In Moscow, buzz over arms race II

Yuri Solomonov, Russia's top missile designer, said last week that Moscow will "notify Washington within two months" of key changes in Russia's strategic forces, which could include stepped-up missile production and new types of weapons.

Russian experts say that President Bush's 2001 decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty made Moscow determined to deploy a new generation of nuclear missiles that could penetrate any possible US defense shield. Those weapons are now coming online, they say, with the first regiment of mobile Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles, which feature warheads that can evade interceptors, due to become operational this year. By 2008, Russia will begin stationing its new Bulava missiles, each carrying six independently-targeted warheads, on a new fleet of nuclear submarines.

"Russia is no longer capable of competing on the same level as the US, but you do not need to copy the same technologies or have the same number of missiles to respond," says Danil Kobyakov, an analyst with the independent PIR Center in Moscow, which specializes in nuclear issues. "Russia can retain its basic ability to destroy the US in retaliation for an attack; that's the logic of MAD."

Former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, who now heads a prominent liberal institute in Moscow, has warned that the perception of Russian (and Chinese) vulnerability projected by the Foreign Affairs report might even prompt a revival of cold war-style military blocs. "If someone had wanted to provoke Russia and China into close cooperation over missile and nuclear technologies, it would be difficult to find a more skilful and elegant way of doing so," Mr. Gaidar wrote in a letter to the Financial Times this month.

The old arms race was eventually reined in by a net of arms control treaties between the superpowers. Though most of those treaties are now redundant, a 2002 agreement between Putin and Bush committed to reduce their strategic arsenals to 2,200 warheads each by 2012, but placed no limits on technological innovations. Currently, Russia has 3,800 strategic warheads and the US 4,530.

Some Russian experts say the shadow of MAD can be banished only through fresh US-Russia talks that would lower nuclear stockpiles to fewer than 1,000 strategic nuclear weapons apiece. "We can only eliminate MAD if we eliminate those weapons," says Mr. Kobyakov. "Even if you have good relations and good intentions, as long as you have those potentially devastating nuclear forces, there will always be fear and suspicion of the other side."

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