Following the October 2007 visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to Moscow, Russian officials acknowledged that tentative progress had been made during their face-to-face discussions on the thorny issue of U.S. plans to deploy missile defense assets in Eastern Europe. (See “The Gates-Rice Trip to Moscow: Few Promising Signs Expected,” WMD Insights, November 2007.) When the United States transmitted its proposals on missile defense in writing in November, however, Russian officials promptly rejected them. From Moscow’s perspective, the formal U.S. proposals retracted the compromise positions discussed during the Gates-Rice visit and returned the negotiations to square one. Specifically, Moscow objected to the U.S. proposals on the grounds that the proposals overstated the Iranian threat and failed to give adequate recognition to Russia’s concern that the missile defense system is actually directed at Russia’s strategic missiles. The discrepancies between the U.S. and Russian assessments were highlighted following Iran’s November 27 announcement that it had tested a new missile, and again in early December, when the Russian military claimed that the launch of a U.S. interceptor could spark a nuclear conflict with Russia.

Moscow Accuses the U.S. of Taking Back the October Compromise Proposals
According to open sources, during their October visit to Moscow, Rice and Gates proposed new opportunities for bilateral cooperation and transparency with regard to the proposed missile defense system. In response to Russian concerns, they reportedly tabled, among other ideas:

• integrating the early warning radars at Armavir, in southern Russia, and at Gabala, Azerbaijan (which is leased to Russia), into the system;
  
• stationing Russian liaison officers at all sites in the missile defense system to oversee the sites’ operation; the Russian officers would not have the right to interfere in the operation of the system (some sources state that the offer was limited to the radar in the Czech Republic);
  
• making the missile defense system operational only after Iran develops the capability to strike Europe and/or the United States. [1]

According to Izvestiya correspondent Dmitri Litovkin, Moscow regarded the majority of these proposals as acceptable. The main stumbling block was Moscow’s insistence on full integration of the command and control structure of the missile defense system. This would offer Russia the “right of veto” over any decision to launch interceptors and thereby prevent its possible use against Russian missiles. [2] Speaking in November at an annual meeting of top military commanders, Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined an agenda for subsequent discussions about the procedures for the operation of the missile defense system, exchange of information about the Iranian missile program, and other steps. Putin formulated the Russian position as “creation of a joint missile defense system with equal representation of all participants.” [3] This represented a significant shift from the Russian side’s original stance: the flat rejection of any American missile defense plans in Europe. While Putin showed interest in the Gates-Rice meeting proposals, both the Foreign and Defense Ministries continued to call for the United States to present the missile defense proposals formally, in a written document.

Moscow received the document outlining Washington’s proposals on November 21. [4] According to an anonymous source at the Foreign Ministry, by the following day Russian officials had concluded that the United States “had taken back its oral initiatives.” According to the same Russian diplomat, the written proposals did not provide for the permanent presence of Russian representatives at U.S. facilities in Eastern Europe, nor did they include postponement of the operational status of the system until an Iranian missile threat materialized. He concluded: “Everything is so vague that it is impossible to recognize the American proposals made in Moscow in this text.” [5] In Moscow, the U.S. retreat from the promising October initiatives was attributed to political infighting in Washington. According to this hypothesis, the Rice-Gates initiatives were an improvisation. Once back in Washington, however, Rice and Gates were unable to generate sufficient support for their proposals to have them adopted as Bush Administration policy. According to this hypothesis, the U.S. debate delayed the drafting of the written proposals and led to the watering down of the original initiatives. [6]

Five days after receiving the proposals, both Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chief of the General Staff Yuri Baluevski firmly rejected them. Lavrov said that Russia was acutely disappointed with the document: “If the ideas presented orally in Moscow were an improvisation, this means that the improvisation has failed. What we received on paper is disenchanting, although no one has refused to continue discussions with the Americans.” [7] He said that the United States no longer advocated genuine transparency of the future missile defense system. [8]

Predictably, Baluevski’s response was even tougher: “We have seen nothing new in these proposals.” Referring to the Aramavir and Gabala radars, he continued, “How can these proposals be called constructive if the only role offered Russia is to provide a ‘free addition’ to the U.S. missile defense deployments?” Baluevski stated that, when the U.S. proposals were originally tabled on October 12, he had been immediately skeptical of the fact that the United States would stand by them, and he had not expected that they would be reflected in the subsequent written proposals. He added that, even in October, he had believed that negotiations were little more than a U.S. ploy intended to deflect Russia’s efforts to prevent the deployment of missile defense in Eastern Europe. [9]

Baluevski repeated his negative assessment at a press conference during his visit to Washington, DC, in mid-December when he reiterated Russia’s original position that deployment of U.S. missile defense assets in Eastern Europe should take place only after a joint U.S.-Russian determination that Iran’s missiles posed a serious, near-term threat. [10] At a December 15 joint press conference in Moscow with Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Kislyak, Baluevski presented a table that detailed the differences between what he said were American tentative proposals in October and the written proposals transmitted in November. [11] (See illustration and translation below.)

