Samizdat – August 16, 2022
Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine has served to dispel the myth of Western ‘superweapons’, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said during an international security conference on Tuesday.
Speaking at the forum, part of the ongoing Army 2022 expo near Moscow, Shoigu claimed that the weapons provided to Kiev have not had a significant effect on the battlefield, as has been claimed by the West.
“Initially, it was about the supply of Javelin anti-tank systems and some unique drones. More recently, HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems and long-range howitzers were being promoted to the role of superweapons by Westerners. However, all of these weapons are being ground up in battle,” the minister said.
Shoigu added that Russian forces are “carefully examining” the Western weapon systems seized on the battlefield in Ukraine, and are “taking into account the features and specific qualities” of these weapons when planning combat operations.
The minister’s statement comes after US Defense Secretary LLoyd Austin announced last week that the weapons sent to Kiev by Washington have proven themselves effective on the battlefield and pledged to send more arms to Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”
The US has approved more than $54 billion of economic and military aid to Ukraine since February, while the UK has committed nearly $3 billion in military aid alone, and the EU has spent another $2.5 billion on arms for Kiev.
A large range of equipment, from rifles and grenades to anti-tank missiles and multiple launch rocket systems, has left Western armories for Ukraine, with most entering the country through Poland.
Moscow, meanwhile, has repeatedly warned the West against sending weapons to Kiev, saying it only prolongs the conflict and increases the number of casualties.
By Lucas Leiroz | August 15, 2022
The West continues to insist on indefinitely prolonging the suffering of the Ukrainian people. The policy of sending military aid seems to have no limits. In addition to financial remittances and arms shipments, Western countries are also mobilizing to give military instructions to Kiev. Considering the war crimes and human rights violations repeatedly committed by Ukrainian forces, supporting Kiev militarily means co-participating in the crimes – and the West must be judged responsible for that.
On 12 August, Canada and Sweden announced that they had sent teams of military instructors to participate in a joint program with the UK to train Ukrainian troops. Currently, London leads a project of military assistance to Ukraine by training soldiers with Western instructors. The objective is to pass on the technical and practical knowledge necessary for the Ukrainians to use the military equipment received from the West in the best possible way, thus helping Kiev to continue its “resistance” against the Russian special military operation.
Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said that 225 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) officers will be sent to the UK to participate in the project. The first phase of participation would consist of a four-month period of joint military actions, in which Ukrainian combatants would be instructed in knowledge “related to frontline combat, weapons handling, first aid, field craft, patrol tactics, and include the law of armed contact”. She also made it clear that, in addition to training soldiers, Ottawa will also be contributing by sending 39 armored vehicles to Kiev.
On the same day, the Swedish government also made it clear that it intends to actively participate in this London-led international mobilization. Stockholm announced the deployment of 120 military instructors to participate in the program. The act follows a previous announcement, in which Finland also committed to act in the training, albeit in a more moderate way, sending about 20 instructors. This is just another step towards militarization, revealing the bellicose turn that both countries have taken since the beginning of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, when Sweden and Finland started to react irrationally to Moscow’s measures, even asking for NATO membership.
In fact, it must be noted that countries like Canada, Sweden and Finland are historically weak nations from a military point of view, whose security has always depended on two key factors: neutrality or automatic alignment. In the case of the Scandinavian nations, neutrality has always been a central factor, which began to be reversed as local governments adopted more favorable stances towards NATO – culminating in the current application for membership. In the Canadian case, however, the pillar of defense policy has always been automatic alignment with the US, complying with all decisions taken by Wasington in exchange for a place in the security umbrella.
These countries remain militarily weak. Their participation in the program does not imply real changes. Most Canadian, Swedish and Finnish military officers do not even have real war experience, which shows the practical irrelevance of being participants in the UK-led project. More than that: the very existence of a training program is of questionable relevance. Although the UK and other NATO countries have great military expertise and undoubtedly have qualified instructors to train their allies, the short training time makes it almost impossible for soldiers to prepare properly.
British military assistance to Kiev with training of personnel is not new. Since 2014 London has been assuming projects to train Ukrainian soldiers. Some of these programs took place publicly, while others were conducted secretly – such as the clandestine “Operation Orbital”, in which more than 22,000 Ukrainian troops were trained by British agents. What the UK is doing now is simply continuing its actions of the last eight years, with the only difference that now NATO’s plans for Ukraine have already failed. The aim is no longer to arm Kiev so that it can become a local power against Russia – it is simply to prolong the conflict indefinitely in order to “postpone” Russian victory.
