#7
Current History
October 2000
Russia's New Security Policy and the Ballistic Missile Defense Debate
By Celeste A. Wallander (cwallander@cfr.org)
Celeste A. Wallander is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Little mystery surrounds Russian policy toward American proposals to
revise the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty to develop a national
missile defense system. Moscow views the ABM Treaty as the basis for
strategic stability and a necessary condition for maintaining the broad
array of agreements on controlling weapons of mass destruction and the
means for their delivery. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov recently
referred to these agreements as the "modern architecture of international
security," with the ABM Treaty serving as the foundation. "If the
foundation is destroyed, this interconnected system will collapse,
nullifying 30 years of efforts by the world community."1
Russia views the American premise for national missile defense (NMD)-that
the United States is threatened by the acquisition of weapons of mass
destruction and missile technology by certain "states of concern" (formerly
called "rogue states")-as implausible. Russian analysts consider only North
Korea a credible threat in technological terms for a time frame of 10 years
or less and relegate potential Middle East threats (Iran and Iraq) to a 20-
to 25-year window. Furthermore, they argue that the United States can rely
on existing theater missile defense (TMD) systems and developing
technologies such as Theater High Altitude Area Defense to deal with any
missile launches by these countries. American reluctance to rely upon
boost-phase TMD to cope with these potential regional threats is seen as
evidence that the real target of NMD is undermining and possibly
neutralizing Russia's nuclear retaliatory capability.
The key to understanding Russian policies, the potential for agreement on
ABM modification, and likely Russian responses in the event of nonagreement
is more complicated than this familiar public posture. It requires an
understanding of Russia's new security, military, and foreign policy
doctrines; the complex role nuclear weapons play in defense policy; the
relationship between Russian conventional and nuclear capabilities; and the
priorities for economic reform articulated by President Vladimir Putin's
administration.
RESHAPING SECURITY POLICY
Since the beginning of this year, Putin has approved three documents that
comprise the government's official policy on national security, military
doctrine, and foreign policy. The statements explain Russia's national
interests, objectives, and problems, and establish the military, political,
and economic means by which Russia will pursue its interests and cope with
threats and problems.
The clear message of all three documents is that the greatest threats to
Russia's national interests lie within the country itself, and that
Russia's most urgent task is to achieve economic reform and stability.
However, in contrast to earlier assessments that ruled out external
threats, the documents approved this year also conclude that unnamed
countries might pose a threat to the territorial integrity or sovereignty
of Russia and its neighbors. At the root of this shift is an assessment
that: NATO's conventional capability has increased because of enlargement
while Russia's conventional military capabilities have continued their
post-Soviet slide; after the 1999 air campaign in Kosovo, NATO is more
inclined to use military force for nondefense missions in the European
region; and the United States will continue to pursue a unilateral,
assertive global policy.
As a result of this assessment, the new Russian military doctrine lowered
the threshold for nuclear use. Nuclear options were always part of the mix
of military responses to threats; throughout the 1990s, Russian military
policy allowed for the first use of nuclear weapons in the event of
non-nuclear attacks on Russian territory and sovereignty. More important
than the precise language in the 2000 doctrine was the analysis behind the
careful wording. In June 1999, the defense ministry reported that during
military exercises simulating a conventional military action on Kaliningrad
from Poland, the attack was successfully defeated and de-escalated only
with resort to nuclear weapons.
Russian analysts have concluded that Russia's conventional military
forces are insufficient to defeat external aggression and internal
conflicts, exemplified by the quagmire of Chechnya. Consequently, the
Russian leadership has decided that in the short-to-medium term the country
must rely on nuclear weapons to deter and de-escalate potential
conventional regional conflicts. This means that the range of missions
assigned to Russian nuclear forces have expanded beyond deterring global
war. The task for Russia's foreign, defense, and security policies is to
see Russia through a transitional period of 10 to 15 years until its
conventional military forces can be reformed and rebuilt to more
effectively serve as the primary instrument to defend Russian national
interests.
Thus, for the immediate future Russia will not rely on a genuine
second-strike military policy. In a second-strike strategy nuclear weapons
are used to threaten retaliation, thereby deterring any initial attack. In
addition to the simple deterrence-through-retaliation mission that relies
on some 200 deliverable warheads to threaten unacceptable damage to the
United States, Russian policy includes de-escalation and war-fighting
missions, potentially increasing the required number of nuclear weapons.
Russian analysts argue that credibility requires convincing the adversary
that Russia has a war-fighting capability, even if Russians themselves do
not believe it to be so. Use of nuclear weapons to deal with regional war
contingencies is quintessential war fighting.
Because nuclear weapons now play a role in Russia's stop-gap policy for
defeating, controlling, and de-escalating regional conventional conflicts,
the number of deliverable warheads available at the strategic level matter.
And even an imperfect missile defense can be effective because it erodes
the credibility and effectiveness of Russia's multiple nuclear missions;
hence assurances that an American NMD system could not stop 100 percent of
Russia's missiles do not address Russia's security concerns.
THE POTENTIAL RATIONALE FOR ABM REVISION
The baseline consensus that emerged in Russian security discussions in the
first half of 2000 had two premises. First, Russian security will for at
least the next decade rely primarily on nuclear weapons, with a form of
launch-on-warning with 200 deliverable warheads, escalation control and
de-escalation potential through a form of flexible response-and the need to
deal simultaneously with the United States (along with its NATO allies) and
China in any potential armed conflict. Second, agreement with the United
States on the third strategic arms reduction treaty (START III) is better
than unilateral measures to ensure sufficient retaliatory capability.
Current projections for modernization of Topol-M (SS-27) missiles-Russia's
newest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), first deployed in
1997-are based on a defense budget in the range of 2.6 to 2.9 percent of
GDP (207 billion rubles, or about $7 billion for fiscal year 2001), which
is a small sum given the size of Russia's economy but a huge burden on a
weak economy about to embark on a new direction in market reform.
A moderately successful Russian economy can be expected to support
production and deployment of 20 to 30 Topol-M missiles per year through the
decade, providing a force of as many as 300 of the single-warhead missiles
by 2010. Combined with reliance on Delta-class submarine-launched ballistic
missiles (SSBNs) with modernized SS-N-23 missiles (carrying 4 warheads each
in current plans), a small force of aging but reliable bombers, and
retiring other nuclear forces as their service life ends, one arrives at a
force of 1,000 to 1,500 nuclear warheads. This provides an acceptable
retaliatory capability if the ABM Treaty is maintained. It also provides
sufficient capacity for deliverable warheads against the United States/NATO
and can deal with existing and projected Chinese nuclear missile capability
against Russia.
With even a limited United States NMD, these calculations change in two
respects. First, to counter limited United States defense systems, Russia
has said it might make the Topol-M capable of carrying multiple warheads.
In part, this is simply to increase the number of warheads against United
States defenses, but it is also to achieve the advantage of launching, for
example, only 100 3-warhead missiles rather than trying to coordinate the
launching of 300 separate missiles to penetrate defenses. The Topol-M has
already been tested with side-maneuver technology, which complicates the
ability of United States defenses to track multiple warheads from single
missiles.
Second, Russian analysts assume that the Chinese response to a United
States NMD system will be to increase deployment of missiles from fewer
than the 30 it currently has to the hundreds. As a result, if Russia takes
seriously the need for a nuclear force that can deter and de-escalate in
conflicts with the United States/NATO and with China, the required number
of deliverable warheads increases. To achieve a larger force while still
engaging in the kind of force modernization now in its earliest stages,
Russia would need to place 3 warheads on its Topol-M and might seek to
deploy more warheads on SS-N-23s above the current level of 4 per missile.
In addition, to assist the survivability of Russian forces and enhance
their credibility in the face of United States defense, Russian analysts
assume that at least a portion of Russian ICBMs in 10 years will have to be
mobile. Some Russian analysts also discuss the option of returning to a
reliance on tactical nuclear weapons, and possibly deploying
intermediate-range missiles to cope particularly with the problem of China
in the Far East.
COMPLICATIONS
Important political and economic factors work against Russia's primary
reliance on a substantial nuclear force for its national security over the
long term. The first factor complicating the military policy is that some
political leaders do not support the logic of the cold war arms control
regime and the concept of United States-Russia parity that it protects. For
years, Russian critics delayed ratification of START II, arguing that the
agreement locked Russia into a position of permanent qualitative
inferiority and required cooperation with an unreliable United States. The
position of these political opponents appeared to have weakened in late
1999 after the electoral success of Putin's hastily conceived Unity party
and others that supported the treaty. With opponents no longer controlling
the Duma, the Putin leadership managed to achieve START II's long-delayed
ratification in April.
