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www.nationalreview.com
December 17, 2001
The Key to Russian Stability
It's not the ABM Treaty.
By Nikolas K. Gvosdev, executive editor, The National Interest
Does the U. S. announcement of its intent to withdraw from the 1972 ABM Treaty herald a dramatic shift in the global strategic balance of power, raising the specter of a new nuclear arms race? Such sentiments, expressed by some Western commentators, are reinforced by the reaction from the Russian side. Dmitry Rogozin, the chair of the international-relations committee of the Duma, declared that Russia will use the six-month notification period "to plan its response and subsequent steps," which may include a reevaluation of Russia's arms-control commitments under the START accords. "We believe that offensive and defensive tools of nuclear deterrence must be linked. If the ABM Treaty ceases to exist, Russia will have a free hand in nuclear planning," he declared.
Rhetoric, however, cannot mask reality. In August, the former head of Russian military intelligence, General Fedor Ladygin, candidly admitted that, for the foreseeable future, Russia's nuclear capacity will continue to erode "due to the shortage of financial resources for ... maintenance and renewal." Viktor Litovkin, a political commentator, was even blunter in his assessments. "The country has no money. Not even enough to replace the decrepit, hazardous, strategic missiles with the new single-warhead 'Topol' missiles." Vladimir Putin himself castigated the old Soviet-era defense complex in a November speech, saying it is "archaic" and unable to "meet modern military and political challenges."
This is why, in November, the Russian Security Council considered a draft document outlining how the Russian defense industry can be modernized. Putin is well aware that Russia's national security depends upon Russia's growing integration into the global economic system as a full-fledged member. By gaining access to world markets, Russia can obtain the funds and investment needed to conduct "technical and technological modernization" in a timely and efficient manner.
Through an aggressive campaign of state-directed investment in things like the construction of a new nation-wide fiber-optic network and broadband transmission stations (in part relying upon tax revenues generated by increased oil and gas exports), Putin hopes that by 2010 Russia will have a highly developed information and communications infrastructure at its disposal. This would facilitate the revival of an industrial sector that is both a manufacturer and a consumer of domestically produced high technology products, including communications equipment and imaging systems, which could be marketed to the civilian sector but also utilized in upgrading Russia's defense capabilities.
Putin's calculations may be misguided; after all, during the 1970s, Venezuela and Mexico both drastically overestimated the impact of oil revenues in funding ambitious development programs. However, Russia is expected to achieve an eight-percent growth rate this year, and the country seems poised for extensive economic recovery over the next several years. U. S. policymakers should seriously consider whether it is in American national interests to have, in a decade, a prosperous Russia that feels compelled to invest in the research and development of things like glide- and maneuverable-reentry vehicles capable of evading interception by any of the proposed missile-defense systems that could be deployed by the United States. (Actually, plans for such a system have already been drawn up, but lack of funds has prevented any serious efforts at development — something that the Chinese are reportedly interested in remedying).
This is why it is in U. S. interests to take Putin up on his offer to start fresh negotiations to define a new framework for Russian-American strategic relations (and it may not be a bad idea to include the other principal nuclear powers of the world in that process). While the current frail condition of Russia may lead some to conclude that the U. S. should act unilaterally, taking Russian interests into account — over such contentious issues as the second round of NATO expansion — is a policy which could pay significant dividends for the United States several years down the road.
Washington should seriously consider the advice proffered, however unintentionally, by the Chinese magazine Liaowang this past August, when it noted that "Economic interests are the key bargaining chips for the U. S. and Russia to reach a compromise." Increasingly, Russia's future prosperity lies in its integration with the Western alliance. Sixty-seven percent of its exports will be consumed in European Union countries by 2005. Russia, now the world's second largest producer of oil, needs Western expertise and capital to fully tap and exploit its energy reserves; in turn, Russia could emerge as a viable alternative to the Middle East as the principal supplier of energy to Europe. Russia has not had this degree of economic integration with the rest of Europe since before the Bolshevik Revolution.
After World War II, the United States rejected the so-called "pastoralization" plans for Germany and Japan — leaving these two rivals in a permanently weakened and subordinated position. Instead, the reconstruction of the industrial and technological base of these two countries — and their integration into the world market — helped to stabilize Central Europe and East Asia. Moscow's current weakness should not blind us to the potential that an economically resuscitated and technologically modernized Russia could play — for good or ill — across the Eurasian landmass.
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