Posted on 17-6-2002

Nuclear Arms Flexing Again
By Alan Marston

One day after the United States formally abandoned the 1972 Antiballistic
Missile Treaty, Russia responded with the all too familiar and dangerous
tit-for-tat reaction that has characterised politics since its inception in
the caves of neolithic man. The Russian politicians are saying they are no
longer bound by the 1993 accord known as Start II that outlawed
multiple-warhead missiles and other especially destabilizing weapons in the
US and Russian strategic arsenals.

Russia's action was the sort of statement that would have induced
heart-racing in the media a decade ago, and still should. But no, this time
its been called a political gesture, signaling displeasure but little else
in a world that the West proclaims has been remade by forces unleashed
after the Soviet Union's collapse. What ignorance. Three millenia of
Eastern wisdom says address things while they are still small and easy to
change, because a lack of instinct and consequent inaction allows small
things to become unstoppable catastrophes. As Helen Caldicott said in her
recent interview on PTV, talking about the new nuclear danger and Bush
Politics is not rabble-rousing, its realistic. Russia's move could
exacerbate a trend toward a more unstable nuclear balance — especially if
the current thaw between East and West began to chill.

The reaction in Washington? A State Department spokesman said tonight that
Russia's action "was not unexpected. "Both the United States and Russia
have moved beyond the treaty on further reduction and limitation of
strategic offensive arms with the recent signing of the Moscow Treaty," the
spokesman said. "Under the Moscow Treaty, the United States and Russia will
reduce their strategic nuclear warheads to a level of 1,700 to 2,200 by
Dec. 31, 2012, a level nearly two-thirds below current levels."

Official Russia seemed of two minds today. Even as its Foreign Ministry
proclaimed Start II dead, accusing the United States of wrecking the
arms-control process, its Defense Ministry said there were no grounds to
retaliate against Washington for abandoning the missile defense treaty.
Other senior Russian defense officials told the Interfax news service that
some Russian nuclear rockets might be kept in service longer because of the
American action, but that no major shifts in Russia's strategic posture
were envisioned. "There's no point in talking about this treaty anymore,
just as there is no point in talking about the ABM treaty," Vladimir Z.
Dvorkin, a retired major general who heads the Russian center for Problems
of Strategic Nuclear Forces, said in an interview tonight. "It's all in
oblivion. It's time to start thinking of something else."

It may well be that today's announcement was in large part a bow to Russian
politicians who have ached for a stronger response to the United States'
go-it-alone policies on arms control. It may well be that the Start II
treaty, which the Kremlin threw overboard today, while a landmark in arms
control accords, had never officially been binding on either side.
Nevertheless, are nuclear weapons not still targeted on Russia and the USA
from each side in turn and does this not signify that nothing fundamental
has changed since the terrifying years of the 80's? Rhetorical questions.

The treaty, agreed upon by Presidents Clinton and Boris N. Yeltsin in 1993,
proposed to slash United States and Russian strategic nuclear stockpiles
over 10 years by nearly half, to no more than 3,500 warheads on each side.
More important, it would have eliminated land-based multiple-warhead
missiles, or MIRV's, and so-called "heavy" intercontinental missiles.
Arms-control scholars call those weapons the most dangerous and
destabilizing in the two nations' arsenals. Roiled by conservative
arguments that Start II endangered American security, the US Congress did
not ratify the treaty until 1996, and refused a protocol that would have
deferred it. Russia's Parliament approved the treaty and the new deadline
in 2000, but only on the condition that the United States did not abandon
the antiballistic missile accord. One result is that Russia has yet to
remove multiple warheads from some of its missiles, including ones whose
service lives will now be extended. In the interim, Russia has developed a
new missile, the Topol-M, which its military experts say is decades ahead
of any American design and can penetrate any missile defense the United
States can erect.

In the near insane world of arms control, some American experts call this a
heartening development — primarily because the United States no longer
views Russia as an enemy, and thus does not worry about a surprise attack
from Moscow. Also because the existence of Russia's Topol-M suggests that
the missile shield the United States is developing is not aimed at swarms
of Russian warheads, but rather at single or double shots from terrorist
nations.

Today the director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, Daryl G.
Kimball, said the Russian move, while long expected, was not to be
dismissed lightly. Among other things, he said, it frees Russia to equip
its new Topol-M missiles with multiple warheads, a move the Kremlin has not
formally endorsed, but that would actually save money as Russia shrinks its
nuclear force.

Nobody on this good earth can pretend to be a dissinterested spectator to
such `debates'.