Nuclear blackmail

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Nuclear blackmail is a form of nuclear strategy in which one of states uses the threat of use of nuclear weapons to force an adversary to perform or refrain from actions. It is the perceived illegitimate use of nuclear deterrence or compellence. Nuclear compellence has been characterized as harder or impossible to implement.^[1][2][3] It is related to the concept of nuclear brinksmanship.

During the Cold War, United States military doctrines involving nuclear weapons included massive retaliation, flexible response, madman theory, each variously characterized as nuclear blackmail.

In 1953, during the final phase of active hostilities in the Korean War and the early period of the Eisenhower administration, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles conveyed messages of nuclear blackmail through indirect channels to the Communists—including the North Koreans, Chinese, and Soviets—warning to put the conflict to an end by using atomic bombs if no progress was made toward a negotiated settlement.^[4] Nuclear blackmail may have complicated rather than facilitated an armistice, because the Chinese refused to appease the Americans with their threats and the United Nations members such as the British did not support a full-scale escalation.^[4]

In January 1955, the Chinese government made the decision to develop the nuclear bomb as a result of the unpredictabilities brought by the nuclear blackmail levied by foreign powers, particularly the United States.^[5] On October 16, 1964, when China became a nuclear power, the Chinese government stated:^[6]

The United States is now putting nuclear weapons into the hands of the West German revanchists through the so-called multilateral nuclear force and thereby threatening the security of the German Democratic Republic and the other East European socialist countries. U.S. submarines carrying Polaris missiles with nuclear warheads are prowling the Taiwan Straits, the Tonkin Gulf, the Mediterranean Sea, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, threatening everywhere peace-loving countries and all peoples who are fighting against imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism. Under such circumstances, how can it be considered that the U.S. nuclear blackmail and nuclear threat against the people of the world no longer exist just because of the false impression created by the temporary halting of atmospheric tests by the United States?

Following World War II, the United Kingdom regained control of Hong Kong, while the mainland became controlled by the communist People's Republic of China. British military commitments east of Suez in the postwar period, and it therefore considered Hong Kong completely indefensible in the event of a Chinese takeover. The British believed their only response options would be abandonment or nuclear retaliation. They therefore wished to signal to China that the latter would be employed. The UK stationed nuclear weapons in Singapore from 1962 to 1970.^[7] The UK also wished to signal American nuclear retaliation; in 1961, Minister of Defence Harold Watkinson wrote to the British cabinet: "Our object is to encourage the Chinese to believe than an attack on Hong Kong would involve US nuclear retaliation." This goal required counterbalancing against any perception of Hong Kong as a US military outpost.^[8]

On February 24, 2022, in the TV address where Vladimir Putin announced Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Putin warned that any countries interfering would face consequences they had never encountered in their history. This was widely interpreted as being a threat of nuclear attack. Several days later, Putin put Russia's nuclear forces on a higher state of alert.^[9][10] United States warned Russia of "catastrophic" consequences for Russia if Russia uses any nuclear weapons after setbacks in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.^[11]

On September 25, 2024, Putin warned the West that if attacked with conventional weapons Russia would consider a nuclear retaliation. Putin went on to threaten nuclear powers that if they supported another country's attack on Russia, then they would be considered participants in such an aggression. This was described by the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as nuclear blackmail.^[12][13]

During the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, PLA lieutenant general Xiong Guangkai was quoted as saying to US senior diplomat Chas W. Freeman Jr.: "In the 1950s, you three times threatened nuclear strikes on China, and you could do that because we couldn't hit back. Now we can. So you are not going to threaten us again because, in the end, you care a lot more about Los Angeles than Taipei." National Security Advisor Anthony Lake subsequently questioned Chinese national security official Liu Huaqiu on this threat, who replied that the threat was not China's policy. ^[14]

Following the 2025 India–Pakistan conflict, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that Pakistan had been engaging in nuclear blackmail, which India would no longer tolerate, adding that the country would not be intimidated by nuclear threats. ^[15][16][17]

In 1981, the US Department of Energy security director Martin Dowd said there had been 75 cases in the last five years of nuclear blackmail by people threatening to release radioactive material on the public, in which almost all of the cases were threats by "cranks and weirdos" but several blackmail attempts were serious.^[18]

• Brinkmanship
• Deterrence theory
• Doomsday Clock
• Emotional blackmail
• Essentials of Post–Cold War Deterrence
• Mutual assured destruction
• Nuclear terrorism
• Samson Option