Category Archives: Nuclear Issues

The Long Telegram: Ukraine, the Last Nail

Posted on by
3

byVice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar (Published in the IIRF Strategic Year Book 2024)

An Expiatory Offering

Stian Jenssen, director at NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s private office, stated that one solution to the on-going war could be “Land for Nato membership and peace”. Has the strategy of ‘Containment’, a lodestone dogma from the cold-war run its course and has the very ideology of a cordon sanitaire, to contain an expansionist Russia been put to rest?

 Jenssen is a senior figure who has worked at NATO for over a decade and rarely speaks in public. Jenssen, however, the next day appeared to backtrack on his comments. He said his statement was part of a broader discussion and, not very convincingly added, “it was a mistake.” It will be recalled that Stoltenberg at the NATO Summit on July 2023 said that Ukraine would be invited to join the alliance; remaining vague on how or when. President Biden, however, had been far more categorical when he earlier declared that Ukraine was not ready for NATO membership.  But was there a sense of remorse in the changed strategic direction that the proxy war in Ukraine was taking? Had Jenssen touched a true chord in the larger plans of the West?

Keenan’s ‘Long Telegram’

            In 1946 Mr George Keenan, the then American Charge d’Affaires in Moscow, responding to a query from Washington who were perplexed by the USSR’s obdurate approach to proposals that were to be the foundation of the post-war world order, had enquired “why the Soviet Union was opposed to the newly formed World Bank and International Monetary Fund.” Keenan, in a cable famously called the “Long Telegram” outlined, from a questionable perspective (it must be said), strategic motivations of the Soviet Union. His 5000 word narrative over-simplified a picture of an insecure State obsessed with the idea of expansionism and impervious to reason. He urged leadership to adopt a foreign policy the main element of which sought to belligerently “contain” Soviet imperialistic tendencies; almost as if it were pandering to a need to invent a new enemy to replace the Nazis. As we attempt to verify whether the Telegram lay at the core of the West’s policy and try and excavate some sane logic to its centrality one is up “against it” for the innermost chambers that are expected to hold secrets of that time are… bare. (John le Carre).

Containment provided an aggressive ideological framework to a strategic policy strapped administration that saw military power and mass destruction as the only arbiter to a war drained world. History today tells us, it led to a series of conflicts, near nuclear catastrophes, deliberate twisting of political narratives, disastrous WMD stockpiling and bizarre ‘witch hunts’ targeting left leaning polity.

This dogma conceived in 1947, continues in essence, into this millennium. The policy has been varyingly called a master stroke that sealed factional diplomacy; a strategic monstrosity blind to the complexity of geopolitics; a perverted belief that was to climax with the spread of capitalism, slanted democracy and free markets (Fukuyama). Much of its appeal was driven by creating manipulable elites in states of interest, fear, enticement and the inability to discern reality. Rather, ‘Containment’ gave the world, a self-extolling prophecy of morality and leadership; a curious sense that frustrating the spread of communism was an interest above all else; nurturing and militarily arming an array of pliant puppet states irrespective of their dictatorial and often tyrannical outlook; sponsoring of surrogate conflicts that split the world into persistent warring camps; subversion of legitimate governments and lastly regime changes in unyielding states. Its long-term fallout was the distortion of democracy on the altar of anti-communism.

Is the looming lack of success in the Ukraine proxy-war the last nail in the moribund policy of Containment?

The Last Nail

By oversimplifying the world into categories defined largely by ideology (and in later years) by culture and religion and declaring them inevitably hostile to one another (Huntington) Containment established an intellectual template for what began as an ideological siege which in recent years has transmuted to a civilizational one.

Clearly the development of social and political history of man cannot be so easily pigeon holed. Nations follow their own path of socio-economic development and pursue different forms of wealth generation, equitability, concepts of security and sovereignty; some of these are indeed at odds with the norm, yet it does not make a case for intervention unless such anomalies spill over borders in armed clashes. As the concept of Jus Ad Bellum (Just War)  suggests the war must have: just cause, being a last resort, being declared by a proper authority, possessing right intention, having a reasonable chance of success, and the end being proportional to the means used. When seen against this backdrop, it beggars belief to assume that powers of the day will readily embrace all aspects of a western-led international order. It seems more likely that rising powers will want to shape a global order that is inclusive of their own values and find place for their political agendas. It is this transformation that has provided the hammer to drive the last nail into Keenan’s telegram.