Opposition to the strategic calculations supporting ABM and arms control
emerged in a different context in July 2000, when General Anatoly Kvashnin,
chief of the General Staff, went public with his proposal to reform the
Russian military. These included unilaterally and immediately reducing
Russia's nuclear forces to 1,500 warheads or less, slashing procurement of
the Topol-M missile, and eliminating the Strategic Rocket Forces-the
organization responsible for maintaining Russia's land-based nuclear
missile force-as an independent service within the armed forces.
One reason for the proposal was competition within the military: if
implemented, this measure would reduce the power of Defense Minister Igor
Sergeyev, who made his career in the Strategic Rocket Forces and who
receives the bulk of his support within the military from the officers with
whom he served there; it would thus improve Kvashnin's chances for
replacing him as defense minister. Another reason is competition over
scarce resources: during the 1990s, the Strategic Rocket Forces received
funding for new strategic nuclear missiles while Russia's conventional
forces were left without funds for procurement, wages, or any fundamental
reform. Kvashnin explicitly argued that his proposal would allow resources
to be allocated to Russia's conventional forces.
Another reason for Kvashnin's proposal is that many in Russia's security
elite believe that nuclear arms control is self-defeating. It forces Russia
to accede to American criteria, such as bans on multiple warhead and mobile
missiles that suit Russia's strategic context and budget constraints.
Nuclear arms control also compels Russia to make concessions-potentially
agreeing to ABM revisions-to gain agreement on mutual reductions to 1,500
warheads, the level where Russian forces should be within a decade anyway.
And it reinforces a focus on nuclear weapons for defense that is
unreasonable and irrelevant, given that Russia does not face a primary
threat of global war with the United States and instead is confronted with
an array of immediate threats to its territorial integrity in Central Asia
and the Caucasus that require conventional forces.
At a Security Council meeting on August 14, 2000, Putin decided on a
compromise that primarily favored Kvashnin's logic. Russia's strategic
nuclear forces will be cut to 1,500 over the next few years through
attrition, as older missiles reach the end of their service life and are
decommissioned. The Topol-M missile will continue to be de-ployed at a rate
that will preserve a land-based leg for the Russian nuclear triad, but at a
level below that sought by Sergeyev. At the meeting Putin explicitly stated
that his decision was based on the need to adjust to what Russia could
really afford, and that the pursuit of nuclear arms had eroded Russia's
conventional forces in the 1990s. The Strategic Rocket Forces are to remain
an independent arm of the military until 2006, although the space missile
defense forces will become part of the air force by 2002.
Putin's compromise on the Sergeyev-Kvashnin dispute is consistent with his
reasons to pursue START III and a negotiated revision of the ABM Treaty.
Given Putin's economic program and priorities, it is clearly in his
interests to cap and stabilize Russian strategic nuclear spending. Although
the August decision means that Russia will in principle be ready to reduce
to 1,500 strategic nuclear weapons unilaterally, the Russian leadership
prefers to achieve negotiated reduction and agreement with the United
States on START III because only an arms control agreement provides both
lower levels and a system for stability and verification. This decision of
course is based on the current international, strategic, and economic
context and could change in light of American decisions on NMD and their
effects on the choices of other nuclear powers, especially China.
The ABM Treaty, therefore, is linked to more than the Russian nuclear
balance, because the real object of these defense-spending decisions and
priorities is not the nuclear force, but the reform and funding of Russia's
conventional forces and defense-oriented economy. Both the national
security and foreign policy concepts approved by Putin in 2000
overwhelmingly emphasized that Russia's primary national interest is to
create a healthy and growing economy. Russia's economic failures are the
most dangerous threat to its national security, and the chief mission of
its foreign policy is defined as securing the country's interests though
policies that the country can afford, rather than by wasting resources in
pursuit of a superpower status that it cannot sustain.
This policy, combined with an emerging economic strategy for reform and
growth that will focus at least partly on reviving sectors of the defense
industry-primarily those with export potential-is important for modern
conventional forces. To shift resources in this manner, Putin must stop
worrying about nuclear balances and focus on conventional forces and
painful economic choices, especially closing large sectors of the nuclear
military industrial complex inherited from the Soviet Union.
Russian arguments that any ABM modification will intrinsically destroy
the system of bilateral strategic arms control contain an inescapable
contradiction: Russia has broad political, economic, and security interests
in a START III treaty as long as the United States remains vulnerable to
Russian nuclear weapons. Offensive and defensive nuclear systems are
closely linked. This suggests that there is a price that is worth ABM
modification given Russia's package of political, economic, and security
concerns. The question is: What is that price?
ABM BREAKOUT?
