Abstract
On the first day that NATO bombed Yugoslavia, Ukraine's parliament adopted, by a substantial margin, a resolution urging its executive branch to reconsider Ukraine's status as a non-nuclear country. Ukraine, its parliament said, did not want to be “as vulnerable and toothless as little Yugoslavia.”
Across the border in Russia, the reaction was even stronger. A common Russian interpretation was that NATO's military campaign represented a future threat to the country's national security. In the past, the NATO “threat” was regarded as mostly hypothetical, although in some cases it also served as a convenient propaganda tool for Russian communists and nationalists. But the initiation of the bombing made those threats appear real and tangible. According to the polls, the bombing also led to a sharp increase–from 28 to 70 percent–in the number of Russians with negative perceptions of the United States.
Then, too, the reactions of Russia's military revealed how deeply leaders of the armed forces disagreed with Russia's current “strategic concept.” The 1997 national security strategy stipulated that, given the absence of the threat of large-scale conflict, the main danger to Russia came from “regional and local wars.” Following the bombing, Russia's top brass said that “democrats” had included the absence-of-a-large-scale-threat language in the concept despite the vigorous objections of the armed forces. They urged political leaders to drastically revise the concept and adjust Russia's defense potential to counter large-scale aggression. Vladimir Putin, secretary of Russia's Security Council, publicly promised in early May to make Russia's national security concept consistent with new realities, including NATO's own new, recently approved, “Strategic Concept.”
A new Russian military doctrine had been in the making for some time. It was originally scheduled to be finished last December but it has been delayed. Defense Minister Igor Sergeev said in April that the draft, which is undergoing substantive changes in the aftermath of NATO's actions, will now be released at the end of the summer or in early fall.
The role of nuclear weapons in Russia's strategic thinking has grown steadily since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Most notably, Russia's November 1993 military doctrine rejected the Soviet no-first-use declaration of 10 years earlier. The new doctrine also provided more flexible options for the use of nuclear weapons.
The failure of Russia's conventional forces in Chechnya was a clear signal that a troubled Russian army was not a credible deterrent. And with the economy in free fall, there was no money for revamping or modernizing the military. A State Duma Commission, tasked with evaluating the status of Russia's armed forces for the May 1999 impeachment proceedings against President Yeltsin, concluded that the military was “in a state of practically complete collapse.” The share of air-worthy aircraft in the air force, for example, was only about 55 percent. And although some 12 of the army's infantry divisions were “combat ready,” much of their hardware was obsolete and needed to be overhauled or replaced.
Ironically, the bombing of Yugoslavia and NATO's Washington summit were perceived as a mixed blessing by Russian politicians, top military, and academics concerned about the unacceptably low level of funding for the nuclear deterrent. It gave them a unique opportunity to prove their point. Of particular value was NATO's Strategic Concept, which retains a role for nuclear weapons seemingly in perpetuity: Paragraph 62 calls the strategic nuclear forces “the supreme guarantee of the security of the Alliance,” while paragraph 46 recognizes that “the Alliance's conventional forces alone cannot ensure credible deterrence.” (See “Characteristics of Nuclear Forces,” page 44.)
March 29: As the bombs fell in Yugoslavia, the U.S. embassy in Moscow was the scene of an anti-U.S., anti-NATO protest
What to do?
In the emotional aftermath of the initial bombing, Gen. Anatoli Kvashnin, chairman of the General Staff, said he supported “the use of nuclear weapons to protect Russia's territorial integrity.” Roman Popkovich, the chairman of the Duma's Defense Committee, said the strategic concept should include the option “to deliver preemptive nuclear strikes.” And retired Gen. Vladimir Medvedev urged Russia's withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, implying that removing the ban on medium-range missiles would give Russian strategists a free hand and better choices. (Ironically, Medvedev was among the members of the top brass who contributed to the successful negotiation and implementation of the treaty in the first place.) Sergey Karaganov, director of the influential Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, suggested that Russia will have to move to “a policy of early use of nuclear weapons at the first sign of a threat.”
