The day after doctrine: Russia's nuclear dilemma & the South Asian precedent

Express Tribune

14 hours ago

On 3 June, the Daily Mail ran a headline that many dismissed as melodramatic, but few could ignore: 'Putin knows a nuclear revenge attack will force Ukraine's surrender. These are the four ways he'd strike... and we're powerless to stop this holocaust.'
Quoting Col Richard Kemp, a former British commander in Afghanistan, the piece imagined multiple escalation scenarios where Russia, cornered by battlefield setbacks and deep strategic losses, might resort to tactical nuclear use. The framing may have sounded like tabloid frenzy but it struck a chord with the evolving anxiety in the West: that nuclear deterrence, as traditionally conceived, is disintegrating. That tactical nuclear use, long treated as a taboo, is now entering the realm of possibility — not by miscalculation or accident, but as a calculated tool of escalation management. That the post-Hiroshima threshold is not merely at risk but already structurally breached.
Ukraine's deep-strike campaign against the air leg of Russia's nuclear triad marks more than a tactical success; it is a doctrinal rupture. A claimed 20 per cent degradation of Russia's strategic long-range fleet, achieved using low-cost drones and remote-inserted assets, pierced directly into the Soviet legacy posture. This wasn't a battlefield blow, it was strategic. It signalled that a top-tier nuclear state has failed to protect its second-strike assets from sub-strategic encroachment. The world has sleepwalked into a new nuclear reality.
Technically, Russia's 2020 declared deterrence doctrine has been breached. If 'critical military infrastructure' includes nuclear-capable bombers and their launch sites, then the threshold for retaliation was crossed. But enforcement isn't automatic, it's political. The absence of response so far can only be attributed to structural hesitation or political calibration.
Strategic restraint remains a possibility, if Moscow still calculates long-term positional gain rooted in the attritional phase of its war doctrine. More likely, however, is operational unreadiness. Few of Russia's tactical nuclear platforms are both survivable and deployable under current battlefield conditions.
Doctrinal hesitation seems less convincing. Had the strikes carried a NATO signature, escalation might already have occurred. But the "Ukrainian" label, even if nominal, offers Moscow political cover to absorb, for now.
But the SBU's operation revealed more than Ukrainian capability; it exposed the fragility of the triad's symmetry. The air leg now appears a soft, centralised, and non-survivable underbelly. If the calculus for escalation is grounded in survivability, then Russia and other nuclear nations face a strategic imbalance. Submarines and ICBMs must now carry the entire burden of escalation credibility. That shift has consequences far beyond Ukraine. It fractures the predictability of nuclear thresholds. It dissolves the assumptions underpinning INF and New START. It redefines the sub-strategic space under a nuclear horizon.
Yet, deterrence doesn't survive on ambiguity. It must survive impact. A tactical Russian nuclear strike — even a single sub-kiloton yield, battlefield-contained use — would not be about battlefield outcomes, but reestablishing doctrinal red lines. But the fallout would not remain in theatre. It would globalise.
For China, this would be doctrinally liberating. The American Indo-Pacific Command's persistent theatre-posturing — especially its simulated decapitation 'left-of-launch' scenarios against mainland targets — already pressures Beijing to shorten its response timeline. A Russian precedent would remove the final moral hesitations. It would rationalise tactical nuclear signalling as legitimate escalation management, not taboo. Expect China to invest in regionalised, non-strategic nuclear options designed to deny US naval or ISR dominance around Taiwan — and to validate 'first countervalue, then counterforce' as a pre-emptive logic, not a reactive one.
But the deeper detonation, however, may occur in South Asia.
India's doctrinal drift away from 'No First Use' — through both ambiguity and posture — is already incentivising Chinese and Pakistani 'use-it-or-lose-it' anxieties. India's alignment with Israeli precision warfare and American surgical decapitation has fostered a belief that strategic risk can be managed through deniable, calibrated strikes. But unlike Tel Aviv or Washington, New Delhi operates within a regional theatre defined by compressed warning timelines, low tolerance for ambiguity, and adversaries conditioned for reflex. This borrowed strategic grammar, when applied to a nuclear dyad like Pakistan, risks translating Western hubris into subcontinental catastrophe.
