Putin won’t use nukes.

Nuclear threats always have to be taken seriously, and great care taken in responding to them. There are several reasons, however, to regard Putin’s threats as posturing and to treat them as such.

First, his threats have involved insinuation and bluster, but have not actually involved any corresponding military moves. This might make Putin look tough to his domestic audience, might scare public opinion in Ukraine and in the West, but without actually risking the consequences of military escalation. Were Putin in fact to put his nuclear forces on alert, that might have real consequences. Washington might increase the alert status of its own forces, and, at worst, there would be the risk of a U.S. preemptive strike. But by engaging in dramatic rhetoric while making sure that U.S. intelligence can see that he has not moved his tactical nuclear arms from their storage facilities to military bases, Putin shows that he appreciates the dangers of nuclear weapons. Indeed, in March 2022, the United States and Russia established a “deconfliction hotline” to avoid any inadvertent escalation in Ukraine. In May, the U.S. Secretary of Defense and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff re-established communication with their Russian counterparts for the first time since the war began.

Second, Putin had a history of trying to use nuclear blackmail. He said he was prepared to put his nuclear forces on alert during the 2014 annexation of Crimea. As in 2022, however, the rhetoric was not matched by actions.

Third are domestic costs. It is sometimes suggested that there are no forces or institutions in Russian society limiting Putin – the antiwar movement is too weak — and thus the danger of his pushing the button is all too real. But Russia doesn’t have to be a well-functioning democracy for there to be domestic constraints on Putin. Consider that the Russian armed forces do not have the number of troops they need (Russia has been fighting a large conventional war” “at peacetime strength,” in the words of U.S. military analyst Michael Kofman); this deficit could be solved by ordering a general mobilization, but Putin evidently judges that the domestic political costs of doing so would be too great. One can assume that escalating a “special military operation” into a nuclear war would also substantially raise the domestic political costs for Putin and his supporting oligarchs.

Fourth are international costs. We have seen Russian diplomacy engaged full tilt at trying to win over foreign countries. Europe is united against Putin’s invasion, but in other parts of the world, many countries are trying to avoid taking sides. For Russia to use nuclear weapons would deliver a tremendous blow to Moscow’s international position, especially in Africa and Latin America, where there are nuclear-free zones. Even China, which has given tacit support to Russia, would be hard pressed to support a first use of nuclear arms, contradicting its own declared policy. (China’s military cooperation with Russia since the invasion has been quite limited, and it abstained on the General Assembly resolution condemning the Russian assault.) The prediction that China would support sanctions against Moscow in the event it uses nuclear weapons does not seem unreasonable.

And fifth, Russia seems to be quite cautious in actually declaring that red lines have been crossed. For example, in April, when a Ukrainian missile struck Russia’s Black Sea Fleet flagship, with the help of U.S. intelligence, Russia insisted that there had been no missile at all, just an onboard fire. And in August, when Ukrainian forces set off explosions at a Russian airbase in Crimea, “Russia’s Defense Ministry moved quickly to play down the extent of the damage, saying no equipment had been destroyed and no casualties reported,” assertions that “were contradicted by a video from the scene and by a tally of the damage by officials in Crimea.” The Kremlin’s interest in hiding its military failures from the Russian people makes it harder to mobilize Russian public opinion to support any escalation.