In early April 2006, an article by two U.S. academics, arguing that the United States is gaining nuclear supremacy over Russia, triggered a firm, if somewhat delayed and indirect rejoinder from the Russian government. Contemporaneously, Russian President Vladimir Putin took steps to ensure that Russia’s ability to manufacture and maintain nuclear weapons would be unaffected as the Russian nuclear complex undergoes a major reorganization.

Scholars Claim U.S. Gaining First-Strike Capability
The claims that the United States is gaining a dramatic strategic advantage over Russia were made in an article entitled, “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy,” by Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, which appeared in late February 2006 in the prestigious U.S. journal Foreign Affairs [1]

The article predicted that over the next decade, the United States would acquire a first strike capability vis-à-vis Russia, as the result of two parallel processes – the continuing modernization of the American strategic nuclear arsenal (including improved delivery systems) and the continuing degradation of Russian strategic weapons and early warning capabilities. The notion that Russia might lose the ultimate security guarantee and the most important vestige of its great power status is anathema to that country’s elite and public; consequently the relatively restrained reaction to the Lieber-Press article is somewhat unexpected.
The article’s authors summarize their position in the following terms:

Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States’ nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia’s arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China’s nuclear forces. Unless Washington’s policies change or Moscow and Beijing take steps to increase the size and readiness of their forces, Russia and China -- and the rest of the world -- will live in the shadow of U.S. nuclear primacy for many years to come. [2]

When the article first appeared, the Russian Ministry of Defense pointedly refrained from commenting on it in depth. Chief of the General Staff Yuri Baluevski waited a week after initial reports on the article in the Russian media before speaking about it, and then merely noted in passing that Russia “has and will continue to have sufficient deterrence forces,” and no longer seeks numerical parity with the United States as the Soviet Union had during the Cold War. [3]

In the absence of significant official comment, the first substantive rejoinders to Lieber and Press came from non-governmental experts, primarily retired military officers. Figures like Vladimir Dvorkin (the former director of the research institute of the Strategic Rocket Forces), Viktor Yesin (the former chief of staff of the Strategic Rocket Forces), and Pavel Zolotarev (former deputy chief of staff of the Russian Defense Council) all declared that the article reflected poor scholarship. Zolotarev noted that the kind of computer modeling utilized by Lieber and Press was useful only to study the impact of individual variables upon the strategic balance and was ill-suited to predict the outcome of an actual exchange with strikes. [4] A prominent civilian expert, Sergey Karaganov, even remarked that he would not have accepted this research as a third-year course paper, much less as an MA dissertation. [5]

Military and civilian experts were unanimous in declaring that Russia would retain both a secure second-strike or at least a strike-on warning capability vis-à-vis the United States. While the number of operational weapons in the Russian strategic arsenal continues to decline, they argued that because of the superior technical attributes of Russian deterrent systems, the United States would never be able to achieve a decisive superiority that would rule out a powerful Russian retaliatory response. In particular, these analysts cited the capabilities of new Russian warheads to penetrate missile defenses and the improved survivability of Russian land-based strategic systems, whose proportion of highly survivable mobile systems is growing.
Responding to the argument by Lieber and Press that the United States could exploit blind spots in the Russian early warning system as part of a first-strike strategy, the Russian experts stressed that Russia was working aggressively to restore its early warning capabilities. Viktor Yesin, for example, noted that the space components of the system would be restored by 2008 and the land-based components by 2012. [6]

The analysts were in near universal agreement, moreover, that the authors of the article had ulterior goals in writing it– either to weaken Russia by drawing it into a new arms race; to gloat over Russia’s imminent subjugation by the United States; or to belittle Russia as a punishment for the growing independence of Russian foreign and domestic policy. Most linked the Foreign Affairs article to a report by a high-level panel convened by the Council on Foreign Relations – the publisher of Foreign Affairs – which was released almost simultaneously with the Lieber-Press article. The report, “Russia’s Wrong Direction,” [7] was highly critical of Putin’s curbs on domestic political activity and his increasing uncooperative foreign policy. Only Pavel Zolotarev argued that the Foreign Affairs piece was not linked to broader and more sinister U.S. policy goals. [8]

In early April 2006, official Moscow began to respond more fully to the Foreign Affairs article, through Chief Designer and Director-General of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology (MITT) Yuri Solomonov, who gave a detailed interview on the issue of Russia’s deterrent to Voyenno-Promyshlennyi Kurier, published on April 5, and spoke further on the subject at an April 11 press conference at the Interfax news agency. [9] [10] Russia’s new strategic nuclear posture, said Solomonov, will take shape by 2015-2020, with the new configuration of Russian nuclear forces to remain in place for roughly 20 years, until 2040-2045. The strategic force will be based on approximately 2,000 nuclear warheads. The backbone of the nuclear triad, to be composed of long-range bombers, ballistic missile submarines, and land-based intercontinental missiles (ICBMs), will be the Topol-M ICBM, to be deployed in two basing modes (silo-based and mobile-based) and the Bulava submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM). He noted the first regiment of road-mobile Topol-M ICBMs (consisting of nine launchers) will be deployed in 2006. The first Borey class strategic submarine Yuri Dolgoruki equipped with Bulava SLBMs will be operational in 2008, and subsequently a new Borey class ballistic missile submarine will enter service approximately each year until the full complement of new subs has been deployed. The third flight test of the Bulava will be conducted in June or July 2006; the full testing program will consist of at least ten launches.

