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#12
Versty
No. 146
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
REDUCE THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR TO ZERO

The US administration has announced its decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty. What should Russia do? Academician Radiy ILKAYEV, Director of the Russian Federal Nuclear Centre, answers this and other questions in an interview he granted to Mikhail DMITRUK.

Question: The US withdrawal from the ABM treaty has changed the political situation dramatically. The world's most powerful state is speedily creating an anti-missile shield. Does Russia have the time and resources to build up the strength of its nuclear sword to render impotent the shield of the potential adversary?

Answer: I have no doubt about this. The Americans should not have done this, because terrorists whom they fear above all today will not necessarily use missiles to deliver bombs or toxic agents to the USA. They can find many other methods to do this.

It must be said that if the USA deploys the NMD system, Russia should have up its sleeve measures that would neutralise the use of the system against Russia. We have been working in this direction. The US withdrawal from the treaty was not a surprise to us; we expected this to happen for several years now. And we took into consideration this possibility.

Question: Can you speak about your centre's greatest achievements in the past few years?

Answer: Now that nuclear tests have been prohibited, we have to improve the calculating and computing base of our experiments. We have greatly advanced in this sphere of late, creating for our centre novel technologies that are many times more powerful than the ones we used before.

We are creating sophisticated radiographic equipment that is ten times more powerful than the old one. For when creating an "item" (warhead) one should know in the smallest detail how individual parts of this item would act when we detonate the fuse that causes the fission of nuclear materials and initiates the chain reaction. To be able to do this, we must watch how the explosion begins, where the blast will move, how the explosive container breaks up, and so on.

The same goes for the Luch (Beam) laser system, which we are creating now. We need it to simulate very complicated processes in high-temperature solid plasma. To create new thermonuclear weapons, we need to know how a substance will behave in extreme conditions, for example at a temperature of tens of millions degrees or under compression of thousands of grams per cubic centimetre, and so on. Such processes can be simulated only in very small volumes at powerful laser systems. For example, the Iskra-5 system occupies a large four-story building. It concentrates the energy of 12 lasers with the beam diameter of about a metre in a chamber that is not larger than one cubic millimetre. Only in these conditions we can achieve the energy density of thermonuclear weapons.

And lastly, in the past few years we worked successfully to create conventional arms whose characteristics are similar to those of nuclear weapons.

Question: You once said in a private conversation that the press would be able to write about these weapons in about ten years. But maybe we can tell our readers already now that these weapons can penetrate a metre-thick armour?

Answer: You can do this. In a word, we have scored impressive achievements. Despite modest funds, our achievements are on a par with and sometimes are even better than those of foreign research centres.

Question: Experts say that the unilateral US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty will inevitably provoke a new round of the arms race. In which direction will the creation of nuclear weapons move in this case, if you can tell this?

Answer: Certainly. Some ten years ago there was a great amount of powerful nuclear warheads in the world. Since then, their number and size have decreased. Why? Because the precision of their delivery has improved, with missiles, bombs and torpedoes hitting the target dead on and hence we do not need a powerful charge to destroy the target.

The basic trend of the development of nuclear weapons is the diminishing number and yield.

Question: And what about the nuclear winter, with which we have been scared for 30 years? They said that each nuclear power can destroy all life on earth many times over and hence a world nuclear war would inevitably lead to overkill, explosions of super-powerful bombs and missiles would provoke giant fires, with smoke turning day into eternal night on this planet. The Apocalypse. Oceans deep frozen for thousands of years...

Answer: You probably noticed that nuclear physicists stopped mentioning overkill in the past few years. And this is logical, for the number and yield of warheads have decreased so much that there can be no nuclear winter now. The weapons we still have on this planet cannot seriously affect the climate.

Don't think that the threat of a nuclear winter was invented to scare humankind and resolve political and economic problems. We really feared very much that a nuclear conflict would result in a nuclear winter, with the Earth's climate resembling the atmosphere on Mars. But these fears have been allayed. Thank God, the great powers have found the courage to reduce the number and yield of their warheads to a ceiling where nuclear weapons can be used to fulfil purely military tasks without changing the planet's climate.

Question: This is good news. But I fear it can provoke undesirable changes in the public mind. In the past we abstained from nuclear conflicts because they were fraught with the death of humankind. But now hawks may pluck up the courage to launch a world slaughter.

Answer: Have no fear. Nobody will launch a nuclear conflict, for a very simple reason: just recall the shock the USA had when the two skyscrapers crumbled. And then imagine that any, even the smallest possible nuclear strike will obliterate a whole city. The shock will be incredibly stronger.

And I think that now, after the terrorist attacks in the USA, all reasonable people know that the threat of a nuclear war must be reduced to zero. For even a limited strike would entail extremely serious psychological losses for the world community. This is why we need not fear that there will be people who may think that they can use nuclear weapons with impunity. September 11 eradicated this fear.

I think it is no longer possible to eradicate global civilisation. Yet we must know that the defence philosophy of Russia, which occupies a vast territory, should be based on deterrence weapons. Even a multitude of troops will not protect this country, even if it overcomes the economic crisis. Because there are billions of people around it and there are only 150 million of us.

I believe that the world is changing only slightly and regrettably force is still being used in politics. You know this better than I do. And I see no reasons to expect that force would not be used in the 21st century. So, one of the main tasks of our centre is to be at the crest of all advance weapons technologies in order to provide Russia with modern weapons of world standards.

                                * * *

COMMENTARY

Valery FEDOROV, Director of the Centre of Political Analysis:

The US withdrawal from the ABM treaty means that the die was cast and the USA refuses to respect the interests of Russia, China and other nuclear powers. It is steering a policy of becoming the world's only power with a unique status in the 21st century. The USA refused to create a collective security system and actually put its interests above all and any international priorities. I can understand American desires, but the NMD system as it is designed is not just a shield but also a sword.

A system of unilateral security is fraught with strategic threats, and not only at the so-called rogue countries against which it is formally spearheaded, but also at any other country that dares pursue an independent policy and does not want to move in the wake of US policy. They are facing a choice: either join a new round of the arms race, or accept the fact that their status and security level will be considerably lower than those of the hegemonic country.

In principle, Russia has about six or seven years while the USA will test its NMD system. In that time it must do something to create an alternative collective security system or turn the US system into an international one. Otherwise Russia will be treated as a regional country in the 21st century, with the best it would be able to do is control the situation on its own borders. There will be no equitable participation in the global process.

And yet, we should not see the US decision as a deliberate slap meant for Putin or Russia as a whole. It is nothing more than the usual pragmatic American attitude to the solution of internal problems. The Americans gave us a good lesson of how national interests must not be overshadowed by handshakes, embraces and even a solidary stand in the anti-terror struggle.

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