Jonathan Freedland (We’re appalled by Putin now, but be clear: the west gave him the green light, 25 February) makes the important point about Russian nuclear strategy: that it is integrated into its military doctrine with little, if any, reference to a firebreak between a nuclear and conventional escalation. This has been so since the mid-1960s, when both east and west were grappling with the rapid expansion of strategic and the more ambitious tactical nuclear weapons.
Western strategists tended to look for ways of deterring an adversary. This led to complex theories of controlled escalation, known as flexible response – still the central principle of Nato doctrine. At its core, Nato would seek to respond appropriately to a level of Soviet/Russian aggression. How all of the supposed signalling in the middle of a hot and dynamic war was supposed to work was often glossed over.
Soviet, and now Russian, concepts of warfare are different. You prevent a war by demonstrating or convincing a potential opponent that your armies will prevail. This implies that if impeded or resisted the application of military force will be rapidly intensified. The nuclear option is thus readily at hand and shown to be so. Deterrence against an attack is insured by promising defeat. A crucial distinction from mutual assured destruction.
Prof Keith Hayward
London
• Jonathan Freedland is right about the green light but not its cause. Invasion and war have become the accepted method by which major states impose their will on weaker ones. They are no longer a last resort when diplomatic efforts fail, but an accepted first resort, with the UN providing a convenient fig leaf to give spurious legality to some invasions and not others.
We now live in a world in which sovereign states are no longer protected by an international system of rule. The UN principle of the right of states to self-determination as set out in international law has been completely superceded by the right to invade by the powerful.
As in every war, it’s always the civilians and military personnel who pay with their lives, not the politicians who too easily pick invasion and war, not diplomacy and peace.
Peter Hall
Barnburgh, Doncaster
• Russia’s aggression against Ukraine exposes the extraordinary failure of the UN security council to live up to its primary responsibility to maintain international peace and security. When, in 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, the security council was swift to act and adopt resolution 678, which authorised the use of “all necessary means” to halt that aggression and restore peace. The USSR representative at the time stated that “those who had breached the peace should know that all necessary means would indeed inexorably be used against them”.
Of course, the situation is different today. The peace was broken by one of the permanent members of the security council, which are able to abuse their privileges and treat this body with disdain. Indeed, as reported in your article Moment that Putin thundered to war, drowning out last entreaties for peace, 24 February), Putin announced the start of Russia’s “special military operation” while an emergency session of the security council was under way.
What we are witnessing here is not just a flagrant breach of international law but also a stark sense of resignation on the part of the other permanent members of the security council with respect to Ukraine’s occupation.
Dr Aldo Zammit Borda
Reader in law, The City Law School, City, University of London
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