He is an authority on nuclear weapons. Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, in Washington DC, is an expert on the world’s arsenals and writes about them for the most respected publication on arms control: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Il Fatto Quotidiano sat down for an in-depth interview with Kristensen.
How real is the risk that Russia might use nuclear weapons against Ukraine?
There is a lot of uncertainty, of course; we don’t know if they will, and we all hope that they won’t. So, if Putin is going to use nuclear weapons, what would the scenario be? Most people say he would probably not use the long-range strategic forces, so it would be a short-range tactical system, and there is a lot of speculation about what that might be. There is no certainty here. It could well be that this is just Putin doing more chest-thumping; he likes to talk big. Russian officials have at times issued nuclear threats in the past, not just in the context of the Ukraine war, but even before it. They also issued such threats back in 2014, and before that in 2010, 2011, 2008. They have issued nuclear threats, some of them very explicit, from time to time. So in part this could just be the way Russians like to sound big and be threatening, but of course it could also indicate, and that’s the fear, that if he loses in Ukraine, then he would be willing to escalate to the use of nuclear weapons.
Would he gain any major military benefit from using a tactical nuclear weapon?
Not from using one, not at all. He would have to use a significant number, because if he wants to use nuclear weapons against Ukrainian troop formations or bases or depots in a military sense, he would have to use quite a number to have a real impact. In 1991, before they started attacking Saddam Hussein’s troops, the Pentagon examined how they might use tactical nuclear weapons to knock out those forces, and one of the problems they encountered was that they would have had to use quite a few. There were many reasons why they chose not to use nuclear weapons; it wasn’t really an option, but even in that hypothetical scenario they realized it was not really something they could do. And Putin would face the same dilemma: he would have to use multiple tactical nuclear weapons to really have an impact on how the war is going. So it all depends on what his objective might be: is it a military objective, or is it the objective of wanting to shock the Ukrainians into giving up? And you can imagine that if you want to shock Ukraine, you could also destroy a city or two, but again: there are no good nuclear options for Putin in Ukraine, just like there are no good options for the West to respond directly to nuclear use in Ukraine. It is a very complicated situation.
Do you think he might resort to a demonstrative employment, like detonating a tactical nuclear weapon over the Black Sea?
The problem with that, of course, is that there is no damage [to troops and military installations] if you detonate one over the Black Sea, so it might have exactly the opposite effect, namely that of hardening Ukrainian resistance and determination, and hardening the Western response, so that Putin would find himself in even more trouble, in terms of more sanctions, more political isolation, more economic isolation. You might even imagine that some of his best friends, China and India and Brazil, countries like that, might then say: enough, Putin, you are going too far. So it is not clear to me he would gain anything in particular from doing that.
Does he have full control over the power to launch a nuclear attack against Ukraine?
No. He doesn’t have a red button on his desk that he presses and then nuclear weapons fly; he needs the cooperation of the Russian military. As the president of Russia, it is up to him to make the decision, but his military has to agree to use nuclear weapons, and if they agree, that order has to trickle down through the nuclear command system into the units that must carry out the order. So first you have to bring the nuclear weapons out of a central storage, transport them out to the battle front where they are to be used, install them on the launcher, and then there would have to be another decision, the actual order to launch, which has to come from Putin.
And of course this would give us in the West and other powers some warning time…
Yes, it would take some time to do all that, so there would be some time to pick up indications that all that is happening. Western intelligence would almost certainly get news about that. But it is also not a given that if Putin should decide to use nuclear weapons, he would want them to be used quickly. He might prefer for it to take a long time, he might prefer to make the Ukrainians sweat and the West sweat for a whole week, maybe two, while getting those things ready, and play it up in public. So he might also choose to make a big drama out of it in order to increase coercion on Ukraine and the West.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine decided to transfer nuclear weapons back to Russia. Did Ukraine transfer them back to Russia because it was technically or politically unable to assume control of them?
Yes. Of course those weapons were Soviet weapons, and when the Soviet Union fell apart, the problem was what to do with them, but it wasn’t as if the Ukrainian authorities could use them. Codes would have been needed to be able to activate them, but actually the Ukrainians used the weapons to get concessions from both the West and Russia, concessions that were of benefit to Ukraine. So they got a lot out of negotiating the return of those weapons, but they did not really have the option of keeping and using them, if they had wanted to.
So they would not have protected Ukraine from invasion, had they kept these weapons.
No, I don’t think so. Of course one can imagine that, over the many years that have passed, they could have dismantled them, and tried to get the material inside them and build their own nuclear weapons, but that is all hypothetical, and not realistic in my view. The world was in a different situation at the time, and I think they made the right decision. They got benefits from that. Frankly speaking, I think Ukraine would be more alone today had it kept nuclear weapons, because it would have been considered a sort of pariah country, that did not follow international norms.
How would the U.S. react if Russia hit Ukraine with a tactical nuclear weapon?
That is really hard to predict. There is no doubt it would be a very forceful reaction. The question is: would it be militarily forceful, or forceful in some other way, or a combination of the two? It is impossible to predict. And in fact I think that on the U.S.’s part the whole idea of not being too specific about how they would react is part of the game.
Thanks to your research we know that Italy is the European country with the highest number of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in its territory and the only one with two nuclear bases. Does this increase the risk for us?
No, not directly. It is only if NATO reacts and things escalate to a full-scale war between Russia and NATO that there is any military threat against those bases in Italy. It would have to go far before that would be the case. I don’t think they would play a direct role in that kind of scenario at all.
This is not the first time that nuclear powers have considered using tactical weapons: the United States also considered using them in Vietnam and in Iraq. However, no one has used any nuclear weapons in combat since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The nuclear taboo has worked for the last 77 years. If Russia hits Ukraine with a tactical nuclear weapon, it would break the nuclear taboo. How would this change the course of history?
That is the key question. It’s about the reaction: if Russia makes the mistake of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, it will break the 77-year-long taboo against using nuclear weapons in war, so the question here is: what should the West do, if that happens? I think it is much more important for the West to stick to the nuclear taboo even if Russia does use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. They can punish Russia in many other ways, but they should not resort to nuclear weapons.