#10
Vremya Novostei
No. 1
January 2003
RUSSIA NEEDS A TRANSPARENT DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME FOR ITS STRATEGIC NUCLEAR FORCES

Some analysts predict that the ratification of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty signed by the presidents of Russia and the USA in May 2002 may call for a compromise between Vladimir Putin and the State Duma. The December 17, 2002 closed session of the defence and foreign affairs committee partly confirmed this forecast. The president forwarded to the State Duma a two-item suggestion: to ratify the treaty and to enforce it as of its ratification, but the deputies suggested a four-page list of conditions for withdrawal from the treaty. A third variant provides for the approval of the president's draft complemented with a State Duma resolution that will include the aforementioned list.

A joint group of the defence and foreign ministries and the Foreign Intelligence Service has been created and there will be closed hearings on the ratification issue in January and open ones in February. There will be fierce debates with unpredictable result. We asked Major-General Vladimir DVORKIN, senior researcher of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences and an adviser for the PIR Centre, who had headed the 4th Central Research Institute of the Defence Ministry until 2001, to share his views on the issue.

The Strategic Reductions Treaty signed in Moscow is certainly a major achievement of Russian diplomacy. It will maintain the strategic nuclear balance between Russia (for whom nuclear forces are the last proof of its superpower status) and the USA for 10-15 years at the least and ensure Russia a strategic dialogue with the USA and a befitting place in the world.

On the other hand, the document signed in Moscow cannot be described as a proper treaty. Washington made unprecedented concessions when it agreed to regard as a treaty its own plans of the development of the strategic nuclear triad, adopted more than six months before. Likewise, Moscow made public its plans of maintaining its strategic nuclear forces at the level of 1,500 charges in the future long before signing the treaty. In fact, the two presidents put their signatures to their countries' unilateral programmes.

However, the importance of the new treaty must not be underrated. It freed Russia from a number of limitations on the structure and composition of strategic nuclear forces, allowing it to maintain strategic nuclear balance with the USA at the level of roughly 2,000 warheads without additional outlays, but mounting MIRVed warheads on ground-launched missiles. Russia can continue to focus on the development of ground-based group of ICBMs (including their mobile variant) as a cheaper, more effective and more easily controlled part of the nuclear triad.

In conditions of growing strategic partnership and clear-cut policy of integration with the West, adopted by the Russian president, a nuclear balance with the USA underscores Russia's exceptional role in geopolitics and is an insurance policy in case of unpredictable development of the military-political situation. This is why the treaty should be ratified without procrastination.

The problem (during and after ratification) will boil down to a reasonable use of possibilities afforded by the new treaty and the elaboration of a rational and legally formalised programme of the development of the national strategic nuclear forces. The thing is that the system of making strategic decisions, including those bearing on the strategic nuclear forces, remains moot. The presidential decree of 1998, which stipulated a balanced composition of the strategic nuclear forces that would fit START-2 provisions, has not been cancelled. In August 2000 the Russian Security Council approved a programme which the media have criticised for the absence of any operational-strategic and technical-economic substance.

That programme stipulated an accelerated reduction of ground-based ICBMs. It was adopted to ensure the enforcement of START-2 and preserve the 1972 ABM Treaty though specialists knew than neither had a future. When the USA withdrew from the ABM treaty, the leadership of the Russian General Staff announced the prolongation of the service life of MIRVed ICBMs, thus admitting gross strategic mistakes made in the past. The question is, on the basis of which decisions, resolutions or decrees should the Russian strategic nuclear forces develop today? How should these decisions be substantiated? The law on the ratification of the strategic offensive reductions treaty could provide the answer.

To ensure reliable deterrence of the potential adversary, Russia needs a transparent programme of the development of its strategic nuclear forces that would be adequate to the arising situation. The US nuclear policy and programmes could provide an example in this sense because the USA always knows the number and characteristics of ICBMs, missile submarines, SLBMs and strategic bombers it would have. The nuclear programmes of Britain and France are also transparent. Of the official members of the nuclear club, only Russia and China keep their nuclear programmes secret. So, the question is: Are we moving east or west?

The reasons for this closeness of Russia can be explained not only by the traditional secrecy (which is frequently not just useless but also harmful, especially in the case of strategic nuclear forces, though their ability to play the role of detergent should be apparent to everyone). Another reason is the unwillingness to put the development programme of the strategic nuclear forces on display and thus make it vulnerable to professional criticism.

Only recently, the programmes of the strategic nuclear forces, orbital groups and such like were elaborated by expert commissions that consisted of chief designers, key military specialists and leading scientists. The latest programme of strategic nuclear forces, approved by the president in 1998, was elaborated by an expert commission led by Academician Nikolai Laverov, vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences. And the development programme for the orbital group was elaborated by a similar commission led by Academician Yevgeny Velikhov.

This practice should be resumed, so that the basic provisions of a programme approved by the president and adjusted to new conditions would be made public. It would be also expedient to focus our attention back on the ground-based MIRVed ICBMs and to retarget the bulk of strategic bombers to non-nuclear tasks. This would enable us not just to maintain a stable nuclear balance but also to reinforce the weakened general-purpose conventional forces and to keep cruise missiles in reserve, for potential use in case of unpredictable developments in the military-political situation, just as the USA plans to do.

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