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US-Russian Relations

Strategic Arms Issues Still on the Table

By Irina Bystrova

The Cold War seemed to end about two decades ago. Now its consequences are being revived in relations between Russia and the United States. Barack Obama is scheduled to meet Russia’s President Dmitrii Medvedev in April. Three major areas of US-Russian strategic military relations need to be discussed: nuclear proliferation, strategic arms reduction and an anti-missile shield in the Eastern Europe.

The United States and Russia have a joint interest in fighting further nuclear proliferation in the world. Among the greatest current threats are North Korea and Iran. Yet the United States has yet to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty signed in 1996. Russia ratified it in 2000.

The first step on the part of the US and Russia toward the idea of a “non-nuclear world” would be strategic nuclear armaments reductions. On February 4, 2009, Obama proposed to replace the 1991 US-Soviet Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START), which expires in December, and to slash each country’s stockpile of nuclear weapons by 80 per cent – down to 1,000 warheads. Some Russian politicians and ordinary people think that such substantial reductions would mean the “liquidation” of Russian missiles, so the country would stay disarmed, and balance of forces would be shifted in favor of NATO.

However, recent developments in US-Russian strategic relations look more optimistic. Both sides are interested in doing more than just extending the START. Russia has shown interest in deep reductions, perhaps 1,500 strategic warheads or fewer on each side. Restarting the US-Russian nuclear arms control process could substantially reduce the number of nuclear weapons, improve global cooperation to meet other nuclear threats, and help repair U.S.-Russian relations.

Another set of problems are related to the creation of an anti-missile shield in Eastern Europe, embodied in the plan laid out by former President Bush to place missile interceptors and radar in Poland and the Czech Republic as a hedge against a possible strike from Iran.

The problem of strategic arms reductions was historically connected with the issue of antiballistic missile defense, which was the most sensitive for the Russian side. On June 13, 2001, the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, claiming that it prevented U.S. development of defenses against possible terrorist or "rogue-state" ballistic missile attacks.

On July 8, 2008, the United States and Czech Republic signed the agreement for the construction of radar near Prague; in August 2008 the US-Polish agreement on the deployment of the elements of anti-missile system was reached.

Russia had an alternative idea of cooperating against joint “missile threats”. For example, Russia proposed that the US join Russian monitoring systems including the Russian radar station in Azerbaijan. Russian Prime-minister Vladimir Putin proposed creating an anti-missile shield in Europe together.

Rhetoric on the missile system grew heated last year, and was compounded by U.S. outrage over military conflict between Russia and Georgia last summer. In his appeal to the Federal Assembly of Russian Federation on November 5, 2008, Dmitrii Medvedev announced that Russia might deploy an “Iskander” missile complex in Kaliningradskaja oblastj in the Western part of Russia in response to US plans for anti-missile defense system deployment. Russia previously proclaimed it could pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The flight range of a new cruise missile adapted for Iskander and successfully tested in May 2007 could exceed 500 km.

Both the U.S. and Russia have made steps to ease the tension since President Barack Obama’s inauguration. At least for now, it was proclaimed by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates that Washington needed time to look at the plan to deploy missile interceptors and radar in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Maybe these are the first signs of US-Russian strategic relations thawing out.

Irina Bystrova is a professor of history at the Russian State University for Humanities in Moscow. She is currently a visiting Fulbright fellow at George Washington University....

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