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The changes which officially made to the Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence on November 19, 2024, served as a signal from Russia to the West in response to the first use of U.S. and British-made tactical missiles on Russian territory. 

Judging by Russia's actions, the adjustment of its nuclear policy is part of a plan for retaliatory escalation steps, which was prepared some time ago when the United States came close to deciding on the use of its missile weapons deep within Russian territory.

We are at the beginning of a dangerous escalation spiral, which could potentially lead to a conventional conflict between Russia and the United States, followed by a nuclear conflict. The immediate task of the Doctrine is to clarify the essence of future Russian signals to the adversary, ensuring their proper interpretation.

At the same time, several innovations introduced in this document could have far-reaching consequences for the containment strategies of all world states.

Emerging Challenges

First and foremost, the changes in the doctrine are driven by the technological revolution that has occurred in military affairs over the past few decades. This revolution has effectively erased the distinction between what was once considered conventional military-technical or military cooperation and direct involvement in warfare.

The core of this revolution is that the information and technological aspects of modern warfare now play a decisive role in shaping the course of combat operations.

Superiority in technical intelligence, command and control systems, and information processing can provide a decisive advantage on the battlefield and transform the capabilities of weapons systems that might previously have been considered obsolete.

A great power providing its partner with real-time intelligence, space communications infrastructure, and command and control and data processing software, all while requiring continuous technical support, provides the ability to fully control and direct the activities of a junior ally.

Before the digital age, the recipient of even the most sophisticated weapons could use them as they saw fit, without anyone knowing, at least as long as they had the capacity to maintain them. Real-time intelligence assistance was nearly impossible: satellite images on analog media, typically only usable at the strategic command level, could be transmitted to an ally.

Now, Ukraine’s American backers have the ability to blind the Ukrainian Armed Forces and paralyze the Ukrainian command and control system with a single click: all long-range strikes, including those carried out by drones assembled by Ukraine, are planned jointly, and none are carried out without American approval.

Thus, any external power that provides significant assistance to a warring party, connected with the use of modern systems of satellite and electronic intelligence, information processing and control, is a full-fledged participant in the war. Consequently, retaliatory strikes against its troops and territory are fully justified.

Technical changes are combined with political ones. The progress of the American model of globalization, which continued until recently, led to the coming to power in a number of countries of real "citizens of the world", claiming to enter the global elite and detached from national interests.

Such states, under the leadership of a globalist elite accumulating their capital abroad, are capable of making colossal human and economic sacrifices, significant territorial losses in order to implement political directives imposed on them from outside.

The durability of such regimes can be significant due to the powerful propaganda apparatus created with American assistance, as well as the systematic use of mass repressions, extrajudicial killings, torture, etc. sanctioned by the United States.

Georgia during the reign of Saakashvili and modern Ukraine are classic examples of modern American proxies following this path. This model of relations is much more dangerous than the American alliances of the Cold War, when junior partners of the United States had almost complete freedom in domestic policy and tried to follow their national egoistic interests.

Solutions

There is no doubt that Russia has the right to strike American reconnaissance and communication satellites, as well as reconnaissance aircraft and drones involved in providing information support for the activities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The only question is the feasibility of this step in achieving the goals of the Special Military Operation (SMO).

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has previously stated, in particular, that Western satellites involved in supporting military operations could be legitimate targets for a Russian strike. The updated "Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence" extend this logic to the sphere of nuclear deterrence.

The "Basic Principles" specifies that aggression against Russia and/or its allies by a non-nuclear state, carried out with the support of a nuclear state, is considered as their joint attack. Other changes concern possible scenarios for the future use of service "kamikaze states" like Ukraine by the enemy against Russia.

This is the receipt of reliable information about a massive launch (take-off) of air attack weapons of all types (from drones to missiles) and their crossing the Russian border.

The US can quickly give its proxy a huge capability to strike deep into Russia with drones and missiles; even if Russia completely destroys the immediate aggressor with a retaliatory strike, it will suffer heavy losses, and the US will remain the winner.

Therefore, the US should be the target of a retaliatory strike on par with the immediate aggressor.

Given the widespread proliferation of long-range attack drones around the world, and the US policy of transferring intermediate- and shorter-range cruise missiles to its junior allies, this condition should potentially create a new framework for future local conflicts.

Given that the ability of France and the UK to produce long-range weapons without extensive use of US technology is largely lost, any massive long-range strike against sensitive forces inside Russia, delivered with Western weapons and/or big data, should result in a strike against the US.

At this point, since American and European long-range strikes on Russia have already been carried out, Russia probably has no choice but to transfer to one or two countries the weapons or technology that will allow them to reliably deliver payloads to North America and Western Europe: the Americans and Europeans must pay. But how widespread such a practice will be in the future is one of the important questions of the post-war world order.

In the course of the current conflict, the question of strikes on American targets will probably arise with the further expansion of the practice of American proxy strikes deep into Russian territory.

Another change related to the response to threats of possible conflicts in the coming years was the specification of the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons in the event of non-nuclear aggression against Russia.

If earlier the condition for the transition to the use of nuclear weapons was defined extremely vaguely as "aggression using conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is threatened", now we are talking about a "critical threat to the sovereignty and/or territorial integrity" of Russia and Belarus.

As the experience of the Ukrainian Armed Forces operation in the Kursk region showed, the United States can send its proxies to carry out operations that lead to an advance into Russia by tens of kilometers. In the future, each such operation should be considered as an attack by the United States on Russia.

The Problem of Defining Criteria

The issue of "proxy states" or "kamikaze states," which can be rapidly rearmed and thrown into battle under external control, will continue to increase.

This will be driven by the development of military capabilities (particularly those involving artificial intelligence, autonomous platforms, and weapon systems, etc.) in combination with the refinement of methods for societal control.

Russia is not the only one that will have to deal with this problem. In the long term, there will be a difficulty of developing criteria for the level of "support" by a nuclear state for a non-nuclear country, at which the actions of the junior partner become their joint aggression. 

Probably, we can talk about finding a combination of political, economic and military-technical conditions, at which the "junior partner" can no longer be considered as a separate participant in international relations. In this case, the responsibility for any significant attacks from it on Russian or Belarusian territory should be borne by the patron state.

Such criteria must be logical and transparent, and their development and announcement probably need to be done in advance. Perhaps such a practice will gain some currency in the future unstable world as a way to protect the national territories of great powers from attack, narrowing the potential for the use of "service states".