If the Cold War hadn’t ended, the latest update on the number of the intercontinental missiles and bombers that the United States and Russia keep deployed against each other would have surely meant that heads would roll in Moscow. As it transpired from the New START Treaty total numbers, the US has nearly twice as many missiles and bombers deployed as Russia.
The Kremlin doesn’t seem to be worried about this striking disparity, which, of course, is a clear sign that post-Communist Russia’s political leaders are no longer worried about being able to destroy America as many times over as America can Russia.
Nor are Russian generals overly troubled by the possibility of a nuclear confrontation with America and its allies. Otherwise, Russia’s strategic bombers would not be up there flying with GPS navigators, as the Russian media reports.
The US leadership is, of course, even less worried about an intentional nuclear exchange with Russia. After all, the days when the two countries were so deeply locked in global rivalry and ideological competition that Ronald Reagan would joke about bombing the Soviet Union and muse that “in the Russian language there isn't even a word for freedom” are long gone.
And, yet, both sides keep nearly 1,300 launchers on duty – with a total of over 3,000 nuclear warheads assigned to them – to guarantee mutual destruction in a nuclear war.
But why do the United States and Russia continue to deter each other with nuclear weapons more than 20 years after the end of the Cold War? Why can’t the Russia-US relationship be more like the France-US relationship?
Paris and Washington may disagree bitterly on major issues, as the war in Iraq demonstrated. But neither US nor French policy-makers would consider bringing nuclear weapons into the equation during such disagreements.
Of course, any analogy is flawed. Unlike France, Russia is not a member of NATO.
But even in absence of a formal US-Russian alliance, Moscow and Washington have demonstrated that they can achieve unprecedented results on issues of vital importance, such as denuclearization of the former Soviet republics.
Yet, while jointly ridding these republics of nuclear weapons, the two countries continue to use these weapons as a deterrent – sticking to the trusted old Cold War concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD).
There is no simple answer as to why a MAD-based relationship proves so resilient over two decades after the end of the Cold War.
The answer, to an extent, lies in institutional inertia. As long-time director of Russia’s Institute for the US and Canadian Studies (ISKRAN), Sergei Rogov recently observed: “We all know how MAD was built, but we don’t know how to dismantle it.”
Rogov made that observation during a recent presentation of a joint US-Russian report that purports to chart the course from mutually assured destruction to what senior diplomats on both sides described as the state of mutually assured stability.
The report, published by senior researchers from Harvard University’s Belfer Center and ISKRAN, laments the fact that a “relationship based on the constant threat of mutual nuclear annihilation persists” even though “Russia and the United States ceased being mortal enemies … and the interests of the two countries in natural resources are also largely noncompetitive.”
It also recommends particular measures in the realm of nuclear forces, including greater transparency of forces, adjustment of nuclear doctrines and training to end the targeting of each other and reduce further the already exceedingly small probability that their arsenals might be used against one another.
These bilateral steps should be then followed by “expansion of the circle of stability” through involving other countries in the process, according to the report, which is entitled “Transcending Mutual Deterrence in the US-Russian Relationship.”
Outside the military realm, the report recommends that the United States and Russia expand their efforts to understand each other’s political perspectives and deepen intelligence cooperation.
The report’s authors – that include ex-deputy chief of staff of the Russian Defense Council Pavel Zolotarev, former-deputy head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) William Tobey and Obama’s ex-advisor Gary Samore – also urge the two countries to dramatically boost their mutual trade and economic cooperation.
I cannot stress this last point enough (if only because I helped to make it).
Trade between world’s largest and sixth largest economies remains minuscule. Russia was No. 20 on the list of the United States’ trading partners last year while the United States was No. 8 on the list of Russia’s trading partners. (If I had any qualms about cancellations of the Putin-Obama summit in September, they would be about the economic cooperation agreement that the two leaders were to sign during that meeting.)
As the report notes: “economic integration does not preclude the possibility of conflict (as World War I clearly demonstrated), but it tends to balance the considerations, and put into perspective inevitable differences that arise.”
If Russia and the United States were to transcend mutual nuclear deterrence, most of the disagreements over issues such as slashing tactical nuclear weapons or America’s ballistic missile defense plans, would simply become irrelevant.
Removing these disagreements, which stem from an underlying perceived need to continue mutual nuclear deterrence – would pave the way for the deep, sustainable cooperation that Moscow and Washington need to foster if they want to advance their shared interests on issues such as non-proliferation, preventing nuclear conflict, counter-terrorism and regional stability, and preventing failure of states.
Of course, the United States and Russia would continue to have occasional disputes, even in (a perhaps utopian) post-MAD world. But this would be only natural, given the divergence of values and views on issues such as the future of the post-Soviet neighborhood.
As General Zolotarev put it while presenting the report to a packed hall at Brookings: “It is bad when spouses argue. But it is also bad when they don’t argue at all.”
These disputes would not undermine the relationship as a whole, but it would end the frequent fluctuations in the bilateral relationship that we have observed throughout the post-Cold War period.
Simon Saradzhyan is a researcher at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center. His research interests include international security, arms control,
counter-terrorism as well as political affairs in post-Soviet states and their relations with major outside powers. Prior to joining the Belfer Center in 2008 Saradzhyan had worked as deputy editor of the Moscow Times and a consultant for the United Nations and World Bank. Saradzhyan holds a graduate degree from the Harvard University.
The views expressed in this column are the author’s alone.
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