US-Russia Nuclear Relations Slipping into Cold War Habits

August 5, 2014 | Edited by Lauren Mladenka

Don’t go tit-for-tat - “After many months of provocative Russian missile tests, the United States has finally accused the Russian Federation of violating the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty,” writes Tom Nichols in The National Interest. “In terms of the military balance between East and West, none of this matters a whit. But in terms of what it says about how the Russians (and not just President Vladimir Putin) view a future war in Europe, it’s deeply troubling.”

--“The danger is that Moscow may be coming back to theater-range nuclear weapons as some sort of imagined equalizer against NATO. Russia no longer has a strategy of blitzkrieg; rather, Russian military leaders fear that they will be defeated in any major conventional engagement, and so must rely on nuclear deterrence to prevent an enemy from taking advantage of a battlefield victory. This is the Kremlin’s bizarre strategy of ‘nuclear de-escalation,’ in which the use of just a few nuclear weapons convinces a putative ‘aggressor’ to back off.”

--“At least where nuclear arms are concerned, the American response to this should be to do nothing, as paradoxical as that sounds. As Ambassador Steven Pifer and others have noted, if NATO, as some have suggested, starts arming its own cruise missiles with nuclear warheads and answers Russia’s INF violations in a tit-for-tat exchange, we will have succumbed to Moscow’s bait. We will end up not only legitimizing their abrogation of the treaty, but closing off opportunities for further talks.” Full article here. http://bit.ly/1nogwSL

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On ice - “The growing confrontation between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine has derailed a recent accord that promised one of the most expansive collaborations ever between the countries’ nuclear scientists, including reciprocal visits to atomic sites to work on projects ranging from energy to planetary defense,” write David Sanger and William Broad in The New York Times. “Eleven months after U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz went to Vienna to seal an arrangement that would let Russian scientists into, among other places, the heart of the American nuclear complex at Los Alamos National Laboratory and allow American scientists would be allowed deep into Russian nuclear facilities, the accord is on ice.”

--“This year, the Energy Department canceled nuclear meetings, symposia and lab visits with Russia,” Sanger and Broad say. “American officials and experts say the decision will limit how much each side knows about the other’s capabilities and intentions after more than two decades in which American and Russian nuclear scientists worked alongside one another… Now, both sides are slipping back toward habits reminiscent of the Cold War.”

--“The idea of having thick relations with Russian nuclear scientists is a good idea,” said Graham Allison, a Harvard professor who negotiated some early deals on securing the Soviet arsenal during the Clinton administration, the peak of cooperation between American and Russian nuclear weapons scientists. “People get to know each other, work on joint projects, and there is a basis for conversation and cooperation.” Full article here. http://nyti.ms/1v6EjjR

Tweet - @daxe: B-2 stealth bomber pilots rarely get to actually fly. http://t.co/mGf5uvs4t1

Unrealistic expectations - “The Senate Foreign Relations Committee quizzed Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman on the status of the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program at a hearing [last] Tuesday. Negotiators announced on July 19 a four- month extension of the talks on reaching a comprehensive nuclear agreement,” writes Jonah Aboni in Arms Control Now. “Many senators used this opportunity to continue to set unrealistic expectations for a final deal and ignored the important achievements made thus far.”

--“Members of Congress should check the record and not dismiss the efforts and the achievements that have been made so far. A comprehensive P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran is by no means assured, but it is clear that a good deal is better than no deal, and responsible Senate and House members must give diplomacy every chance and the time necessary to succeed.” Full piece here. http://bit.ly/1lwcjww

Spilling the beans - “A Chinese provincial department appeared to have inadvertently confirmed the existence of an intercontinental ballistic missile that may be able to carry several nuclear warheads and travel as far as the United States,” writes Megha Rajagopalan for Reuters. “The state-backed Global Times tabloid carried a report about the missile in its online edition on Friday based on an internet posting by the Shaanxi Provincial Environmental Monitoring Center Station, which said a military installation in the province was developing the weapons… But both the Global Times report and the station's notice were later taken down.” Full story here. http://reut.rs/1zPaUcJ

History lesson - “The first nuclear age began 69 years ago this week, with mushroom clouds over Japan,” writes James Carroll in The Boston Globe. “The dawn of the next, equally dangerous nuclear age can be seen through the haze of this summer’s violent conflagrations and political dust-ups. Washington, though peripheral to the conflicts, remains at ground zero of the revived nuclear dilemma.”

--“For all of its dangers, the first nuclear age was organized around a precious international consensus, embodied in the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, that the demonic weapon must be corralled. The fact that there are only nine nuclear-armed nations today — and not 15, or 20, or 50 — represents the Cold War’s one clear legacy of hope. But that communal restraint presumes an ongoing and universal commitment to disarm, even if in stages, over time. Obama’s vision of a nuke-free world, articulated so passionately in Prague in 2009, was not a fanciful dream, but a hard-headed description of the one and only acceptable future that lies ahead of the human species.” Full piece here. http://bit.ly/UXBxwt

Renewed action - “Since the devastating U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 69 years ago this week, the catastrophic effects of nuclear weapons have motivated ordinary citizens to push their leaders to pursue arms control and disarmament measures to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons use,” writes Daryl Kimball in Arms Control Now. “Since the end of the Cold War–and with strong public pressure for the conclusion of effective U.S.-Russian nuclear risk reduction and disarmament measures–the threat of a U.S.-Russian conflict has decreased, but the risk of a nuclear war remains.”

