Stephen Blank: The Real Reset ... Moscow Refights the Cold War
[Stephen Blank is a professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. The opinions expressed are his own.]
Presidents Obama and Medvedev have publicly insisted that “hitting the reset button” has improved more than just the atmospherics of U.S.-Russian relations. Russian officials in particular claim that this policy shows that Washington has begun to take Moscow’s interests seriously. But enthusiasts on both sides are hard-pressed to come up with evidence that the new approach has accomplished much, and some American foreign policy experts have begun to argue that “taking Moscow’s interests seriously” might well lead to rather different and less favorable outcomes than those imagined by the architects of the reset policy.
It is fashionable in today’s Washington to assert that the United States needs Russian cooperation to stop North Korean and particularly Iranian nuclear proliferation. Many adherents of this view argue that taking Russia “seriously” means accepting Russian demands for no missile defense in Eastern Europe and no NATO enlargement or further European integration of the former Soviet republics. In other words, the price of such cooperation means leaving Europe vulnerable to Russian military threats (like those leveled against Poland in 2008 in response to the potential deployment of a U.S. missile defense system there) and turning a blind eye to Russia’s energy blackmailing as well as its efforts to quash democracy and establish a heavy-handed sphere of influence in its near abroad. Such a bargain would be both a moral and a strategic disaster for the United States and Europe, not to mention former Soviet republics.
The centerpiece of the reset policy is the new arms control treaty known as “New START.” Under its measures, both sides will retain 1,550 warheads. Second, both sides can retain up to eight hundred strategic nuclear delivery vehicles (SNDVs, i.e., vehicles capable of carrying a nuclear or designated strategic warhead), of which seven hundred can be deployed while the other hundred remain in reserve. (Russia only has five to six hundred SNDVs to retain in the first place, but the U.S. will have to cut down its own supply from the 1,100 suggested by the presidents’ June 2009 statement to the limit dictated by the treaty.) Third, the U.S. has apparently agreed to Russian demands that its conventional weapons mounted on strategic platforms be counted as strategic weapons except in the case of submarines carrying cruise missiles. Specifically, Moscow reported that “the Americans have agreed to regard the majority of their non-nuclear-configured delivery platforms as strategic. In exchange, we have decided not to count in the strategic category their four submarines converted to accommodate sea-launched cruise missiles.” The overall terms of this agreement could force a serious reconfiguration of the U.S. nuclear triad, perhaps even eliminating the airborne leg and thus substantially limiting the conventional global strike capability that Russia regards as America’s most potent military instrument—and whose elimination it has regarded as its primary objective in these talks.
Controversies exist as to whether or not we can adequately verify Russia’s new mobile, MIRVed, land-based ICBM, the RS-24, which can carry up to ten warheads and will serve as the backbone of Russia’s deterrent through 2030. We will not be able to verify them at the factory, as was previously the case, but only through the examination of test results. According to the treaty’s terms, Russia has blocked further U.S. monitoring at its missile factory in Votkinsk, which produces the land-based SS-27 Topol-M ICBM and the sea-based Bulava SS-26 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). Moscow also opposed renewing START-1 provisions for exchanging missile test data (called telemetry), but ultimately relented to the point of allowing five such inspections each year.
As this treaty comes up for consideration before the Senate, these concessions by the United States, in addition to questionable verification procedures, have already triggered an outcry from Republicans and conservative Democrats. Senator Jon Kyl has already vowed to kill the treaty for other reasons...
Read entire article at World Affairs Journal
Presidents Obama and Medvedev have publicly insisted that “hitting the reset button” has improved more than just the atmospherics of U.S.-Russian relations. Russian officials in particular claim that this policy shows that Washington has begun to take Moscow’s interests seriously. But enthusiasts on both sides are hard-pressed to come up with evidence that the new approach has accomplished much, and some American foreign policy experts have begun to argue that “taking Moscow’s interests seriously” might well lead to rather different and less favorable outcomes than those imagined by the architects of the reset policy.
It is fashionable in today’s Washington to assert that the United States needs Russian cooperation to stop North Korean and particularly Iranian nuclear proliferation. Many adherents of this view argue that taking Russia “seriously” means accepting Russian demands for no missile defense in Eastern Europe and no NATO enlargement or further European integration of the former Soviet republics. In other words, the price of such cooperation means leaving Europe vulnerable to Russian military threats (like those leveled against Poland in 2008 in response to the potential deployment of a U.S. missile defense system there) and turning a blind eye to Russia’s energy blackmailing as well as its efforts to quash democracy and establish a heavy-handed sphere of influence in its near abroad. Such a bargain would be both a moral and a strategic disaster for the United States and Europe, not to mention former Soviet republics.
The centerpiece of the reset policy is the new arms control treaty known as “New START.” Under its measures, both sides will retain 1,550 warheads. Second, both sides can retain up to eight hundred strategic nuclear delivery vehicles (SNDVs, i.e., vehicles capable of carrying a nuclear or designated strategic warhead), of which seven hundred can be deployed while the other hundred remain in reserve. (Russia only has five to six hundred SNDVs to retain in the first place, but the U.S. will have to cut down its own supply from the 1,100 suggested by the presidents’ June 2009 statement to the limit dictated by the treaty.) Third, the U.S. has apparently agreed to Russian demands that its conventional weapons mounted on strategic platforms be counted as strategic weapons except in the case of submarines carrying cruise missiles. Specifically, Moscow reported that “the Americans have agreed to regard the majority of their non-nuclear-configured delivery platforms as strategic. In exchange, we have decided not to count in the strategic category their four submarines converted to accommodate sea-launched cruise missiles.” The overall terms of this agreement could force a serious reconfiguration of the U.S. nuclear triad, perhaps even eliminating the airborne leg and thus substantially limiting the conventional global strike capability that Russia regards as America’s most potent military instrument—and whose elimination it has regarded as its primary objective in these talks.
Controversies exist as to whether or not we can adequately verify Russia’s new mobile, MIRVed, land-based ICBM, the RS-24, which can carry up to ten warheads and will serve as the backbone of Russia’s deterrent through 2030. We will not be able to verify them at the factory, as was previously the case, but only through the examination of test results. According to the treaty’s terms, Russia has blocked further U.S. monitoring at its missile factory in Votkinsk, which produces the land-based SS-27 Topol-M ICBM and the sea-based Bulava SS-26 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). Moscow also opposed renewing START-1 provisions for exchanging missile test data (called telemetry), but ultimately relented to the point of allowing five such inspections each year.
As this treaty comes up for consideration before the Senate, these concessions by the United States, in addition to questionable verification procedures, have already triggered an outcry from Republicans and conservative Democrats. Senator Jon Kyl has already vowed to kill the treaty for other reasons...