2. Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has not changed so much in terms of expanding its power and ignoring treaties whenever possible.
3. While every state has a right to defend itself, the lack of transparency on the part of Moscow suggests more than merely defensive interests.
4. Russia continues to use whatever power it has to dominate its near-abroad and aggressively manipulate both the EU and the US.
5. The West and particularly the US must take a realistic approach with Russia. While we may wish that Russia works with us in good faith, the reality is that in many respects it does not and the West must see to it that its interests are safeguarded even as it leaves the door open to better relations in the future.
Recently, US President Barack Obama visited Moscow to discuss closer relations and the possibility of further agreements on nuclear arms reductions. In February, President Obama announced his intention to follow up on campaign promises to significantly cut the remaining number of US warheads, at times during his campaign even calling for the total elimination of the American nuclear stockpile.
Estimates seem to diverge on the total number of warheads active and inactive currently maintained by the US and Russia; however, they generally fall between three to ten thousand for the US and three to sixteen thousand for Russia. These numbers naturally can fluctuate wildly depending on which report is read, the biases or sources used, and whether or not reports about Russian compliance with the last strategic treaty in 2002 have been honored – in contrast to all other treaties Russia has signed.
Both the administrations of President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush pushed aggressively for drastic reductions in nuclear arms across the board, as well as the end of all testing and new weapon development, some of which Russia reciprocated. Both presidents also engaged in lofty rhetoric that hoped for a day free of all nuclear weapons. President Obama appears set to follow the precedent and carry out more cuts in the US arsenal. However, where President Bush has expressed concern about the passing of Russian and Chinese nuclear weapon or dual-use technology onto rogue states or terrorist groups, as well as the “lack of candor” in Russia’s process of disposing of nuclear as well as other WMD, Obama, following more of President Clinton’s doctrine, has not expressed such concern, at least publically.
Russia asserts, naturally, that it possesses nuclear weapons to deter aggression that would directly threaten the survival of the country. While it is certainly reasonable that Russia be able to defend itself, it also makes it unlikely that Russia will truly surrender that deterrent, either. Moreover, because of Russia’s unusual psychology, it would not be altogether surprising for the government to want to hold onto far more than that which would be considered a reasonable deterrent, and if it does so, it will probably do so in secret. As such, any treaty that Russia should sign at some point in the future which appears to move beyond removing a few extra nuclear weapons here and there and toward effective strategic disarmament should certainly be viewed with skepticism. Such a goal, whether Russia be a friend or foe, is completely unrealistic. As for anything short of that, there should be much skepticism there, also; and without question in the absence of rigorous verification.
One key difficulty in interpreting Russian intentions has been the mixed signals the government has sent as far back as Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, with little transparency during the transition from the Soviet empire and a foreign and domestic policy that unmistakably falls short of the standard good neighbor. Since the dawn of the country’s long history a millennium ago, Russia has been a country steeped in a hermitage as eccentric as its leaders, lashing out from time to time, accusing its tiny neighbors of aggression and then using events as provocation to embark on adventurist campaigns in its near-abroad.
The fact that Russia and the US have managed to conclude their summit without causing further damage to relations is only a failure of US perception of the reality of the summit in contrast to its own interests. The US allowed Russia to avoid in any real way the most pressing issues of the day between the two states such as Iran and human rights in Russia and will likely maintain the status quo for some time This is perceived as good by Russia but could prove devastating for the US Further, Russia’s desire for the US to abandon its missile shield in Poland is considered a lower priority than getting the concessions it wants out of the Iran bargaining chip, which is why it refused a US offer at an earlier date to negotiate it.
There is also the significant absence of Russian cooperation in meaningful areas, such as placing unified pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program. Russia not only refuses to use its extensive trade with Iran as a significant tool to apply pressure on the regime, it has also worked alongside Iran in supporting Hezbollah terrorists’ activity in the Middle East.
However, at some point Russia will need to deal with its profound paranoia or sense of entitlement about the outside world. It is a major reason the Iran crisis has progressed this far, as Russia resists any effort to bring Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions to heel. This is likely because Russia is intent on using it concurrently to spite the US as well as seeing it an opportunity for leverage. With the EU, Russia has its gas and oil reserves as collateral for its power, but with the US it needs Iran and any other state or organization suitable as a knowing or unknowing pawn. Iran is not by any means the first situation in which Russia used its power in the UN and otherwise to create a crisis. However, should Iran acquire nuclear weapons, and worse yet, should Iran or one of its terrorist proxies use them, Russia will bear a very heavy responsibility. Likewise, Russia did not respond to US requests to use its airspace a few months earlier in the Afghanistan effort during a time in which US convoys from Pakistan were coming under significant fire even though a successful Taliban entrenched in the region would appear to be against Russia’s interest. ( 1) (2) Russia will also have difficulty controlling a nuclear Iran, should the regime decide to set its jihadi sights on Russia, which hardly has been a longtime historical friend of Islamic governments.
