Bear over the Barrel’: Putin’s Threats re: U.S. Missile Defenses are Strategically Hollow, Economically Unaffordable

(Washington, D.C.): Opponents at home and abroad of President Bush’s plan to deploy U.S. missile defenses are betting heavily on Russian President Vladimir Putin to help them carry the day. Thus, Putin’s every utterance about his determination to build new missiles or add warheads to old ones are given prominent treatment in Democratic congressional circles, allied capitals and talkfests featuring pundits and others in the domestic and international media elite.

The only problem is — as complementary essays published in recent days by Columbia University professor Padma Desai and former Clinton CIA Director R. James Woolsey make clear — there is no there. Putin’s Russia simply cannot afford to undertake the “arms race” he threatens. Even if the Russians could, it would make absolutely no difference strategically.

The latter point, lucidly made by Mr. Woolsey, is further underscored by Putin’s latest, bizarre gambit aimed, apparently, at not giving too much offense to his new friend, George W. Bush. On Friday, according to an Associated Press item featured today by globalsecuritynews.com, the Russian President announced, “I want to say that if such a response [i.e., a Russian missile and/or warhead build-up] does take place, it will not be aimed against the creators of the NMD system.” He added that Russia’s plans “should not worry anyone” given this fact.

In short, there is no better time than the present for the United States to be deploying missile defenses. Get on with it.

Many US security specialists thought Vladimir Putin would use Saturday’s summit with George W. Bush to air his outright rejection of US plans to develop a national missile defence. They were surprised when it did not happen. But they have only themselves to blame: if they had not lost sight of Russia’s plight, they would have predicted the mildness of Mr Putin’s disapproval long ago.

The Russian bear is trapped between a failing economy and pressing defence needs on the non-nuclear front. Russia’s president has little choice other than to accept NMD, even if he tries to secure some concessions along the way.

Mr Putin’s post-summit threat to push ahead with deployment of multiple nuclear warheads in response to a unilateral US decision on NMD is therefore little more than noise and cheap bargaining. Mr Bush has the bear over a barrel.

The failure of US security analysts to recognise the importance of economic factors in undermining Mr Putin’s opposition to NMD is particularly puzzling when one considers that the Bush administration is front-loaded with many veterans of Ronald Reagan’s “bust-their-budget” war against the “evil empire”. They believe, not implausibly, that Mikhail Gorbachev was pushed – even if willingly – into the dissolution of the Soviet Union and into glasnost and perestroika because the failing Soviet economy was incapable of sustaining an enhanced arms race.

Drawing a parallel between the economic circumstances of Mr Gorbachev’s Soviet Union and Mr Putin’s Russia is hard to resist. As it did a decade and a half ago, Russia suffers from severe economic stress. It is true that the growth rate was 8 per cent last year – but it is expected to fall to half that in 2001. Few of the reforms needed to attract foreign investment are in place and infrastructure is crumbling. The country’s economic transition is deeply troubled.

As if that were not enough, Russia’s dependence on foreign assistance continues to be acute, a fact that is not helped by the US’s Republican administration, which is reluctant to give Moscow a “free ride.” The 1998 Cox Commission of the Congress, dominated by Republicans, viscerally denounced the Clinton-Gore approach of ready financial support as naive and wrong. Realpolitik, rather than active engagement and quid pro quo generosity, is likely to be the new order of the day.

A close look at the Russian budget is also revealing. The budget is at last expected to be in balance this year. But this good news reflects the massive increase in oil revenues because of high oil prices and that is unlikely to last. Government expenditure in 2001 is planned at $ 42 billion; one out of every four roubles – rising to one out of three by 2003 – is earmarked for debt repayment. By contrast, only a paltry $5 billion is allocated for defence. If defence expenditures are re-evaluated at purchasing power parity -a dubious procedure in itself – they rise but are still tiny compared with US defence spending at Dollars $330 billion.

Worse for Russia, priorities within this small defence budget have shifted to reflect the country’s growing concerns about neighbours such as Tajikistan and Georgia to the south – partly a consequence of the costly mistakes in Chechnya. After a prolonged internal debate in which Igor Sergeev, the former defence minister, argued for renovation of Russia’s nuclear capabilities while Anatoly Kvashnin, the current joint chief of staff, fought for building conventional forces, Mr Kvashnin gained the upper hand.

There is no doubt that Mr Putin must dread the prospect of NMD eventually destroying the utility of Russia’s nuclear stockpiles and turning the US into a hyperpower with first-strike capability without fear of retaliation. But the Russian leader has no alternative. After all, he needs US financial support; his budget cannot possibly find the necessary resources to begin a nuclear arms race; and his immediate defence needs are focused on the country’s difficult neighbours.

Mr Putin cannot even threaten nuclear proliferation because such a tactic could backfire through the actions of some Islamic states on Russia’s periphery. To assuage Russia, the Bush administration has suggested buying surface-to-air missiles for possible deployment in Europe. It may even buy transport planes and submarines, which Russians produce well – as we know from the use of the Russian transport plane to bring the disassembled US spy plane back from China. An economically crippled Russia, with her conventional defence needs, cannot but look favourably on these sweeteners.

If NMD is to be stopped, the onus will not be carried by Russia. Instead, it will fall on the Europeans, as well as by the Democrats and others within the US itself. The war over NMD will be fought not in Moscow but within the west.

The writer is professor of comparative economic systems and director of the Center for Transition Economies at Columbia University 

In his recent marathon press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to show both a velvet glove — nobody here but us free enterprise democrats, folks — and a barely concealed mailed fist: In essence, if you Americans deploy ballistic missile defenses we will put multiple warheads on our new ICBMs.

Some European and American observers have already declared that Putin has now trumped every card in the American hand. What could be worse, they ask, than more Russian strategic warheads? Destabilizing! Arms race! Stop Bush from provoking this horror!

Whoa.

The proper riposte to Putin’s threat is the one given earlier this year by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when Russia’s current defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, similarly told him that Russia would deploy more strategic warheads if the United States pursued defenses. Essentially, Rumsfeld shrugged.

Exactly right. If Putin wants to waste his rubles convincing the world that his nostalgia for the Cold War knows no bounds, it’s his problem, not ours. The number of Russian strategic warheads was a central concern for us only in the historical context of the Cold War and the threat the Soviets then posed to Europe. Fixation on such numbers today is a demonstration of short-term memory loss — about everything that’s happened since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today we have two serious problems with Russia’s nuclear forces, but neither has anything to do with the number of their strategic warheads.

First, Russian warning systems are thoroughly decrepit and riddled with gaps. Some of their radars are not even in Russia, due to the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the satellites in their warning network are starting to fail. In 1995 President Boris Yeltsin was falsely alerted because the wheezing Russian warning system mistakenly took the launch of a Norwegian scientific rocket (of which they had been notified) for a possible missile launch from a U.S. submarine. The Russians need help filling these gaps in their warning systems, and two years ago we agreed to do so — by forming a joint U.S.-Russian warning center in Moscow that would use data from both countries — but the Russians continue to delay its implementation.

Second, although Russian strategic warheads are well-guarded, large numbers of small tactical nuclear warheads and huge amounts of fissionable material usable for bombs are not, and these create a serious stockpile security problem. Nunn-Lugar funds from the United States have helped secure about two-thirds of this mess from theft and smuggling and could help secure the rest, but again Russian stalling (much of it from President Putin’s old outfit, the domestic successor to the KGB) is holding up progress.

The numbers of Russian strategic warheads don’t cause, or even exacerbate, either the warning or the stockpile problems. The warning gaps have to be fixed whether the Russians have 1,000 strategic warheads or 5,000 — the accidental launch of even one would be an incredible disaster — and this risk is basically unaffected by warhead numbers. The stockpile security problem is also independent of strategic warhead numbers. It is fissionable material and small tactical warheads that are in danger of being stolen or sold, not the well-guarded strategic systems.

So why the excitement about Putin’s strategic warhead brandishing? It’s been said that the most common form of mistake is forgetting what it is you’re trying to accomplish. This is what has happened to those who have started fluttering about Putin’s threat.

During the Cold War there was indeed a reason we cared about the number of warheads on Soviet strategic ballistic missiles. More than 20 armored and mechanized Soviet divisions were poised only a few days’ march from the Low Countries and the English Channel. We needed to be sure that, in a crisis, our allies would hold firm. and thus we could brook no doubts about our steadfastness. We wanted them, and the Soviets, to have no doubt that if necessary we would use our strategic forces to defend Europe.

The bulk of our deterrent was in our silo-based ICBMs, and they were crucial to us because of their unique accuracy and reliable communications, and because, unlike the bomber force, the Soviets had no defenses against them. We were deeply concerned that if the Soviets could credibly threaten to strike first and destroy our ICBMs with a small number of their own ICBMs carrying multiple warheads — while retaining the bulk of their strategic forces in reserve — our allies would doubt our resolve.

Our ballistic missile submarine force was steadily modernized over the years, but most of us were unwilling to rely on it alone. Consequently in the arms control negotiations of the ’70s and ’80s, we bargained hard to limit Soviet warhead numbers, to protect our ICBMs from attack.

Today’s world bears not the faintest resemblance to that of the Cold War. Brussels indeed stands naked to invaders, but it is to a golden horde of antitrust lobbyists. Some of our allies doubt our resolve, but their concern is our fetish for CO2-emitting SUVs. Missiles are still the heart of our nuclear deterrent, but the bulk of them are on Trident submarines; added numbers of strategic warheads, by anyone, do not make them vulnerable.

It is reported that President Bush may soon show he is not obsessed by strategic warhead numbers by unilaterally reducing ours. We should also keep trying to get the Russians to let us help them solve their real strategic problems — decrepit warning and unsecured stockpiles. And if part of the administration’s defense plan against rogue states includes boost phase intercept — being able to shoot down offensive missiles very early in their flight — the system would incidentally also defend Russia.

If, in spite of all this, Putin keeps threatening to add to Russia’s strategic warhead numbers, we have two things to communicate to him. First, as an act of kindness we could point out that he’d get substantially more military utility out of battleships, the political currency of 1920s arms control. But if he ignores that friendly suggestion, then it’s time for the shrug.

The writer, an attorney and a former CIA director, was ambassador, delegate or adviser in five U.S.-Soviet arms control negotiations.