Interestingly, almost immediately after the negative reaction to the written American proposals on missile defense, the independent Nezavisimaya Gazeta published a series of pieces trying to demonstrate that the renewed conflict over missile defense did not represent the return to full-scale confrontation between the two countries. In fact, it said, Baluevski’s visit to Washington in early December demonstrated that even military-to-military relations continued rather normally, in spite of the continuing harsh rhetoric. [12] According to the Director of the Moscow branch of the Institute for Global Security, Ivan Safranchuk, Moscow was not seeking a return to the Cold War: it only wanted to “correct” the “excessive” concessions of the last years of the Cold War, which is why Russia has taken such an unyielding position on issues such as missile defense and the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty. Safranchuk argued that the chief danger is the perceptual gap between the two sides: the West continues to underestimate Russia’s power and determination, while Russia overestimates its power and influence. He concluded that this gap could lead to a genuinely serious confrontation. [13]

Iranian Missile Tests Illustrates Differences in Threat Assessment
As a result of the falling-out in the aftermath of the Rice-Gates October visit to Moscow, Russia has effectively returned to its earlier position: deployment of U.S. missile defense assets in Europe must be suspended and, in the meantime, Russian radars in Armavir and Gabala should be used to monitor the Iranian missile program to determine whether and when a missile threat to Europe and the United States materializes. In a late November 2007 interview, Baluevski provided details regarding the data that the Armavir-Gabala operation should track.

First and foremost, he explained, one needs to have reliable data that a flight-test has actually taken place, the time and place of the launch, and the location where the missile or its warhead hit the ground. “This information could determine whether claims about missile launches are credible or [whether] they are only [Iranian] self-advertising.” Second, such surveillance should help decide whether the launch in question involved a satellite launch vehicle or a military ballistic missile system. Finally, the threat assessment system should provide information about the trajectory and the time of the separation of the front section (warhead) or other elements of the missile. Baluevksi concluded, “This data is decisive in shaping objective assessments of a real, as opposed to an imaginary, threat.” With this kind of monitoring system in place, participants in the integrated threat assessment system would have sufficient time to take countermeasures, if necessary. [14]

At the end of November, Iran reported that it had tested a new missile named “Ashura,” with a 2,000-kilometer (km) range. [15] This test provided an unexpected opportunity for Russia to track and evaluate an Iranian missile launch. About a week after the launch, during his visit to Washington, Baluevski stated that Russia did not – at that time – have information confirming the range of the missile. “I cannot tell you with certainty right now that the launch in fact took place and that the missile flew 2,000 km,” he stated. Baluevski further explained that he could not rule out the possibility that the announcement of the test represented a “political bluff” by Tehran. He also added that the United States refused to share data about the Iranian missile with Russia. [16] One week later, at a press conference on December 15, Baluevski was even more specific; he said that the Iranian missile “supposedly could have flown 2,000 km, but did not,” apparently suggesting that Russian surveillance systems tracked the launch and did not confirm the range announced by the Iranians. [17]

Russian Military Claims Launch of U.S. Interceptor Could Trigger a Nuclear War
At the December 15 joint press conference in Moscow, Kislyak and Baluevksi raised the level of the disagreements with Washington on missile defense to a new high. Kislyak announced that Russia was “not satisfied” with consultations on the missile defense issue with the United States in Vienna that had followed the October two-by-two meeting in Moscow. [18] Baluevski, in turn, declared that he believed the United States “has not ruled out the possibility of a direct global conflict” with Russia, and these plans are the main reason for the deployment of a missile defense system in Europe. [19]

Furthermore, Baluevski asserted, American plans are not limited to the interceptor base in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic; in the future interceptor bases will appear near the radar at Vardo, in Norway, and near the Fylingdales radar, in Great Britain. These three missile defense bases will cover almost the entire European part of Russia and nearly half of Russia’s land-based strategic missile (ICBMs) deployments. [20] U.S. assurances that the number of interceptors in Poland will not exceed ten “are unconvincing,” he said, stressing that this number could be increased “any moment.” [21]

Baluevski also warned that the United States plans to deploy interceptors in Poland that are similar in shape and dimensions to American ICBMs; furthermore, the intercept of a hypothetical Iranian missile could have the same trajectory as that of an ICBM targeted at Russia, and thus Russia could mistake such an intercept for an American attack. “We are talking about the provocation of a retaliatory strike resulting from a mistaken identification of an interceptor launch,” Baluevski said, adding that Russia has an “automated” early warning system, which works with only minimal human participation. [22]

Baluevski phrased the latter point with utmost care; he did not refer to a launch-on-warning system, but to an early warning system. The latter does, indeed, work with minimal human participation, while decisions to launch a responsive strike are apparently not “automated” and involve Russian political and military leaders. The workings of both the early warning and the response strike decision chain were demonstrated by the 1995 “Black Brant” incident, involving a Norwegian research rocket. In that case, the early warning system automatically detected the launch, identified it as a possible Trident I (C-4) launch, and alerted relevant decision-making echelons. The situation was then evaluated by responsible elements of the Ministry of Defense and personally by then-President of Russia Boris Yeltsin. Eventually, the rocket was determined not to be dangerous, and the heightened alert status was downgraded. [23]

On December 17, Baluevski’s statement was amplified by Commander of Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF) Nikolai Solovtsov, who declared:

Nikolai Sokov – Monterey Institute James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies