He may succeed only in scaring everyone else, though.
Like a bolt from the blue on Friday, President Trump signaled that his patience with the Kremlin was all but exhausted. The time for carrots is behind us. Russian recalcitrance can be broken only with sticks. And the president is brandishing the biggest stick in his arsenal:
The unusually bellicose statement follows remarks by Vladimir Putin’s deputy, Dmitry Medvedev, who recently dismissed President Trump’s decision to truncate the deadline he’d imposed on Russia to agree to a cease-fire with Ukraine. Medvedev implied that Russia’s nuclear arsenal grants it strategic impunity.
What’s odd about this is that Medvedev constantly and gratuitously refers to Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Indeed, nearly every Russian chat-show host, Russian oligarch, Russian Duma deputy, and even the Russian president himself tends to do the same when seeking to intimidate their adversaries. The degree to which Russians lean into their nuclear-deterrence capabilities as a response to geopolitical adversity is so reflexive that it has become a punch line.
Still, President Trump’s invocation of America’s submarine-launched nuclear weapons arsenal is sure to rattle some cages in the Kremlin. It’s even more certain to terrify elements in the West who either do not trust Trump’s judgment or have long feared that the war in Ukraine would lead to a nuclear standoff with the West. That is not an unfounded fear. Indeed, it’s a rational concern I share (though the apprehensive should acknowledge that every nuclear standoff in history has stopped short of a nuclear exchange).
The very public nature of the president’s order is highly unusual. I don’t begrudge anyone who finds it unnerving – it is! And yet, it would be odd if America’s second-strike capabilities were not prepositioned to execute its foremost national security directive, e.g., executing retaliatory nuclear strikes on hostile targets. After all, the Russians maintain a similar posture.
As NORTHCOM commander General Glen VanHerck testified before Congress in 2023, Russian (and Chinese) nuclear- and cruise-missile submarines conduct patrols along America’s coast and are doing so at increasing rates: “Now not only the Atlantic, but we also have them in the Pacific, and it’s just a matter of time – probably a year or two – before that’s a persistent threat, 24 hours a day,” he said. That was two and a half years ago. Indeed, included in Medvedev’s instigating social media posts was a reference to Russia’s “dead hand,” by which he meant Moscow’s survivable nuclear-deterrent capabilities, including subs, which exist to deter a first strike.
While the location of America’s “boomers” tends to be a closely guarded secret, it’s no secret that they are probably deployed within range of Russian targets. So, while the president’s saber-rattling is unusual and signals heightened tensions, it should not occasion another round of speculation about the imminence of World War III (good luck with that). What Trump’s remarks do suggest is that the voices within his administration who counsel appeasement have been thoroughly sidelined.