Australian defence expert, Prof. Paul Dibb of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute Australian University has released a report, “The Geopolitical Implications of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.” My interest was in comments that made the mainstream media about whether or not Putin will use strategic nuclear weapons. Professor Dibb believes that this is possible in various circumstances, such as Putin losing badly and needing to save face. He also discusses the coming communist China invasion of Taiwan, and how Australia could be subject to receiving a nuclear bomb lobbed on it. The main target would certainly be Pine Gap, a US spy station that would play a vital role in information gathering. Logically the communists would seek to knock this out. The assumption is made that a strategic nuke would be employed, but it could also be more conventional explosives all on a hyper-sonic missile, which Australia, let alone the US is impotent to stop.
“The Australian government should prepare for the prospect of a nuclear attack from Russia or China a new report says.
The report, called “The Geopolitical Implications of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine” says northern Australia is at greater risk now due to the collapse of the European strategic order, which he says could escalate into a “wider major war in Europe” involving China.
“The risk of nuclear war is now higher than at any time since the Cold War,” said Prof. Paul Dibb of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “At the height of that ideological stand-off, there were much more rigorous arms control agreements between the U.S. and the USSR, as well as a web of other formal and informal modes of communication and signalling, which don’t exist in the same way now as a deterrent to the threat of the use of nuclear weapons.”
“Russian authorities have made it clear that Pine Gap is a priority target. We need to understand what the implications would be for Alice Springs, which is a town of 32,000 people only 18 kilometres from the base,” he wrote.
Pine Gap is a joint military facility in the Northern Territory. It is a critical communication hub for Western allies and is vital to the United States and the United Kingdom.
Dibb called on the federal government to begin serious discussions with the U.S. on how democratic allies could deter a nuclear attack.
“We need to plan on the basis that Pine Gap continues to be a nuclear target, and not only for Russia. If China attacks Taiwan, Pine Gap is likely to be heavily involved. We need to remember that Pine Gap is a fundamentally important element in U.S. war fighting and deterrence of conflict.”
NATO Essential to Asia-Pacific Security
Dibb also called for the federal government to become more involved in NATO as “Europe and Australia now basically agree about China’s attempts at global dominance.”
This comes after NATO declared in April it would engage the Asia-Pacific region to counteract Beijing’s growing influence and economic coercion.
NATO to Engage in Asia-Pacific to Counter China
Following a meeting of NATO foreign affairs ministers on April 7, the pact’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the global implications of the Ukrainian conflict pushed the organisation to step up its engagement with Asia-Pacific for the first time.
“We have seen that China is unwilling to condemn Russia’s aggression. And Beijing has joined Moscow in questioning the right of nations to choose their own path,” Stoltenberg said. “This is a serious challenge to us all. And it makes it even more important that we stand together to protect our values.”
Dibbs said that the change in stance from NATO was welcome as it “reinforces Australia’s view of our own strategic environment and identifies China as our major strategic challenge, now combined with the threat from the de facto alliance of Russia and China.”
The defence expert also warned that the U.S. could find itself facing a two-front nuclear war and recommended that Australia engage more closely with NATO to share strategic analysis, including defence contingencies, for security in the Indo-Pacific.
“Senior Americans, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledge that, if push comes to shove, Washington will for the first time face the threat of a two-front contingency of nuclear war,” Dibbs wrote.
“If the China–Russia military partnership continues its upward trend, that will inevitably affect the international security order, including by challenging the system of U.S.-centred alliances in the Asia–Pacific and Europe.””
“Of more concern for our purposes here is whether Putin might decide to use tactical nuclear weapons either in the Ukraine theatre of war or against NATO allies actively resupplying the Ukrainian Armed Forces with increasingly advanced conventional weapons, such as HIMARS.22 He might just decide to use a tactical nuclear weapon for its demonstration effect in Ukraine or to show that he’s had enough of NATO’s interference. For example, much of NATO’s supply of weapons to Ukraine passes through the capital of Poland, Warsaw. That city is only 140 kilometres from the western border of Belarus.