The Jenssen Testimonial in Retrospect; the Nuclear Factor  

There are several underlying issues that may have actuated Mr Jenssen’s testimonial; after all the statement was made and it was in the air extant and plausible before it was rescinded. So what triggered this account? While  there are several reasons, which include the all-round economic burden that the conflict has imposed and the consequent fatigue that has set in, the growing disaffection amongst a populace unwilling to cover the cost and perhaps most importantly the real dangers of the proxy war escalating and the EU being hauled into a catastrophic war. But chief amongst these is the inexorable push towards a nuclear calamity.

The breakdown of existing strategic nuclear checks and control regimes that have evolved over the last more than half-a-century between U.S. and Soviet/Russian leadership is perhaps the first symptom of the disintegration of whatever trust had been built up. The only agreement on Strategic Arms Reduction had been negotiated through a series of near calamitous nuclear incidents, progression of bilateral agreements and other confidence building measures to limit and reduce each other’s substantial nuclear arsenals. Indeed it was a slow but apparent understanding of the futility of a nuclear exchange.  Which would in time (it was hoped) become the norm with all states in possession of nuclear weapons. These optimistic prospects today amount to naught with the suspension of the New START arms control treaty. Since February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin has rattled his nuclear sabre in hopes of isolating Ukraine and intimidating it into submission. The US has responded by threatening Putin with terrible reprisals if he uses nuclear weapons, equipping Ukraine with long-range precision guided munitions and bolstering their air-power despite Moscow’s provocations. The deliberate nuclear risk-taking is both a throwback to Cold War-era superpower crises and a preview of what lies ahead.

The Treaty of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT, 1968) is now on thin ice. The big unwritten bargain amongst the signatories of the NPT (191 nations) was that nuclear weapon states will not only provide nuclear security and nuclear technologies to non-nuclear states,  but will also not attack a non-nuclear weapon state with nuclear weapons,  However, given the proceedings of the Ukraine war the nuclear security assurances of the NPT, today hardly sound very convincing.

Changed Outlook: Has the War Run its Course?

The unanimous New Delhi G 20 Leaders Declaration on the Ukraine War underscored “that all states must act in a manner consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter in its entirety. In line with the UN Charter, all states must refrain from the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition against the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of any state. The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.” The declaration is symptomatic of a changed outlook to the war. The absence of an outright condemnation of Russia and recourse to the founding principles in the UN Charter are, debatably, a realisation of the disastrous economic burdens of the war, acceptance of the frozen state of the conflict and the nuclear perils of attempting to push the NATO verge up to  Russian borders has dawned on the USA and its allies.

Disarmament Structures in Tatters 

In 2007, Putin, at the Munich security conference accused the United States of creating a unipolar world “in which there is one master, one sovereign.” He added, “… this is pernicious.” This event had to have been seen by serious Russia watchers that Kremlin had reached its red-lines. At this stage for NATO to push for expansion appeared adventurous and contradictory to the spirit of the reassurances made by the then US secretary of state James A. Baker to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during a meeting on 09  February, 1990. In a discussion on the status of a reunited Germany, the two men agreed that NATO would not extend past the territory of East Germany, a promise repeated by NATO’s secretary general the same year in Brussels. Also the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) established as a mechanism for consultation, consensus-building, cooperation, joint decision making and joint action on a wide spectrum of security issues of common interest never came to an understanding on enlargement other than on membership of the Baltic States. Russia’s case has been built on these two instances of “betrayal” and a lack of trust.

In the meantime, Moscow backed its words with actions by dismantling the structures designed to keep peace in post-Cold War Europe. Moscow formally announced its withdrawal from the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, rejected the principle of host-nation consent for its troop presence, annexed the Crimean peninsula and indeed now occupied the Donbas region of East Ukraine and the Kherson region that provides the continental bridge to the Crimea.

The Global disarmament structures today lie in tatters.

