ANALYSIS: Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush, and the National Missile Defense Program (03/04/01)

ANALYSIS

Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush, and the National Missile Defense Program

by Dr. David Marples

The new defense and security team put together by President George W. Bush appears to have posed some immediate problems for the Putin administration, which is in the midst of a debate as to Russia's security policy and needs. Specifically, the U.S. proposal to develop a National Missile Defense Program (NMD) allegedly contravenes the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972 and threatens to lead to a new arms build-up reminiscent of the Cold War. How serious is this question?

The 1972 treaty was signed between U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid I. Brezhnev and marked a significant breakthrough following 15 years of sabre-rattling between the two superpowers. It placed restrictions on ABM systems and systems that were built to defend against strategic ballistic missiles. It did not completely eliminate such sites, as each side was permitted to retain two, with a maximum of 100 ABM launchers and 100 interceptor missiles. Today, the United States has no such sites and the Russians have one, reportedly obsolete, just outside Moscow.

The treaty, according to the U.S. side, is null and void for several reasons. First, the USSR no longer exists, and implicitly Russia, the inheritor of its nuclear weapons, has different interests. Second, the original treaty excluded the other nuclear weapons-holding states, Britain, France and China. Today, as was demonstrated by the Gulf War and by Chinese truculence toward Taiwan (the use of ballistic missiles as a potential threat to enforce political demands), the main danger to the United States emanates not from Russia, but from so-called rogue states, like North Korea and Iraq, which might use ballistic missiles against the Americans.

Thus, several prominent statespersons have supported research into a new protective shield (the NMD), resurrecting in effect a new Star Wars syndrome, despite the fact that research into such a program has yielded few results thus far and a lot of costly failures.

The Russians do have a point. Despite official rhetoric, several officials in the new U.S. administration (including the director of the CIA) have suggested that Russia remains a potential U.S. enemy. The fact that so many officials of the late Cold War era have returned under the new Bush leadership adds weight to the Russian concerns.

On the other hand, the furor over the NMD owes at least something to disputes in the Russian military hierarchy and the vacillations of the president. The main debate has centered on Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF), a target of Russian Chief of Staff Gen. Anatoly Kvashin, who wishes to join them to the air force. His opponent is Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev, the former head of the SRF, who has alienated the Russian armed forces by allocating the bulk of the military budget to a new generation of ballistic missiles, thereby depriving the impoverished army of any new weapons.

Minister Sergeev has denounced the NMD, but at the same time the American program has in some respects provided him with justification for a very dubious defense policy. The latter is reliant on the new Russian ICBM, the Topol-M SS-27, a weapon conceived in the 1980s for the purpose of penetrating a Star Wars style shield. The SS-27 can carry numerous decoy warheads that can stymie radar and interceptors. They represent what the military calls "asymmetrical counter-measures" and are as relevant today - given the NMD - as they were in the Cold War era.

Yet this is to miss the key point, which is that no such NMD or "shield" is in place, and nor is one likely to be completed within the next decade. Meanwhile of the 780 remaining Russian ICBMs, 60 percent have already exceeded their anticipated life-span and require upgrading. Minister Sergeev seems to be living in a time warp, clinging to the view that Russia remains a world power, albeit one with a military budget around 2 percent that of its former adversary. Indeed, the new U.S. administration places less stress on the Russian reaction to the NMD than on the response of the emerging new power in the east, China.

President Vladimir Putin, for his part, appears to be awaiting a consensus between Messrs. Kvashin and Sergeev that is unlikely to come in the near future. In the meantime, he continues to dither and make placatory remarks to the new U.S. president, making many Russians ponder what happened to the bold and decisive young leader they elected with such readiness only a year ago.

David Marples is a professor of history at the University of Alberta.

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