Russia is no stranger to past infractions over international sanctions, either. During the period before the resumption of US hostilities with Iraq in 2003, Russia was actively involved in selling the regime anti-aircraft technology and doing other business with Saddam Hussein’s government in contravention to various UNSC Resolutions imposing sanctions on Baghdad and restricting the sale of military technology to Iraq. In what later became known as the UN Oil-for-Food Scandal in 2004, Russia and other states including China, France, and Germany were caught profiting from illegal business with Iraq, including the purchase of Iraqi oil. Although Western nations were also involved in this, their behavior was usually an exception to the rules they usually followed, while for Russia it fitted into a worrying pattern. Further, Putin’s own statements about regretting the fall of the Soviet Union and missing the Cold War lend further ambiguity to Russia’s trustworthiness. Barack Obama was quite right in stating that Putin still “has one foot in the Cold War”, but so far Russian behavior seems to suggest Mr. Medvedev also does.
With regard to Russia’s immediate neighbors, Russia seems intent on controlling members of its near-abroad and destabilizing those who seek to resist its influence. Russia has already invaded Georgia and has aggressively meddling in the affairs of Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and its other neighbors as well. To achieve this, Russia has worked to undermine the economies and democratic movements in these countries, using a host of tools, including natural resources, missile movements, local ethnic Russian populations, and covert operations, to say nothing of brute military force when all else fails. The effect of this has been a quasi-revival of the old Soviet Union in terms of geographical, political, and economic control under the terminology of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The Kremlin has also not deviated from its Soviet-era policy of funding and supporting terrorist organizations or the states that also support them, as already mentioned. During the Israeli war in southern Lebanon in 2006, Russia was reported to have advisors on the ground in southern Lebanon advising members of Hezbollah, which were also using new Russian-made weapons systems. Russia has denied it sold weapons to Hezbollah. (2)
Meanwhile in Africa and Latin America, Russia was for a time forced to severely draw back its influence in the two regions due to financial restraints during the 1990s, but clearly the constraints were solely economic and not political, as we now see. As Russia’s vast oil profits began to amass until about a year ago, Russia began to spring back into action around the world. Even a Russia hard hit today by the collapse in oil prices is still far better off economically than it was at the fall of the Soviet Union 20 years ago. Russia has been working ever more closely with regimes such as Cuba and Venezuela and has beefed up its arms trade, no doubt partly to make up for lost oil revenue, but also because such relationships offer strategic value to Moscow. Russia has also resumed naval exercises in the Western Hemisphere, much to the consternation of the Bush administration, although it offered little response. Additionally, Russia’s sale of aircraft and naval vessels to China in particular are helping China to quickly modernize its military while Russia receives much-needed revenue to modernize its own.
Of great concern also is that Russia continues to suppress any mechanism by which the Russian people might petition their government against taking an unfriendly footing against its neighbors, the EU, and The US The Russian people who have seen up close the horrors of war as well as the deprivation that comes about as a result of the absence of trade represent a key safety lever in the machine of state to prevent it from plunging itself into unwise situations. While Russia does maintain regular elections, the methods by which opposition parties can inform the public about their issues have been largely disabled; even the candidates themselves, along with their supporters, have been arrested or murdered by Russian authorities. So, while there are pro-forma elections, those elections are so greatly interfered with that they no longer can be considered legitimate. The government has without question lurched backward in terms of its own internal respect for the rule of law and human rights, which means that this safety lever has effectively been disabled. That the Russian state could move swiftly and with little warning at the caprice of a quasi-dictator naturally does have foreign policy implications, again, particularly when its other actions do not shed sufficient light on its intentions to make Russia appear utterly benign to free and peace-loving states.
