#6 - JRL 8046
Moscow Times
Feburary 3, 2004
Editorial
Strategic War Games Off Target

Later this month, Russia's strategic nuclear forces will hold their largest exercises since the early 1980s.

The official explanation, according to a report in Kommersant, is that the war games are designed to help Russia prepare to counter terrorist threats.

But no sensible person could believe that the launching of cruise missiles over the Atlantic and satellites into space combined with the test-firing of ballistic missiles would make the military better able to interdict a group of terrorists, even if they had managed to get hold of a nuclear weapon.

When the military last held war games of a similar scale, in 1982, both the Kremlin and the White House knew perfectly well what they were for -- to simulate a global nuclear war. The planned exercises will also simulate a U.S.-Russian nuclear war, and the Russian side should not pretend otherwise.

The strategic exercises are clearly intended to send a message to Washington, but also to the voters at home as President Vladimir Putin comes up for re-election.

It would be a little alarming if the Kremlin was planning to simulate a nuclear war just to show that Russia is still a power to be reckoned with. What is more alarming is that Russian commanders, though they would not admit it in public, continue to believe that a nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia is possible and thus that they should plan for it. Sadly, the situation is the same with U.S. commanders.

Otherwise, how to explain why each country has 2,500 nuclear warheads on hair-trigger alert? Even a fraction of these would be enough to deter and, if necessary, destroy any third nuclear power. And the high state of alert greatly increases the risk of a false alarm triggering a nuclear exchange.

The reported holes in Russia's early warning system, and the fact that a joint center for exchanging data from early warning systems, which leaders of the two countries agreed to establish at a summit in 2000, has yet to materialize, increases the risk of a doomsday even more.

The sheer number of launch-ready nuclear weapons on both sides makes it easier for terrorists to try to seize one or hack into the command and control network to launch one.

True, Russian and U.S. leaders have done a lot to reduce their nuclear arsenals, increase security and improve communications between their strategic commands. They need to do even more. If they are serious about fighting terrorism, political leaders on the banks of the Potomac and the Moskva should prod their generals to game joint interdictions of nuclear terrorist attacks rather than U.S.-Russian nuclear wars.