Russia-Ukraine Flash Report 20 SEP 2022 13:45 PDT - Time to Discuss MADIP, Again

Mutually Assured Destruction

Once upon a time, as the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the Western nations simmered, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom developed nuclear weapons programs while the Soviets created their own.

In a little more than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviets launched Sputnik, creating hysteria in the west and kicking off the space race. German engineers and scientists who had been captured at the end of World War II by both sides expanded on their research from the German V-2 rocket program.

When Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth, the age of ICBMs had arrived, and the strategic bomber started to become irrelevant. Before the advent of the ICBM and strategic nuclear weapons, there was an understanding that using bombers created a "pause." Negotiation could still happen in the hours it would take for pilots to reach their targets. Time was added to identify a mistake, and it provided a buffer. ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles changed that.

By the time the Cuban Missile Crisis happened, it was evident that both the West and the Soviets possessed enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world. From that, the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD, was born. 

MAD is elegant and simple. You will never use your nuclear weapons against us because our proportionate response will destroy you. We will both be destroyed. Strange game. No winners. Would you like to play some chess?

MAD worked perfectly. There hasn't been a large-scale global conflict since the age of nuclear weapons. There hasn't been an invasion of a sovereign nation with the singular goal of its destruction and occupation. There were proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam between the east and the west. As the colonial period ended in Africa, there was significant upheaval, and arbitrary borders created by old men and conference rooms a century earlier were redrawn. The world wasn't peaceful, but there was nothing on the scale of world war. Because MAD worked until it didn't.

Mutually Assured Destruction Instability Paradox

The theory behind the Mutually Assured Instability Paradox (MADIP) is also elegant and simple.

You won't use your nuclear weapons against us because if you do, we will use our nuclear weapons against you, and we'll both be destroyed.

But, because you won't use your nuclear weapons, that means we can do anything we want, such as attack a peaceful neighbor of ours and launch a genocidal war because you won't stop us. Because if you try to stop us, we'll use our nuclear weapons and destroy you, and we don't care, or we don't believe you can destroy us.

That's the paradox. Nuclear weapons assure destruction, but the belief that destruction neutralizes the deterrent of MAD. That then brings you closer to Mutually Assured Destruction. 

MADIP and the Russian Federation

At the beginning of the War in Ukraine, aka the special military operation, we wrote about MADIP and, based on language coming from the Kremlin and Russian actions, believe we were on the path toward MADIP. By June, the rhetoric of "we have nuclear weapons, and we'll send 1,000 meter high tidal waves over England, and Satan missiles to the United States, that just four will destroy" quieted down. The Kremlin's position weakened in July, and 48 hours ago, you didn't need to be an amateur military analyst to see the writing on the wall.

So here we are, once again, on the path of the Mutually Assured Destruction Instability Paradox. However, if we think of it as a ten-step program, we're around step two. 

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

The change in Russian law does not immediately pave the way for mobilization. After the crippling defeat Russia suffered in Kharkiv, the milblogging community was screaming for blood. Support for the war in Ukraine is cracking in the Internet sphere. There is an element of appeasement here.

You have tens of thousands of Russian soldiers in Ukraine with contracts that are expiring. Because this is a "special military operation," Russia has no legal ground to "stop loss," as we say in the west, and keep deployed troops in place indefinitely. They can make the lives of refusers and objectors miserable, but they can't criminally prosecute them. They can try, but much like the legal systems of the rest of the world, those who can afford a lawyer are challenging the threat of charges and walking away.

As for the referendums to be annexed by Russia, our assessment from yesterday is unchanged. Ukraine has already attacked Crimea repeatedly, a so-called redline by Russia. Russia did - nothing. Actually, they did do something. They retreated and pulled part of the Black Sea Fleet out of Sevastopol because Ukraine, with no navy, controls most of the Black Sea because they have land-based Harpoon missiles.

Full stop. How bad are Russian naval defenses against decades-old antiship missiles developed to fight in the Cold War if the Russian Ministry of Defense has decided, "ya, we got nothing."

Russia has used up 70% of its SRBM and cruise missiles and has been forced to use S-300 antiaircraft missiles and their submarine-launched Kalibr missiles, meant as a nuclear deterrent, to continue to attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. They used up to one-third of their remaining hypersonic missiles to attack a dam with the final battle damage assessment of one moderately damaged dam, 112 homes flooded, and one Ukrainian pontoon bridge washed out - for about 36 hours.

