On Monday, NATO launched a large-scale nuclear exercise within 625 miles of Russia’s border involving training flights for 60 aircraft, including B-52 nuclear-capable bombers. Termed Steadfast Noon, the routine training operation is expected to overlap with Russia’s testing of nuclear forces and weapons during an exercise called Grom, or Thunder. On Tuesday, two U.S. Air Force F-16s intercepted a pair of Russian T-95 Bear-H bombers, which breached the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone, and escorted them out. The Russian Bears did not enter U.S. airspace.
Both Americans and Europeans are correctly sensing that we are now in a high risk period of the current crisis. European officials are apparently preparing its citizenry for the possibility, however remote, of a possible nuclear crisis within Ukraine's borders, and 73% of U.S. voters are extremely or very concerned about Russia and Ukraine, according to a recent Fox News poll. It is therefore imperative that our commander-in-chief initiate a prudent de-escalation strategy. Here are five reasons why:
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1. We are now firmly in an escalation spiral with Russia, risking our country being dragged into a Russia-NATO conflict. Having participated, as a former U.S. intelligence officer for Russia, in more than a dozen wargames, I assess that Russia will continue to escalate. While Russia has no intention of striking us with nuclear weapons, cyber strikes and attacks on U.S. space constellations -- on which we rely for every aspect of our lives and for military operations -- are part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s asymmetric strategy to offset Russia’s conventional force inferiority. Russia also maintains an "escalation dominance" doctrine under which it responds to every action by Ukraine or the U.S. with an escalatory action. This is why attacks on the Kerch bridge, which connects Crimea with Russia’s mainland were met with massive strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, including power plants, 30% of which are now destroyed.
2. Both Putin and Biden are in a pickle now, each needing to outmaneuver one another. The decades-old rivalry between Moscow and Washington remains institutionally entrenched today. Russia never recovered from the humiliation of losing the Cold War, and Putin spent his entire presidency hatching the plan for a rematch. In Washington, there’s a tremendous institutional predisposition toward teaching Putin a lesson by bloodying his nose for wreaking havoc in Ukraine and undermining U.S. interests across the world. Given these visceral attitudes on both sides, cooler heads will not easily prevail, and both Biden and Putin are highly motivated to escalate.
3.Washington’s rhetoric — calling Putin a war criminal, stating that he cannot remain in power and should be subjected to the international tribunal — feeds his paranoia, making him more likely to overreact rather than de-escalate the conflict. He believes he cannot afford to lose, as Russia’s entire security strategy hinges on Ukraine serving as Russia’s security perimeter and at minimum not being in NATO's. It’s Putin’s version of the Monroe Doctrine.
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4. The Russians are predisposed for a "worst-case scenario" assessment of the adversary’s intentions. They take drastic actions, sometimes preemptively. In September 1983, the Soviets shot down a commercial Korean airliner, KAL-007, flying to South Korea from Alaska that got tragically off course. The Soviets assumed it was a "spy plane." At no time did the Soviets try to identify the aircraft they shot down, killing 269 people aboard, including a U.S. Congressman. Sensitized to the possibility of a U.S. attack, they assumed any intrusion was deliberate rather than a mistake.
5. The risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation, potentially triggering a conflict between NATO and Russia, is going to likely increase over the next two weeks. NATO and Russia are both conducting routing and potentially overlapping nuclear drills in the middle of an active conflict amid the deepest crisis ever in U.S.-Russian relations.
For historical perspective in 1983, NATO was getting ready to practice a nuclear launch as part of a military exercise, Able Archer 83. The Kremlin went into convulsions, assuming that it was the real thing rather than a practice drill. The KGB and GRU had been on high alert for two years, having been tasked in 1981 by the Communist Party leadership to look for indications of U.S. intentions to launch a nuclear strike on the USSR. What was actually a simulated release of nuclear weapons by NATO forces could only mean one thing to the paranoid Soviets—the beginning of nuclear war. One lone individual, Col. Stanislav Petrov, judged that the threat indicators were a false alarm, revoking the order to launch a response.
President Biden’s de-escalation strategy thus far has been "hope and change." Our chief executive naively hopes that Putin will change his mind and direct his forces to pack up their bags and leave Ukraine. He must instead act on his own recent warning about Nuclear Armageddon and de-escalate this dangerous situation by dragging Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the negotiating table.
