Unambiguous Ambiguity (September 29, 2024) 

Tsar Vlad I is in the news again, talking about nuclear weapons. The news media reports he has changed his nuclear policy but I wonder if that is so. I say that for a simple reason: Russia’s nuclear policy is Vlad Putin’s nuclear policy. He is the guy who will order nuclear weapons be used; he and he alone is 100% of the vote. Other people will be needed, but he is the guy making the decision. So, the policy has always been what he wanted it to be. Yes, he did change some wording, making it clear that there are a number of considerations beyond what was previously released for general consumption. But wasn’t he always able to consider those options?

Interesting thing about nuclear weapon use; in one of those statements that makes ever more sense the more you think about it, then President-Elect Kennedy was given a word of advice by President Eisenhower’s National Security Advisor who told Kennedy that he had to sit down and work out exactly what his real use criteria was for nuclear weapons. And once he was sure of when he would, in fact, use nuclear weapons he must tell absolutely no one.

In short, it had to be crystal clear and unambiguous to the whole world that he would use nuclear weapons, and it also needed to be decidedly ambiguous to everyone as to when that might take place; there was a real line, but he must not let anyone know exactly where it was.

One of the fascinating - and scary - events that keep repeating themselves throughout history is how many times leaders tell their enemies exactly what they intend to do and no one listens.

People throughout history have a remarkable ability to hear and read exactly what they want to hear and read, no matter what is in front of them. The most glaring case in recent history, is, of course, Hitler, who forecast much of what he intended to do in Mein Kampf, which was widely published, and then virtually no one believed him. 

And so we have the man who controls the largest nuclear arsenal in the world - Putin - talking about nuclear weapon use, and it raises the question: is he trying to tell us something and we don’t want to hear it?

If you read between the lines of what he said he seems to me to be saying "when I think something is really threatening Russia, I AM going to feel free to use nuclear weapons to protect my country.” So far, presumably, he has not felt that Russia is threatened. And he wants to keep it that way. So, he is trying to tell us that, in fact, there is a line out there that we shouldn’t cross. And as much as much as he does not want to tell us exactly where the line is, he is trying to make it clear that there is a line and we are approaching it.

Now, of course he could just be blowing smoke and he has no intention of using nuclear weapons. We can, of course, call his bluff. But we should be careful as to how we describe that. Because this isn't a card game, and we aren’t going to lose a big stack of chips. This is more like a game of chicken, two very fast cars racing at each other; who blinks first and steers right? Get this wrong and a lot of people die.

In his book “On Escalation," Herman Kahn quoted the economist and foreign policy advisor Thomas Schelling that “Chicken is a game that it takes two “not” to play.

Schelling noted that "the game [of chicken] can involve some bargaining. The two players may wish to signal to each other that they will settle for something like a tie, each pulling a little to one side if the other does, yet watching to see whether the other responds. This is a game in which it is usually better to be opposed by a good player than poor player.”

We need to learn how to play this game. And we need to be aware that Putin is playing this game. And how we play this game will affect how well we can play this game when we need to play it with Emperor Xi, which is going to be upon us very soon. We are living in a fantasy if we think that either of these confrontations - Russia or China - does not and will not involve nuclear weapons. Whether they are actually detonated or just presented, that depends on how well the game is played.

As Schelling noted, nations sometimes may find themselves in a game of chicken as part of "a deliberate showdown," and sometimes they are "pushed by events" in other countries. But, as he says: “deterrent expectations must be maintained,” yet, we don’t want to fight a nuclear war.

In short, we are back to the sage advice given to President Kennedy: we must be absolutely crystal clear, with Tsar Putin, with Emperor Xi, with Ayatollah Khamenei, with Kim Jong Un, that there is some point at which we will in fact use nuclear weapons. As to when, they need to be guessing… Unambiguous ambiguity.