Front Burner - Long-range missiles, nuclear fears in Ukraine

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Earlier this week, after months of debate and hesitation, the U.S. decided to allow Ukraine to use American made ATACMS missiles on targets inside Russia. Escalations followed, such as Russia signing a new doctrine that lowered the threshold for nuclear attacks.As the tensions ratchet up, there’s still the question of what will happen once Donald Trump takes office. To break down the gravity of this moment, we talk to David Sanger, longtime New York Times national security correspondent and the author of “New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion and America’s Struggle to Defend the West”.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. On Tuesday, the 1,000th day of the war in Ukraine, came two pivotal moves. Ukraine, after being greenlit by the Biden administration, sent U.S.-made Atakums missiles into Russia for the first time, causing a fire at a military facility in the Russian border region of Bryansk.

This was a day after this warning from Zelensky. Today there's a lot of talk in the media about us receiving permission for respective actions, but strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. Missiles will speak for themselves. And the second move, in response, Russian President Putin signed a doctrine that lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons. Following that, more escalations. Reports of UK-made missiles being used, Western embassies being closed, and the authorization of U.S. anti-personnel landmines, too. David Sanger has been covering the White House, U.S. national security, and superpower conflict for The New York Times for over four decades. Earlier this year, he came out with his latest bestseller, New Cold Wars, China's Rise,

Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West. So who better to break down this situation, the machinations behind the decision that triggered it, and where this all could be headed? David, hi. Thank you so much for coming on to FrontBurner. It's a pleasure to have you. Jamie, great to be with you. So it has been just over a thousand days now since Russia invaded Ukraine. And before we get into the details from this week, how would you describe the state of the war right now? You know, the war has gone through, I would say, three distinct phases. And this may be, you know, a little bit of gross overstatement.

But first came the initial invasion for which the United States tried to provide early warning, hoping that it would embarrass Putin into not doing the invasion or prepare the Europeans to make threats. We believe President Putin has made the decision, but until the tanks are actually rolling and the planes are flying, we will use every opportunity and every minute we have to see if diplomacy can still dissuade President Putin from carrying this forward. The Europeans saw the intelligence, didn't believe them, and that's a big part of the book that you just described, how the decision came about to make public this very classified intelligence and

how it didn't do much good. Then we went through the phase where the Russians tried to take Kiev. This morning, Russian tanks and troops, artillery and aircraft are pummeling the Ukrainian capital Kiev as they lay siege to the city and failed. All that's left of the Russian military around Kiev are their wrecked vehicles, the damage they caused and the casualties they inflicted. All Russian forces have pulled back from the capital. And the height of this came at the end of 2022 or the fall of 2022, just two years ago. And that was when we probably came closest to the use of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, when the U.S. picked up signs that the Russians were discussing setting off a tactical nuclear weapon.

And then we went into what I guess you could call the stalemate phase, which was much of 2023 into the beginning part of 2024. And actually, when you talk to U.S. officials who were deeply involved in Ukraine or Europeans, in Ukraine or Europeans, they basically thought that by about now through this coming summer, mid-2025, we would be in essential stalemate where the lines didn't move very much. And instead, what's happened is that in just recent weeks, with the help of the North Korean troops. According to the US, at least 3,000 troops were moved into Russia in mid-October. When asked about satellite images apparently showing North Korean troop movements, Putin said,

Images are a serious thing. If there are images, then they reflect something. Getting their act together with communications, with suppression of radio signals, which has enabled them to protect themselves against a lot of drone attacks and so forth. The Russians have actually begun taking significantly more territory. And that's come at just the wrong moment because everybody suspects that Ukraine will be forced into a negotiation as soon as President Trump takes office.

And then I guess that brings us to this week, right? And I should say you and I are talking around 1 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday. I just want to timestamp this conversation because there are fire and to further inflame tensions around this conflict. There had been much deliberation and debate over whether or not to allow Ukraine to use these missiles on Russia that they used this week. And what's your understanding of how this decision was eventually reached. Well, let's back up, Jamie, for a moment and just describe to our listeners today what it is we're talking about, what kind of missiles and what's involved. So the missiles, they're called ATAKMS. It is basically an acronym that people are describing in pure Pentagon fashion. The weapons have a maximum range of 300 kilometers, meaning they could target more than a dozen airfields over the border.

