NATO, Deterrence, and the Ukrainian Conflict

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NATOs strategic concept of 2022 says that “We will deter and defend forward with robust in-place, combat ready forces.” A shift is going on from deterrence by retaliation to deterrence by denial, epitomized by the slogan to “defend every inch of allied territory.” The balance between in-place forces and reinforcements is adjusted in favour of the former.

The shift has been going on for quite a while, spurred by the war in Ukraine. It happens simultaneously with a very significant general increase in the Alliance’s response forces and is reflected in training programmes, exercise patterns and peacetime patrols. All of it closer to Russia. It remains work in progress.

The permanent basing of the US Army’s 5^th Corps headquarters in Poznan, Poland, is an important part of the shift, along with the positioning of rotational troops in the Baltic states and Romania. The US has also concluded a series of bilateral Defence Cooperation Agreements with frontline states, allowing it to establish a number of support facilities in each country next to national airfields, naval bases, infrastructure and other military assets. The sites are largely under US jurisdiction: by ceding sovereignty, the host nations leave it to the US to the determine their specific configurations and roles. These arrangements are outside NATO, and parts of US global military planning.     

The strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance, and particularly those of the US, are said to be the supreme guarantee of its security. The British forces, which explicitly contribute to the defence of NATO, and the French ones which are independent but not uncoordinated and always had a European dimension, add complexity to Russia’s decision-making.

Conventional, nuclear, cyber, space and other means of warfare are fully integrated in US military planning. That is the claim and certainly the high ambition of the current strategic nuclear war plan—OPLAN 8010–12—which took effect more than 10 years ago. The same OPLAN emphasizes “escalation control designed to end hostilities and resolve conflicts at the lowest practical level” and on conditions favourable to the US.

An essential part of this, highlighted by more or less veiled Russian threats of nuclear use in connection with the war in Ukraine, and also by the discussion of so-called escalate-to-deescalate strategies, are the contingency plans for limited nuclear war in Europe. Revisionist powers in Europe and Asia defy stability, and one of the main concerns about nuclear use is escalation from conventional to nuclear warfare in regional settings.

In Europe, similar concerns ran high in the 1980s already, when so-called euro-missiles—SS-20s, cruise and Pershings—were deployed. Today, Europe is about to receive another wave of missiles, but this time under much different political and technological conditions.

Russia has introduced a range of new delivery vehicles already. On the Western side, the US and Germany have agreed to station new missiles at the US headquarter in Wiesbaden. The multi-domain task force there is one of five such interconnected task forces worldwide. One of the missiles, the Dark Eagle, claims a speed 17 times the speed of sound and a range up to 2700 km. Testing is completed, and it is due to be deployed in 2026. Two versions of previously sea-based missiles will also be deployed there. In addition, European countries have their own missiles and plans for new ones in cooperation with each other.

Compared with the early 1980s there are, of course, notable differences as well. Then, new missiles meant nuclear-tipped ones, and in a confrontation with the Warsaw Pact the West could use them against Eastern Europe and Soviet Forces there, but not against the Soviet Union, for that would bring retaliation and assured destruction to the US, too. Now, the East European countries are members of NATO, and bombing allies is no attractive option.

The exception is Belarus, which remains in alliance with Russia. In some NATO staff exercises, nuclear weapons have therefore been used against targets there in response to Russian first use, but this is not meaningful in the long run, so in other exercises the reaction has been conventional. That’s what it is about this time: the new western missiles will carry conventional munitions. This was clear already by the time the INF agreement that eliminated all US and Soviet/Russian intermediate range missiles broke down in 2018.  

Existing theatre nuclear weapons will, however, not be removed but replaced by new generations of weapons. Air launched cruise missiles on board B52 and B2 aircraft will be succeeded by Long Range Stand Off systems (LRSO) on board B52 and B21s in 2030, on the argument that they are needed to provide flexible strike options in limited regional scenarios. Development of a new nuclear tipped SLCM was stopped by the Biden administration but brought back into the 2025 budget by Congress.

Bombs and warheads for these delivery vehicles are in most cases modernized to enable variable yields, low yields in particular. For instance, the nuclear weapons for F35s have yields down to 0.3 and 1.5 kt., fit for nuclear warfighting. In the past, one or two bombers were sent to Europe to partner with allies in joint exercises. Now, the missions are different, the bombers being assigned to a Bomber Task Force; the flights are more frequent; the participating aircraft are more numerous; and they are patrolling closer to Russian borders.

Europe is therefore on the way to receive a range of new offensive weapons. Technologically, the news is not accuracy, for accuracy is high already, but higher speed, which is deemed to be of the essence in order to penetrate missile defences and destroy high value, time urgent targets such as aircraft before take-off, missiles before launch and submarines while still in port. In critical situations, such postures—Russian and Western—can be dangerously unstable, for at the moment decision-makers begin to believe that war is unavoidable, there will be a high premium on striking first. Shorter decision times will make escalation control harder.

Unfortunately, the talk about nuclear use in the Ukrainian context may have accustomed people to the possibility of nuclear warfare and therefore weakened the inhibitions against it.

In national strategy documents, dubious as well as mainstream ideas are wrapped and phrased in seemingly prudent deterrence terms. Deterrence is an exceptionally flexible and handy term that can make the most illustrious ideas palatable. However, deterrence was meant to deter use, not bait their use by allowing unstable force postures to take hold.

The crisis of the 1980s led the International Commission on Security and Disarmament (the Palme Commission, after the late Swedish Prime Minister who chaired it) to introduce the concept of Common Security. It said that in the nuclear age, security is not something you can build on your own by unilateral rearmament. It is something you have to build together with you adversary, through measures that are advantageous to both. Today, we are further away from that kind of thinking than at any time since the beginning of arms control sixty years ago, but the concept has it right, so we must hold on to it.      

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Preparation for nuclear-war fighting and the demise of arms control (10-minute read)

Sverre Lodgaard has been a senior research fellow and former director (1997–2007) of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). He is also a former senior research fellow of the Toda Peace Institute in Tokyo.