My view is that there’s little doubt that Putin is the sort of person who won’t resile from the use of nuclear weapons, particularly if it looks as though he’s losing this war. But he must surely realise that there’s no such thing as the limited use of tactical nuclear weapons in isolation from their escalation to a full-scale strategic nuclear war.
Washington needs to make that much plainer to Putin and his advisers, and it needs to reverse the past two decades of US nuclear posture reviews that have discounted the role nuclear weapons would play in US military strategy. Once we enter the slippery slope of even limited nuclear exchanges, the end result will be escalation to mutual annihilation—something about which both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping may need reminding. The worrisome issue here is that—unlike in the Cold War—Russia and America no longer enjoy the full scale of strategic nuclear confidence-building measures (and that’s something China has never experienced with either major power). Old Cold War nuclear arms control agreements, such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies agreement, have been cancelled—mainly by the US because of Washington’s view about Russian noncompliance. So, both sides lack the long experience over the last 20 years of the Cold War of extremely detailed and intrusive nuclear arms control agreements. Moreover, the habit of talking to each other has largely disappeared. That can only add to the risks of nuclear miscalculation.
Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University, has said that he finds it difficult to believe that any world leader, including Mr Putin, would seriously contemplate using nuclear weapons in any of the scenarios we have here, for the simple reason that they understand the consequences: ‘I still think the odds of a nuclear strike are low, but I’m finding it easier to imagine the possibility than I did a couple of months ago.’23 He observes that, if Putin and his inner circle were contemplating using one or two tactical nuclear weapons against targets in Ukraine, the fact that US soldiers wouldn’t be killed in the attack ‘might remove an additional inhibiting factor’. Walt goes on to observe that he’s also worried because Putin ‘has a track record of issuing warnings and then following through on them’. He disapprovingly quotes both the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who has said he wants to ‘see Russia weakened’ by its war in Ukraine, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
Nancy Pelosi, who asserts that the US will back Ukraine ‘until victory is won’. Walt notes that the risk in trying to inflict a decisive defeat on Russia creates a circumstance that might encourage a rational leader to contemplate a demonstration strike with nuclear weapons. Such a use could well galvanise additional support for Ukraine, but it might just as easily spook any number of European governments, resulting in a rapid end to the conflict and increasing the prospects of other states—notably in the Indo-Pacific region—pursuing their own nuclear weapons. Walt concludes that, no matter how much one might want to see Russia decisively defeated, there are limits to how far one can safely push a nuclear-armed adversary.
Henry Kissinger worries about the fact that there’s almost no discussion internationally about what would happen if nuclear weapons were used. He thinks that Putin must decide at what point escalating the war will strain his society to a point that will limit its fitness to conduct international policy as a great power in future. Using nuclear weapons wouldn’t solve any military or political problems for Russia. But, in my view, that cautionary analysis wouldn’t apply if Putin considered he has been humiliated by the perception that his war on Ukraine has failed and his regime is fundamentally threatened. Were the war to extend to a direct conflict with NATO, all nuclear bets would be off. Under those circumstances, and if Russia’s situation appeared dire, nuclear use by Russia against Ukrainian territory wouldn’t require NATO legally to respond. But, were a nuclear response to occur, it could trigger retaliation, dragging Russia and NATO up the escalation ladder. It will be interesting to see whether European members of NATO, such as Poland, seek additional nuclear protection through stationing US nuclear weapons on their territory.
Let me add a final personal experience here. In June 2016, I was with a delegation of senior Australian National University (ANU) scholars and former very senior Australian policy and intelligence officials having discussions in Moscow. In those talks, Sergei Rogov, an old-hand arms-control specialist from the Cold War era and now at the prestigious Institute of the United States and Canada, stated that ‘nuclear conflict is conceivable, and Australia would be involved.’ He made it plain that this was a direct reference to what the Russians still call the ‘American spy base’ at Pine Gap. I told him that nothing seemed to have changed much in Moscow over the previous 30 years because in the early 1980s, as a former senior intelligence officer, I was faced with exactly the same blunt nuclear threats.24 We need to plan on the basis that Pine Gap continues to be a nuclear target, and not only for Russia. If China attacks Taiwan, Pine Gap is likely to be heavily involved. We need to remember that Pine Gap is a fundamentally important element in US war fighting and deterrence of conflict.”