Russia's pretense to great power status is undercut by their growing reliance on nuclear weapons.
This Russian attitude should worry us:
According to Marek Menkiszak, head of the Russian Department at Poland’s Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw, “…the list of moves which could fall under the Russian definition of ‘threatening’ is impressive, and contains both offensive and defensive actions by a potential adversary.” The Litovkin version of Russian nuclear first-use policy indicates that these “concerns” are really conditions for “pressing the button.” He is apparently saying that in addition to Paragraph 19 criteria in the Putin decree, just about any serious threat to Russia justifies first use of nuclear weapons. Moreover, it appeared in Russian state media without any disclaimer concerning whether or not this is state policy.
Lowering the threshold for Russian use of nuclear weapons is an admission of conventional military weakness. For all the unjustified hype about Russian "hybrid warfare" Russia has weak conventional military options against any but the weakest and closest opponents.
And the Russians are nuts to want to defend their territorial integrity with a policy that could just lead to nuclear strikes on Russia itself and escalate to their total destruction. The reality is that the only way this comes up against NATO is if Russia invades a NATO country and NATO counterattacks despite Russia claiming that their new conquest is suddenly part of Holy Mother Russia and a red line for nuclear weapons use.
That's rational?
My hope is that this reliance on nuclear weapons for territorial defense is actually directed against China which lost huge amounts of territory to Russia in the 19th century and Russia is just too afraid of China to admit that China is the real threat to Russian territorial integrity.
That's the scary aspect. Russia is too weak to admit that China is the main threat to Russia and take steps to repair relations with NATO which is too weak to threaten Russia and totally uninterested in doing that.
Have a super sparkly day.