Ukraine has been pleading for this missile system was one of the many weapon systems that President Biden was initially reluctant to give to the Ukrainians at all. Because he had two instructions to his staff. One was, don't let the Russians win. And the second was, don't get us into World War III. War III. And his fear was that the use of advanced weapons like the Atacoms or F-16s or advanced tanks would cross some kind of invisible red line for Putin and lead to a broader war involving NATO that the U.S. would have to come into with troops and all that. Over time, what they discovered was that Putin seemed less sensitive to what the U.S. was sending in than they thought initially. So they have sent

in F-16s. Not to great effect, but they've done it. They did send in U.S. tanks, mostly as political cover for the Europeans to get their much lighter, more maneuverable tanks in. And ultimately, they did ship the attack to Ukraine. And the British and French shipped a similar kind of weapon. Right. And they all had restrictions on it. And the restriction was you can use this against Russians in your territory, but you cannot attack deep into Russia with it. And this came right out of President border at Ukrainian troops that were in Ukraine. And it seemed ridiculous to have a rule that restrained the Ukrainians from taking out

the artillery that was just over the border. So they said, that's okay. A few miles into the border, you know, if the Russians fire from there, they have it coming to them. But they refused to let President Zelensky use these weapons to go deep into Russian territory, say around Kursk, the area where Ukraine has gone into Russia and taken a fair bit of land. And then something changed. And what changed was the Russian decision to bring in North Korean troops, thousands of North Korean troops to supplement their own. And the U.S. said, if you expand the war this way, you're going to pay a price for it. And the Russians said, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're providing lots of stuff to the Ukrainians, who we choose to fight the wars up to us. And that's when President Biden made the decision to allow these attackams to be used

in the Kursk environment. The response from Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the missile attack was a signal that the West wants to escalate the conflict. said the missile attack was a signal that the West wants to escalate the conflict. We will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia, and we'll react accordingly. But the fact of the matter is, Jamie, that, you know, big a deal as it sounds like it is, we don't have many attackams to give them.

They cost a million dollars and above each. And our stockpile of them is just not that big. So it's not clear it's going to make that big a difference. Even if you include the missiles from Europe as well, there's the Storm Shadow ones, right? The longer version. That's right. The Storm Shadow is the British version. There's a French version. They're essentially the same missile, but under different names. The Germans also have a quite effective missile, but they have so far not wanted to send it at all. But yes, even if you combine all of those, you don't have anything that the Ukrainians could fire in large enough numbers to really turn the war. Right. Because I did see Ukraine fired six of these. I think it was on Tuesday, right? And five of them were also shot down, right?

Well, the Russians said so. We are having a hard time confirming that. Got it. Okay. And they're not easy to shoot down, but it can be done. to shoot down, but it can be done. And as I said before, it's a lot of money per shot. So you want to make sure that you're getting the highest effectiveness out of them, especially if you don't have a very deep, deep arsenal. And the U.S. has stepped up production,

but not fast enough to deal with the rate at which the Ukrainians would like to shoot them off. I also saw in the news today, I believe that the U.S. has given Ukraine the permission to use their landmines. How significant is that? Well, it was a big debate inside the Biden administration for actually for a few years, because the United States is among the countries that's been trying to ban the use of landmines, although it has refused to sign the landmine treaty. But their concern about landmines in general is you litter an area with landmines. Sooner or later, the war

ends. Kids come back into the area, pick up a shiny object, and the predictable tragedies unfold. Right. Why now? Because the Russians are making these rapid advances out of the territory where the stalemate was, there is a sense that the Ukrainians need these desperately to stop that advance. The landmines that we would look to provide them would be landmines that are not persistent. You know, we can control when they would self-activate, self-detonate. And that makes it far more safer eventually than the things that they are creating on their own. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. So the other significant thing that happened this week is that Putin signed a revised nuclear weapons doctrine that would interpret the use of U.S. missiles by Ukraine as not only an attack by Ukraine, but by America as well. And also that Russia can now use nuclear weapons, not just if its survival

was threatened, but if an attack posed a quote, critical threat to its sovereignty. And so the question of Putin's willingness to escalate the war has hung over every decision that Biden has made since the start of Russia's invasion in 2022. As you've just explained, is this move by Putin to lower the threshold for a potential nuclear attack a step towards the worst case scenario? How significant do you think this was? Well, it could be. I mean, it's nuclear doctrine. And of course, while doctrine is very important and is used as a signaling function, And here Putin said as early as September, uh, before the U S decision to allow the use of the attackams that he was headed to changing the, um, the doctrine and loosening these restrictions. At the end of the day, a decision to use nuclear

weapons has less to do with your doctrine than how well you're deterred by what price you might pay in sanctions, in a counter-nuclear strike. There has not been a use of a nuclear weapon in anger since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And so it would be a huge step, a huge step for any country to decide to use a nuclear weapon in battle. That said, what Putin is trying to do is increase the ambiguity about when he would be tempted to use a nuclear weapon. And so if the old doctrine fundamentally said, you know, we would use a nuclear weapon if attacked with a nuclear weapon or if our state was imperiled. The new one, as you quite rightly says, says if a country poses a significant threat to Russia and is working in cooperation with a nuclear

nation, we reserve the right to use nuclear weapons against the invading country, Ukraine, in this case, or against the country supporting them, the United States. So it was Putin's sort of indirect way of saying, push this too far and your own people and your own territory could be at risk. When you're speaking to experts, people who are very steeped in this, in the United States, like how worried are they about this doctrine change right now? They are not worried in the short term. They don't think that Putin is going to use a weapon in the short term. The Pentagon immediately came out and said, we've seen no change in their posture. And the U.S. has had no change in its posture.

