike the wars of the last century, he argues, the current war in Ukraine has not been characterized by large-scale accumulations of troops, and thus it wouldn’t do Russia much good to use a nuclear weapon:

Consider an account (from a Russian source) about the offensive in Kherson. It notes that the Ukrainians have made their impact by messing with the Russian supply lines while advancing not by armoured thrusts (unlike Kharkiv) but instead by using small groups of infantry ‘creeping’ forward over watery ground, for this is an area cut through by irrigation canals. Finding a useful target for nuclear use in such circumstances would be difficult, and, given how little it might achieve, a strange way to start a nuclear war. Moscow has shown no great care for the populations of Luhansk and Donetsk, but as their liberation is supposedly at the heart of Russian war aims it would also be strange to mark this by nuclear detonations.

How would the U.S. and other countries react to a Russian nuclear strike?

In short: Once again, we don’t know for sure. The response would most likely be asymmetrical, meaning NATO would not use nuclear force.

Details: Since the start of the full-scale war, U.S. representatives have repeatedly spoken publicly about the consequences that might ensue if Russia uses nuclear weapons. In an interview on September 17, U.S. President Joe Biden addressed Putin with a clear piece of advice: “Don’t, don’t, don’t. You’ll change the face of war.”

Every warning the U.S. and its allies have given so far has been vague about what exactly would follow a Russian nuclear strike. Judging from analyses by nuclear security experts, this is an intentional strategy that gives the West room to maneuver without requiring it to commit a certain response.

Along with public warnings and calls for Russia not to use nuclear weapons, the U.S. and its allies have the ability to deliver more specific messages through closed channels — something that’s happened multiple times since the start of the war, White House sources told the Financial Times. Because they’re not public, however, these signals carry less weight.

In an open letter to Joe Biden, nuclear weapons expert Matthew Kroenig listed possible ways the U.S. could respond if Putin launches a nuclear strike. According to Kroenig, the U.S. could either:

Intensify its current policy (sanctions, providing weapons to Ukraine, etc.) or

Launch a retaliatory strike.

If the U.S. launches a retaliatory, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a nuclear one. In fact, Kroenig says, a retaliatory nuclear strike would carry too high a risk of uncontrollable escalation. Thus, he concludes, the optimal response would be “an intensification of ongoing efforts to counter Russian aggression in Ukraine and a limited conventional strike against the Russian forces or bases that launched the nuclear attack.”

Almost all experts agree that the U.S. and its allies should not respond to a Russian nuclear strike with another nuclear strike. Former Senator and Nuclear Threat Initiative co-founder Sam Nunn, for example, told The Atlantic that he believes an American nuclear strike should be used only as a last resort, and that horizontal escalation is a safer path. As the Atlantic’s Eric Schlosser described Nunn’s view:

For example, if Russia hits Ukraine with a nuclear cruise missile launched from a ship, Nunn would advocate immediately sinking that ship. The number of Ukrainian casualties should determine the severity of the American response—and any escalation should be conducted solely with conventional weapons.

The other experts Schlosser spoke with made similar arguments. Former Biden adviser Colin Kahl believes “it would be far more effective to respond with a conventional attack and turn world opinion against Russia for violating the nuclear taboo,” as Schlosser put it, and former U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry agreed: “You want to go as little up the escalation ladder as you can get away with doing and still have a profound and relevant effect.”

Are there any signs that Russia has already made a decision on whether to use a nuclear weapon?

Judging by reports in reputable outlets citing Western intelligence findings (and the lack thereof), the answer is no.