In spring 2000, the shape of a possible deal on ABM Treaty modification
became clear. The Clinton administration proposed to redesignate the site
for the construction of a missile interceptor facility allowed under the
ABM Treaty from North Dakota to Alaska, which is in the range of
potentially acceptable treaty modifications. This possibility has been cast
in terms of a limited missile-defense capability against a specific threat
(North Korea) and as a result does not pose a direct challenge to Russia,
thus showing it is not a true national missile defense. Thus it is easier
to justify, and, combined with verification procedures on interceptor
production and deployment, this proposed modification might be workable.
A more difficult question is whether moving the interceptor site to Alaska
requires additional treaty changes that create the potential for true
national missile defense and provide the basis for a capability to "break
out" of the ABM Treaty. If the United States seeks treaty changes that
allow sensors and improved detection, tracking, and targeting capabilities,
including space-based systems, Russian analysts warn that these can be
easily and quickly upgraded from a limited to a national system.
Given the need to upgrade tracking capabilities and create new
technologies and sensors for discriminating between warheads and
countermeasures, it is difficult to see how a verification system could
guard against the United States developing a capability for quickly
breaking out of an ABM Treaty revision. It is easy to count interceptors
and observe where they are deployed to check that the system is limited and
directed against North Korea; it is not apparent how one defines
differences in ABM systems that allow for detecting, tracking, and
discerning nuclear warheads. Such capabilities can be adapted quickly, and
might even be useful for a broad range of contingencies even if designed
and deployed for the limited North Korea scenario. With an enhanced
detection and tracking system in place, it would be much easier to quickly
change a limited-area defense to a national defense by increasing
production and deployment of interceptors.
Even if Russia were to overcome technical obstacles and establish a regime
to verify qualitative limits on these advanced technologies, the chilly
state of United States-Russia relations creates problems for the prospect
of verification measures that would reveal American technological
capabilities. One area in which such a component of a verification regime
might be built is Shared Early Warning, a program for joint monitoring and
information sharing on space activities and missile launches agreed to by
Putin and President Bill Clinton at their June 2000 Moscow summit.
The prospects for a verification regime would appear to hinge on the shape
of the Putin leadership. Putin has shown that he thinks not merely in terms
of a strong and competent state, but has nondemocratic and illiberal
instincts. It will be difficult to justify sharing the information
necessary for stringent qualitative technological verification regimes with
a Russian government that is simultaneously using advanced technology to
monitor citizens' use of the Internet, or limiting communications and free
speech.
In any case, United States participation in an ABM verification regime
should be conditioned on the reliability of the Russian system. One Russian
complaint against the West is that Russia has been marginalized from
important security circles and not treated as a great power. Given the
vital importance of advanced technologies for future security and defense
systems, it should be made clear that accountability is a measure of
Russia's status as a great power.
PUTIN'S NEW COURSE
This year looked like the moment when Putin could get crucial political
and military groups to agree to a verification deal. With the March
presidential elections behind him and a four-year term ahead, Putin had
time to invest political capital in unpopular cooperation with the West.
In early May 2000, however, it was revealed that in addition to seeking
Russian agreement to revisions of the treaty that would allow the limited
deployment in Alaska, the Clinton administration hoped to gain Russian
agreement to further rounds of treaty renegotiation and revision to enable
the United States to expand the system in the future. Whatever value this
approach may have in preserving the arms control process, it eliminated
both the incentive for Putin to make concessions now to achieve constraints
on the United States in the future (since they are subject to
renegotiation) and predictability for force planning and procurement (since
the American system would change as the need arose).
In addition, given the August decision to proceed with nuclear force
reductions, Putin needs START III less-perhaps less than the United States
needs the ABM Treaty revision. Russia would prefer a mutual reduction to
1,500 nuclear weapons governed by a treaty, but if the decision is
implemented, Russia will be reducing anyway. With Russian interest in
preserving the ABM Treaty remaining, and United States leverage in offering
START III for ABM Treaty revision reduced, the chances for agreement are
probably less now than they were in the spring.
Other developments support this assessment. Through the early months of
2000, Russia complained, threatened dire consequences for bilateral
relations and arms control, and quietly explored compromise revisions in
response to American proposals to revise the ABM Treaty and warnings that
the United States might abrogate it if negotiations failed. In June and
July, the Russian approach changed. While still discussing potential
revisions and making the case for the treaty as it exists, Putin took the
initiative on the international scene, challenging the United States in
three areas.
