Sleepwalking into the future

Only two countries on Earth possess thousands of nuclear warheads: the United States and Russia. Together, they account for 95 percent of the existing 20,500 weapons; no other nation has more than a few hundred. Despite the new U.S.-Russia strategic arms limitation treaty, there is plenty of room for deeper reductions in these two arsenals, including tactical nuclear weapons, which have never been covered by a treaty, and strategic nuclear weapons held in reserve.

This December will mark the 20th anniversary of the Soviet collapse and end of the Cold War, a largely peaceful finale to an enormous, costly competition between two blocs and two colossal military machines. Today’s threats are different: terrorism, cyber attacks, pandemics, proliferation and conventional wars. As Leon Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee at his confirmation hearing to be Secretary of Defense: “We are no longer in the Cold War. This is more like the blizzard war, a blizzard of challenges that draw speed and intensity from terrorism, from rapidly developing technologies and the rising number of powers on the world stage.”

Yet the United States and Russia, no longer adversaries, seem to be sleepwalking toward the future. Perhaps the drift is the result of the approaching election season in both countries. Unfortunately, politics makes it harder to embrace new thinking. But honestly, haven’t we learned anything in two decades?

Instead of moving to the next stage in reducing nuclear arsenals, the two countries are debating stale arguments of yesteryear.

Take missile defense. A generation ago, President Reagan proposed research into a global shield to defend against ballistic missiles. At the Reykjavik summit in 1986, Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came close to a deal that would have dramatically slashed offensive strategic nuclear arms. But it fell apart because Reagan insisted on his dream of a global missile defense shield. Even today, many Americans remember this dramatic moment as a triumph by Reagan. The globe-straddling shield was never built, although one legacy of that era is that missile defense still enjoys enormous political support in Congress. Many of the vexing technical hurdles to building an effective sheild remain unresolved.

Today, a fresh divide over missile defense separates East and West. It should not be as momentous as the last one. NATO and Russia are discussing a U.S. plan to build a limited European ballistic missile defense system, known as the Phased Adaptive Approach, largely aimed at defending against medium-range missiles from Iran. The scope would be more modest than Reagan’s 1983 idea. Nonetheless, Russian officials have expressed fear that improvements in the NATO system by the end of this decade could threaten Moscow’s nuclear deterrent. Russia has asked NATO for legal guarantees that the system would not be used to neutralize its strategic missiles. In response, NATO has been trying to hammer out a method of cooperation—two hands on the joystick?—to meet the Russian concerns, so far without success.

The Russians have been warning that should this effort stall, it may not be possible to negotiate deeper cuts in existing nuclear arsenals. Also, partly in response to uncertainty over missile defense, Russia has taken the first steps to design a new liquid-fueled, multiple-warhead intercontinental ballistic missile. Such a project would take years, huge investments, and might never materialize, but it has appeared on the drawing boards.

These may be just negotiating feints. But it will be a real shame if an impasse over missile defense prevents progress on negotiations for deeper cuts in existing nuclear arsenals, or if it begets a new weapons system.

Last week, one of Russia’s leading defense industry chiefs, Yuri Solomonov, who heads the Moscow Heat Technology Institute, which built the Topol-M and Bulava missiles, presented some hard truths in an interview published by the newspaper Kommersant. He called plans to build a new heavy liquid-fueled missile “outright stupidity.” On missile defense, he said there has been talk about a shield for half a century; nothing has come of it, and nothing will come of it. He said ballistic missile defense would always be easier to defeat with countermeasures, which Russia has developed.

So, let’s hope NATO and Russia can find a way to agree on limited missile defense, if only to pave the way for genuine cooperation on what’s really important: reducing the existing outsized nuclear arsenals. Should arms control negotiations stall, and Russia builds the new heavy missile, it will stimulate a response in the United States, where the military services are already preparing modernization plans for the next generation of subs, missiles and aircraft to carry nuclear weapons. A new Russian heavy missile would be just the threat they need to justify massive new spending.

A revived nuclear arms race is the last thing the world needs to mark the 20th anniversary of the end of the Cold War.