If Russia demonstrates that tactical nuclear use can be decoupled from strategic Armageddon, then Pakistan will finally possess a template to formalise the battlefield nuclear doctrine it has long reserved but never operationalised. The full logic of NASR — once a deterrent symbol, now a potential tripwire — will become active: no more a signal but a standing battlefield option. The danger is that Pakistan's ROEs will evolve past Riposte and into deterrence-by-interdiction. Any visible IBG buildup near the border, or persistent scavenging for sub-strategic manoeuvre space under the nuclear ceiling, may trigger a counter-concentration strike before hostilities formally begin.
Unlike Russia or China, Pakistan doesn't operate behind oceans or with redundancy. It operates with existential immediacy. It cannot afford to absorb. Its threshold is not calibrated in megatons, but in minutes.
The United States, meanwhile, will face a strategic reversal. For decades, it managed nuclear escalation through centralised alliance structures and deterrence hierarchies. But a likely Russian breach, especially if absorbed by the West without proportional response, would flatten that structure. It would reveal that nuclear use can be absorbed, normalised, and locally managed. That is not deterrence resilience; it is signalling failure.
The Cold War built nuclear norms through symmetry, transparency, and globalised fear. The new reality is asymmetrical, obscured, and psychologically decoupled. Escalation thresholds are being reinterpreted in regional dialects. Deterrence is being broken not in theory, but in precedent.
For the first time in history, if a nuclear strike occurs outside superpower initiation, in a contested theatre, by a major power struggling to retain parity, then Washington's entire nuclear architecture — based on managed escalation, centralised decision nodes, and predictability — would fracture. The gatekeeping function of American deterrence would be voided. Allies would begin to hedge. Adversaries would begin to test.
But if Russia absorbs these Ukrainian sabotage and continues the war conventionally, the implications may be deeper still.
That would confirm a precedent even more subversive than retaliation: that a nuclear power can suffer strategic degradation without escalation. That the air leg of its deterrent can be degraded, mocked, and exploited without cost. That the bluff can be called — and nothing happens.
That would rewrite the global deterrence script in real time.
In such a scenario, for China, the lesson would not be symmetrical. It would be inverse. The Taiwan scenario would evolve past porcupine defences and passive deterrence. Taipei's planners may assume they can strike Chinese missile bases or early-warning nodes in a prolonged attritional campaign without triggering a nuclear response. Whether true or not, that assumption itself would be destabilising. If a top-tier nuclear state can't protect its second-strike assets, then deterrence must be made more reflexive, more automated, more decoupled from politics.
China's command-and-control systems — already shifting toward dual-use ambiguity — may become hair-trigger by necessity. Meanwhile, the PLA's own deterrence posture will face renewed pressure. If Russia cannot secure its bombers, can China secure its rail-mobile launchers? Expect a doctrinal pivot: from posture-by-denial to posture-by-pre-emption. Thresholds will tighten, not widen. Response timelines will compress. And the pressure to demonstrate readiness, before a shot is fired, will grow exponentially.
For Pakistan, Russia's restraint would be a warning, not reassurance. It would reveal the limits of deterrence signalling in the face of deniable strikes. If restraint buys degradation, then restraint must be shortened. Deterrence posture would move from 'second-strike assuredness' to 'first-strike necessity.' Tactical nuclear use may become essential to restore credibility.
For the United States, Russia's non-response would appear as strategic victory — but only briefly. It would signal that nuclear impunity is now negotiable. It would not matter that NATO ISR assisted the Ukrainian operation. That detail would be strategically irrelevant. What would matter will be this: Ukraine has demonstrated that nuclear deterrence is no longer the exclusive domain of superpowers. Escalatory logic is being localised. Sub-strategic space is being democratised. That is the real rupture. The West no longer gatekeeps the escalatory script — it only reacts to it.
So, the choice is stark.
