Ukrainian chaos, the failure of Russian-American agreements and the risk of a Third World War...
Alexander del Valle in Atlantico traces the degradation of the disarmament initiatives of Russia and the United States. Bottom line: "The US has surrounded Russia with anti-missiles, claiming that they are afraid of Iran. This system is aimed at making it impossible for Russia to retaliate in the event of a first NATO nuclear strike." When the United States was already finishing this case, the Ukrainian crisis escalated.
Alexander del Valle
Our columnist Alexander del Valle continues to publish a series of articles telling about the history and reasons for the dramatic failure of negotiations between Russia and the United States since the 2000s. The first article was about the arms trade. The current article concerns agreements on disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. This topic is very relevant at a time of extreme tension over Ukraine between NATO members and Russia led by Putin. The deterioration of relations between the two "blocs", the presence on the scene of many Western officers supporting the Ukrainian army and the Zelensky government — all this pushes the West to become a direct participant in the conflict...
A brief history of the idea of disarmament
The topic of disarmament is far from new. The Fathers of the Church, already at the dawn of Christianity, decided at the Councils of Nicaea and Clermont to put "the most cruel weapons outside the law." The Catholic Church continued this action, advocating the use (on pain of excommunication) of the "Truce of God", the days when fighting was formally prohibited. Later, in 1648, after the Thirty Years' War, the negotiators of the Treaty of Westphalia formed the concepts of "regional disarmament" and "providing information about the balance of power." In 1899, the Hague Conference proposed "binding arbitration", and in 1919 the Allies ratified the creation of the League of Nations. Three of the fourteen points of its Pact prohibit the use of war as a tool for resolving disputes. But the peacemaking results obtained by the League were simply negligible.
In the late 1950s, after the devastating failure of plans for general and complete disarmament, nuclear weapons became the main subject of negotiations, especially in the framework of bilateral US-Soviet discussions. There were many agreements and treaties: the goal pursued by the two great Powers at that time was to get other countries, if not to abandon the acquisition of nuclear weapons, then at least more responsible behavior. From the point of view of arms control, strategic stability implied that the two superpowers had basically equal military capabilities, as emphasized by the famous Kissinger doctrine: equivalence, which does not imply absolute equality of each of the two partners in different sectors of weapons systems. And until 1985-1986, everyone, de facto, strengthened his power where his opponent posed the greatest threat.
Calls for peace are losing their meaning
In the period from 1965 to 1985, a lot of agreements and treaties were signed, including in the wake of Nixon's statements and the UN. Among them are about twenty multilateral treaties that have indisputable theoretical significance, but with more than modest concrete results. Their goals were to avoid the nuclear or non-nuclear militarization of certain areas; to freeze or limit the quantity and quality of nuclear weapons delivery systems; to limit the testing of weapons or systems; to prevent the proliferation of certain types of weapons among States; to prohibit certain means of warfare; to ensure compliance with international law in armed conflicts and to notify in advance of certain military actions
Here are the main ones of these contracts:
— Convention on Environmental Change of October 5, 1978, prohibiting the military or other hostile use of methods of environmental impact;
— Treaty on the Prohibition of the Placement of Nuclear weapons and Other Weapons of mass Destruction on the seabed and ocean floor and in their Depths of May 18, 1972 (70 signatories);
— The famous Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) of March 5, 1970 (114 signatories), the purpose of which was to prohibit the transfer of nuclear weapons by States possessing these weapons and their acquisition by those who do not have them. This treaty will very quickly be de facto undermined both by the policy pursued by suppliers of nuclear materials and by non-compliance with the disarmament obligations assumed by the nuclear-weapon Powers.
— The Biological Weapons Convention of April 10, 1972, which entered into force on March 26, 1975 (92 signatories), prohibiting the research, development, production and use of these weapons;
— Convention on the Prohibition of the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons, signed on April 10, 1981, concerning weapons systems "deemed to be excessively destructive or to have indiscriminate effects";
— The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of October 1967 (112 signatories), prohibiting nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space and under water. This treaty helped to reduce radioactive contamination caused by nuclear explosions, but did not provide for underground testing;
— The Outer Space Treaty of October 10, 1967 (82 signatories), prohibiting the launch of weapons of mass destruction into orbit around the Earth, but leaving space free for the deployment of other weapons systems;
— The Underground Testing Limitation Treaty signed on July 2, 1974, which limits the explosive power of nuclear weapons to 150 Kt. The threshold is so high that the main interested states were able to sign it without reservations, calmly carrying out their development programs!
