Impact of ABM Treaty Disruption on Russian Interests and Russian-U.S. Relations

Ivan SAFRANCHUK

The 1972 ABM Treaty legalized the preva­lence of nuclear strategic offensive weapons over defense weapons. Former Deputy Chief of the USSR General Staff Akhromeyev and for­mer First Deputy Foreign Minister Korniyenko noted in one of their books that the correlation between defense and attack had changed in the nuclear age and the non-deployment of new ABM systems, i.e. the full observation of the 1972 treaty, was a fundamental factor of strate­gic stability.¹

Western opponents to the idea believed that the development of de­fense capabilities in­creased the security of an individual country as well as the world as a whole.² Prerequi­sites of this logic may be found already in the early writings of Henry Kissinger. For instance, in the late 1950s he wrote: "In the age of ballistic projec­tiles a certain ability of society to endure a seri­ous attack will become an ever increasing factor of deterrence".³

Part of the advocates of the development of strategic missile de­fense, at that time in the form of SDI, thought that the development of defense capa­bilities would lead not so much to additional possibilities of nuclear warfare (the traditional approach to the correlation between attack and defense in a nuclear age) as to the elimination of such possibilities. President Ronald Reagan was an advocate of this theory. His idea of SDI is believed to have stemmed from this theory.⁴  The instability in relations between the two countries increased the prob­ability of a nuclear war at certain periods of time. The development of effective defense against strategic offensive weapons in the form of SDI was suggested as a way out. According to some sources, President Reagan suggested de­veloping such a system not only in the United States but also the USSR.⁵  If such systems had been built, the role of nu­clear weapons as a de­terrent would have de­clined. Reagan himself expressed his idea in the following way in his speech on March 23, 1983: "So far we have maintained international sta­bility with the threat of retaliation. […] Wouldn't it be better to save people's lives in­stead of avenging of the killed?"⁶

When the ABM treaty was signed in 1972, the Soviet Union made the United States recognize the balance/parity of nuclear forces in the framework of the SALT-I treaty. In its turn the USA limited Soviet ABM systems in which the USSR then had the lead. Each side retained the right to develop and test sta­tionary ground ABM systems to combat stra­tegic ballistic mis­siles. Thus the United States limited the de­ployment of existing systems in the USSR and simulta­neously got a chance of catching it up in R&D. As a result it caught up and went ahead. Al­ready in the mid-1980s a ban on research in missile defense was a key aim at the talks of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev with President Ronald Reagan.⁷

The ABM treaty in itself is an example of a vague agreement. Its terminology does not quite coincide with the terminology of strategic arms limitation treaties - SALT-I, SALT-II, START-I and START-II. From the military-technical point of view it was extremely weak which largely explains the debates that have been go­ing on over it since the early 1980s.

The main significance of the treaty is political. And today the treaty has much greater political significance than even in 1972 when it was signed. Or to be exact, the political importance is different. In its time the ABM treaty was a prologue to the policy of detente. The Soviet Union and the USA for the first time reached major understandings in the most difficult nu­clear military sphere. Even if the treaty was not quite precise, there was definite political will that resulted in the policy of detente.

The current significance of the treaty stems from the place it took in the system of international relations. The ABM treaty has assumed a sym­bolic meaning as an agreement that guarantees old military-strategic relations between Russia and the United States guaranteeing Russia a worthy place among leading world powers.

What does Russia need the ABM Treaty for?

Many Russian experts, and not only independ­ent ones, admit that if the National Missile De­fense (NMD) system is deployed in the United States, the Russian potential of nu­clear deter­rence will not be undermined. Even the most ambitious NMD will not nullify the Russian nu­clear potential in the foreseeable fu­ture (5-7 years). Later, if only the Untied States proves capable of carrying out its NMD concept, every­thing is going to depend not so much on the American system, but on Russia's political will and successes on the road of ad­vancement. If in 5-7 years Russia remains in the outskirts of the world economy and politics and will not demon­strate positive development dy­namics, then of course, its military potential re­lying on strategic nuclear forces will lose its old meaning and to a certain extent will be devalued. But it should be clearly understood that with such a course of developments Russia will not be able to retain its nuclear might or limit U.S. military-political plans only through commitments under agree­ments assumed by each party 30 years ago.

