22 February 2008: Washington, DC

Is it getting Cold in here?

On February 8, 2008, in a televised address to ministers and regional governors, Russian President Vladimir Putin conveyed that Russia is ready and willing to counter beefed-up U.S. defense systems that it feels threatened by. These perceived threats may include NATO expansion, U.S. desires to install missile defense shields in Eastern Europe, and increased funding and development on high-tech weapons systems, such as the Reliable Replacement Warhead, or RRW. 

“A new arms race has started to unfold… It’s not our fault, we didn’t start it [by] funneling multibillions of dollars into developing weapons systems,” said Putin, as reported by The Washington Post.

Do Putin’s remarks have any credence? The answer is both yes and no.

NATO Expansion

It’s widely accepted that in 1990, former Secretary of State James Baker promised Mikhail Gorbachev that there would be no expansion of NATO beyond West Germany. Since that time, NATO has expanded to include several post-Soviet states, including Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, Czech and Slavik Republics, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Romania. Given that this expansion is less controversial (but not without controversy) now than it was right after the end of the Cold War, it can still be perceived as a renege on U.S. promises.  Several policy experts in both U.S. and Russian circles voiced concerns that the initial NATO expansion would hurt the fragile relationship between two countries that had just recently stepped back from the edge of nuclear Armageddon.

High-Tech Weapons Systems in Old Soviet Territory

As for high-tech weapons systems that might threaten Russian security, Putin unfortunately has some legitimate grievances. The current administration advocated for funding in fiscal year 2008 for missile defense sites to be installed in Poland and the Czech Republic. Eventually, Congress cut $85 million from the $310 million 2008 request to begin deployment of anti-missile interceptors in Poland and an associated radar in the Czech Republic. The U.S. missile defense system is highly controversial anyways, but the talk of proposed sites in Europe met a lot of objections—including the fact that Russia might perceive it as a security threat.

In an October 2007 article for Arms Control Today, George N. Lewis and Theodore A. Postol note that “the European defense might be able to engage many hundreds of targets, thereby, in conjunction with other U.S. systems, threatening Russia’s nuclear deterrent. Such possibilities, however remote they would seem, would certainly conjure up apocalyptic threats to Russia’s national survival.”

The same authors note that a missile defense site in Azerbaijan, Turkey, or Iraq would provide not only the same protection from an Iranian missile (the proposed European sites’ raison d’etre), but actually enhance it, while posing no threat to Russia. Putin himself proposed this idea (specifically Azerbaijan) to Bush in May of 2006.

However, the administration seems intent of the European site. The fiscal year 2009 budget requests $720 million for the third missile defense site in Europe ($96 million for Development, $382.6 million for Fielding, and $241.2 million for Military Construction).

Nuclear Weapons

The United States hasn’t been as active on reducing our nuclear stockpiles as former President Ronald Reagan would’ve imagined when he and Gorbachev signed a cornerstone treaty of disarmament and came close to negotiating an agreement in Reykjavik, Iceland that would have eventually eliminated all nuclear weapons. Though some saw the meeting as a failure, as no legally-binding nonproliferation treaty was produced, Gorbachev himself—and some in the arms control community—saw the meeting as a positive step toward global disarmament as it reaffirmed “the vision of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Bush’s fiscal year 2009 budget request increased funding for nuclear weapons related activities (up 5.1 percent) and decreased funding for nuclear nonproliferation work (down 6.7 percent). Furthermore, Bush reinserted funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead—a program, which more or less would build a new generation of nuclear weapons—that had been taken out by Congress in the previous year’s budget.

Putin’s Responsibility

The United States doesn’t take all the blame for the increased tension with Russia. Putin’s time in office has been marked by increased censorship of the media and a decrease in the freedoms of independent institutions in the country. The U.S. State Department Human Rights Report for 2006 noted that “government pressure on the media persisted… many media organizations saw their autonomy further weaken. The government used its controlling ownership in all national television and radio stations, as well as the majority of influential regional ones, to restrict access to information about issues deemed sensitive.”

Putin has also been known for taking retaliatory actions against former Soviet states for supposedly siding with the West. Take, for example, the cut off of gas supplies to Ukraine in 2006. Though on the surface it was all about economics (Kiev refused to pay the increased amount Moscow was demanding for its gas), behind the scenes it was all political.

According to a January 1, 2006 International Herald Tribune article, Ukrainian officials said that the Kremlin was simply punishing Ukraine for its interest in joining both NATO and the European Union.

“Putin’s period in office has been marked by an increasingly assertive foreign policy that appears aimed at regaining some of the influence Moscow has lost in former Soviet republics since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991,” stated the article.  

Threat of “NATO East”

Another example of Putin’s attempt to counter the power from the West would be the creation of the Shanghai Five in 1996, a cooperative agreement between Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. In 2001, Uzbekistan joined this group known by some as “NATO East,” and is now known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Since the end of the Cold War, we have seen NATO expand to include several states east of where the United States had promised to draw the line. Bush has proposed missile defense systems in Eastern Europe that Russia perceives as a security threat, and Bush has repeatedly increased funding for high-tech weapons systems while decreasing non-proliferation programs. But, we’ve also watched a strong Eastern alliance build up, and Russia at odds with notions that the majority of the international community agrees with, like Kosovo’s independence from Serbia.

In light of these present and emerging realities, increased U.S. funding for nuclear weapons programs and Putin’s threat of arms races shouldn’t be taken lightly. As we saw during the Cold War, arming the world with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert isn’t merely a bad dream. Right now it seems as though the United States and Russia are headed in different directions—away from the vision shared by Gorbachev and Reagan.

The next president should make it a top priority to refocus on making Russia a partner—not an opponent—in global non-proliferation efforts and security, while also applying pressure to the Kremlin to improve democratic requirements such as freedom of the press. This overture may be the first step in thawing U.S.-Russian relations after the icy period of the Bush years.

Ashley C. Hoffman is a Contributing Editor at The Diplomatic Courier and Outreach Coordinator at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC.