Tag: Disarmament

Inexorable logic — either the U.S. downsizes (and keep its anti-missile program away), or Russia will upgrade

Reuters has picked up a report on the Itar-Tass news agency quoting First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov as saying on Friday that Russia must achieve nuclear arms parity with the United States: “Military potential, to say nothing of nuclear potential, must be at the proper level if we want … to just stay independent … The weak are not loved and not heard, they are insulted, and when we have parity they will talk to us in a different way“.

Reuters reported, from Tass, that Ivanov told veterans and members of Russia’s military-industrial commission that “every year Russia would be now commissioning six or seven of its newest ‘Topol-M’ nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. The missiles — the first developed by Russia after the 1991 demise of the Soviet Union — can carry up to six warheads and are mounted on mobile launcher vehicles”. The Reuters report can be seen here.

Russian irritation with U.S. postures has been evident and growing in recent years, but the U.S. has appeared to be surprised by this — and continues not making concessions to Russia’s views and positions, within the Conference on Disarmament at the UN in Geneva, and elsewhere.

Russia: mad with the U.S.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was shocked, taken aback — according to the news reports.

Why? She should have known.

The Russians have made it clear — they’ve said so in the Conference on Disarmament, and Putin said so at a security conference in Germany last year, before saying it again yesterday before assembled journalists, Rice, and U.S. Defense Secretary Gates. They don’t like the U.S. missile defense system. They are very much opposed to it.

Putin is angry, and has said so consistently. Russia was furious when the U.S. unilaterally abrogated its bilateral treaty on Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM) — and the U.S. said soothingly that it was only because it didn’t reflect new realities, that the new Russia was no longer the enemy that the old Soviet Union was during the Cold War, and so on and so forth …

Then, the U.S. surprised everyone by proposing to put its Missile Defense Shield (a more realistic version of Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” proposal) in Eastern Europe, right on Russia’s doorstep — just like the U.S. deployed nuclear weapons in Europe during the Cold War. When Russia objected, the U.S. was surprised, shocked: So, the U.S. then proposed sharing the technology with Russia. The real target, the U.S. said, was Iran. Russia didn’t believe it for a second.

Why should anyone be surprised, then shocked, now? Unless, of course, you don’t take others seriously …
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