Noteworthily, a few days before one of the most influential American policy-makers Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser for the American president, had visited Moscow. To all appearances, she also discussed non-proliferation with Russian top officials.
It goes without saying that the strengthening of the non-proliferation regime is among the main problems of international politics. Today's close attention of the leading American arms specialists to Russia can be explained by, particularly, its army adopting the mobile strategic missile system Topol-M, being finally tested to success.
Thus, qualitatively speaking, the strength of Russia's "nuclear triad" will greatly increase. "Qualitatively" means the capacity of modern Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles of silo and mobile basing to meets the goals set despite possible technical counteraction.
In other words, it is counteraction of Russian arms to the American national missile defence programme, the first elements of which are going to be deployed in December.
Properly speaking, it is this programme that matters. Withdrawing from the 1972 NMD treaty, which was actually the basic document of nuclear deterrence development, and launching implementation of the new concept of missile defence, the United States has left no choice for Russia except the perfection of its strategic nuclear armaments.
Meanwhile, as many observers note, Washington and Moscow could have reached agreement: the Americans could have rejected the NMD deployment and the Russians -- updating their strategic nuclear arms. It is the question of the first step now.
