Nuclear is back on the menu

With Russian Army units staging and preparing across the border in Russia, Belarus, the Donbas, and the Crimea for weeks and months, Putin probably had visions of Desert Storm in mind. The American-led coalition victory in Desert Storm in 1990/1991 was a drubbing of Soviet equipment, tactics, and doctrine. The Soviets (transitioning back to Russians at the time) were awed; the Chinese were filled with fear at the outcome of Desert Storm.

Having seen first-hand the Soviet T-72 tanks and the BMP infantry fighting vehicles after we shot them up in the First Gulf War, the Soviet equipment was shoddy, prone to breakdowns, and cramped beyond comparison with American vehicles. The Soviet equipment is menacing on parade, but often trouble prone in real operations. The sight of burning, broken down, and motionless Russian vehicles out of fuel in column formation on the way to Kiev belies many things about modern Russia. Perhaps to help maintain strategic momentum for Russia and to distract from the less than stellar gains, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made very clear statements that a broader World War III will involve nuclear weapons. Russia also directly threatened Finland and Sweden.

This quick assertion of nuclear weapon use was a wake up for many and a jolting reminder of the bad old days of toe-to-toe nuclear readiness with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons at the ready on each side of the Cold War struggle.

There are a much smaller number of nuclear warheads today, but still enough for at least a partial Armageddon compared to the Cold War. I grew up not too far from a nuclear-tipped Nike Missile site and remember seeing the missiles at the ready. When I first joined the military in 1983, the reality of nuclear, biological, and chemical use was omnipresent, and we trained to fight under those conditions. After 30-plus years of the End of History and the War on Terror, we’re finding ourselves having to relearn those arts from the past and re-visit the readiness of our nuclear forces.

China is Building and Moving Toward a Complete Triad of Nuclear Deterrence

Meanwhile, China, the senior partner in the China–Russia axis to topple America, is on a silo-building frenzy for nuclear missiles. Ground-based missiles are one leg of the strategic nuclear deterrent triad that America mastered during the Cold War. The other two legs are sea-based missiles and bombers with long-range nuclear missiles. There’s speculation that there are more silos than missiles because the Chinese are copying our “M-X” mobile missile concepts of the 1970s and ’80s.

Two other missile developments complement the Chinese silo-building frenzy. First is the Chinese hypersonic missile capability for strategic strike. Last year was filled with numerous reports of surprise Chinese tests of these missiles and the apparent lack of an equivalent capability or a defense against these missiles in the Western powers. The Chinese are also building up their ballistic missile submarine capability and have perhaps six in service, with more under construction.