Ebbing Wages of this War

Poland has decided to stop transfer of military equipment to Ukraine. It will be recalled that Poland was Ukraine’s staunchest ally and its contribution to the latter’s war effort is amongst the largest in the EU, it has provided the maximum amount of immediate-use combat capability to the Ukraine. To give an example, all of NATO have reportedly provided about 100 tanks; Poland alone has contributed over 330 ready-to-use tanks. However, grasping realities of the Ukraine condition, the Polish Premier likened the situation to a “drowning person who could pull you down with it”.

There is a gnawing awareness that the West’s proxy war in Ukraine has run its geo-political design and fuelling it further can only result in ‘diminishing strategic returns’, degeneration of the NATO alliance and the return of an existential nuclear threat to Europe that lay dormant for near half-a-century. After all, are not the real challenges in the Indo-Pacific?

Distress in West Asia

A dramatic, overnight shift in the West’s policy towards Ukraine is potentially on the cards, as Israel’s war on Hamas escalates to a conflagration that engulfs all of west Asia. Western resources and stomach for the proxy war in Europe with nuclear dimensions has diminished. It has accelerated a process that could freeze the conflict in Ukraine, never mind that Russia may emerge ahead of the game. The alternative is a long and debilitating war in which the western allies appear to be holding the short-end of the stick without in any substantial way eroding the power of Russia.

 The War Will End on the Table

The debate over the future of the Russia-Ukraine war while, rhetorically, predicated on Ukraine re-establishing territorial control to the pre-2014 holding, it is clear today that the reality of the situation will neither tolerate nuclear escalation nor is there the will in the EU to endure further economic hardships and the perils of the conflict engulfing them.

Territorial reclamation, undoubtedly important to Ukraine, appears unlikely as their counter-offensive fizzled out. Add to that support for a protracted conflict that has prospects of degenerating to a Russia-NATO war does not appear to find favour in the western alliance. Avoiding such a war is higher priority. Enabling Ukraine’s territorial control is debatably the most thorny proposition confronting NATO for reasons mentioned earlier and besides they are not fighting the war.

President Biden has said that “this war will end at the negotiating table”. But no moves are apparent that push the parties toward talks. Although it is far from certain that a change in U.S. policy can spark such an outcome, adopting a reconciliatory one on the lines of the Jenssen testimony could freeze the conflict and make negotiations more likely. And with it, perhaps, a blood rimmed curtain will come down on ‘Containment’.

Pushing the Doomsday Clock

Posted on by
Reply

By

Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar

(The article has been published in the IPCS web journal and is available at the following link:  http://ipcs.org/comm_select.php?articleNo=5839 )

The Doomsday Clock

The Doomsday Clock is a symbol that represents the vulnerability of human existence. Set every year by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, it is intended to warn mankind of the imminence of humanity’s annihilation due to a nuclear war or climate change. The clock was moved to its current position at 100 seconds to midnight due to several geo-political incidents of 2020 that drove nuclear anxieties to a pitch.

Historically, the Cold War and the three decades after have contributed to over 30 near cataclysmic nuclear calls, all of which exposed the fragility of command and control and the high probability of unintended use. The build-up and nature of one such near catastrophe is detailed below.

On the Unintended Brink of Annihilation

On 02 November 1983, NATO conducted an exercise (Able Archer 83) simulating conflict escalation against the Soviet Union. The scenario envisaged a massive breach in European defences as Warsaw Pact forces rolled into Western Europe.

The war-game in its concluding phase saw the highest defence alert condition, DEFCON 1, being attained; indicating imminence of a nuclear exchange. Nuclear forces were at instantaneous readiness for strikes on the Soviet Union. All Command Centres had been given necessary weapon release authorisation that set the ether buzzing in preparation for ‘Armageddon’. Nuclear Command Authorities were in their bomb proof posts or in the air, alternate Command posts were enabled, cryptograms were flying fast and furious; while launch codes were broken open with surrealistic deliberation. Predictably this triggered extreme alarm on the Soviet side since there was neither any notification of progress of the exercise nor of the scenario crossing the nuclear threshold. Moscow feared that force build-up was a cover for an actual nuclear attack timed to coincide with their Revolution holiday. Soviet nuclear missiles were readied in ‘emergency mode’ for launch and the entire arsenal with its 11,000 warheads was placed on maximum combat alert.

Kremlin then intercepted a perplexing NATO message stating that US nuclear missiles had been launched; and yet there were no indications of nuclear explosions. It was only then that the hotline was enabled to establish what was going on. The CIA later declared that “the world was on the brink of nuclear annihilation without even knowing it.”