President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus rushed to express his regret that Soviet ICBMs had been withdrawn from his country. Lukashenko let it be known that the redeployment in Belarus of Russian nuclear weapons was a negotiable option. Defense Minister Igor Sergeev's visit to Belarus in late April also suggested that the Treaty on Russian-Belorussian Union, signed in 1997, was acquiring strategic dimensions. Russia is expected to operate an early-warning facility in Belarus, which will replace the dismantled Scrunde radar in Latvia. Belarus is also the source of the heavy trucks for Russia's mobile SS-25 missiles, and more trucks may be procured to carry some of the new SS-27s.
Piling on
More salvos were launched by the nuclear industry, which faces enormous economic difficulties. The Ministry of Atomic Energy's budget for nuclear weapons is just under $100 million, or about 45-50 percent of the money the program needs to stay afloat. (The U.S. Energy Department's stockpile stewardship program alone consumes $4.5 billion annually.) Nuclear weapons activities now make up only 10 percent of Minatom programs, and the agency's leadership positions are being taken over by a new breed of people who represent the civilian component. Their policy objectives and strategy often put them on a collision course with those associated with defense programs.
It was also a propitious moment for former Minister of Atomic Energy Victor Mikhailov (now first deputy in charge of scientific research and technology development) to publish an article in the Moscow-based weekly Independent Military Review, describing the U.S. stockpile stewardship program in meticulous detail. He warned that unless the situation in Russia's nuclear defense sector improves dramatically, Russia runs the risk of losing its credibility as a nuclear power. In 1996, while still the head of Minatom, Mikhailov promoted the development of a next-generation battlefield weapon system with relatively low yields and reduced side effects.
Leaders of key research and production facilities provided additional ammunition. Radii Ilkayev, director of the Arzamas-16 Federal Nuclear Center, said publicly that his facility lacked the funds to develop any of the “types of technology supporting reliability and safety” that could be found at other nuclear labs around the world.
A nuclear renaissance?
The pro-nuclear campaign culminated in a Security Council meeting on April 29, chaired by President Yeltsin. It was a pre-planned session with an agenda agreed on well in advance–it had been preceded by two earlier sessions in June and December 1998. Nonetheless, it met under the shadow of Russia's concern about NATO actions. Opening the meeting, President Yeltsin confirmed that “nuclear forces were and remain the key element in the national security strategy and Russia's military might.”
Only sketchy information has been made public about the meeting, which was held behind closed doors. Even commanders-in-chief of the armed services were excluded. But it was later reported and confirmed by Security Council officials that three resolutions were considered and adopted.
One resolution was apparently aimed at rein-vigorating the nuclear weapons industrial base by making its operations safe, stable, and accountable. The need to regularly conduct subcritical tests was emphasized.
Another resolution was characterized as “a blueprint for the development of non-strategic nuclear weapons.” Experts said modernization, rebuilding, or reactivation of tactical nuclear weapons was a possibility. Most tactical nuclear weapons were withdrawn from Soviet forces in 1991, in reciprocity with an initiative by U.S. President George Bush. There is little information available about how many of these weapons were dismantled, although the original commitment was to destroy nuclear demolition charges and artillery projectiles completely, and partially destroy anti-missiles, naval weapons, and other charges. The most recent report from the Ministry of Defense in September 1997 said these weapons had been “withdrawn from deployment sites and were stored under guaranteed control.”
The third resolution, which officials refuse even to discuss, apparently focused on the ways and means of retaining adequate numbers of strategic nuclear weapons and keeping them in a state of readiness. According to a few leaks in the Russian media, the Russian government may try to buy back some of the TU-160 and TU-95 heavy bombers Ukraine inherited from the Soviet Union. Kiev rejected Moscow's first offer of $25 million apiece for the planes as too low.
Other new proposals allegedly would involve extending the operational life of Delta III submarines by five years and prolonging the lives of SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) by at least two years. However, the expected mainstay of Russia's strategic forces for the foreseeable future remains the single-warhead SS-27 Topol M ICBM. Its first regiment is now on combat duty with the Taman Missile Division deployed in the village of Tatischevo near Saratov. The SS-27, which can be silo-based or mobile, was also designed to be quickly converted, if necessary, to carry multiple warheads.