There are two factors that make the ABM treaty im­portant for Russia. Both are sooner political, than military-technical. The first one is the link between the ABM treaty and strategic arms limitation talks. The second is that the ABM treaty assumed as was stated above a symbolic meaning in the system of international relations and international law.

First factor. The ABM treaty is necessary for the continuation of strategic arms limitation talks. Without it, even in a modified version, the START-III treaty will have no sense. Talks on stra­tegic nuclear arms can continue, only if the old logic of a nuclear balance between Rus­sia and the United States is observed, the ABM treaty being a symbolic and practical expression of this logic. Given the abovementioned weak­ness of the treaty its modification (with certain reservations) would be compatible with the es­tablished logic of nuclear balance. Thus the modification of the treaty may be regarded as a door to START-III. In keeping with the tradi­tional concept of the Russian-American nu­clear balance Russia should be more interested in it than the United States, which should force Rus­sia to agree to a modified ABM treaty to facilitate the signing of START-III.

Second factor. The ABM treaty has become a sacred cow of present-day international relations. At one time, the United States admitted that. The treaty affixes, probably only symbolically, the military strategic relations between the United States and Russia as relations of equal parties. The disruption of the treaty will break the existing structure of Russian-American rela­tions. Bilateral relations have been changing throughout the 1990s. However, the changes did not affect the military-strategic balance between the two countries. The revision of Russian-American relations in this sphere will result in a fundamental revision of the entire system of in­ter­national relations and Russia's place in them.

The United States wants to alter the world or­der. Probably not under a definite plan but in actual fact the ABM treaty will become a touchstone in changing the world order. The disruption of the ABM treaty may provoke a domino effect when it will become much easier to revise or abrogate every following treaty beneficial for Russia for keeping its positions in the world. What next agreement will become an obstacle to the development of a new world or­der? Probably, the U.N. Charter. The only for­mal document giving Russia the status of a great power.

The greatest danger to Russia lies in this trend, which the disruption of the ABM treaty will start, not the disruption itself. If the ABM treaty ceased to exist in its present form (or in general), it would be unpleasant but not disas­trous for Russia. However, a fundamental revi­sion of the entire system of international rela­tions may become a real political disaster for Russia. For economic, military and political rea­sons: the decline in the army, the growing qualitative gap between Russia and leading countries of the world is not ready to take part in shaping the new world, Russia order as a decision-maker. Consolidated as the Russian authorities are, they lack the willpower for something greater than preserving and gradually squandering the foreign policy legacy of the Soviet Union.

The most unpleasant matter for Russia in this situation is that the United States is clearly not aiming at excluding Russia from the group of world powers. By the inconsistency of its re­forms Russia itself is reducing its possibilities in world politics. Russia is not the target of the U.S. policy of revising the world order and Russia's problems, including the ABM treaty, are only a side effect for the United States. This situation creates additional difficulties for Rus­sia. As the game is not purposefully played against Russia, it is extremely difficult, if not totally impossible to work out an adequate re­sponse and pursue a policy of resisting plans detrimental for Russia or adjust them according to the principle of the least evil.

Two strategic issues

Thus, Russia's stance on ABM is determined by the two abovementioned factors and in fact de­pends on answers to two questions:

• Does Russia need new nuclear arms limita­tion treaties?

• Should Russia take part in shaping the new world order?

There are two schools of thought on the first is­sue. The first may be called traditional in the sense that it implies the continuation of the ne­gotiating process with the purpose of the bal­anced reduction of nuclear arsenals in Russia and the United States in the future. Negotia­tions and agreed cuts in the arsenals of the two countries offer the only possibility of maintain­ing nuclear parity between Russia and the United States. Every new treaty after START-I has been a treaty on disarming the United States. Russia has to reduce its arsenals for economic and technological reasons anyway. The United States may get a considerable ad­vantage in the number of deployed systems of nuclear arms.

Supporters of traditional control over nuclear armaments find the preservation of parity neces­sary for the following reasons:

• nuclear arms are the main reason why Russia maintains its status of a great power. If the United States achieves nuclear superiority, Rus­sia will lose this status and will be regarded as a second rate country;

• consequently, in case of nuclear imbalance in favor of the United States, Russia's role in international politics will radically fall.

