Prussian Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke the Elder wrote, “No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength,” which is frequently bastardized as “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” I’m old enough to remember when debates in the United States were all about matching the Soviets in warheads, weapons, and delivery systems. The impetus was less deterrence than it was being able to fight the USSR on the European battlefield. It all made sense, if you thought a nuclear war was a winnable thing. It was as though we could actually plan out a war that included using nuclear weapons, and somehow emerge victorious.

We have used nuclear weapons in war, and emerged victorious, but that is because the enemy didn’t have them, and because his plan to knock out the American fleet at Pearl Harbor did not survive first contact with the enemy. Yes, the Japanese attack sank four battleships and seriously damaged four more, also sinking or damaging three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and a minelayer. There were no aircraft carriers in port, and the wrath of our country was raised, and our industrial might undamaged.

Now, with Donald Trump having won the 2024 election, and his great reticence to get involved in the Russo-Ukrainian War, our European allies in NATO are revisiting notions of, as Major Kong put it, “Nuclear combat, toe-to-toe with the Russkies.”

Dropping tactical nuclear weapons was a major strategic error. We must correct it

by Colonel Richard Kemp | Sunday, June 1, 2025 | 5:00 AM GMT

Britain must urgently restore tactical nuclear weapons to its defence arsenal. That thought understandably fills many minds with horror but the logic of strategy means that these weapons would in fact make us safer. If the enemy possesses a devastating capability that we do not he is far more likely to use it on us. And Putin, not to mention China, has vast and growing stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons while we have none. Now it seems the Government may be thinking about tackling this vulnerability in the defence review due to be unveiled this week.

After the Cold War ended Britain dropped tactical nuclear weapons from its inventory. Before that, faced by the conventional superiority of the Warsaw Pact, these bombs had been intended to halt Soviet armoured thrusts into Western Europe if our ground and air forces couldn’t hold them back. They are relatively low yield, including in radiation, and are intended to obliterate major military targets such as troop concentrations, massed tank formations and airbases, rather than laying waste to entire cities and creating wide area nuclear fall-out.

With highly inadequate European conventional forces now confronted by a violent menace, shown only too clearly by the war in Ukraine, we are again back in a situation where Nato nations are faced with the choice of resorting to tactical nuclear weapons or losing everything to Russian advances. Of course our strategic nuclear forces are intended to deter enemy aggression, but their credibility in a situation short of nuclear Armageddon now lies exposed. Is Putin likely to think that our response to his tactical nuclear strikes would be to go to ultimate escalation with a nuclear attack against Moscow or St Petersburg? And if not, what?

There’s more at the original, and it is also available here if you are stymied by a paywall.

If there is anything the war in Ukraine has shown us, it is that the dreaded “Soviet armoured thrusts into Western Europe” — I’ll take things that never happened for $1,000, Alex — are not things that the Russian army can do. The Russian armored thrust into Ukraine was stymied by Ukrainian forces, and if they were unable to beat the Russians, they have at least produced a stalemate. Heck, that tremendous military strategist,^[1]Yes, of course that description is sarcasm. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Trudy Rubin, has told us how Ukraine can still beat Russia.

The threat that Russian could use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine exists, and it is one that, if used, as I have previously put it, would have Western leaders defecating in their pants. Thus far, Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin hasn’t chosen to use tactical or ‘battlefield’ nuclear weapons to break Ukrainian strong points or positions, something to which Ukraine cannot respond in kind, but the threat of which has to be part of what prevents NATO European nations from sending troops to fight in that war torn country, despite their big, brave words.

The Americans have tactical nukes deployed in Europe but they can withdraw them at any time. And with so much at stake, can we any longer rely absolutely on the US nuclear umbrella to defend us and our Nato allies? Hopefully yes, but optimism is a fool’s strategy.

Britain would achieve greater certainty by generating a tactical nuclear force that could deter attack against our Nato allies and if necessary react decisively to a Russian assault. The cost would be huge but the countries we protect must also share the burden.

Forgetting Russia’s show of ineptness in Ukraine, and I regard the whole invasion as wholly inept given Russia’s military advantages, and assuming that the Soviets Russians could and did launch an invasion of democratic Europe, would the United Kingdom engage in first use of tactical nuclear weapons against Russian troops? The assumption has to include Russian troops and tanks advancing far and fast into the West, or there would be no need for the tactical nukes, Russia would have no need to nuclearize such an invasion first, and increase the risk of a strategic nuclear exchange.

That leads on to Ukraine. It is not a Nato member but there is no reason we should not have a bilateral agreement to provide nuclear cover to them as well. There is a lot of talk about Western security guarantees when this war is over but so far zero realistic proposals. Even Keir Starmer’s plan to send in peace-keeping forces quickly dissolved into some sort of capability building somewhere far away from the front lines, guaranteeing nothing at all.

Ukraine surrendered its nuclear weapons under the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. Many now believe abandoning a capability that could have deterred Putin’s invasion was a fatal error. A British deterrent shield could provide the security guarantee that everyone knows is necessary.

It’s a bit on the late side to try to deter an invasion that has already happened. Colonel Kemp is arguing for a separate British nuclear guarantee for Ukraine, something which would actually void Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty: if the UK used its nuclear weapons against Russia first, a Russian nuclear response would not be an attack on the UK, but a military response to a British first use of nuclear weapons.

If Russia wins in Ukraine, the notion that the UK should extend its nuclear umbrella to cover a non-NATO member would be rendered moot; if Russia loses, there will be no need for such, as the Russian forces will have proven themselves inadequate to attack other countries. And if something similar to the current stalemate continues, it would be silly to extend an Article 5-like guarantee to a nation already at war.

If Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants to spend money building tactical nuclear weapons, that’s really none of the United States’ business. If the United Kingdom wants to go ahead and spend a few billion pounds on this, fine, let them. But it’s amusing to me that our English-speaking brethren across the pond have adopted the neoconservative arguments of the 1980s and 1990s in the United States.