Money troubles
How can the failing Russian economy sustain its nuclear modernization programs? The total 1999 defense budget of only about $4 billion is sinking further under the pressure of inflation. Government guidelines require Russia's defense budget to be about 3.5 percent of gross national product, or about 16 percent of the total federal budget. Signed into law in February, the 1999 budget allocated for defense as little as 2.6 percent of gross national product–the smallest share since Russia's independence.
In the aftermath of the NATO bombing, Duma leaders urged that defense expenditures be increased to about 25 percent of the total budget–although they added that, ideally, defense expenditures should be expanded to 5.5 percent of GNP, or 40 percent of the federal budget.
This increase would be consistent with the popular mood among Russians. According to a May 1999 public opinion poll by a Moscow-based daily, 50.6 percent of those polled supported the idea of expanding the defense budget, and 15.6 percent opted to maintain it at its current level.
Realistically, however, Russia cannot afford to increase its defense budget by more than 8-10 percent. A bill pending in the Duma would provide an additional $500 million. Even if the Duma acts to increase the defense budget, it does not mean an immediate infusion of money into weapons programs. First, the Defense Ministry still owes more than $3.6 billion in salaries, social programs, and procurement for previous years. Second, only 40 to 60 percent of what was allocated in the budget was actually paid in 1997 and 1998.
Unless Russia reverses its policy of maintaining at least the semblance of strategic nuclear parity with the United States, even these additional funds will be no more than a drop in the bucket. According to a Duma source, by 2001, the service life of all of Russia's long-range nuclear cruise missiles will have expired. By 2003, Russia may have as few as 1,000 operational strategic nuclear warheads.
Over the last two years, the SS-27 Topol-M ICBM program has been a top priority of the Ministry of Defense. Even so, according to Yuri Solomonov, chief designer at the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technologies (the general design contractor for the Topol-M), the program was actually funded at less than 50 percent.
Most Russian politicians see nuclear parity as an issue that goes well beyond nuclear strategy. It is, perhaps, the only across-the-board leverage Russia has in its relations with the United States. From a Russian perspective, Moscow must continue to rely on it as one of the only available trappings of great power status.
While the emotional desire to stay at the highest level of nuclear readiness is understandable, Russia's specific actions must be commensurate with available funding and consistent with overall national security imperatives. If a moderate economic recovery materializes in the foreseeable future, by the end of the next decade Russia could deploy from 600 to 1,000 strategic nuclear warheads–the SS-27, the new “Bark” SLBM currently under development, and some existing weapons systems, if their life extension programs succeed.
Under a pessimistic but more realistic scenario of continued economic turmoil and slow recovery, the total would be well under 500. The rate of attrition in Russia's strategic weapons is running far ahead of any future-oriented arms control plans. The basic issue would be to determine how many nukes are enough, and to concentrate on maintaining that number.
If too high a proportion of already scarce defense funds are channeled into nuclear programs, including programs to revive tactical weapons, Russia's conventional potential will be doomed to deteriorate even further, which could lead to the lowering of the nuclear threshold–and increased regional and even global tension.
Enhancing the readiness of Russia's strategic nuclear forces may also be meaningless unless the entire related infrastructure is modernized. With more than 50 percent of Russia's space-based assets–spy and early-warning satellites–nearing the end of their service life or already past it, and with serious gaps in early-warning surveillance, trying to achieve the high readiness described as a major objective at the April 29 Security Council meeting could have a destabilizing effect.
It has been reported, for example, that for several hours every day Russian military commanders cannot see any of the U.S. missile fields nor can they monitor the most dangerous threat to their own forces–U.S. Trident submarines submerged in the world's oceans. It would be much more useful to develop and strengthen channels of communication with the United States and NATO, which would improve information-sharing and confidence-building measures.
Maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent requires political stability, continuity, and well-functioning governance. As a Russian analyst observed, “nuclear poker” is a game that also warrants a clear head and nerves of steel, and President Boris Yeltsin has neither.
Ironically, Russia's renewed interest in boosting its nuclear weapons programs comes from a country which, in the days of the Soviet Union–January 1986 to be more precise–made a dramatic proposal to “deliver the world from nuclear weapons before the year 2000.” That now-forgotten deadline is just six months away. Certainly, Russia has legitimate reasons to be concerned about its nuclear forces. But uncertainty about the international security system is increasingly an additional driving force.