Strike and trigger the world's first precedent for tactical nuclear signalling in a modern battlefield, with ripple effects across every nuclear flashpoint from Kaliningrad to Kashmir. Or absorb and allow the world to infer that nuclear doctrine can be breached without consequence. That deterrence is a decaying art, not a governing science.
This choice is starker still because India and Pakistan are sleepwalking through a transformation in nuclear logic without corresponding public debate, institutional preparedness, or political mechanisms. Parliamentary oversight is absent; military wargaming remains siloed; and civilian elites continue to treat doctrine as a legacy relic, not a living architecture.
As thresholds dissolve and deterrence becomes theatre-specific, the region's opacity is no longer stabilising — it is actively dangerous. Without transparent review of red lines, retaliation postures, or escalation ladders, South Asia may become the world's first nuclear region where deterrence fails not due to intention — but inertia.
A few days ago, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio remarked: 'If it weren't for the US-Russia ties in 1961, the world could have collapsed during the Cuban Missile Crisis.' The world learnt many lessons from those 13 days. Doctrines were developed, safeguards installed, hotlines opened.
India seems to have learned nothing from that even after 63 years. It, perhaps, cannot.
This is the country that 'accidentally' fired a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile into Pakistan in March 2022. A Russian-engineered P-800 Oniks, rebranded as BrahMos, went off-course and landed deep inside a nuclear-armed neighbour. No heads rolled. No systems reviewed. Just a sorry scapegoating at IAF. What other nuclear power in the world could have done this without consequences?
In 2010, a Delhi university lab disposed of radioactive cobalt-60 into a scrap market. One person died. Several were injured. In 2017, a GPS malfunction sent an Agni-II nuclear-capable missile near a populated area. In 2014, a valve failure at Kakrapar threatened radiation leaks. In 1995, a coolant pipe burst at Rajasthan's reactor. In 2002, fuel rod mishandling at Kalpakkam spiked radiation dangerously close to local communities.
Between 1994 and 2021, there have been 18 reported cases of nuclear material theft or loss in India. Uranium on the black market. Californium in private hands. The Bhopal disaster remains the world's worst industrial catastrophe — and still, no full-scope IAEA oversight. No accountability. Not even regulatory autonomy. India's own Comptroller and Auditor General has called out the AERB's lack of independence.
Indian leaders routinely issue conventional threats to nuclear neighbours. It's a uniquely juvenile understanding of deterrence — only possible in Delhi. With immature, nuclear-sabre-rattling leadership threatening a region of 2 billion people, India's belligerence is no longer an internal risk. It is a regional liability — and a global one.
This is the country that the West chose to proliferate nuclear technology with. Through BECA and other agreements, the US has effectively endorsed recklessness. This is not just hypocrisy. It is strategic malpractice.
One lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis was the visible posturing of No First Use policies to reduce escalation risks. Instead, India has embarked on a visible First Use threat, with aggressive and strategic attack platforms. Crisis stability theory, shaped by the 1962 near-catastrophe, warns that such posturing creates a preemptive incentive for Pakistan or China, heightening the risk of miscalculation in a tense region.
Pakistan and China, by contrast, continue to be recognised for nuclear responsibility. IAEA and US officials have acknowledged their command systems as stable and disciplined. No major nuclear accidents or incidents have been publicly reported at Pakistani facilities. Pakistan maintains its nuclear assets under tight security with a robust command and control structure through the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) and the National Command Authority (NCA). Pakistan has improved its regulatory framework, including joining several international treaties like the Convention on Nuclear Safety.
The world was lucky in 1962. It may not be again.
This is not a game of nerves. These are doctrines in freefall. And to the empire-builders in Taipei, Tel Aviv, and New Delhi — and their borrowed faith in absolute escalatory control — this may be a final warning: Are you prepared to be the first ideologues in history who confuse tactical advantage with thermonuclear immunity — and stake your grand civilisational myths on the hope that the other side blinks first?
Abdul Munim is a freelance contributor and electrical engineer. He posts on X using the handle @Munimusing and can be reached via email at [e-mail]
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