Solomonov stated, somewhat enigmatically, that Russia “is prepared” to deploy up to three warheads on Topol-M ICBMs. (Previously, Commander of Strategic Rocket Forces Nikolai Solovtsov discussed future MIRVing of Topol-M as a foregone decision – see “Russia to Deploy Defense-Penetrating ICBM,” in the January 2006 issue of WMD Insights. Bulava will have between six and ten warheads, he stated. Solomonov emphasized that neither the existing, nor the prospective national missile defense system in the United States or any other country (he mentioned Germany, France, and Japan in this regard) will be able to detect either the Topol-M or the Bulava, much less intercept them. Perhaps of greatest interest was Solomonov’s declaration that Russia’s strategic modernization programs are financed in full; in past years he complained on several occasions that the government was not allocating sufficient resources for these programs and that monies allocated in the budget were not transferred in full to the programs. Finally, in an unmistakable response to the Foreign Affairs article, Solomonov declared that in the future, as today, the Russian strategic arsenal will be able to deter a potential first strike by any other nuclear power.

It remains unclear, however, why the official response to the piece was entrusted to Solomonov – a well known and undoubtedly knowledgeable manager of a defense enterprise, but not an official representative of the Ministry of Defense. One possibility is that the choice was made so that the Russian defense establishment could mount a response to the U.S. authors’ charges without exposing top Defense Ministry figures to sharp questioning or personal criticism regarding the visible deterioration of the Russian strategic triad. It is also possible that the choice was made to avoid giving added legitimacy to the U.S. authors’ claims by elevating the debate to the official level.

Putin Reaffirms Need to Sustain Nuclear Weapons Complex
Coincidentally, at the end of March 2006, as the Foreign Affairs article was receiving growing attention in the Russian media, President Putin convened a special meeting on the status of Russia’s nuclear weapons complex. [11] Participation in the meeting was restricted to roughly a dozen officials, representing the Ministry of Defense, the Russian Agency for Nuclear Energy (Rosatom), and relevant elements of the staffs of the Presidential Administration and the Cabinet. In contrast to the usual practice, the meeting was held at Putin’s official residence outside Moscow, Novo-Ogarevo, instead of in the Kremlin. Publicly available information was unusually sparse, beyond an official press release. Available information indicates that important decisions were adopted in Novo-Ogarevo, but their substance has not been disclosed.

The meeting was apparently a follow-on to a much larger meeting on the reform of Russia’s civilian nuclear industry (see “Reform of Russian Nuclear Industry Takes Shape,” in the April 2006 issue of WMD Insights) and was apparently intended to decide the future of the nuclear weapons complex, as Rosatom embarks on transforming itself into a market-oriented, profit-generating enterprise. [12]

At the Novo-Ogarevo session,Vladimir Putin announced that “any modernization of the nuclear sector should not affect” the nuclear weapons infrastructure and that Russia would maintain the number of weapons “minimally sufficient for deterrence.” “The analysis of the trends of the international situation,” said Putin, “forces Russia to regard nuclear deterrence as a key element of guaranteeing its security and the nuclear weapons complex as the material foundation of the state policy of nuclear deterrence. [13]

The participants in the Novo-Ogarevo meeting decided to develop “measures on a sustainable functioning of the nuclear weapons complex,” within the context of Rosatom’s on-going reform and reorganization; apparently the measures will go beyond what already has been done to strengthen the nuclear weapons infrastructure in previous years. Putin placed special emphasis on the need to ensure the reliability of nuclear weapons without testing, but the official statement did not elaborate on how exactly this goal was to be achieved.

By all indications, the Russian government has decided to separate the civilian and the defense parts of the Russian nuclear industry in a decisive break with the Soviet-era model. It is difficult to predict how successful this move will be: the two parts of Rosatom have been closely intertwined for decades, and it is possible that conflicts will arise as the elements of the Russian nuclear complex are divided.

It is unlikely that the Foreign Affairs article, which was receiving considerable attention at the time, was a factor in Putin’s decision to convene the session on the nuclear weapons infrastructure. Nonetheless, Putin’s statement that the international situation “forces Russia to regard nuclear deterrence as a key element of guaranteeing its security…” suggests that the sufficiency of Russia’s strategic capabilities remains a subject of considerable interest at the top levels of the Russian government.

Nikolai Sokov – Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies