WAITING FOR THOSE LAST FEW NUMBERS to be
called to fill your card at the local bingo hall is one thing. Waiting for
those final numbers when you’re dealing with nuclear weapons is a whole, other
kettle of fish.
I’ve mentioned previously that the one major nuclear arms agreement still intact between Russia and the United States, the New START treaty,
is set to expire in 2026 unless both sides renew it. We’re still waiting for
those renewal talks to commence, but I’m not holding my breath that will be anytime soon.
It’s Wile E. Coyote time, folks.
The New START treaty limits the number of “operational” or armed
missiles, ICBMs (“Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles”) and submarine launched
ballistic missiles (“SLBMs”) for each side. Roughly 1500 armed nuclear warheads
(Russia has slightly more) are installed in various delivery systems.
There are several thousand more warheads in storage and scheduled to be decommissioned by both countries (see chart below). After 2026, unless the treaty is renegotiated, we can expect to see a new arms race,
as each side deploys more of its store of warheads and builds more
nuclear weapons and launch systems.[It might be a good time to add more weapons manufacturers to your stock portfolio; there might be a boom in your future. Just sayin'. Ed.]😁
👉It should be noted that in 2002, the American president George W. Bush
withdrew from the long-standing Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.
The
1972 ABM treaty limited both USSR/Russia and the United States to just two
anti-ballistic missile batteries in their respective countries.
Obviously, this was no more than a symbolic gesture of ballistic missile “defense” and would be wholly inadequate to protect continental United States or the vast landmass of the USSR/Russia. The treaty's purpose was to keep both countries vulnerable to the other’s
ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers. If both were vulnerable (without a real defense), then both would be deterred
from attacking the other, when the reciprocal destruction of their own country was an
all-but-assured consequence for launching a first strike. It was called the “MAD” (Mutual Assured
Destruction) principle, and for decades it kept the nuclear powers in a kind of stasis and more or less minding
their nuclear Ps and Qs.🚀
PRESIDENT BUSH'S EARLY 2000s' withdrawal from the treaty, saw the Americans develop anti-ballistic missile defense capabilities now that they were free
from the constraints of the ABM treaty. But creating a viable ABM defense system is difficult to achieve and is no guarantee for stopping anything close to 100% of a massed ICBM/SLBM
attack. Recall the April 13 drone and missile attack by Iran against Israel, and how over-stretched Israel's vaunted "Iron Dome" missile defense umbrella became in only a single evening. Without Western air power, many more of the incoming missiles would have found their targets. NEVERTHELESS, the Americans stationed naval vessels in the Baltic and Barents Sea armed with AGEIS [from Gr. aigís meaning “goat skin”; later usage:
“protection”, “a shield”. Ed.] cruise missiles. They later installed land-based AGEIS missile arrays in Poland and Romania over the objections of the Russians. The relative closeness of the NATO missile batteries to Russia made for the possibility that American ABMs could interdict some Russian ICBMs should they launch from silos in western Russia. The Kremlin pointed out that such missile arrays would compromise the Russian Federation's nuclear deterrence capability and give the Americans a dangerous advantage, tipping the strategic nuclear deterrence balance out of kilter. The Americans argued that the ABMs were there to defend against missiles from Iran or North Korea. 😆 Which is a bunch of crock! According to a leading nuclear arms expert, Professor Ted Postol, the "Aegis Ashore" batteries are not capable of intercepting incoming ICBMs from Iran. So why are they there, other than to guard dog the Russians? Doctor Postol makes the very relevant point that the Aegis Ashore system (like its naval counterpart) can easily be reconfigured to launch cruise missiles which are nuclear capable munitions. And, while they may currently be configured to launch only anti-air missiles, as the Americans claim, they can be quickly fitted out to launch offensive payloads. He says, the Russians are rightly concerned with this development.
[T]he Aegis
systems in Eastern Europe have characteristics that make them especially
threatening to Russia.... [They] were designed...to be
able to launch both cruise missiles and anti-air missiles. This creates a short-warning
attack threat to Russia via US conventional or nuclear-armed cruise missiles
that were otherwise banned by the INF (Postol, "Russia")
IN THE EARLY 2000s, after the strictures against ABM development were removed following Bush's unwise walking away from the ABM treaty, and because of the Americans installations of so-called "defensive" missile batteries in eastern Europe, the Russians developed alternative missile types and launch platforms that could
overcome any ABM system the U.S. might employ in the European theatre. They succeeded in producing
ingenious workarounds like hypersonic missiles that cannot be intercepted, some of which are nuclear-capable. These missiles are now part of the Russian
arsenal. They can travel up to Mach 10, that is, 10 times the speed of sound,
thousands of miles per hour! No missile defense can stop them.
"We had to
create these [hypersonic] weapons in response to the US deployment of a
strategic missile defense system, which in the future would be capable of
virtually neutralizing, zeroing out all our nuclear potential". Putin
announcement 2018
IT'S AN UNNERVING THOUGHT: one side, with weapons that could conceivably shoot down
incoming ballistic missiles or launch a first strike with hypersonics,
disrupting with their speed the other side’s retaliatory launches. Of course,
there are smaller-yield tactical nuclear weapons (bombs, artillery shells, missiles with a range under 500 miles) like those Russia has recently deployed in Belarus. The Americans, for their part, have 100 tactical nuclear bombs stored in six European nations that are currently being equipped with "glide bomb" technology. And there are the "defensive" missile arrays in Poland and Romania, previously mentioned, with a third battery proposed for Germany in 2026.
“In 2018,
Russian President Vladimir Putin gleefully*
unveiled a range of new
developmental nuclear delivery systems—an intercontinental hyper-sonic glider, a
nuclear-powered cruise missile, and a nuclear-powered torpedo—that he stated
were a response to the demise of the ABM Treaty. History appears to back him
up. The glider, which has now been deployed, was first tested in about 2004—just
two years after the U.S. withdrawal took effect.” (Carnegie)
👉ANOTHER TREATY that the Americans walked away from was from 1987's Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces (INF)Treaty. This treaty was significant because it got rid
of an entire ‘family’ of nuclear weapons (short, medium, intermediate-range missiles and their delivery systems. Over two
thousand missiles and warheads were destroyed during this treaty’s existence,
significantly reducing the chance for Europe being turned into a giant ashtray
in the event of a nuclear war. Missile emplacements in Western Europe and those
in Eastern Europe were destroyed and eliminated from both sides’ arsenals. But, after 2000, as I discussed earlier, strains were placed on the treaty’s viability with complaints from
both sides of not abiding to the terms of the deal. And to be fair, there is
evidence both sides pushed against the constraints of not being able to develop
land-based, mobile and siloed cruise missile platforms. Russia was accused of working on a new
type of cruise missile in the early 2000s, while the U.S., for its part, put anti-air batteries in Poland
(2008) and Romania (2015) over the objections of the Russians who complained these so-called "defensive" anti-ballistic missile
systems could be reconfigured to fire intermediate/long-range, nuclear-capable cruise missiles.
IN 2018, President Trump began the process to withdraw the United
States from the INF treaty. And just recently, the Americans have inked a deal to install similar missile batteries in Germany by 2026.
“U.S. Army
forces in Germany will field the multipurpose Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), the
Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile, and a hyper-sonic missile that is still in
development in ‘episodic deployments…as part of planning for enduring
stationing of these capabilities in the future…’” (Arms
Control)
UP TO THIS POINT, RUSSIA has refrained from installing intermediate-range
missiles along Europe’s borders, and abides by the INF treaty protocols, though it is no longer obligated to do so. But if the German deployments go ahead “Russians
will consider themselves “free” from a unilateral moratorium on the deployment
of intermediate-range missiles.” (Arms Control) Then its back to the future with
Europe once more bristling with the latest generation of tactical and theatre non-nuclear and nuclear-capable missiles.
NOTE that Russia has delivered to its neighbour, Belarus, “tactical” or “theatre”
nuclear weapons. These are short/medium-range missiles, artillery shells and
air-dropped bombs, typically with lower explosive yields. (Only a half-Hiroshima, say.)
Escalating tensions this year with the West prompted the Russians to ‘lay down
a marker’ in Belarus,1
warning NATO they were serious about completing their “special
military operation” in Ukraine and ensure their borders were secure and their
heartlands safe.
WHAT the now-defunct 1987 INF treaty accomplished in its nearly thirty years
of existence was to eliminate such missile batteries from the European
continent. Land-based cruise missiles, installed in the early 2000s in
Poland and Romania, (mobile and siloed) and now potentially in Germany were, and are, seen as a
threat to Russian security and another step up the nuclear escalation ladder.
WE SHOULD BE WORRIED when treaties that kept a semblance of order and
calm in the relations between two nuclear superpowers, like the ABM and the INF treaties and soon perhaps New START, are tossed out with
nothing to replace them. It’s like watching (or listening, perhaps) to two
heavy-weight boxers duke it out in a darkened arena, each unsure where the
other is at, having to decide on the fly whether to block or go for a knockout punch.
👉AND IN THE CASE of nuclear fisticuffs, we hope neither bruiser lands a
knockout blow, because there can be no winners of such a match, even if one of them goes down for the count. In nuclear gamesmanship that’s
not the end of it, not by a long shot.
Cheers, Jake. ______________________________________
* "...gleefully..." A rather gratuitous dig at Russia's President Putin that I find annoying. It is supposed to give the reader the impression of Putin as a reckless trickster perhaps? Putin's announcement wasn't 'tongue-in-cheek' and it should have been a wake up call for the U.S. to get arms control negotiations working again, but nope, not in 2018 and not today either. So far. And while I appreciate the info from the Carnagie Institute, please save the jibes for real clowns, like Zelensky, Biden, Kamala, von de Leyen, Sholtz, Macron, Trudeau, etc. There are plenty of boobs go around....
1. When the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR ceased to exist, and its constituent
parts became independent nations, the nuclear weapons' arsenals from several former
Soviet republics were returned to Russia proper. Belarus was one such republic that had
hosted Soviet nukes, tactical and otherwise, during the Cold War. Now they’re back in Belarus. Good job, guys!😨
NUCLEAR TREATIES OVER THE YEARS:
1963: Limited Test Ban Treaty
1968: Non-proliferation Treaty
1971-2: Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I)
1972: ABM (“Anti-Ballistic Missile” treaty) cancelled
2001
1987: INF Treaty (“Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces” treaty) cancelled 2018
1991: START treaty (“Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty”)
1992: Open Skies treaty (a mutual verification pact) cancelled 2020
1993: START II (not ratified)
2002: Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT)
2010: New START (in effect until 2026; limits overall number of nukes in U.S
and Russia.)
VARIOUS NUCLEAR TREATIES have been able to reduce the number of nuclear warheads possessed by Russia and the United States from a high of nearly 60,000 in 1985 to roughly 5,000 a piece. These two countries hold 90% of the world's total nuclear warhead arsenals to date. There are currently nine nuclear weapons possessing countries.
Click here for a clear and easy-to-read timeline
of all the treaties and talks around nuclear weapons control between the
USSR/Russia and the U.S.
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