#9
Rossiiskaya Gazeta
No. 245
December 18, 2001
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
KOKOSHIN ON POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF US DECISION
Andrei KOKOSHIN, ex-secretary of the Russian Security Council, deputy
of the State Duma, talks with Vladimir BOGDANOV about strategic security
Question: What do you think about the decision of the Bush administration to withdraw from the ABM Treaty? How will it influence Russia-US relationship and global strategic stability?
Answer: That decision is a major landmark in modern history. I don't doubt that it is one of the gravest mistakes in the US national security policy, if only because it was made in conditions of growing military-political instability and strategic uncertainty in the world, when there are no new mechanisms of ensuring strategic stability that could replace those that worked during the Cold War and Soviet perestroika.
It will have a negative effect on Russo-American relations, but we should not dramatise it. On the whole Russia has the capabilities to ensure a reply strike potential even if the USA builds its NMD system. But we should take proper steps, which calls for outlays and the attention of Russia's top leadership.
Question: Most experts agree that the first phase of the NMD project is spearheaded exclusively at the Chinese nuclear potential. Only the American man in the street - and then not every one - believes in the fairy-tales about the nuclear threat coming from the rogue countries, which in US parlance are now Iran and now North Korea or Iraq, depending on political considerations.
Answer: US officials have long stopped using this argument at the high military-political level. Americans say off record that North Korean and Iranian missiles are nothing but a manoeuvre invented because it was impossible to say outright that the NMD was being created to neutralise the Chinese, and subsequently Russian nuclear potential.
The very beginning of the NMD project psychologically devalued the nuclear forces of China and France, not to mention the British nuclear forces that have long become an appendage to the US nuclear fist. The plummeting of the Gaullist spirit in France can raise the question of preserving the independence of the French nuclear forces.
The Chinese leadership is in a quandary. On the one hand, it cannot permit even a virtual devaluation of its nuclear forces in the eyes of its people and the international community. On the other hand, it would be politically extremely dangerous for China to reply by building up its nuclear forces. For this can provoke a sweeping negative reaction in the world, which would hinder the implementation of Beijing's long-term plans of augmenting its economic and research-technical might.
Beijing will most probably make a show of all available technical possibilities to evade any potential NMD system without considerably increasing the number of strategic delivery vehicles and warheads on them.
Question: Can Russia counter the US intention to formalise its military-political hegemony in the world? For example, can it start to quickly develop relations within the Russia-India-China strategic triangle?
Answer: These three powers had quite a few stands in common, in particular on the ABM treaty. But there have always been problems in India-China relations. There are grounds to say that the situation is not suitable for strengthening India-China collaboration on the key issues of international security. The press is more frequently quoting experts as saying that the USA will manage to turn India towards a new policy of deterring China.
India, which quickly and resolutely joined the US-led counter-terror coalition, has been actually granted the recognition of its nuclear status as all sanctions against it have been lifted. The next item on the agenda is the issue of major arms deliveries to India from the USA and other Western countries, which will create problems for Russian arms merchants. India and China are Russia's most important partners in military-technical cooperation, on which the future of the Russian defence industries and hence real sovereignty of the country largely depend.
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