They were much more worried, as I referred to at the beginning of our conversation, in October of 2022, when they picked up conversation between several Russian generals that suggested that a weapon was being prepared or might be moved into place for use against a Ukrainian military base inside Ukraine. And that's when President Biden, attending a fundraiser in New York, started talking about the approach of Armageddon. He warned everybody that night, the remarkable evening, that we were closer to a nuclear detonation than we had been at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was 1962. So, you know, most of your listeners may not be remembering it all that vividly. So I think the experts who I talked to, the government officials I talked to, I've been covering nuclear strategy for more years than I would want to admit, are not that worried in the short term. They are worried in the long term.

And their worry is this, Jamie, that throughout this war, we have seen a gradual loosening of nuclear taboos. Putin has, at every couple of months, threatened nuclear use in some form or another, in meetings with his national security staff that are broadcast on TV, in the kind of activity that I mentioned from October of 2022, which led the administration to think there was a 50% chance under some circumstances that Putin would use a nuclear weapon. Now loosening the doctrine. And this is not what this era was supposed to be about. This era was supposed to be about the post-Cold War denuclearization time, when nuclear weapons were reduced in their role in American national defenses. When Russia and the United States were agreeing in a series of treaties

to reduce the number of weapons that they had deployed. And it sure looks like we're about to head in the other direction. David, I just want to spend some time before you go today talking about how the next little while could play out here vis-a-vis Ukraine. as you mentioned, Donald Trump is getting ready to take office. People around him were highly critical of the Biden administration's decision to allow Ukraine to use the attackums. Here's Don Jr., for example, on X, quote, the military industrial complex seems to want to make sure they get World War III going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives. And I wonder if you could talk to me a bit about what you think is going to happen in the next couple of months and beyond that. First, let's talk about the very different worldviews on this of Joe Biden and Donald Trump,

because these worldviews were basically on display during the campaign. But I'm not sure that Americans or Canadians or others who are watching sort of put them in these stark terms. To Joe Biden, the war in Ukraine is part of a bigger defense of emerging democracies, even a corrupt democracy like Ukraine and about reinforcing the international norm that we don't just go over and take land from other countries, right? That we don't just roll armies in that, that the post-World War II order, um, had established. You don't do that. To President Trump, land is land. He's been in real estate his whole life. You swap some for others. And when he says he can get a deal done in 24 hours, what he seems to mean is he'd strike a deal in which Russia could occupy the 20 percent, he hasn't quite said this, the 20 percent of Ukraine that it's

already basically in control of. Right. Just basically preserve the lines where they are. That's right. And in return, you know, Ukraine would say it would never join NATO or wouldn't join for 20 years or some period like that. And then they basically either have a peace agreement or more likely a Korea-like armistice where they just stop fighting and agree that they'll work out the border issues later on.

And in Korea, of course, they've never worked them out. I mean, the war ended in 1953 and, you know, here we are still with some disputes. So those are the two worldviews. Now, how could this play out? A couple of scenarios. One is it might be difficult for Trump to then come in and say, I'm now stopping the Ukrainians from using the long range missiles into Russian territory. Trump administration, there are some old neocons who were quite anti-Russia, Marco Rubio, the new or newly designated secretary of state among them, who would have strong views on that. Or it could be that Joe Biden's doing Trump a favor and giving him some negotiating leverage here with the Russians. Well, if you don't pull back your troops, I can't pull back the Ukrainians from

using these missiles into Russia. So in other words, give him some bargaining chips. That would be a generous view of it. Third possibility is that the Biden team doesn't believe that any of this is going to make that much difference, but they want to leave office having given Zelensky everything he asked for, even if they gave it to him a bit later than he wanted it. And why would that matter? The way history is written, that they think that at the end of the day, President-elect Trump is going to strike a deal that may sell out the Ukrainians. And if they do, they want to go down in history as having given the Ukrainians everything the Ukrainians asked for.

Now, President Zelensky would say it's one thing to give me this, but it's another thing to give it to me when I actually need it. So, you know, handing me a hose after the house is burned down is not all that helpful. I did see a recent Gallup poll that suggested that there was a growing desire in Ukraine for a quickly negotiated end to the war, even with territorial concessions. People are tired. They've lost so much, right? And while the preference for most Ukrainians is for the EU or the UK to be at the reins, could there end up being more support for Trump in this than previously expected? I think they're good. Look, we're approaching year three, right? And year three is when you begin to understand the terrible cost of a war like this. Rebuilding Ukraine is going to cost untold tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. There are families that have lost fathers and sons and daughters,

and they're never going to get them back. The Ukrainians are running out of people to recruit. And so if the option, if they went into this with great enthusiasm that they were going to win, I don't know what quite winning looked like other than getting the Russians to pull back the February 22, 2022 borders. But if there was initial enthusiasm for that, they now may be comparing giving up 20% of the country with losing the whole country. And that's a different calculus. David, I want to thank you so much for this. I really, really appreciate you coming by. Great to talk to you, Jamie.

All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.