They are sending troops to the front unarmed. They are recruiting from prisons, hospitals, and among the homeless. They are shooting their wounded on the battlefield. They aren't paying combat pay, promised bonuses, or survivor benefits. They've lost over 1,200 military officers that will take a generation to replace. The Russian army has been reduced to a heavily armed mob.

So the idea from the Kremlin is sham referendums done in an online vote in areas where the Internet and cell service have been turned off (take all the time you need) to then say an attack on these places is an attack on Russian soil. However, this ignores that the line has already been crossed in Crimea. Russia already recognized the LNR and DNR, so that line has also been crossed multiple times.

What will Russia's response be when Kyiv and 97% of the world's nations thumb their noses at this next week? They've got nothing - right now.

The only fresh Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) left in the Russian military are in Transnistria. They pulled from Kalinigrad, they pulled from the Kuril Islands, and they are pulling air defense infrastucture from St. Petersburg. They are pulling troops and resources from the Finnish frontier. The 3rd Army Corps was destroyed when it was rushed to Kharkiv, with catastrophic losses before they even reached the front.

Reminder, the Kremlin was facing a revolt after Ramzan Kadyrov called for the Russian regions to self-mobilize without support from the Kremlin, and to curry favor with Moscow, many of the poorer districts went along with creating the 4th Army Corps.

Let's be honest, all of this posturing is for an internal Russian audience. Ah! See! Now the gloves are off! Now it's war! Stand back and think, what's left? What can Russia do that it hasn't done yet? If Russia starts inching closer to using nuclear weapons, do you really think India, Pakistan, and China, all nuclear-armed nations, are going to sit silently with the prospect of radioactive fallout spreading across their nations? Further, as we wrote about earlier, any use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine will cover the Donbas and western Russia with radiation.

Moscow will spin the defeat in Kharkiv not as a defeat against Ukraine but by hidden secret NATO troops. Think about that. Because the Kremlin has positioned NATO as weak and easily defeated. To now claim NATO beat Russia goes against seven months of messaging from Russian state media.

Yes, Nicaragua, Syria, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Eritrea, and maybe a couple of others will recognize the annexation. Ironically, Iran will continue to happily sell 122mm artillery shells to Ukraine while selling kamikaze drones to Russia to destroy Ukrainian D-30 artillery pieces that use 122mm ammunition. The referendums won't be legitimate, and the United Nations won't view it that way.

As I type this, the Russian stock market is down about 10%, and the price of plane tickets out of Russia has skyrocketed, as has demand. Oh yes, the watchers of Russian 1 are in full support of everything happening and believe Russia has no borders - right up to the moment that a real possibility of a conscription notice is going to be put in their hands. Check, please!

What's Next

In the short and medium term? Nothing changes. We have repeatedly written that Ukraine is where invading armies of the world have gone to die in the wintertime. If the Russian Federation believes they can force mobilize and send tens of thousands of ill-trained and ill-equipped conscripts to fight in the Ukrainian winter, it will be a catastrophe. As it is, Russian units are begging for crowdsourced winter weather gear because the equipment issued to them, literally Cold War era vatniks, are in terrible condition. That's among the troops that are getting cold-weather gear.

Western resolve won't slow down, it will get stiffer because the threat has become more real. Let's say for a moment that Russia can mobilize and equip one million people (just tossing a number out). Do you think NATO and Western Europe will believe that negotiations and promises by Russia that, "Oh yes, we'll stop at the Ukrainian border, honest," will be believed? Especially as the Kremlin will almost certainly shift its message as this is now a war of survival against NATO.

Hence, here we are once again. on the path of the Mutually Assured Destruction Instability Paradox. If the world is hoping for a rational decision from the Kremlin, one is not going to be found. However, we are a long way off from a European continent war and the dangerous escalation that could follow.

Closing thought NATO doctrine would almost certainly not include an invasion of Russia itself, even in the face of total war. Only two nations could occupy Russia on paper, but both lack an essential element.

The United States has the military budget and the resources, but does not, even with all of NATO, have the human capital to occupy a nation that covers 11 time zones. China has the human capital but doesn't have the military budget. There is literally no existential threat to Russian sovereignty beyond the one they have created in their own minds.