For the UK, continuing the instruction is an opportunity to encourage the use of Western military equipment and thus trying to extend the conflict. For Canada, Sweden and Finland, it is a mere gesture of “political goodwill”, without any relevance. But, above all, those involved in this training and in all forms of military aid to Kiev share in becoming co-responsible for the Ukrainian atrocities. Since it is proven that Western-trained Ukrainian soldiers use Western weapons against civilians in Donbass, then the West itself is a participant in these crimes and should be sanctioned for doing so.
Lucas Leiroz is aresearcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
By Drago Bosnic | August 15, 2022
As America is trying to shift the blame to Russia and China, it ignores that it was the US aggression against the world which caused the proliferation of thermonuclear weapons, as countries decided they don’t want to be held at gunpoint by the political West.
For nearly 80 years, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) has been keeping the relative global peace, preventing superpowers from going into a head-on confrontation. One of the stabilizing factors was the fact there were only two superpowers – the Soviet Union and the United States. This made negotiating arms control deals much easier than would be the case nowadays. The reason is that in the last 30 years, global geopolitical architecture has changed dramatically. The fall of the USSR almost completely dismantled the former Eastern Bloc. This led to the rise of new superpowers, resulting in a different level of geopolitical rivalry, the most important part of which is strategic dominance.
At the same time, the geopolitical interests of global players remained largely unchanged. Russia, although smaller and less powerful than the USSR remained a military superpower as it still had thousands of thermonuclear warheads, although its conventional forces went through a severe degradation. This changed in the 2000s, when Russia started regaining its strength. At the same time, China grew exponentially stronger, giving the Asian giant a virtually universal recognition of superpower status. One notable exception to this was (and to an extent, still is) its thermonuclear arsenal.
For decades, China has been maintaining a minimalist approach to its strategic security. This doctrine boils down to the idea of maintaining a minimal force required to inflict unacceptable damage to an opponent, regardless of how much more powerful the said rival is. It stood in stark contrast to the offensive-oriented nuclear posturing of the US and the USSR, both of which built enormous arsenals aimed at outgunning each other. China started changing this, as its blistering economic strength started translating into geopolitical and military power. And indeed, in the last 2-3 years, China has built hundreds of new missile silos, indicating that it’s moving toward a full superpower status which would help improve its strategic security beyond the Asia-Pacific region.
The US is closely following this process, as the Washington decision-makers and the Pentagon strategic planners are now faced with the nightmarish prospect of having to face not one, but two near-peer adversaries. The belligerent thalassocracy is now “furiously writing a new nuclear deterrence theory to tackle the new threat”, said the supreme commander of America’s nuclear arsenal. Top brass at US Strategic Command has been contemplating strategies to face this new reality and the ways of “how threats from Moscow and Beijing have changed this year”, said STRATCOM chief Navy Admiral Chas Richard. Admiral said he “delivered the first-ever real-world commander’s assessment on what was going to take to avoid nuclear war” after Russia launched its counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe.
Richard claims that “China has further complicated the threat”, and the admiral made an unusual request to experts assembled at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, last Thursday, August 11:
“We have to account for three-party [threats],” Richard said. “That is unprecedented in this nation’s history. We have never faced two peer nuclear-capable opponents at the same time, who have to be deterred differently. The need for a new deterrence theory comes as “institutional expertise on avoiding nuclear war has atrophied. Even our operational deterrence expertise is just not what it was at the end of the Cold War. So we have to reinvigorate this intellectual effort. And we can start by rewriting deterrence theory, I’ll tell you we’re furiously doing that out at STRATCOM,” he added.
According to Defense One, STRATCOM “took steps to evolve past the traditional nuclear deterrence theory of MAD (mutually assured destruction), which posits that any use of nuclear weapons would result in retaliatory use and total annihilation of all parties,” which, as previously mentioned, has been preventing nuclear war for nearly eight decades. The idea of going beyond MAD is quite controversial, to say the least. Although quite a rudimentary concept at its core, it’s been proven to work, preventing global thermonuclear confrontation, including during the Cuban missile crisis, which is arguably the closest we’ve got to a world-ending war.
