Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future - Strategic ...

esistance by Russian conventional forces, then a limited
nuclear strike, after which the opponent was expected
to back down because its stakes were not worthy
of resulting destruction and losses.
Central to the concept of de-escalation was the notion
of calibrated damage (zadannyi ushcherb), defined
in the 2003 White Paper as ‘‘damage, which is subjectively
unacceptable to the enemy and which exceeds
the benefits the aggressor expects to gain as a result of
the use of military force.’’ 18 This notion is more flexible
than the more common notion of ”unacceptable damage”
and, in addition to promising to deny benefits
from aggression, also conveys a message that damage
would be commensurate to the level of conflict rather
than devastating. Calibrated damage gave the opponent
a choice to back down without escalation to the
strategic level.
Even limited strikes were supposed to reach faraway
targets: according to the 2003 While Paper, in all
wars in the 1990s and early 2000s (Balkans, Kosovo,
Afghanistan, and Iraq) American victory was ensured
by ability to involve out-of-theater assets. Consequently,
counterstrategy, whether nuclear or conventional,
had to emphasize the ability to defeat targets at
large distances.
Accordingly, the White Paper postulated “the utmost
necessity of having the capability to strike military
assets of the enemy (long-range high-precision
weapons, long-range Air Force) outside the immediate
area of conflict. To achieve this, [we] need both our
own long-range high-precision strike capability and
other assets that enable [us] to transfer hostilities directly
to enemy territory.” 19
Targets for limited nuclear use with calibrated
damage could be gleaned from a series of large-scale
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