Sergei Oznobischev: "Someone has to make the first move!"

Sergei Oznobischev, 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, comments on relations between Russia and the US in the field of strategic stability.In late October, at a hearing in the Committee on Armed Forces of the U.S. House of Representatives, a representative of the Pentagon talked about plans for the modernization of strategic nuclear forces of the United States in the next decade. At the same time, in June, President Barack Obama spoke about the initiative to reduce the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, as well as tactical weapons in Europe, by one third. However, Russia believes that it is time to reduce strategic offensive arms on a multilateral basis - not only with the participation of official nuclear powers that have so far remained outside the talks, but with all the countries in possession of nuclear weapons without exceptions. "Unfortunately, we do not have many experts who believe that the Euro missile defense system poses no military threat to the strategic potential of Russia and that it does not infringe on containment. But for many people who are already politicized and consider the other side again almost as a potential enemy, and this "almost as" position has already been proved by quotes from some of our worthy military. It is a sad trend. But in this context, it turns out that the serious military does not find this missile defense system 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. Especially because, in the view of military experts, in military terms it is not very substantial. We rarely hear criticisms of about the military expediency of the Euro missile defense coming from America. Serious doubts of that kind do exist," Oznobishev says. "We are talking in political terms and by far not always in military and military-technical terms. I repeat once again, 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 the personal intervention and personal dialogue between the presidents who have 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: we say that you do not need 200 bombs, you tell us that we do not need 2000 or fewer tactical nuclear weapons. But someone has to make the first move. In our view and in my opinion, for example, 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 the very serious dialogue and preparations for this dialogue that need to be carried out by Russian and American experts," he says.