24A037 Russia's Nuclear Doctrine by Jim Davies, 9/24/2024  

For more than a couple of decades now, the RusGov has published the conditions under which it would use its arsenal of about 5,000 nuclear missiles; and when the USGov last month permitted its Ukrainian proxy to fire regular ones into the heart of Russia, that doctrine was adjusted.

Because any one of those 5,000 would vaporize you, this matters.

As far as I know the USGov has not spelled out its own nuclear doctrine, and other governments that have a few bombs each haven't either; so in those cases we who will be most affected have no clear idea. The most I know is that the trigger is controlled by an old guy with a feeble brain, at least for the next four months.

The core of the Russian policy is plain: if there is a clear and imminent threat to the existence of the Russian State, its nukes will be unleashed. Assuming they are telling the truth (and in this case, that's quite possible) the resource is for defense, and the criterion hangs on the State's survival. At present there are many US-originated pinpricks to the welfare of Russia, but not a menace of that magnitude; so we may have a little longer to live.

That doctrine - use in defense only - is not as grossly immoral as the alternative, namely "we'll use them any time we see an advantage in the struggle for world power" - including unprovoked aggression. Nonetheless, let's take it apart.

The big problem with nuclear bombs is that they are not defensive weapons; it is impossible to use them for defense only. Explode one, and most of those killed will be people who can do you no harm at all. That is why, in the coming zero government society, nobody will wish to own one; most folk will choose to keep defensive weapons such as handguns, but the "private ownership of nuclear weapons" will be a non-starter. Neighbors of such an owner would move away (or pay him to move away, or possibly even shoot him, since he would be menacing them with a deadly weapon even by keeping it in his garage) in the reasonable belief that he meant them harm; and with a reputation like that his ability to buy and sell essential items like food would vanish.

So it is even with states, or governments, including Russia. If its government judges it (the State!) faces an existential threat and so fires off its arsenal at the US, all 5,000 may not arrive but some fraction of them will. Perhaps 150 million of us will die at once, in cities. They will be relatively lucky. The survivors will die more slowly, of radiation poisoning and thirst and hunger. And what's true here will very likely be true in Russia and probably Europe. What the radioactive clouds will do to the rest of the planet's population I cannot tell; but thousands of years of civilization will have been wiped out in a single day.

This is Hiroshima, a once-vibrant city, after being hit by one atomic bomb in 1945.

Nuclear bombs - 5,000 of them - are each hundreds of times more powerful.

That is what governments do. It is what one US Government did.

The Russian nuclear doctrine is clear, and hence preferable to the unpublished others; yet the above shows that it is nonetheless impossible; nukes can't be used only for defense, and any retaliation would devastate Russia as well as its targets. There could be no possible "victory"; the word would have no meaning. The outcome, as promised for 75 years, would be Mutually Assured Destruction. The winner would lose as well as the loser. No fruits of victory could be enjoyed; the loser's resources would not be available for plunder. What Team Putin is saying, it seems to me, is: leave us alone, to run our country the way we prefer; or if you won't, we'll destroy the whole house. Like Samson.

A last thought, and it applies to all with control over nuclear bombs, not just Russia: the conditions for their use (published or not) relate always to the State. The Putin government says if the existence of the State is in peril, they will be fired. Why? - a state anywhere is no more than a legal fiction, a handful of people pretending to have power over millions. As repeatedly shown in these ZGBlogs alone, its "necessity" disappears the moment it is seriously questioned; there is therefore no shadow of need to kill anyone who removes it, using nukes or any other method.