#6
The Russia Journal
December 21-27, 2001
Challenging times for U.S.-Russia relations
In the wake of the ABM withdrawal, Putin has his work cut out
By ALEXANDER GOLTS
President Vladimir Putin’s reaction to the United States’ withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty has apparently turned out to be more significant than the U.S. decision itself.
Everyone has become familiar with the arguments put forward by Russia and the United States as they’ve debated the treaty’s future over the last two years. The United States says the 1972 treaty is a Cold War relic and that the mutually assured destruction principle makes no sense in today’s world. Moscow, meanwhile, has always held that the treaty is "the cornerstone of the international security system" and has threatened to withdraw from a dozen arms-control agreements if the Americans liquidate the ABM Treaty.
The United States assured Moscow that its new missile-defense system would be able to intercept only isolated missiles, while the Russians insisted the American plans posed a serious security threat and said they would make an "adequate response" using "asymmetrical measures."
In announcing the United States’ withdrawal from the treaty, President George Bush simply repeated the usual American explanations. But in his TV address, Putin bid farewell to everything Moscow had made the foundation of its negotiating position all this time.
Putin said that Bush’s decision "wouldn’t create a threat to national security." This is the truth. Even supposing that Moscow and Washington still need mutually assured destruction guarantees as they did 30 years ago, it’s enough for Russia to have a 1,500-strong arsenal of warheads to overcome U.S. missile defenses. Even if the Americans successfully deploy their planned system, it will only be able to intercept a maximum of 30-50 warheads.
So, the "retaliation measures" Moscow has threatened the Americans with all this time have proved quite unnecessary. Putin’s decision not to try frightening the Americans is a rational one. Even if the Russian military has unique technology enabling Moscow to overcome America’s missile defenses, it obviously doesn’t have and won’t have the money to make use of it.
Lack of financing has already brought to a halt the program to replace Russian heavy missiles at the end of their service lives with new Topol-M missiles. Russia could choose to install multiple warheads on these missiles, but rather than being motivated by a wish to overcome American missile defenses, this would simply be a cheaper way for Moscow to maintain its nuclear arsenal at 1,500 warheads.
Putin called the American decision a mistake, and this is an apt description. There’s no guarantee that the United States isn’t opening Pandora’s box by withdrawing from the ABM Treaty. From a military point of view, the American missile-defense plans would deal a blow primarily to China. China has approximately the number of nuclear warheads that the American system could ideally intercept. For China, this means the risk of losing an important policy instrument, and this could incite China to try increasing its nuclear arsenal. But this would be a problem more for the United States than for Russia.
The problems Moscow will have to deal with are of a psychological rather than military-strategic nature. By backing away from confrontation with the United States over the ABM Treaty, Putin is giving up the status of a country that not only had the power to destroy the United States, the most powerful nation in the world, but forced the Americans to agree with this. This was the political significance of the ABM Treaty, and most of the Russian elite was convinced that this status, inherited from the Soviet Union, made Moscow and Washington equal at the negotiating table, no matter what the issue being discussed.
Putin’s calm reaction to Bush’s decision ends these illusions. This is a rational approach, but it gives rise to a number of serious problems. For a start, there’s the question of how to maintain the Russian-American partnership. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said two years ago that strategic-arms relations form the foundation of Russian-American relations. But now there is less and less of a foundation to work on.
The United States has pulled out of the ABM Treaty. True, in exchange, Washington has announced plans to make a threefold cut to its nuclear arsenal. This greatly benefits Russia, which is seeing its own nuclear arsenal decline through rapid aging, not through political decisions.
But the U.S. administration is very cool on the idea of signing a treaty with Russia like the START-1 or START-2 treaties, setting not only maximum thresholds for nuclear arms, but also verification procedures. This means there won’t be regular consultations on the treaty’s enforcement, inspections to check that it is being observed and debates on how to count warheads and what to do about the potential for re-installing them on missiles – that is to say, there won’t be all that forms the system of bilateral ties.
The operations in Afghanistan will, to some extent, serve to maintain and develop Russian-American relations, but this situation could change if Washington decides to continue its anti-terrorist operations in a country that Moscow has some particular ties with. Finding a positive agenda for U.S.-Russian relations will thus become the main challenge for Russian diplomacy. Another major challenge for Putin will be finding the people who can help form this agenda.
(The writer is a correspondent for Yezhenedelny Zhurnal.)
Next Article