If you didn’t listen to the John Batchelor show last night, you missed an informative (and worrisome) conversation between the host and Professor Stephen F. Cohen about the new U.S. – Russian arms race.
The issue is this: since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has abandoned the commitment to parity that prevented mutual destruction during the Cold War. The expansion of NATO beginning in the 1990’s, and the abrogation of the ABM treaty by George Bush, pushed Russia, apparently deprived of effective retaliation to a U.S. first strike, and confronted by NATO forces now deployed right up to its borders, into an increasingly tight corner. On March 1st, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia now has a new generation of nuclear weapons that render our missile defenses obsolete — and if his claims are true, the new weapons not only restore parity, but have given Russia tactical (and therefore strategic) superiority.
You can hear the discussion in two parts, here and here. See also the relevant section of Putin’s March 1st speech, here.
6 Comments
Malcolm, I don’t think we’ve ever had anything even close to an ABM system that could realistically shoot down not merely one, but a flock of missiles sent by the Russians. Hell, we can’t do anything about missiles sent by a rouge republic like the North Koreans. I agree we’ve probably been too provocative with the Russians, but some of this just seems like red meat for Russian domestic consumption.
Jason,
The point is that, whatever the efficacy of our previous defensive systems might have been, if Russia’s new weapons are real those defenses are now obsolete.
ABM technology was taken seriously enough to become the basis of a critically important strategic agreement. Even if it was just an agreed-upon fiction, it was sufficient to form the basis of a static balance of power. The abrogation of that treaty, and the pressure applied to Russia in these last decades, has meant that that balance was destabilized, with Russia forced to concentrate on re-establishing strategic parity (or superiority). This was an immense waste of what was an enormous potential gift to the Western world: the peaceful end of the Cold War, so dearly bought, and the possibility of a productive partnership with a global power with which we naturally have a great many shared interests.
Imagine if Russia and the U.S. were friends and allies in 2018, instead of belligerents. We had this opportunity, and I think it was the U.S. not Russia, that squandered it.
Putin:
‘Missile defense’ has always been political theater- our systems can intercept missles under perfectly controlled conditions (and even then with a high fail rate) but not if a thousand warheads are flying toward the mainland at hypersonic speeds. ICBMs travel so fast that hitting them midflight is nearly impossible. There’s a good chance that our actual nuclear defense strategy involves detonating nukes in the flight path of oncoming missiles, which doesn’t play well with the media
Boasting about missile defense is a way of saying ‘we might be crazy enough to have a nuclear war’ to other nations, and in fact is an aggressive act itself. It’s like a Mexican standoff where one party starts suiting up in Kevlar.
Putin isn’t bluffing, he’s calling a bluff of ours that’s been going on for a very long time, whether he has new tech or not. And I think he might. Moscow is an incredibly advanced city and the hinterlands are impoverished- Russian tech exists, and is good, even if it seems humble in comparison to the US Mil-ind. complex. And if it exists in Russia, you can be sure that it’s getting faster, more efficient results than the giant money-laundering scheme that US defense research is. Elon Musk excluded, Russia has a working space program and we do not. Russia does not need to hire [designated “victim” groups] and pretend that they are doing serious work.
Beforehand the conversation assumed that our missile defense worked, now the conversation has moved to ‘will our missile defense work?’, which is closer to reality.
Exactly right, I think, Aidan. (I trust you will forgive my minor edit.)
Putin is not bluffing and Batchelor does a great service having Cohen on.
In another article, it appears we don’t need a navy as naval warfare is fast becoming obsolete. Let us recognize the fact, sell the boats for scrap and save money so we can pay my social security.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/03/donald-w-miller-jr-md/the-day-u-s-military-supremacy-ended-and-naval-warfare-became-obsolete/