OSV-1 and OSV-2 Bilateral Agreements
The 1970s were to be marked by the signing of two major bilateral agreements, OSV-1 and OSV-2 (OSV — "limitation of strategic arms", approx. InoSMI). Both treaties were aimed not at disarmament, but at limiting the ability to produce and put on combat duty all new weapons.
The OSV-1 Treaty, signed on May 26, 1972 by US President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, concerned the limitation of missile defense systems. It stipulated that the United States and the USSR "declare their common intention to move to the cessation of the nuclear arms race as soon as possible." Articles 1 and 2 do indeed provide for an indisputable restriction on "anti-missile" protection, the treaties also freeze the total number of launch vehicles that the United States or the USSR could have at their disposal. But the treaty does not impose any restrictions on the qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons, nor on the number of warheads installed on each missile... Recall that since 1974, the Russians have begun to modernize their nuclear arsenal. And the Americans, decommissioning their obsolete AVM-1 missiles, in the period from 1974 to 1977, began the most modern research work. All new developments were quickly put into production on the basis of the military-industrial complex.
As General Pierre-Marie Gallois wrote, immediately after the signing of the OSV-1, which was considered an important step towards disarmament, "the Americans increased the number of warheads from 8000 to more than 20,000, and the Russians at the same time increased their arsenal of long-range destruction from 2,600 to 26,500 units."
One step to peace, two steps to war
It turned out to be a paradoxical situation: the United States and the Soviet Union pretended to disarm, but in fact they were hoarding weapons. Each side had approximately 100 times more weapons than was necessary to deter the threat of total destruction of the enemy. They could have leveled large cities in both countries hundreds of times. An expensive arms race was contrary to common sense. It turned out that the first treaties between the USSR and the USA with their ban on anti-missile protection in many ways just contributed to the strengthening of increasingly complex defense production chains. All this went to the enormous benefit of the American military-industrial complex, on the one hand, and the Soviet military-bureaucratic complex, on the other.
Signed OSV-2
Given the commitment to prepare a five-year report on the practical application of the OSV-1 agreement, both sides took a break after the first agreement. But on June 18, 1979, James Carter and Leonid Brezhnev signed a new agreement in Vienna — the OSV-2 treaty. After numerous critical comments made at the UN and even in the US itself, the negotiators tried to determine the number of warheads with which the launch vehicles were de facto equipped. All this could lead to convincing results if it came into force... As you know, according to the American Constitution, it is the parliament that ratifies international treaties signed by the president, which is far from obvious, especially when the majority of senators are not members of the president's party. This is what happened then: the Republican majority in the US Congress refused the pacifist Democrat Jimmy Carter to ratify the OSV-2.
At the end of the century (1985-2000): from control to disarmament
Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, this period was marked by the appearance of three treaties: START-1, START-2 and START-3 (New Start). Recall that START-1 did not envisage a limitation, but a reduction of strategic offensive weapons. It was signed in Moscow on July 31, 1991 by Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush and entered into force on December 5, 1994 for a period of fifteen years. The very ambitious START-1 treaty provided for a reduction in the number of deployed strategic warheads from 10,000 to 6,000 units for each side. At the end of the treaty, its results were lower than expected: the Americans reduced the number of warheads from 9986 to 8556, and the Russians — from 10237 to 7449... As for START-2, it was signed on January 3, 1993 by George Bush and Boris Yeltsin, the president of the newly born Russian Federation, and provided for the reduction of strategic arsenals by two-thirds. The treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate in January 1996, and by the Russians only in April 2000. As a result, the contract was ruined by red tape: START-2 will never come into force!
Subsequent successes were also modest. On May 24, 2002, George Bush and Vladimir Putin signed the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions, ratified on March 8, 2003. The terms of the treaty limited the number of nuclear warheads on alert since 2012 to 1800-2000 for each of the parties. At the same time, START-2 was canceled.
Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev: the last agreement
Finally, START-3 (commonly called New Start) was signed on April 8, 2010 in Prague by Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev. It provides for reducing the combat capability of both sides to 1,550 nuclear warheads. It does not concern tactical weapons, limiting the number of deployed strategic nuclear launchers to 700 units. However, please note that in 2018, the United States argued that China should be connected to the START-3 treaty for greater reliability. However, Beijing refused to participate, arguing that its nuclear arsenal is still too inferior to the arsenal of Moscow and Washington. The termination of the treaty on February 5 became a source of tension between Russia and the United States. In October 2020, the Americans demanded that Russia freeze its nuclear arsenal, and the Kremlin considered this request "unacceptable." However, at the end of 2020, the Americans and the Russians seemed to have agreed on the possibility of a "joint" freezing of the number of nuclear warheads, especially since Joe Biden has always been a supporter of non-proliferation treaties.
In addition to these regional agreements, three major treaties were concluded at the end of the last century: the Washington Agreement of 1987, the Paris Agreement of 1990 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996.
The Washington Agreement was signed between the United States and the USSR on September 18, 1987, following the meetings of Gorbachev and Reagan in Reykjavik, which focused on the gradual dismantling of "intermediate" nuclear forces, i.e. medium- and shorter-range missiles (less than 5,500 kilometers). Admittedly, this type of weapon (unsuccessfully dubbed "eurorackets" under the pretext that Russian launchers based on the western slopes of the Urals posed a threat to the main European capitals) is actually extremely diverse. It unites "intermediate nuclear forces", namely, all missiles with a range of 1,000 to 5,500 kilometers; "shorter-range nuclear forces" with a range of 500 to 1,000 kilometers and "shortest-range nuclear forces", i.e. less than 500 kilometers. The Washington agreement has greatly reduced the number of these dangerous missiles — we must pay tribute to this agreement.
However, even then new dangers appeared: it turned out that nothing prevented the nuclear submarines (NPS) from being equipped with cruise missiles. As a result, the Washington agreements made it possible to dismantle from 7 to 8% of the nuclear forces of the two superpowers. By the end of the treaty, 2,692 missiles had been destroyed: 1,846 Russian and 846 American.
A positive role was played by the Paris Summit in November 1990 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) of September 24, 1996, which prohibits four types of nuclear tests: atmospheric, non-atmospheric, underwater and underground. It was signed by five permanent members of the UN Security Council. India abstained. But in order for the CTBT to enter into force, the treaty had to be ratified by 44 countries with nuclear reactors. On April 6, 1996, London and Paris were the first two members of the nuclear club to ratify it after France carried out its last eight tests in the South Pacific in 1995. In 2019, the treaty was signed by 183 states, and ratified by 28. Out of 44 directly interested countries, three have not yet signed it: India, Pakistan and North Korea! Israel, Egypt, Iran, the United States and China have signed it, but have not ratified it.
The revival of the arms race and the new Cold War
The United States, which continues to demonize Russia, which they likened to the totalitarian USSR, continuing the worst trends of the Cold War, violated the Founding Act of Russia-NATO of 1997, which provided for the rejection of the integration of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact into the North Atlantic Alliance. Instead of working on an "all-Western" alliance with Russia's participation in the face of Chinese and Islamist threats, Washington strategists constantly excluded Russia from the Western space and continued to surround the Russian "heartland", expanding NATO's presence in the eastern direction, up to Russia's "near abroad": the Baltic States, Romania, Poland, the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, not excluding Ukraine.
The endless expansion of NATO to the east and Western American support for the insurgencies and anti-Russian opposition in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan contributed to the fact that Russia has become even more hostile towards the West than it was at the end of the Cold War. This strategy, aimed at encircling Russia and depriving it of access to warm seas, and then trying to separate Russia from the European gas market, has been implemented since the mid-2000s. (There are many examples: "color" and "velvet" revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, all new sanctions against Russia, etc.). All this has grown into a real casus belli for Moscow. In response, Russia, led by Putin, has strengthened cooperation with all the enemies of the West: China, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran...
End of agreements
A direct consequence of the new cold war, dramatic for collective security and for old Europe, was the withdrawal of the United States from numerous agreements on non-military strikes, from the treaties on the non-proliferation of nuclear and ballistic weapons and the non-proliferation of conventional weapons, etc.