Bewildering Nature of a Nuclear Crisis

The nature of a nuclear crisis is such that the decision to use nuclear weapons is invariably taken in a compressed time frame; in an ambience shut off from impartial consultancy and by a command authority of questionable competence. Its dynamics are driven by a purpose in denial of the probability of like-retaliation and the prospect of mutual destruction. Rationality and balance go out of the window in this determination and are replaced by nationalistic ego and an aroused rush to confront. As one will note, each one of these ingredients possess an element of inadvertence or at the least fecklessness. Carl von Clausewitz’s unerringly wise counsel, that even the “simplest” strategic decision making can be bewilderingly difficult; has new meaning when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons. For neither is there precedence to guide nor, distressingly, time.

Documented events have shown that it takes the chancy instincts of a Vasily Arkhipov or a Stanislav Petrov to make an unsanctioned intervention to defuse a calamity through gut-feelings of survival, conscience and little else. In such a scheme of things one wonders whether hierarchical systems can guarantee the making of decisions in the larger interest of mankind.

The Crisis in Ukraine and Nuclear Overtones

The crisis in Ukraine is no different, for it reveals several events that have turned world attention away from the anguish of people, exposed the hypocrisy of nations and, most recklessly, pushed the doomsday clock a little closer to midnight. It is now apparent that NATO and the European Union are instruments of US foreign policy, rather than being consultative institutions in any collective cause. These institutions, arguably, are acting in American interests. That the USA has contributed over 60% of all contributions (over $ 55 billion since the start of the war) to the Ukrainian war effort makes clear where control of the war lies. The sanctions adopted under American stewardship are proving to be a double edged sword. Europe is faced with the onset of a frosty winter in circumstances of sky rocketing energy prices and crippling economic woes.

As recent as June 2021 in the Geneva Agreement for extension of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, both Premier Putin and President Biden reaffirmed the principle that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”. And yet right from commencement of Russia’s “special operations” to date, a week has not gone by without a threat or the rhetoric of imminent use of nuclear weapons. It began with Russia exercising their nuclear forces on 19 February 2022 as tensions of invasion of Ukraine were at its peak, almost as if to announce the impending military operations were covered by nuclear forces. Towards the end of October, both the NATO and Russia were involved in intensive exercise of their respective nuclear forces amidst shrill rhetoric about the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The nuclear face-off has today degenerated into a threat of use against intervention, on the one side; versus intimidation by proxy.

The Doomsday Clock in Forward March

And almost as if to further provoke the doomsday clock into a “forward march”, the US Nuclear Posture Review 2022 released recently, is interwoven into something called Integrated Deterrence  that brings the nuclear factor alongside war fighting domains as an instrument conjoined with all elements of U.S. national power. To say the least, this is disappointing for the cause of nuclear arms control and indeed for survival as it makes no attempt to differentiate nuclear weapons from the conventional.

Humanity’s hope for a lead into reducing the role of nuclear weapons in interstate relations and an opening to a universal No First Use policy as a pre-cursor to disarmament is a far and bleak cry. For verily, the Ukraine war and foolhardy nuclear postures have brought the day of reckoning that much closer.

The Looming Winter of Discontent

Posted on by
Reply

By

Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar (Published in the IPCS web journal. Available at http://ipcs.org/comm_select.php?articleNo=5837 )

Impact and Veracity of Social Media

       The widespread popularity of social media, despite its loud and frequent boorish content, has made the study of events that form historical processes more a disarrayed function of the common than, hitherto, an orderly and elitist function. With around 63.4 million tweets in cyber space relating to the Russo-Ukraine conflict inside a fortnight of the commencement of operations, reality is tossed around and mangled as never before to present itself in the garb of emerging history. Meanwhile, people quite blithely debate whether a nuclear holocaust is an option; whether the NATO should impose a no-fly zone (forget the consequences); or if the alleged counter offensives are kosher; and indeed the imminence of a palace coup in the Kremlin  through the revolt by the oligarchs or even the return of Alexei Navalny.

       A viewpoint built on contrived interpretations of happenings serves only to manipulate human understanding in a manner that gives life to wishful projections. All this has left discernments of the conflict in Ukraine confounded in a mire of half-truths, myths and propaganda.

