Description
This paper examines Russia’s nuclear signalling in the context of its war against Ukraine, advancing the hypothesis that Russian officials deliberately leverage ambiguity to exploit Western risk aversion. While nuclear threats have become more frequent and explicit, they are increasingly detached from Russia’s formal doctrine. The project identifies patterns in Russian nuclear threats by clarifying conceptual distinctions -- between strategy, doctrine, policy, posture, and types of nuclear signalling -- and by analysing the intellectual and institutional context in which Russia’s nuclear posture has evolved.
Building on the foundational work of Thomas Schelling and Robert Jervis, and incorporating insights from psychology and strategic culture, the paper develops a theoretical framework to explain how ambiguity functions in nuclear brinkmanship. Given the limits of doctrinal analysis alone, it argues for an interdisciplinary approach -- drawing on neuroscience and decision theory -- to better understand how Russia constructs and communicates nuclear risk under conditions of deliberate uncertainty.
Among other things, the paper interrogates whether Russian elites genuinely view limited nuclear escalation as a viable strategy, and whether nuclear posture emerges through centralized presidential control or through interaction among multiple actors -- questions central to assessing the credibility of Russian nuclear threats.