For these reasons "traditionalists" conclude that nuclear arsenals can be reduced only jointly with the United States through signing new treaties. This understanding is recorded in offi­cial statements (especially by former Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev and former Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces Vladimir Yakovlev) and documents (namely the Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation signed by President Vladimir Putin in June 2000).⁸

Such an approach implies a high degree of inter­est in the continuation of the balanced reduc­tion of Russian and American nuclear arma­ments and readiness to pay for parity by the modification of the ABM treaty (with certain reservations). The idea of swapping the modifi­cation of the ABM treaty for signing the START-III on Russian conditions was put for­ward and actively developed by this school of thought.

The second school of thought also accepts the idea that every new treaty after START-I has been a treaty of disarming the United States and it is possible to maintain parity only through agreed reductions. However, it admits that it is hopeless orienting on the United States at the present stage because economic conditions place Russia at a disadvantage at the talks from the very start. The United States un­derstands perfectly well that Russia can main­tain a nuclear balance only by signing new arms limitation treaties and therefore demands quali­tative concessions in exchange for quantitative reductions. The United States is in a position to make Russia pay for parity.

Under START-II the United States agreed to deeper cuts than initially expected.⁹ However, in exchange for its qualitative concessions the United States got quantitative concessions from Russia, for instance the ban on reentry vehicles for ICBM. The resulting figures are approxi­mately the same, but potentials differ signifi­cantly. The qualitative restrictions of START-II are arranged so that they are more effective against the Russian arsenal than the American. Exchanging quality for quantity is a road to nowhere.

Formally Russia keeps up the nuclear balance, but in fact the United States is getting unilat­eral advantages recorded in the treaties. The only way out lies in a transition to an inde­pend­ent nuclear policy not based on agreements (the French or Chinese model). Russia should have a nuclear arsenal not burdensome for its economy and use it for a most effective nuclear policy.

It is impossible to break away from the old logic of swaps in the framework of the established ne­gotiating process because past concessions have constituted the exchange poten­tial of the opposite party in the talks and it is possible to recover the old concessions only by making new ones. To give up negotiated restric­tions means giving up parity. Giving up parity is a complex political task. Rus­sia will have to work out a nuclear policy that would be based on disparity and simultaneously guarantee the reliability of Russian nuclear deter­rence and block attempts to regard it as a second rate nu­clear power. However, Russia will then have full freedom with regards to its nuclear arse­nal and chose the most effective and economically least burdensome option of developing and mod­ernizing its nuclear force without tough control on the part of the United States.

In this case the disruption of the ABM treaty by the Americans is a chance to break away (on a good pretext) from all the unfair treaties that have been imposed on Russia since the mid-1980s. In fact Russia with the help of the United States, may re­cover much of what American negotiators man­aged to take away in the past 15 years. In the framework of such an approach the ABM theme can be used for the benefit of Russia that may stick to its tough position which, by the way, will raise Russia's stakes in the eyes of very many countries: Europe, China, India and the United States itself.

The answer to the second question - should Rus­sia take part in shaping the new world order - re­quires a clear understanding that Russia does not have the resources to take active part in the proc­ess. By participating Russia will only le­galize the new world order. After that any at­tempt of Russia to question the new rules of the game will meet with bewilderment in the best case and active re­sistance in the worst.

Russia is unable to stop the development of a new world generally based on American condi­tions. The most it can do is, firstly, to postpone it by not participating in it, secondly, to keep its hands free by not committing to observe the new rules. The situation resembles 1997 when Russia actually agreed to the NATO enlarge­ment, getting by way of compensation the Founding Act that gave it almost nothing in a practical sense. By signing the Founding Act Russia got involved in the European security ar­chitecture centered around NATO against which it had fought for a long time, and in fact not only recognized the first round of the NATO enlargement but also significantly reduced its own opportunities politically to resist the fur­ther expansion of the alliance. If applied to the ABM treaty, such an approach means that Rus­sia should not agree to the revision of the treaty. Strong support for the maintenance of the treaty (even at the cost of the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from it) would follow the logic of dragging out the formation of a new world order and not legalizing it on the part of Russia.