A state is also known as a friendly or unfriendly state based on the nature of the covert activity it conducts outside its borders. Russia has signaled an aggressive uncooperative posture through its covert activity against the West. This activity has increased rather than decreased since the fall of the Soviet Union, with intelligence activities focusing in large part as before on science and technology targets. In fact, Jane’s states that rather than downgrading its clandestine operations at the conclusion of the Cold War, Russia simply shifted the emphasis away from its main civilian foreign intelligence organization – the KGB and the post-Soviet SVR – to its military intelligence apparatus, the GRU. (3) Since that time there have been quite a number of articles in the press about Russian intelligence activities working at Cold War levels, but this somehow has seemed to be regarded as a matter separate from any process of divining overall strategic Russian intentions that may also be useful in determining the likelihood of long term nuclear cooperation.
Perhaps the best guide to likely Russian behavior, however, rests in an analysis of how Russia has followed past treaties, particularly those regarding WMD. In addition to developing ABM technology irrespective of treaties signed throughout the 1970s, there are countless examples where the Soviet Union and later Russia continued to use stealth and concealment to evade treaties both for non proliferation as well as development, testing, and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, including SALT I and II and START. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union little has changed on this front and Russia has been caught several times in violation of its nuclear arms control agreements both during the Clinton and Bush administrations, the most recent being the SORT or “Moscow Treaty”.
Russia has followed the same course with its biological and chemical weapons programs. In 2002, the New York Times wrote of the Bush administration condemnation of Russian failures to abide by treaties by becoming purposefully opaque:
But the decision (by the Bush administration) puts Moscow on notice that Washington insists on more cooperation and candor with respect to weapons of mass destruction. "This is a signal of our seriousness about compliance on arms control and the need to meet all obligations under the chemical and biological weapons conventions," a senior administration official said. [...]
"Russia's actions, like its declarations about what was done in Soviet times, the lack of transparency in its ostensibly defensive programs, and its refusal to share the strain, among other things, raise serious questions about Russia's willingness to abide by its treaty obligations," one official said. (4)
Such lack of transparency and an apparent utter disregard for the treaties Russia has signed with the West for the better part of the past century has shown little evidence of changing. It is also further reason to be suspicious of the nature of Russian military developments, particularly that they may in fact be more offensive. Once more, lack of information promotes lack of trust. In the words of President Ronald Reagan during a speech to the World Affairs Council of Los Angeles in 1988, “Nothing is more damaging to the integrity of the arms control process than for one side to be able to choose which parts of a solemn agreement it will fulfill.” Indeed, Russia is not only hiding all its cards, it is working very hard to see all the cards of the other players at the table. These are not the actions of a reformed, humanitarian state and thoughtful world citizen.
As for whether the US should completely eliminate its nuclear capability even if Russia were to be shown utterly trustworthy and cooperative, the specter of unforeseen nuclear threats from other powers should always be considered as it remains a reality. If history is a viable indicator of future events, it is that nothing is new except the element of surprise. In other words, nascent unfriendly powers can be counted upon to arise, but when and where they may strike cannot. Thus, a nuclear deterrent against any direct threat to the existence of the US is a key part of the necessary overall defense posture. Presuming Russia can break with precedent and keep its agreements in the future and China would do as likewise, and that all of the world’s democracies totally disarm along with Pakistan and North Korea, in what way would history favor the likelihood that no aggressor states or other entities would take advantage of the vulnerability and exploit it with their own WMD or other overwhelming force? We would certainly wish for a day in which the world would have no need of defensive nuclear weapons, just as we hope for a day in which our cities would have no need of a police force. In fact, history is against that notion, as it seems so far to be that of a reformed Russia.
Naturally, Russia presently has no interest in starting a nuclear conflagration; however, Russia has done little to allay intrinsic concerns about its overall intentions, which may or may not be more Putin’s fault than Medvedev’s. Further, even if Medvedev and Putin prove sensible in this regard, with so much power in the hands of a near dictatorship, open faith can seem disconcerting at best. A Russia unwilling to launch nuclear missiles does not mean Russia will not pass on nuclear technology to third parties, as it already has. Regardless of the approach taken, the evidence seems to indicate the best path forward is one of caution; or in the words of the late President Reagan, “trust but verify.” At present, there is an abundance of "trust" and a deficit of "verify".
2. Russia denies Hezbollah arms link. (2006, August 25). Retrieved from BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5284938.stm
3. Russian Spies. (1992, July 30). Retrieved from Jane’s Foreign Report.
4. Miller, J. (2002, April 08). US Warns Russia of Need to Verify Treaty Compliance. Retrieved from New York Times: http://www.ph.ucla.edu/EPI/bioter/USwarnsrussiatreaty.html