“Russia and the PRC have the ability to unilaterally, whenever they decide, they can escalate to any level of violence in any domain. They can do it worldwide and they can do it with any instrument of national power. We’re just not used to dealing with competitions and confrontations like that,” Richard concluded.
As the admiral was trying to shift the blame to Russia and China, he ignored the simple fact that it was the sheer US belligerence and aggression against the world which caused the proliferation of thermonuclear weapons, as countries decided they don’t want to be held at gunpoint by the political West. Now, the US is faced not just with old rivals like Russia, but also with China, which is responding to numerous US provocations, including in Taiwan. As a result, any new strategic arms control negotiations will put the US in a very difficult position, as neither Russia nor China trust the political West to hold its end of the deal. Thus, the US will need to either escalate a new arms race (the one in which it’s already lagging behind) or come to an agreement which will still result in the need to divide its strategic forces (limited by a treaty) equally against Russia and China, while the two (Eur)Asian giants have only the US to focus on.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Samizdat – 12.08.2022
BEIJING – Beijing cannot ignore the deployment of US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems in South Korea as it undermines China’s strategic security, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Friday.
“China has always respected South Korea’s sovereignty and understood its security concerns, but the US deployment of THAAD missile systems in South Korea undermines China’s strategic security, and Beijing cannot ignore this,” Wang told a briefing.
Heads of foreign ministries of South Korea and China during a meeting in the Chinese city of Qingdao earlier this week, exchanged views and expressed their positions on the THAAD matter. The parties agreed that this issue should not be a stumbling block between Beijing and Seoul.
“We hope that the South Korean side will continue to properly resolve this issue in accordance with the mutual understanding and consensus reached at the meeting of foreign ministers of the two countries,” Wang added.
THAAD is an anti-ballistic missile defense system capable of shooting down short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The deployment of additional THAAD missiles in South Korea was an initiative put forward by President Yoon Suk-yeol in January, when he was still a candidate for the top post.
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | August 9, 2022
Amid unprecedented Chinese military drills surrounding Taiwan, a top defense official said the US will carry out Taiwan Strait transits and freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in waters claimed by China.
Colin Kahl, the undersecretary for defense policy, said the Navy is expected to send warships on FONOPS in the coming days. “We will continue to stand by our allies and partners. So even as China tries to kind of chip away at the status quo, our policy is to maintain the status quo with [a] free and open Indo-Pacific which frankly, is what I think most of the countries in the region would prefer,” Kahl said.
Beijing routinely denounces FONOPs and Taiwan Strait transits as the US meddling in China’s internal affairs. The US has increased its military activity in the region under the Biden administration, leading to increased tensions with Xi’s government.
Beijing has carried out several military exercises in the waters around Taiwan since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a high-profile visit to Taipei last week. China views the trip by Pelosi as a violation of the ‘One China’ policy that has been the foundation of the Washington-Beijing relationship for decades.
China currently has 13 warships in waters off Taiwan’s shores. Beijing has taken several other unprecedented steps like sending warplanes over the median line in the Taiwan Strait and firing missiles over Taiwan. A Chinese defense official warned the drills could become real military operations at any point.
Taiwan has responded to Beijing’s war games with its own military drills. Taipei kicked off two days of military exercises involving 700 troops firing live rounds.
Despite the increased Chinese military activity targeting Taiwan, both Pelosi and Kahl defended the Speaker’s trip to Taipei. On Tuesday, Pelosi said the visit was “absolutely” worth it and Kahl claimed, “Legislatures from around the world go to Taiwan. Our Congress is an independent body of our government. Nothing about the visit and visit change one iota of the US government’s policy toward Taiwan or towards China.”
Samizdat | August 9, 2022
The deployment of US atomic weapons on the territory of non-nuclear NATO members goes against the nonproliferation treaty (NPT), increases the risk of conflict, and hinders disarmament efforts. This was the message the Russian delegation delivered to the UN conference on nuclear nonproliferation in New York, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said on Tuesday.
“NATO openly declared itself a nuclear alliance. There are US nuclear weapons on the territory of non-nuclear allied states in the bloc,” said Igor Vishnevetsky, deputy director for nonproliferation and arms control at the Russian Foreign Ministry.
In contravention of Articles I and II of the NPT, non-nuclear members of NATO are taking part in “practical testing” of the use of atomic weapons, Vishnevetsky added. Such actions “not only continue to be a significant factor negatively affecting international and European security, but also increase the risk of nuclear conflict and generally act as a brake on efforts in the field of nuclear disarmament.”
Moscow’s position is that “US nuclear weapons must be withdrawn to national territory, the infrastructure for their deployment in Europe must be eliminated, and NATO’s ‘joint nuclear missions’ must be terminated,” Vishnevetsky told the UN conference, according to a transcript posted by the Foreign Ministry.
The US Air Force currently has an estimated 150 nuclear bombs at NATO bases in Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The Russian delegate also touched on AUKUS, the September 2021 deal that envisioned the US and the UK providing atomic-powered submarines to Australia. This partnership “creates prerequisite for the start of a new arms race in the Asia-Pacific region,” Vishnevetsky said.
The withdrawal of US atomic weapons from non-nuclear NATO states was one of the key planks of Russia’s security proposal, presented to the US and NATO in December 2021. Neither Washington nor the military bloc addressed it in the responses they sent to Moscow in January.
At the very start of the conference, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of “reckless, dangerous nuclear saber-rattling” aimed at “those supporting Ukraine’s self-defense.” Russian diplomat Andrey Belousov responded that Moscow put its nuclear forces on alert to deter NATO aggression, and that the conflict in Ukraine does not rise to Russia’s nuclear threshold.
Belousov has also addressed statements by US officials about new negotiations on strategic arms control with Moscow, saying that Russia has so far received only “declarative statements,” but no “concrete proposals.”
Samizdat | August 8, 2022
The US Department of Defense has announced its largest military aid package for Kiev since the Russia-Ukraine conflict began in February, planning an additional $1 billion in weapons shipments to the former Soviet republic.
The latest batch of weaponry was approved under President Joe Biden’s so-called “drawdown authority,” the 18th such package for Ukraine, the Pentagon said on Monday. It will include more ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers that the US previously sent to Ukraine, as well as 1,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles, C-4 explosives, Claymore anti-personnel mines, and tens of thousands of artillery and anti-aircraft rounds.
The Pentagon also plans to provide 50 armored medical treatment vehicles, plus more pallets of medical supplies and equipment. Biden has now approved about $9.8 billion in military aid to Kiev since he took office in January 2021, including $9 billion since Russian tanks rolled across Ukraine’s borders. Congress approved $40 billion in overall new aid to Ukraine in May after previously providing $13.6 billion.
“To meet Ukraine’s evolving battlefield requirements, the United States will continue to work with its allies and partners to provide Ukraine with key capabilities calibrated to make a difference,” the Pentagon said. The latest aid package includes the types of weaponry “the Ukrainian people are using so effectively to defend their country.”
Ukrainian officials have touted the effectiveness of the US-made HIMARS system, calling it a “game-changer” on the battlefield. However, the Russian Defense Ministry has claimed to have destroyed six of the 16 HIMARS launchers that the US has sent to Ukraine, as well as ammunition stockpiles.
Only about 30% of the weapons sent to Ukraine by the US and its allies have actually made it to the front lines, according to a CBS News investigative report that was released on Thursday. Getting weapons to the troops involves navigating a complex network of “power lords, oligarchs [and] political players,” the outlet cited Lithuanian aid group founder Jonas Ohman as saying. However, facing pressure from the Ukrainian government and its supporters, CBS censored itself on Sunday, deciding to cancel a documentary that it had planned to broadcast on the issue and revising the text version of its report.
By Ron Paul | August 8, 2022
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “surprise” trip to Taiwan last week should be “Exhibit A” as to why interventionism is dangerous, deadly, and dumb. Though she claimed her visit won some sort of victory for democracy over autocracy, the stopover achieved nothing of the sort. It was a pointless gesture that brought us closer to military conflict with zero benefits.
As Col. Doug Macgregor said of Pelosi’s trip on a recent episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, “statesmanship involves advancing American interests at the least cost to the American people. None of that is in play here. … Posturing is not statesmanship.”
Pelosi’s trip was no outlier. Such counterproductive posturing is much celebrated by both parties in Washington. Neoconservative Senators Bob Menendez and Lindsey Graham were thrilled with Pelosi’s stop in Taipei and used it as a springboard to push for new legislation that would essentially declare war on China by declaring Taiwan a “major non-NATO ally.”
The “one China” policy that, while perhaps not perfect, has kept the peace for more than 40 years is to be scrapped and replaced with one sure to provoke a war. Who benefits?
Foolishly taking the US to the brink of war with Russia over Ukraine is evidently not enough for Washington’s bipartisan warmongering class. Risking a nuclear war on two fronts, with both Russia and China, is apparently the only way for Washington to show the rest of the world it’s serious.
The Washington Post’s neoconservative columnist Josh Rogin accurately captures the mindset in Washington DC with a recent article titled, “The skeptics are wrong: The US can confront both China and Russia.”
For Washington’s foreign policy “experts,” those of us who don’t believe a war with both Russia and China is a great idea are written off as “skeptics.” Count me as one of the skeptics!
During the Cold War there were times of heightened tension, but even in the darkest days the idea that nuclear war with China and the Soviet Union could be a solution was held only by a few madmen. Now, with the ideological struggles of the Cold War a decades-old memory, such an argument makes even less sense. Yet this is what Washington is selling.
The US fighting a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine and Nancy Pelosi provoking China nearly to the point of war over Taiwan is meant to show the world how tough we are. In reality, it demonstrates the opposite. The drunken man in a bar challenging everyone to a fight is not tough. He’s foolish. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose from his display of bravado.
That is interventionism at its core: a foolish policy that provokes nothing but anger overseas, benefits no one in the US except the special interests, and leaves the rest of us much poorer and worse off.
There may be plenty to criticize about China’s government and policies. They are far from perfect, particularly in protection of civil liberties. But have we already forgotten that our own government shut down the country for two years over a virus, and then forced a huge number of Americans to take an experimental shot that is proving to be as worthless as it is dangerous? Let’s look at the log in our own eye before we start lobbing missiles overseas.
Samizdat | August 8, 2022
Ukrainian forces have “had the American military at their side” from the start of the conflict with Russia, the magazine Causeur cited a “well-placed analyst” in French intelligence as saying. Pentagon-hired contractors are allegedly “everywhere on the battlefield.”
The claim was published by the right-leaning outlet last week in an analysis of the five-month-long Russia-Ukraine conflict, which, it stated, “is not the fight of David against Goliath,” contrary to what many people believe.
“In Ukraine, the Pentagon for the first time subcontracted large-scale warfare,” the magazine cited its source as saying. These “mercenaries” come in addition to the “gigantic” military aid provided to Kiev by Washington, and are not necessarily frontline fighters, according to Causeur.
As an example of ‘subcontracted’ warfare, it cited the widely-publicized supply of SpaceX satellite internet access for Ukrainian military officials. CEO Elon Musk initially framed this as an act of charitable support, but media reports later revealed that it was paid for with US taxpayer money.
The US decided not to involve its troops in Ukraine, claiming it did not want a direct confrontation with Russia. However, the French magazine said Washington is apparently ignoring the threat of escalation as it pours weapons and private manpower into Ukraine for the sake of “bleeding” Russia, which, the US government hopes, will result in a strategic defeat for Moscow.
The magazine also said that Russia appears to be slowly gaining the upper hand over Ukraine as its superior firepower is prevailing over Kiev’s eight-year preparations for a fight for Donbass. The heavy damage caused by Russian artillery and aerial forces have led to dissertations and insubordination among the Ukrainian troops, it said. If the Russian forces progress beyond the heavily urbanized Donbass with its unfavorable terrain, the balance of power could quickly shift in Moscow’s favor, the report said.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
Samizdat | August 6, 2022
Russia has not received any concrete proposals to resume talks on replacing the landmark New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), despite recent remarks by US President Joe Biden on the matter, a senior Russian diplomat said on Friday. He also signaled that the negotiations should be held without any preconditions.
“Saying that you’re ready doesn’t mean you are,” the deputy head of Moscow’s delegation to the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, Andrey Belousov, told reporters.
According to the diplomat, a real commitment to resume dialogue with Russia “should be supported by concrete proposals, concrete signals” that Moscow could view as a firm decision on the part of the US to “resume close cooperation with Russia on a wide range of issues of strategic stability.”
“At the moment, we are not receiving such signals, except for these declarative statements, including those coming from the highest level,” he added.
Belousov noted that the timing of the US statements on arms control should also be taken into account.