However, this does not mean at all that the ab­sence of cooperativeness on the part of Russia on questions of shaping the new world order should necessarily result in the sharp aggrava­tion of Russian-American relations or a return to the cold war atmosphere. Neither Russia, nor the United States is interested in that. And it is on the issue of the ABM treaty that Russia and the United States may test the model of uncooperative behavior (Russia's refusal to modify the treaty and the U.S. withdrawal from it) that would not have direct political expenses for either Russia or the United States.

Conclusions

A comparison of the Russian and American stances on ABM shows that the debates on the domestic scene and the domestic position of both administrations and both presidents make their approaches tough and give reasons for each side to remain tough. Still, neither side rejects compromise. However, in practice this may mean that the United States will exhaust its re­serve of maneuvers at consultations on ABM both in terms of concepts and time before reaching the point when there will be any sense for Russia to begin a serious dialogue given its strong domestic position.

In this case the withdrawal of the United States from the ABM treaty and Russia's transition to an independent nuclear policy not limited by agreements will make the two countries face a complicated but feasible task of neutralizing the negative political consequences of the collapse of the system of disarmament treaties. In case of the disruption of the ABM treaty each side will get a chance to do what at least part of the two military-political elites want. These plans re­lated to the disruption of the ABM treaty that do not dominate in the American administration and even less in the Russian are not aimed at aggravating bilateral or international relations. Each side will get a freedom of action, but no reasons to use that freedom to the detriment of the other, on condition that the sides manage to make a politically painless transition to nuclear policy not based on treaties.

¹ S.F. Akhromeyev, G. M. Korniyenko, "Glazami mar­shala i diplomata", Moscow, 1991, p. 38.

² Harry B. Hollins, Averil L. Powers, Mark Sommer, "The Conquest of War", London, 1989, pp. 64-65.

This approach was substantiated in the follow­ing way. Security was described as a function:

• of defense and offensive armaments of one side,

• the quantity of armaments of the other side with its defense armaments having a positive and offensive - a negative impact on the security of the first side,

• nonmilitary variables.

Given this approach "highly effective missile de­fense would increase security without threaten­ing anyone." The limitation of offensive arma­ments and a buildup of defense capabilities al­low "to reduce the threat of war without risking one's own security, and even strengthening it as well as the security of the other side." J. Tin­bergen, D. Fischer, "Warfare and Welfare: In­tegrated Security Policy into Socio-Economic Pol­icy". New York, 1987, pp. 23-27, 59.

³ Henry Kissinger, "Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy" (translated into Russian), Moscow, 1959, p. 188.

⁴ It is difficult to say how serious the SDI op­tion in it­self was. Archives should be examined for the pur­pose. However, in recent years an in­creasing number of scholars has come to the conclusion that SDI was a U.S. intelligence op­eration meant to exhaust the Soviet Union eco­nomically. However, it should be remem­bered that the SDI program also cost American tax­payers a pretty sum: some estimates put the spending on it at $32 billion. V. F. Terekhov, "Globalnaya protivoraketnaya oborona i interesy Rossii", Problemy vneshnei i oboronnoi politiki Rossii, Collected articles, Moscow, 1994, p. 89.

⁵ Thus at the Geneva talks in 1986 President Reagan suggested agreeing on the mutual reduc­tion of war­heads and the balanced buildup of missile defense. Frank L. Gertcher, William J. Weida. Beyond Deter­rence: The Polit-Economy of Nuclear Weapons, Westview Press, 1990, p. 142.

⁶ Quoted from A. Ye. Bovin, "Kosmicheskie fantazii i zemnaya realnost", Moscow, 1986, p. 103

⁷ Nikolai Chervov, "Yadernyi krugovorot: chto bylo, chto budet", Moscow, 2001, p. 103.

⁸ The concept states on the subject: "Russia […] is ready for the further reduction of its nu­clear potential on the basis of bilateral under­standings with the United States and on a mul­tilateral format with the involvement of other nuclear powers on condition that strategic sta­bility in the nuclear sphere is not violated. Rus­sia will work for the preservation and observa­tion of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty - the cornerstone of strategic stability". Kont­septsia vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Moscow, 2000, www.mid.ru.

⁹ The United States proposed a ceiling of 4,700 for START-II. It did not accept the Russian proposal of 2,000/2,500 put forward by Presi­dent Yeltsin in January 1992. Andrey Kozyrev, "Preobrazheniye", Moscow, 1994, p. 78.