First, Putin made several proposals for joint efforts to deploy theater
missile defense in Europe and Asia. Just before his June summit with
Clinton, Putin proposed joint boost-phase theater defenses in Asia, joining
United States and Russian technologies and using Russia territory to deploy
interceptors. During postsummit visits to Western European countries, Putin
repeated the proposal in the context of joint TMDs for Europe. In
subsequent comments, Russian security officials noted that Russia has
experience in air defense technologies and space-based detection
capabilities, has common interests with the United States and its Asian and
European allies in not wanting to see the emergence of regional missile
threats, and has the advantage of location to support efforts to cope with
regional threats without recourse to an NMD system that would protect only
the United States.
Second, Putin shifted the NMD issue from a bilateral United States-Russia
matter to one that involves China, Europe, and other countries-and in a way
that favors Russian views. Russia (and the Soviet Union before it)
generally bolstered its status through bilateral summits and arms control
talks that only the two countries with massive nuclear arsenals could
conduct. Although the decision to revise the ABM Treaty remains a United
States-Russia prerogative, Putin has multilateralized the issue by making
it a matter of discussion in his meetings in Europe and China this summer.
Finally, Putin used his July trip to North Korea to undermine the
fundamental American rationale for NMD by announcing that North Korean
leader Kim Jong-Il had offered to stop his country's missile program if
other countries would provide it with missile launches. Putin followed up
at the July 2000 Group of Eight meetings in Japan with proposals to include
an intrusive verification system to monitor North Korean compliance with
any such agreement. Although the United States remains skeptical of Kim's
proposal (it does not address other reasons cited for NMD, including the
remaining "states of concern" and the problem of accidental launch), it
seriously complicates the most plausible reason for United States NMD,
especially in the eyes of the European and Japanese publics, who would have
to support use of their territories for deployment of sensor components to
support an American NMD system.
This is not to say that Russian policy has completely abandoned quiet
discussion of potential treaty revision. At the June summit, presidents
Clinton and Putin agreed to a joint statement on "Principles of Strategic
Stability" in which Russia agreed that the threat of weapons of mass
destruction and missile proliferation was growing and that the ABM Treaty
could be modified to account for changes in the international security
environment. These were important concessions that committed Russia in
principle to participate in continued discussion of United States NMD
proposals. At the same time, Putin gained an American commitment to mutual
deterrence and strategic stability with recognition that the ABM Treaty is
the basis for that stability, and recognition of the interrelationship of
strategic offensive and defensive arms.
However, this agreement should be viewed as a fallback position by which
Russia might be able to achieve negotiated damage limitation if the United
States is determined to deploy some kind of NMD. With President Clinton's
decision on September 1, 2000 not to move ahead with an NMD system but to
leave the decision to his successor, Russia has gained breathing room for
consolidating its efforts to prevent United States deployment of NMD.
Putin's diplomatic initiatives in Europe and Asia this summer and proposals
on joint TMD are a more ambitious attempt to make renegotiation and
revision unnecessary by offering alternative solutions, choices that for
different reasons resonate with important American allies, other great
powers like China, and possibly with the American public. If the new
approach succeeds, it signals a more subtle and professional Russian
foreign policy that is attuned to emphasizing advantages, practical
results, and the realistic matching of objectives and resources required in
the newly approved Russian foreign policy concept. As Putin's first major
foreign policy initiative, this new approach has broader implications than
merely the NMD issues for United States-Russia relations.
BOXED ELEMENT:
THEATER AND STRATEGIC MISSILE DEFENSE
Theater refers to the immediate location of military operations, usually
in contrast to "strategic," which refers to the overall effort to defend a
country or conduct a full-scale war. Theater defense is located and targets
missiles in a specific location, such as North Korea. Strategic or national
defense is primarily located in a nation's homeland (although components
may be based abroad or in space) and meant to defend against multiple
sources. Because of their location, theater defenses meant to prevent
nuclear missiles from reaching the United States would target missiles in
their "boost phase"-that is, shortly after launch and before they left and
re-entered the atmosphere. In principle a boost-phase tmd located in
Northeast Asia could provide the United States with the same protection of
its national territory against North Korean missiles that a strategic nmd
would. C. W.
1Igor Ivanov, "The Missile-Defense Mistake: Undermining Strategic
Stability and the ABM Treaty," Foreign Affairs, September-October 2000, p.
15. The other agreements to which Ivanov was referring included existing
and potential strategic arms reduction treaties, the 1991 agreements on
tactical nuclear weapons, the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and the
Missile Technology Control Regime.
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