View from Delhi: Why the West must take seriously that Russia revises its nuclear doctrine?

The revision lowers the threshold of use of nuclear weapons by Russia. It is a warning to the West not to escalate the Ukraine war, writes Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian Foreign Secretary, India’s Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia.

The Ukraine conflict is acquiring increasingly dangerous dimensions. The US is today engaged in an open proxy war against Russia by providing arms, training, intelligence, instructors and funds to Ukraine to sustain its conflict with Russia.

The US has declared openly that its goal in the Ukraine conflict is to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, weaken it militarily to the point that it can no longer pose a threat to its neighbours, in the hope that this could lead eventually to a regime change in Russia.

The US has applied the most draconian sanctions on Russia to cause its economic collapse. It has sought to isolate Russia diplomatically

This US/NATO strategy has not worked. The Russian economy has weathered the sanctions. After initial setbacks, the Russian army has recovered ground. Russia has ramped up its production of war material. It has adapted its military response to new weapon technologies and advanced NATO arms and tactics employed against it. It has limited its war aims and used its military resources commensurately.

Many in the global south see Russia, the world’s largest country, possessing huge natural resources, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a formidable nuclear power, as pivotal to creating a multipolar order. Such an order alone will give a voice to the global south in international governance.

The West has steadily escalated the military conflict in Ukraine by providing the Ukrainian armed forces with more and more lethal weapons to attack Russian targets. This has been done step by step to test the Russian red lines. It began with the supply of air defence systems, long range artillery, tanks, powerful cruise missiles, F16s, and so on. Russia has been warning against such stepped up supplies but has acted with restraint, without being distracted from its limited war aims.

President Putin has, however, been warning the West that they must understand that Russia is a nuclear power and will defend itself if necessary with nuclear weapons if its very existence is threatened. He had in 2018 announced that Russia was developing a new ICBM missile and long range underwater drones against which the West had no defences. He has repeated this subsequently.

Russia’s nuclear warnings have gone unheeded in the West. The belief there is that Russia is bluffing and that the West should not be deterred. In turn, western voices have warned that the West too possesses nuclear weapons, with commentators threatening to destroy Russia’s Black Sea if Russia used tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. France has offered access to its nuclear arsenal for Europe’s defence.

Ukraine has been permitted to use NATO supplied weapons to attack the former Ukrainian territory now incorporated into Russia, as also the Russia fleet in the Black Sea which has suffered much damage. Ukraine has also used long range drones to attack targets deep into Russia. In August 2024, Ukraine intruded into Russia’s Kursk region, the first land invasion of Russia after that of Hitler. The symbolism of this invasion cannot be ignored by Russia.

Ukraine is now lobbying the US and the EU for permission to attack Russia proper with the long range missiles supplied by the UK and the US. The UK is actively supporting this escalation while the US seems reticent for fear of triggering a direct conflict between Russia and NATO. Zelensky has just visited the US with his Victory Plan which is intended to draw NATO into the conflict.

While this debate is going on in the West, President Putin has unveiled the revision of Russia’s nuclear doctrine which would allow a Russian nuclear response to a massive attack on its territory with missiles, drones, etc, with the support of a nuclear state. This lowers the nuclear threshold of use of nuclear weapons by Russia. It is a warning to the West not to escalate.

There are voices in Russia, of well-established geo-politicians and conservative philosophers, that are advocating the use of nuclear weapons by Russia as the only way to deter the West. The fact is that so far Russia’s formidable nuclear arsenal has not deterred its adversaries from fighting a steadily intensifying open proxy war against it. Russia’s redlines have been repeatedly crossed by the West

If Russia, which has been a staunch supporter of the NPT, were to use nuclear weapons the non-proliferation regime will undoubtedly collapse.

Most importantly, the G20 New Delhi Declaration, to which Russia is also a party, states that the “use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible”. Brazil and South Africa, as well as China, not to mention Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey, also endorsed this view. This will be the general view of the countries of the global south too, beyond the G 20.

All said and done, it is not conceivable that Russia would use nuclear weapons unless its very existence is threatened. This proposition would be true of all countries that possess nuclear weapons, as the logic of possessing them is precisely to thwart any existential threat.

If the debate over the use of nuclear weapons has started in Russia because of the declared objective of the West to impose a strategic defeat on it, with some in Europe openly talking of the break-up of the Russian federation, then the responsibility lies on the West to desist from fuelling the conflict in Ukraine to a point of no-return and instead exploring the route of dialogue and diplomacy to find a realistic solution.

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