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The author is director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will present his “victory plan” to end Russia’s war against his country during a visit to the United States this week. A central plank of the plan is likely to be a demand that the Biden administration remove limits on Ukraine’s use of military tactical missile systems (ATACMS) to strike deep into Russia. kyiv maintains that long range attacks would allow it to destroy Russia’s logistical infrastructure, airfields, and artillery and rocket positions.
The debate over whether to allow Ukraine to carry out such attacks hinges not only on their military utility, but also on divergent views on the risks of Russian retaliation. Some argue that Ukraine’s current Kursk offensive and its recent drone attacks on large Russian ammunition depots are definitive proof that Russia’s red lines are a pipe dream. Others fear that if British ATACMS or Storm Shadow missiles were to fall on Russian territory, Moscow would escalate the conflict horizontally or vertically. It could expand the geographic scope of hostilities with the West, for example by helping the Houthis attack shipping in the Middle East, or move one step closer to using a nuclear weapon in Europe.
But Russia faces its own dilemmas in weighing how and where to retaliate. Serious aid to the Houthis would cost Moscow its relationships with third countries (primarily Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), which have been important to its wartime economic survival. Coordination with Gulf Arab states in OPEC+ has given Russia leverage over the oil market, and the UAE has emerged as a crucial conduit for Russian efforts to evade Western sanctions.
A major arms transfer to the Houthis could not only irritate Gulf leaders but also Xi Jinping: China gets most of its oil from the Middle East and its ships have already been attacked in the Red Sea, despite Houthi promises of safe passage.
A vertical escalation against Ukraine’s allies would not carry the same risks of irritating Russia’s non-Western partners. If the Biden administration lifts its veto on Ukrainian long-range strikes, Russia could expand its sabotage, espionage and disinformation operations in Europe.
It may also look for other ways to stoke fears of nuclear war. Having verbally threatened a nuclear apocalypse once again, Moscow is now preparing an update to its official nuclear doctrine (presumably to lower the threshold for use), while occasionally hinting that it might conduct a test. But again, this kind of vertical escalation is not costless for Moscow. It risks unnerving not only China but the many nuclear “have-nots” in the “global south” – countries that Russia is courting in its crusade for a post-Western international order – without actually achieving its goal of diminishing support for Ukraine.
Western states are not the only ones facing dilemmas as they consider their next steps in Ukraine. There may be additional costs (and uncertain benefits) that prevent Russia from opting for serious horizontal or vertical escalation, especially as Vladimir Putin remains fully confident in the prospects for a Russian victory in Ukraine in the medium term.
This does not mean that horizontal escalation is out of the question, or that there is no point of last resort for nuclear weapons: if Russia perceives that it is at a disadvantage in Ukraine in ways that cause it serious concern, the factors that should currently weigh in favor of restraint may suddenly become less important.
Recognizing that Putin faces limitations in considering options for escalating violence should not be a reason to trivialize the cumulative impact his actions will still have. Russia’s progress in escalating violence still makes it the midwife of a more dangerous global nuclear environment.