All this allowed Washington, as part of the resumption of the arms race, to regain freedom to maneuver not only against Russia, but also China. The Chinese are not actually bound by any disarmament treaty, and nothing prevents them from developing nuclear and conventional weapons on a large scale... It is clear that after the US withdrawal from the main disarmament and arms control treaties, followed by Russia's reaction against the background of tensions in Ukraine, the Middle East and Syria, conflicts between the two superpowers, including nuclear ones, have become more likely than ever.
Who does it harm? The return of interstate conflicts primarily affected Europe, the traditional theater of major clashes between Russia and NATO. But the new instability also affected the Middle East (the Russian and American armies are opposing each other in Syria), the Baltic Sea, the South China Sea and Asia.
Asia has become the region with the largest number of countries with nuclear weapons: China, Taiwan, North Korea and South Korea, Pakistan and India. Just a month after Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles Treaty (INF Treaty) in August 2019, Washington tested a medium-range ballistic missile that reached its target at a distance of more than 500 km. Russia immediately reacted: like China, it condemned the United States for systematic attempts to achieve military superiority with the risk of reviving the arms race in the world. Since 2010, the United States, through NATO, has created a real global architecture of missile defense in Europe (ABM), this time covering all the territories of European NATO member countries. Thus, the Americans surrounded Russia with anti-missiles, claiming that it was out of fear of Iran. This system is objectively designed to make it impossible for Russia to retaliate in the event of a first NATO nuclear strike. In 2014, the United States strengthened this system, using the annexation of Crimea to Russia as a pretext for deploying additional weapons systems.
The "avant-garde" response of the Russians
Therefore, the arms race is far from over, because in response, the Russians have developed their own defense systems, namely modern hypersonic Avangard missiles. This missile, tested in 2018 and put into service on December 27, 2019 (just when the INF treaty was terminated), has exceptional capabilities, operating at an average speed of Mach 20 and can deliver nuclear charges with a capacity of 2 megatons... Another feature is that such missiles are capable of flying at an abnormally low altitude, which makes it difficult to detect and react quickly. Thus, they can destroy the enemy's intercontinental missiles right in the mines, calling into question the effectiveness of NATO's defense. Vladimir Putin is especially proud of the fact that "no one except Russia has hypersonic weapons." Earlier, Russia also developed an intercontinental ballistic missile "Satan-2" or "RS-28 Sarmat", very inconspicuous, which can destroy a territory like France in a few seconds.
Washington has been preparing for a direct confrontation with Russia for a long time, and officially, as evidenced by the Defender 2020 exercise program, which was designed to practice actions in the event of an attack on one of the NATO countries. 37,000 soldiers, including 20,000 Americans, participated in the exercises with a budget of 315 million euros — and this figure was significantly reduced due to the pandemic (only 6,000 American soldiers arrived). However, this clearly shows Washington's goals: to demonstrate its dominance over Europe and its threats against Russia, which, unfortunately for European security, eventually learned lessons and became seriously bitter against the West. As a result, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the situation at the end of February 2022 a "point of no return" in relations between Russia and the West.
Point of no return
However, having focused since the 2000s on the "Russian enemy" and never made any attempts to involve Russia when the latter was ready and asked for it (1991-2007), the NATO organization seems to have forgotten about China, a much more threatening rival for the West in the long term. From an economic and strategic point of view, China is more dangerous than Russia (a rather poor country). In a few decades, China may surpass the American armed forces in the event of a conflict in the Pacific. By giving priority to the Middle East and Russia, the US has contributed to lowering its capabilities against China. In addition, most US military bases in the western Pacific do not have a defense infrastructure and are quite vulnerable. Finally, we must not forget that nuclear-armed China also has the largest army in the world with more than two million combat-ready soldiers (and 800,000 reservists), as well as a defense budget almost three times that of Russia (172 billion euros versus 64). In addition, China has invested heavily in the development of high-precision ballistic missiles. Even if American military power still has a good margin of safety, in a very rapidly changing world, the balance of power can change in a surprising way not in favor of the United States.
China is also developing hypersonic weapons, computer warfare and artificial intelligence, an area in which it has almost reached the level of the United States, and possibly surpassed it, for example, in the field of quantum computing. One enemy may be hiding behind another... And by designating Russia as the main enemy after the collapse of the USSR, NATO has achieved that Russia has actually become this enemy. Russia simply responded to the deployment of the armed forces and missile weapons of NATO countries at its borders.