“It is clear that the timing was chosen on purpose. The statement by the US president was made before the Conference [on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons] intentionally to show that the US is still a state you can cooperate with and which is ready to engage in dialogue,” the Russian representative said.
According to Belousov, Moscow does not think that the US is ready for constructive talks on the New START treaty that would accommodate the interests of all parties, at least not at this stage. He also noted that Russia views the preliminary conditions for the dialogue set by Washington as “unacceptable.”
“The statement by the US president, which, as we believe, reflects a softening of the US stance on resuming dialogue with Russia on a wide range of issues of strategic stability, is linked to some sort of a preliminary condition,” Belousov said, adding that it has not been formulated in black and white, but rather looks like a hint.
The high-ranking diplomat recalled that previous statements on the matter were “more specific and understandable.”
“There were specific conditions under which the United States would agree to resume this dialogue with us,” he said. “But in any case, no matter how these preconditions are phrased, we deem them unacceptable.”
The diplomat echoed comments made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who said on Wednesday that the US had not made any “requests on reopening this negotiating process.” The West, he said at the time, “has developed a habit of making announcements on the microphone and then forgetting about them.”
Earlier this month, Biden revealed that Washington was ready to negotiate “a new arms control framework” with Russia that could potentially replace the New START treaty when it expires in 2026. The landmark document, which entered into force in 2011 and was extended in 2021 after Biden’s inauguration, puts caps on the number of strategic nuclear missiles and warheads held by Russia and the US.
By Scott Ritter | Samizdat | August 6, 2022
This week, in an address to the Tenth Review Conference for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – which had convened at the United Nations Headquarters in New York – US President Joe Biden made a forceful appeal to Russia regarding the need to resume arms control talks. “Today,” Biden said, “my Administration is ready to expeditiously negotiate a new arms control framework to replace New START when it expires in 2026.” But, he added, “negotiation requires a willing partner operating in good faith. And Russia’s brutal and unprovoked aggression in Ukraine has shattered peace in Europe and constitutes an attack on the fundamental tenets of international order. In this context, Russia should demonstrate that it is ready to resume work on nuclear arms control with the United States.”
Biden has made arms control a central theme in his dealings with Russia. Indeed, one of his first major acts as president was to sign on to a five-year extension of the Obama-era New START treaty, which had been allowed to languish under the Trump administration. “Extending the New START Treaty,” Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, declared in a press release issued at the time, “ensures we have verifiable limits on Russian ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers until February 5, 2026. The New START Treaty’s verification regime,” Blinken noted, “enables us to monitor Russian compliance with the treaty and provides us with greater insight into Russia’s nuclear posture, including through data exchanges and onsite inspections that allow US inspectors to have eyes on Russian nuclear forces and facilities.”
Blinken then added a critical statement. “The United States,” he declared, “has assessed the Russian Federation to be in compliance with its New START Treaty obligations every year since the treaty entered into force in 2011.”
Unfortunately, Russia cannot say the same about the US. Since 2018, Russia has accused the United States of “converting a certain number of Trident II SLBM launchers and В-52Н heavy bombers, in the way that the Russian Federation cannot confirm that these strategic arms have been rendered incapable of employing SLBMs or nuclear armaments for heavy bombers.” The bottom line is that America accomplished its conversions in a manner which allowed them to be easily reversed, something Russia believed circumvented the intent of New START, which was the permanent reduction of each side’s nuclear arsenals.
The US rejected the Russian allegation, noting that New START does not explicitly require the conversions on either the Trident II SLBM launchers or the B-52H bombers to be irreversible. As long as the treaty was in force, the US contended, Russia could use its inspection provisions to verify that the goal of “rendering incapable” was still in place. The Russians, with reason, believe that the US position violated both the spirit and intent of treaty, a position which carried over into the extension of New START.
But Russia’s problems with America’s compliance are just one of the issues when it comes to judging whether to trust Washington’s good faith on arms control overall. The US has walked away from three foundational treaties in the past two decades – the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty in 2002, the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty in 2019, and the Open Skies Treaty in 2020. Likewise, America’s intransigence over fairly adapting the conventional forces in Europe (CFE) treaty to reflect post-Cold War realities led to its demise. New START is the last man standing when it comes to arms control accords between Russia and the US.