--Kimball outlines three steps that world leaders can take ahead of the pivotal 2015 NPT Review Conference to reduce the nuclear threat, including 1) Engaging the P5 in a discussion on the impacts of their nuclear weapons use plans, 2) Exploring a ban on the use of nuclear weapons and 3) accelerating the process on nuclear disarmament. Read the full analysis here. http://bit.ly/1kky1bv

Transforming relations - “What would a nuclear deal mean for Iran’s relationship with the West and in particular, the United States?” asks Michael Cohen in The National Interest. “This question—and the prospect that the answer may be a thawing of relations—has, ironically, brought hardliners in Iran and Israel together in common purpose. It could wind up either derailing an agreement or narrowing its ultimate impact.”

--Despite all the powerful forces arrayed against an agreement, “that doesn’t mean talks are doomed. In Iran, for example, the calculation on talks has evolved. While there remain those who want no agreement at all there is today a relative consensus that a deal is needed to throw off the yoke of crippling economic sanctions, which have caused enormous hardship in Iran. Inflation has skyrocketed. Unemployment has risen to 10-15 percent and by some estimates, might be double that amount, and the economy shrank by nearly 6 percent last year. This has transformed the cost-benefit analysis for Iranian leaders. So while hardliners will not accept a bad deal, they are far more willing to go along with an agreement than they were just a few years ago.” Full piece here. http://bit.ly/1o95lmV

Preventing war - “As a combat veteran, my world view was profoundly impacted by my deployment to Iraq,” writes Derrik Gay in The State-Journal Register. “As Iraq descends further into chaos, the world’s attention has shifted to Iraq’s neighbor Iran, as the United States and its partners sought to prevent another unnecessary war in the Middle East.”

--“Last year, the United States forced Iran to the negotiating table after the successful use of diplomacy and aggressive economic sanctions. Both sides reached a preliminary agreement for Iran to effectively freeze its nuclear program in exchange for the West gradually reducing sanctions,” Gay says. “Achieving a deal with Iran will not be easy, but it is essential… We have an opportunity to learn from the past decade’s mistakes and give diplomacy a chance. Failure to do so will have dire consequences for our military, our country and the international community.” Full article here. http://bit.ly/1kDchrK

Deterrence myth - “Nuclear deterrence was conceptualised in the US even before the Soviet Union produced atomic weapons,” writes Michael Krepon in Dawn. “Anticipating that the Kremlin would acquire the ‘ultimate’ weapon, brilliant minds devised a strategy to dissuade Moscow from using nuclear weapons in warfare or for leverage. Thomas Schelling, one of the founding fathers of nuclear strategy, wrote that the essence of deterrence was the threat that left something to chance. Nuclear threats were supposed to prevent bad outcomes. If deterrence failed, there would be worse outcomes.”

--“There were other paradoxes and weaknesses in deterrence theory. Strategy had to be rooted in psychology, but this wasn’t easy because adversaries, by definition, think differently. If a bluff were called, one side would have to back down or both would lose. No one had a credible explanation of escalation control. The ransom notes associated with mutual hostage-taking came with rising price tags because deterrence always needed to be strengthened in response to adversarial moves. Failure to compete might imply a weakening of will.”

--“The evidence so far strongly suggests that this is wishful thinking. Deterrence stability is a myth, except in cases where nuclear-armed states have little, if anything, to fight about. In contrast, deterrence stability bet­ween nuclear-armed adversaries is a mirage. Neither the US nor the Soviet Union achieved deterrence stability during the Cold War, even when their nuclear arsenals and retaliatory capabilities grew to massive proportions.” http://bit.ly/1novhot

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Meeting request - “North Korea said Friday it has asked for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting to protest upcoming U.S.-South Korean military exercises, warning the drills increase the danger of war on the Korean peninsula,” writes Edith Lederer for AP. Full article here. http://abcn.ws/WXxHFy

Quick hits:

--“Collateral damage: How Iran sanctions fears hurt humanitarian trade” by Jonathan Saul and Parisa Hafezi in Reuters. http://reut.rs/WXwDSc

--“Obama, Putin Discuss Ukraine, Missile Treaty” by Jim Kuhnhenn for AP. http://abcn.ws/UG4D3N

--“Russia and the INF Treaty Violation” by Pavel Podvig in Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. http://bit.ly/1qQZ0tx

Beach reading:

--“Watching the Eclipse” by David Remnick in The New Yorker. http://nyr.kr/1tJBDqG

Events:

--“Hiroshima Peace Commemoration.” Sponsored by the DC Hiroshima-Nagasaki Peace Committee. August 5 at 6:30 at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, 1964 Independence Ave., SW, Washington.

--“The Nuclear Zero Lawsuits: Why the Tiny Marshall Islands Took on the Nuclear Nine.” Discussion with Rick Wayman, Neisen Laukon, and Erica Fein. August 6 from 3:00 to 4:00. Registration for online webinar available here. http://bit.ly/1k8nf8p