Dave Majumdar
In recent months there has much hysteria in Washington about Russia allegedly lowering its nuclear threshold and particularly about Moscow’s arsenal of non-strategic nuclear weapons. However, there is little evidence that Moscow has lowered its nuclear threshold—nor are there concrete figures available for how many non-strategic nuclear weapons the Kremlin has in its inventory.
Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons:
While non-strategic nuclear weapons are sometimes referred to as “tactical” nuclear weapons, the term is a misnomer. In reality there are tactical and strategic effects that a can weapon deliver. The fact is that any nuclear weapons usage inherently has strategic implications even if it was used on the battlefield as a tactical weapon. Thus, the term non-strategic nuclear weapon (NSNW) is a much better term.
“A nuke is a nuke,” retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, a former Air Force intelligence chief and current dean of the Mitchell Institute told The National Interest. “No such thing as a ‘tactical’ nuke. The terms ‘tactical’ and ‘strategic’ refer to outcomes or effects, not material things like aircraft or weapons.”
Arms control and non-proliferation experts also agree on that point.
“I do not like the term tactical because it implies short-range. Better to talk about non-strategic—i.e., those that are not covered by START [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] or INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces],” former Soviet and Russian arms control negotiator Nikolai Sokov, now a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey told The National Interest.
How big is Russia’s NSNW Arsenal?:
Arms control and non-proliferation experts are divided on exactly how many NSNWs Russia currently has in its inventory. The Russian government has not released any official figures, Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told The National Interest.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/everything-you-need-know-russias-tactical-nuclear-weapons-22607
