Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

in areas affecting Russian national interests. There
could be serious risks that such local conflicts would
evolve into local wars <strong>and</strong> even threaten a general war
involving Russia. In the absence of conventional forces
capable of dealing with such crises, Russia has seen fit
to exp<strong>and</strong> the role of its tactical/non-strategic nuclear
forces to include the mission of crisis de-escalation by
first use.
Until very recently, Russian military analysts
spoke of three distinct threats on three distinct axes.
The first, coming from the West, was U.S.-<strong>NATO</strong> outof-area
intervention with a military built around precision-strike
technology <strong>and</strong> advanced C4ISR capabilities.
Russian TNWs/NSNWs were intended here
for de-escalation by disrupting the West’s capacity
to conduct tactical <strong>and</strong> operational combat in theater
warfare. Every Western out-of-area intervention has
led to long discussions in Russia on how a force might
counter such an opponent. Following the invasion of
Iraq, intense debates occurred between those who saw
“no-contact” warfare as the dominant trend in future
war <strong>and</strong> those who looked upon the invasion as a
reversion to operational art, with the addition of advanced
technologies. After a brief romantic tryst with
partisan warfare among some, the consensus among
analysts shifted back to dealing with no-contact operations
designed to achieve rapid <strong>and</strong> decisive defeat
of the enemy. Russian attention focused on conventional
force modernization. 42
The author who most directly addressed the evolution
of operational art under conditions of sixth generation
warfare was General-Major Viktor Riabchuk,
a veteran of the Great Patriotic War <strong>and</strong> professor of
operational art at the former Frunze Combined Arms
Academy. General Riabchuk sought to apply military
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