#6041
#9
Moscow Tribune
January 25, 2002
RUSSIA'S DETERRENCE CAPACITY QUESTIONED
Will Moscow Loose Parity?
By Stanislav Menshikov
When George W. Bush announced in November his decision to drastically cut US
strategic warheads, and Vladimir Putin promised to do the same the general
feeling was that strategic arms reduction could perhaps move ahead without
formal treaties. Of course, arrangements were necessary to control and
verify but some of those procedures were already provided by SALT-1.
Preparing a document for signature at the next summit in Russia in May
seemed to be largely a technical matter. Perhaps difficult in details, but
still technical.
After a round of talks in Washington (to be continued next week in Moscow)
the emerging difficulties are seen more as a matter of principle than
technique or formulation. The Russian side wants reduced warheads to be
destroyed, but the US plans to stockpile them for possible re-use in
unforeseen contingencies. Because Putin wants agreement with Bush to crown
his efforts in integrating Russia into the West, Moscow may eventually agree
with the American arguments. The widespread belief (not necessarily true) is
that Russia simply has not got the money to keep its warheads alive anyhow.
So it looks like Russia is heading for unilateral nuclear disarmament.
The theory prominent in Moscow today is that in the next ten years or so it
will not need strategic parity with the US in order to maintain a credible
deterrence capacity. Even if it scraps its old-age intercontinental
ballistic missiles but increases a smaller number of new Topol-M rockets
re-equipped with multiple warheads it could easily maintain the potential to
overcome any limited national missile defence shield (NMD) that the US could
realistically build in that time.
The 1,500 warheads that Russia is planning to retain by 2012 would be quite
adequate to retaliate against a possible US attack even if America had by
that time, say, 4,000 warheads or more. The US nuclear shield could destroy,
say, 100 Russian warheads, at the most. The remaining 1,400 payloads
delivered to the US territory would be more than enough to devastate the
most powerful country in the world. Vladimir Putin has been saying that the
US decision to scrap the ABM treaty and build an NMD does not present a
threat to Russia's national security. Also, with a drastically reduced
nuclear arsenal Moscow would save resources badly needed to expand the
economy and modernise its conventional armed forces.
So goes the theory. But some Russian and US experts are questioning its
validity and particularly its arithmetic. Their reasoning goes as follows.
Russia will never be able to use most of its warheads for the simple reason
that it will not be the first to attack. Having no NMD of its own, such an
attack on its part would be tantamount to national suicide. Its deterrence
capacity is equal not to the total number of its warheads and delivery
vehicles, but rather to the much smaller number that would survive and be
operational after an initial attack from a foreign power. Expert opinion
places this survival capacity at only 10-20 percent of its pre-conflict
level. So the question is whether the US NMD in 2012 is able to destroy 150
to 300 incoming Russian warheads.
Probably this is not feasible given the technology now being tested. But if
ABM interceptors were nuclear-tipped, as is likely given possible US plans
to resume nuclear tests, then the capacity of the American NMD would
increase enormously and the task of successfully repelling a Russian nuclear
response becomes very realistic. Incidentally, the US minimum requirement
for successful retaliation of its own is said to be 2,000 warheads.
Probably, Russia's minimum is not much smaller than that.
That is why Russian negotiators insist on destroying, rather than
stockpiling reduced US warheads. With nuclear parity maintained, the
survival of the Russian deterrence capacity would no longer be an issue.
Also, General Yuri Baluevsky, Moscow's principal military negotiator, is
perfectly right in asking for limits to be placed on the US NMD. For
instance, the use of nuclear-tipped interceptors on national defence systems
should be restricted. US insistence on full freedom in this matter is an
additional matter of concern for obvious reasons.
US negotiators argue that in view of the new relationship between the two
countries concepts like "deterrence" and "nuclear parity" are no longer
valid. But true partnership and mutual trust in military matters does not
emerge immediately, like a rabbit from a conjurer's hat. And if Russia is
seen as a genuine partner, the US does not really need thousands of warheads
in reserve. To deal with the "rogue states" a few dozen would suffice, at
the most.
There is also a strong political reason why Moscow should not agree to
unilateral reduction in warheads. While nuclear parity is retained, Russia
remains a major global power that can talk on equal terms with other great
powers. Foregoing nuclear parity would reduce it to second-rate status.
Civilised exchange with the US might become difficult if not impossible. If
Washington largely tends to take Moscow for granted today, what would happen
in the non-parity world of tomorrow?
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