Description
Ritual deterrence is a compelling concept used to describe NATO’s efforts, for example, to reassure its Baltic members and deter Russia through the deployment of troops known as enhanced Forward Presence (Mälksoo, 2021). Ultimately the deterrent threat relies on the alliance’s willingness to use nuclear weapons in response to a Russian attack if other means fail. Describing how that threat produces restraint on the part of an adversary through arcane strategies of “counterforce” targeting, “graduated escalation,” and “escalation dominance” has, since the Cold War, been the province of mainly civilian strategists engaging in what some have characterized as theology and others magic (Fraise, forthcoming).
In the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, think-tank and academic magicians have become more explicit in promoting integration of conventional and nuclear forces in the interest of extended deterrence. Meanwhile plans for deploying new nuclear weapons to support the strategy are underway. This paper analyzes official NATO and US declaratory policy, combined with specialist strategic literature, information about likely weapons deployments, and understandings of the environmental and human consequences of nuclear explosions in Europe to anticipate what the transition from “imaginary” wars (Kaldor) to a real nuclear war could entail.
It focuses on the precarious security situation of Estonia and draws on historical analysis of a Cold War precedent in NATO plans to defend West Berlin—with particular attention to the mismatch between the assumptions underlying those plans and the likely response from the USSR (then) and Russia (now).