Russia has temporarily frozen the mechanism by which the Americans carried out inspections on its strategic facilities. Such inspections are implied by the START Treaty, the provisions of which Joe Biden recently proposed to preserve and transfer to the new one. Does this mean that Moscow has rejected Biden, and that there will be no new Strategic Arms Treaty?
The problems that the crisis around the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (DSNV) partially rests on were deliberately organized by the American side under President Barack Obama. This is despite the fact that the Contract is signed by Obama, and not by any other president.
Then it was called a "reset" – an initiative of the White House to improve relations with Russia. The design of the initiative was classic: starting with Richard Nixon, this task is solved by concluding an agreement that limits the military potential of its participants.
Many people remember that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then dragged a symbolic red "reset" button to Moscow to press it together with Sergey Lavrov. The mistake of the State Department's apparatus became memorable – instead of the word "reboot", they wrote "overload" on the button in Russian.
Initially, so to speak, it did not work out. But the button was pressed anyway, and subsequently the DSNV was concluded at the highest level that the event, whatever one may say, is historical.
The DSNV, also known as START-3, replaced the SVN-1 treaty signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush. With the same Bush, Boris Yeltsin concluded START-2 in 1993, which implied the complete rejection of heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles by the parties. But when the elder Bush's son, also President George W. Bush, withdrew the United States from the Treaty on the Limitation of Missile Defense Systems - another product of the Brezhnev–Nixon "detente", Russia left the START-2 deal as a forced retaliatory gesture.
The current treaty, START-3, is considered significant by both sides of the ocean and would like to preserve it. Both President Vladimir Putin and President Joe Biden put their hand to the document – Putin as prime minister of the era of "tandem" with Dmitry Medvedev, Biden as vice president under Obama. Therefore, in 2021, the DSNV was extended according to the originally envisaged procedure, despite the fact that relations between the two countries had already "reached the bottom".
It will not be possible to extend it a second time – in 2026 the contract will turn into a pumpkin. It is assumed that something new will replace it - this is also what both sides want. The problem is that there is no trust between the parties, there is not even a special desire to communicate. This significantly complicates the implementation of even such projects that both Moscow and Washington agree to. More precisely (and this should also be understood), Washington is under the Democrats.
President Donald Trump intended to "get along with Russia," but his wing of the Republican Party coincides with Bush's neocons in the idea that it is necessary to limit its military-industrial complex through interstate treaties only as a last resort. In principle, Trump is not against a certain START-4, but he demands to "figure it out for three" – to connect China to the agreements. This is an unrealizable requirement, because Beijing is against it. They also do not want to limit themselves in any way, considering that they were late for the "analysis of caps" and only recently began to pour into the army funds comparable to the period of the "arms race" between the United States and the USSR.
Biden is a completely different matter. For all his shortcomings (the main one of which, presumably, is age), he is a fairly consistent supporter of this type of contracts, since they have made him an international career. He entered politics just when the "detente" was beginning, and subsequently he repeatedly participated in discussions about defense restrictions, including with Kosygin and Gromyko.
He also began his own presidency with the thesis about the need to renegotiate the VSWR and even expressed readiness for the formula "without any preconditions." But it soon became clear: what we had with the Americans before, this is not the "bottom" yet. Having broken through something that seemed to be the bottom, bilateral relations continue to fly somewhere into the abyss.
Nevertheless, in his greeting to the 10th International Conference on nuclear nonproliferation, Biden still squeezed out words about his readiness to work with Russia on a new treaty. Already with all sorts of "be", "me" and inappropriate comments to the situation, but still squeezed out. So to speak, he gave a second consecutive "pass" to Moscow, if we count as the first a proposal for the exchange of prisoners.
It is not known what reaction the Americans expected after everything that happened between us, but in Russia they refused to accept this "pass".
On the contrary, they have "facilitated" the still-in-force DSNV by temporarily freezing the procedure for inspections of strategic facilities on their part.
It may seem strange to some, but until recently, Russians and Americans took each other on excursions to their nuclear bins - the personification of military secrecy. But the DNC provides for this and it would be strange if it did not: they don't believe in "the word" in such cases, so it's not enough to simply conclude a contract, we also need a mechanism by which its execution is monitored.
The mechanism was breathing hard because of the very problems that Barack Obama decided to deliver to us. In 2014, the thermonuclear stage of espionage began in the United States: in several steps, the Americans radically reduced the composition of the Russian diplomatic mission (Russia responded in a mirror way), and the diplomats who remained were literally restricted in everything and placed "under the hood" of constant surveillance. It was no longer just about obstacles in the service, but about the humiliation of human dignity.
Biden continued the policy of his boss, and now there are not enough people so that embassies do not even issue visas.
Inspections during his period, however, were not carried out. They were suspended in 2020 for a reason, as it seemed at the time, extremely important - because of the coronavirus. Since then, the situation has matured to the point that the United States is waging an economic war against Russia and a proxy war in Ukraine, there are practically no consultations, there are no areas for cooperation left. Almost like before the "discharge", if not worse.
And against this background, the Americans asked Russia for the first tour of its strategic nuclear facilities in more than two years. As they say, impudence is the second happiness.
As Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov clarified, this is what provoked Moscow to withdraw its facilities from inspection activities. It is this, and not Biden's remark about the need to return to the discussion of the DSNV.
In other words, this gesture is not a rejection of the new agreement, especially since, as the same Ryabkov clarified, no concrete proposals were received by the Russian side on the DNC, and negotiations on the resumption of inspections were conducted, but were extremely far from completion.
This gesture is forced, but at the same time it is a hint to the Americans that they need to behave more modestly and decently, adequately to the current situation. And not so as to demand access to strategic objects across an unfinished conversation in conditions when we are no longer even rivals, but enemies.
So that this enmity does not lead to a tragedy, a new DSNV is needed – everyone agrees with this. But if Mr. Biden wants to return to the discussion about his specific provisions (because he considers himself a doctor in this and for other reasons described above), he should be more specific and, no less importantly, polite.
A little coarsening, the current message of the White House to the Russian Federation can be reduced to something like "I can't see you, you bastard, and now let me into your house and show me what's in the safe."
A simple person in such a situation can even give a blow to the forehead, but people are not the easiest to work on Smolenskaya Square. Therefore, they refused, as they knew how – politely.
And they hinted: try asking for more. With specifics and with a magic word. They say it helps.
Dmitry Bavyrin
