Lawfare Archive: Russia's Nuclear Threats
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2021
⏱️ 96 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
From the Lawfare Archive, July 18, 2015: While world powers and Iran were embroiled in last minute negotiations last week, Brookings hosted a panel discussion on the meaning of another power’s recent nuclear threats: Russia's. In recent months, Russia has rattled the saber, with Vladimir Putin remarking on his nuclear options during the Crimea crisis and making a mild threat to nuke the Danish navy. Given that Russia maintains enough nuclear muscle to destroy the world---theoretically anyway---how seriously should we take these provocations?
The panel was moderated by Brookings Fellow Jeremy Shapiro and featured Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists and Brookings scholars Pavel Baev and Steven Pifer. Together, the trio took a deep dive into Russia’s recent nuclear threats during the Crimea crisis, the country’s capabilities—both conventional and nuclear—relative to NATO, and its ongoing modernization program. The three conclude with terrifying thought: The folks surrounding Putin just might not fully understand deterrence.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | This is the LawFair Archive. |
| 0:43.5 | Hello, this is LawFair intern Ajay Sarma with a podcast from the LawFair Archives for June |
| 0:48.8 | 27th, 2021. |
| 0:51.0 | On Wednesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that a patrol ship fired warning |
| 0:55.2 | shots at a British warship on route to Georgia that it alleged had entered Crimean territorial |
| 1:00.5 | waters. |
| 1:01.5 | Water that Russia claimed as its own after its 2014 annexation to Crimean. |
| 1:07.0 | But this is just the latest sign of tensions between US allies in Russia and other major |
| 1:11.1 | nuclear power. |
| 1:12.9 | For today's episode from the Archives, I went back to July 2015 to revisit a Brookings |
| 1:17.4 | panel discussing Russia's nuclear threats during the 2014 Crimean crisis. |
| 1:22.2 | LawFair listeners will be able to understand the role that aggressive deterrence plays in |
| 1:25.9 | Moscow's foreign policy toolbox, especially when it comes to defending its claim of sovereign |
| 1:30.5 | duty over Crimean. |
| 2:00.5 | This event comes a little bit from some of the discussions that we've had on our blog, |
| 2:12.1 | on the order from Chaos blog, particularly from Pavel and from Steve, on what all of these |
| 2:18.8 | Russian nuclear threats that we've been hearing the last several months really mean. |
... |
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