Where Lies the Truth?

       In this ambience of facts being irrelevant to a distorted narrative, Orwell’s suggestion that the truth  “is not merely determined by the accuracy of verbal veracity; it is the sense of the importance of the event that is its truth; a combination of actual fact and factual relevance ultimately impel an outcome which is the inviolable truth…” Arguably, this is the most important sense in which the truth exists and also the only way of deciphering the goings on in the war in Ukraine.

       President Zelenskyy addressing his nation stated that “The pace of providing aid to Ukraine by partners should correspond to the pace of our movement.” To a military mind, this may suggest that western arms and war material is either not keeping pace with losses or that Ukraine is running low on reserves. And what of the Ukrainian counter offensive? It appears to be vacated space that is being reclaimed; not on account of having exacted a military rout but more owing to Russian operational inability to consolidate a territorial over-reach.

Not the Era for War

       At the recent meeting of the 77th session of the UNGA, deliberations were dominated by the situation in Ukraine. President Macron went to some length as he quoted Prime Minister Modi’s dialogue with President Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit exhorting him that “Today’s era is not an era of war…” There can be several interpretations of the discourse; but the one that underscored sense and criticality to Macron, the EU and indeed the world was the impact that Russian controlled energy cut-offs will have on the people and economies of the EU.

Russia’s Menacing Energy Bludgeon

       Russia supplied the EU with 40% of its natural gas last year. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, was the leading importer. As the main supplier of gas for many European countries, Moscow controls energy to propel industries, keep alive essential services and for domestic heating. The resource has become a lever that governs relations and, indeed, tensions. Europe’s dependency on Russian gas was no accident. It began as a measure to wean itself away from the OPEC and then became a part of a larger project spearheaded by Germany to deliberately tie the two together in bonds of reliance. The probable understanding was that increased dependency on Russia would open their vast markets to bi-lateral trade and mutual dependency would bring to an end an historical adversarial relationship. But the war in Ukraine exposed the failings of this strategy as Russia’s dominance over energy supplies far outweighed any sense of mutuality. On the contrary it has put immense pressure on European leaders without in any way reducing Russian oil revenues, as demands mount.

       The Kremlin has already cut off gas to six countries and fettered supply to six more in response to NATO’s sanctions. While energy policies of EU states have recognised that it is overly dependent on Russia, it offers no definitive answers of how to reduce that dependency. After all, Russia earned over $430 billion in revenue from oil and gas exports to the EU in the last one year and this figure far exceeds the estimated costs of Russia’s war in Ukraine. In balance is the menacing hardship of an extreme winter for Europe without Russian gas to brave it. Add to this Russia’s control over a third of global wheat supplies that has laid bare the food insecurity of the world. Clearly economics has trumped strategy.

       In the meantime, in a referendum ordered in the occupied Eastern and Southern regions of Ukraine, the people there have apparently voted overwhelmingly in favour of joining the Russian Federation. The annexation has made clear that Moscow’s war aims was the territories that comprised the Donbas region, Kherson and the Zaporizhizhia Oblasts (if it weren’t discernable all along).  A reported partial Russian mobilisation has been called, perhaps to generate the necessary “boots-on-ground” that will secure the fresh appropriations.

External Factors and Peace Prospects

       Distinguishing myths from the reality of disparities in Russo-Ukrainian war waging potential and the flagging nature of aid coming in from the NATO are keys to understanding the direction of this conflict. There is little doubt that Moscow has suffered military reverses, yet their hold on substantial swathes of land in the East and South to the extent of near 20% of the Ukrainian land area is firm and is in the process of being consolidated.  On a daily basis, Ukraine confirms the pivotal dependence upon external factors. Fundamental to the war and, ironically, the weakest link is the US and NATO material backing. Both, surprisingly, bristling at the start of the conflict; are perhaps becoming aware that sanctions are not going to make the Kremlin sue for peace. The answer is not more sanctions as much as the political will to see through privations, a harsh winter and the current economic downturn; we note, NATO’s strategic patience has worn thin.

       Given the correlation that is emerging, hazards of escalation and NATO’s wilting resolve to stay-the-course; one is unlikely to see the appearance of an olive branch till the worst of winter is past and that too on Kremlin’s terms.