Biden tried to further strategic arms control with Russia, discussing the matter with President Vladimir Putin during their Geneva Summit in June 2021. The two leaders agreed to pursue “an integrated bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue” that would “seek to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.” Indeed, two such meetings were on July 28 and September 30, 2021. Following the conclusion of the second round of talks, the negotiators agreed to “form two interagency expert working groups” covering the “Principles and Objectives for Future Arms Control” and the “Capabilities and Actions with Strategic Effects.”
But then came the crisis in Ukraine, and the talks gave way to the issue of security guarantees demanded by Russia in the face of NATO expansion, which threatened to bring Ukraine into the fold of the trans-Atlantic military bloc. In direct talks with the US, NATO and the OSCE in January 2022, Russia was repeatedly rebuffed in its efforts to negotiate a new European security framework that considered its national security interests, setting in motion the conditions that resulted in Russia initiating its Special Military Operation in Ukraine, prompting President Biden to terminate the strategic stability dialogue, an action which essentially froze US-Russian relations, at least in the arms control field.
Biden’s announcement on restarting talks with Moscow took the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, by surprise. “No requests on reopening this negotiating process have been made,” Lavrov announced during a press conference in Myanmar, adding that the West “has developed a habit of making announcements on the microphone and then forgetting about them.”
Regardless of the lack of any prior notice on the part of the US, Russia announced that it was ready to engage in arms control talks at any time, the sooner the better. Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, during a conference call with the media, declared that “Moscow has repeatedly spoken about the necessity to start such talks as soon as possible as there is little time left.” If the New START treaty expired without a replacement, Peskov said, “it will negatively impact global security and stability, primarily in the area of arms control.” For this reason, Peskov noted, “We [Russia] have called for an early launch of talks, but until that moment it has been the US that has shown no interest in substantive contacts on the issue.”
Peskov further emphasized that negotiations on a new arms control pact can only be held “on the basis of mutual respect and taking into account mutual concerns.”
Washington’s push for talks with Moscow, however, appear to be little more than an effort to get Russia to negotiate away the advantage in strategic nuclear weapons delivery systems that it has accrued in recent years through the development of weapons such as the Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and the Avangard hypersonic re-entry vehicle. In this way, the US would have Russia walk away from new systems which cost billions of dollars to develop and field, while the US would only be called upon to give up a handful which have not yet been fully tested and deployed (the US is poised to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years to replace the Minuteman III ICBM, B-2 bomber, and Ohio-class submarine with a new missile (the “Sentinel”), a new bomber (the B-21), and a new submarine (the “Columbia” class). The high cost of these new weapons is likely to become an issue in a tightening economic environment, which may explain Biden’s push for fresh negotiations.
The current US approach to arms control negotiations appears to be one-sided in nature, premised on sacrificing existing Russian capacity for future American systems which are currently under development. In addition to this, the US has a poor track record when it comes to either treaty compliance (the ongoing controversy over New START verification of Trident and B-52 conversions comes to mind), or treaty adherence (the US withdrawals from the ABM treaty, the INF treaty, and the Open Skies treaty serve as an historical precedent).
The US approach ignores the fundamental approach taken by Russia when it comes to arms control – that any such negotiations must take place as part of a comprehensive restructuring of existing security frameworks that fully integrate Moscow’s legitimate national security concerns. This includes issues pertaining to missile defense (including the two US facilities in Poland and Romania), intermediate nuclear forces (a ban on the deployment of such systems on European soil), and non-strategic nuclear weapons (the US stockpile of B-61 bombs currently stored in Europe, and releasable to non-nuclear NATO members during any potential conflict.)
The White House has flipped the script when it comes to advancing the cause of arms control. Former US President Ronald Reagan appropriated a Russian saying– “Trust but Verify”– when discussing his approach to implementing the groundbreaking INF treaty back in 1987. At that time, the “trust” was assumed, and the focus was on constructing appropriate verification regimes to ensure treaty compliance.
Today, there is no trust between Russia and the US, primarily because of the dismissive manner which the Biden administration has treated the issue of Moscow’s concerns over European security that has been inexorably linked to aggressive NATO expansion. But the abysmal track record of the US under existing and past arms control agreements must also be considered. Even if Biden were willing to consider Russia’s concerns, the question that must be answered for Russia is whether the Americans can be fully trusted as a partner in disarmament.
As things stand today, the answer to this question is, sadly, ‘No.’
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Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
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