Russia and America are in bad shape

Moscow and Washington stopped thinking in categories of disarmament

By Vestnik Kavkaza

Speaking about disarmament issues, U.S. President Barack Obama stated this summer in Berlin that Washington intends to hold talks with Moscow on reduction of strategic offensive weapons by one third and reduction of tactical arms in Europe. Moscow made it clear that the U.S. couldn’t count on agreement of Moscow under conditions when they have scaled up missile defense armaments. Moreover, Moscow believes that other countries should be involved in the talks as well – China, the UK, and France. Last week a video bridge between Washington and Moscow took place, and it appeared that American experts supported their government, while Russian experts supported Moscow.

According to Steven Pifer, director of the Initiative on Arms Control and Non-Proliferation at the Brookings Institute, the U.S. forces are now seeking modernization in the same manner as Russia today is modernizing its nuclear arsenal and its armed forces. “At the same time, efforts are aimed at reducing the nuclear potential. In Berlin in June President Obama proposed reducing the nuclear potential, the nuclear arsenal, by a third, but there has been no reaction to this statement on the part of Russia.”

“The Berlin Initiative of President Obama has essentially remained unsettled, because it was certainly not talking about a unilateral reduction of weapons, but about a mutual reduction between Russia and the United States,” Vladimir Dvorkin, senior research fellow of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations at the Academy of Sciences of Russia, retired Major General, explained Moscow’s position. “That is why at the moment I do not see any prospects for immediate negotiations in the START framework regarding nuclear arms reduction to the level of, for example, a thousand warheads, but from a military point of view, from the security perspective, it would be possible and effective, especially because Russia has to catch up from the bottom, to reach the level of the Prague Treaty. The possibility of multilateral control and limitation of nuclear weapons is an extremely complex issue that goes far beyond our traditional relations in the field of nuclear disarmament, because there can be no talk about any multilateral treaty at the moment. No one will go for it, even the official members of the nuclear club, the United Kingdom, France and especially China, who believe that Russia and the United States are too much and have too great an advantage in terms of strategic weapons and tactical weapons, and it is absolutely impossible to negotiate even something here. This is true, and at the moment I do not see any prospects of multilateral treaties.”

With regard to modernization. Dvornik thinks that the modernization of nuclear weapons is natural: “It is ongoing in the U.S. and in Russia. If we look at the U.S. nuclear arsenal, B-52 bombers have been there since the 1950-1960's. Land complexes with Minuteman-3 missiles also have been around for more than a dozen years, and there is no more room for their improvement. So naturally, when reducing armaments one has to put aside and make up for what will be written off the arsenal with improved, upgraded types of weapons. Russia is doing the same.”

Sergei Oznobishchev, head of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations at the Academy of Sciences of Russia, Professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations at the Foreign Ministry of Russia, believes that “there is a tremendous atmosphere of distrust, and in this atmosphere of distrust to do something positive, to initiate some new talks on strategic stability or keep repeating that the missile defense system in Europe poses no threats. It is a waste of time, a waste of taxpayers' money and it causes a regress in our relations.” Oznobishchev urged Washington “to stop repeating the same arguments that do not work. And some of them have not been working already for decades, they are still repeated. For example, that "the expansion of NATO does not threaten you and it is not clear why you are concerned about it." Currently, a similar situation exists in case of the missile defense system, though, to the credit of Obama and the White House, the program has indeed been modernized, but the perception is very, very cautious. So we must pass on to a dialogue, a dialogue which would be very lively and partner-based, which would react very quickly to the concerns of the other side. Arguments about the missile defense system would no longer influence our experts.”

According to the expert, the Euro missile defense system is not rational: “No one believes that one day an Iranian missile or rocket will be launched and will reach Munich and that this missile defense system will stop it. It seems that the Iranian side, and we're talking about it here very openly, and the Americans also talk about it, it seems that this missile defense system does not exist for the Iranian side. We have discussions on this issue, and the Iranians don't. Now the political situation in Iran has changed, it seems that, knock on wood, one can say that a certain dialogue is being established. But making clear beforehand that "we have lost faith in finding a political solution and that everything we do matters nothing, and that we are preparing for the launch of a missile and for intercepting it, in my opinion, is a very irrational position.”

At the same time, Oznobishchev believes that “we are talking in political terms and by far not always in military and military-technical terms. Once there is trust, there is political will and the presidents will sign other important documents in the field on the further strengthening of security, strategic stability, arms reduction and decrease. But the issue has been brought already to such a stage that to sign and agree on the latest Prague START treaty it took personal intervention and personal dialogue between the presidents, who reached an agreement on technical details on the phone. This has never happened before, it was impossible to imagine. And it turns out that, without their intervention such a, let's face it, simple treaty, which automatically replaced the already expired agreement, could not be coordinated. They could not coordinate the time framework either, despite the participation of the presidents. It just demonstrates that the parties are in bad shape, that the parties stopped thinking in the categories of disarmament, ceased to prepare for it practically, are looking for flaws in each other. But someone has to make the first move. Our NATO partners could have made this move in their latest Strategic Concept, they could have written much more up-to-date words than the ones they put there. Again the repetition of nuclear deterrence and such "new" in quotation marks suggestions as to move our tactical nuclear weapons deeper into the country. Deeper into the country means closer to whom? Closer to China, friendly Azerbaijan. That is, to complicate relations with several countries. Therefore, it is necessary to work in this direction, and someone perhaps has to be bold and do something unilaterally. But still, it is no substitute for very serious dialogue and the preparations for this dialogue that need to be carried out by Russian and American experts.”