The Nuclear Wall

In the past I've noted that given American conventional military power that having a nuclear weapons-free world is to America's advantage. Russia by contrast must have nuclear weapons because of their conventional weakness. So obviously they oppose the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Russia has too few trained troops and warplanes to defend their long land border. Really, despite chest thumping and flinging poo, Russia's strategic position is difficult (especially when they make things worse by provoking hostility in neighbors, so make that "because of" rather than "despite," I suppose).

Russia can't afford to build an army that can defend their border because China is becoming a major military threat to Russia.

That factor alone could make it impossible for Russia to afford a conventional defense of their territory. Add to China the traditional three sources of Russian weakness identified in the 19th century: Poland, the fleet, and the Caucasus.

Russia doesn't control Poland but Russia is trying to pose a threat to Poland, which requires offensive land and air power. Russia is provoking NATO to see Russia as a threat to NATO members Poland and the Baltic states. Which requires even more Russian land and air power to overcome.

And keep in mind that in large measure the Russian war against Ukraine is related to Poland by controlling a route into Russia (or a route into Poland from Russia).

Yet consider that since the Cold War the NATO military capacity in Europe had dwindled to the point where few European NATO countries can field even a small conventional force to fight outside their borders. Russian hostility is erasing the quiet western border--and the ability to spend little to defend that border--that Russia has enjoyed.

The fleet--if Russia truly wants to rebuild their Soviet glory days of a globe-spanning navy--is another source of weakness when every ruble spent on a blue water navy is better spent to build up land border defenses and air power to support it.

As for the Caucasus? Post-Soviet Russia has fought three wars there--two in Chechnya and one against Georgia. It is a wound that won't heal that sucks up Russian resources far from Russia's core regions that need to be defended. Maybe there is an argument for paying so much to hold Chechnya (I don't know what it is), but are Abkhazia and South Ossetia really important enough

So Russia will never give up nuclear weapons. Although they are hardly the silver bullet that solves all territorial defense problems.

So Russian security would be better secured with peace with NATO, refusing endless wars in the Caucasus, and a navy built for coastal defense and protecting nuclear ballistic missile submarines in coastal bastions.

And yes, if there were no nuclear weapons (and I mean no nuclear weapons, since a cheater with a couple dozen would have leverage in a crisis--so I don't actually think a total nuclear ban could work given verification problems), America would have an advantage (I mentioned this as an aside near the end of the post) and Russia would have a disadvantage. And China would likely gain an advantage, too, because their military is far better and because they potentially face a lot of nuclear-armed foes if nuclear proliferation spreads to weaker neighbors of China.

Anyway, Russia is hardly about to give up nukes. A rising China adds a fourth source of Russian weakness, a new reality that arrived after Russia seized large chunks of their Far East in the 19th century from a weakened China that the Russians can't change, on top of the three self-inflicted Russian sources of weakness