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the U. S. announcement of its intent to withdraw from the 1972 ABM
Treaty herald a dramatic shift in the global strategic balance of
power, raising the specter of a new nuclear arms race? Such sentiments,
expressed by some Western commentators, are reinforced by the reaction
from the Russian side. Dmitry Rogozin, the chair of the international-relations
committee of the Duma, declared that Russia will use the six-month
notification period "to plan its response and subsequent steps,"
which may include a reevaluation of Russia's arms-control commitments
under the START accords. "We believe that offensive and defensive
tools of nuclear deterrence must be linked. If the ABM Treaty ceases
to exist, Russia will have a free hand in nuclear planning,"
he declared.
Rhetoric, however,
cannot mask reality. In August, the former head of Russian military
intelligence, General Fedor Ladygin, candidly admitted that, for
the foreseeable future, Russia's nuclear capacity will continue
to erode "due to the shortage of financial resources for ...
maintenance and renewal." Viktor Litovkin, a political commentator,
was even blunter in his assessments. "The country has no money.
Not even enough to replace the decrepit, hazardous, strategic missiles
with the new single-warhead 'Topol' missiles." Vladimir Putin
himself castigated the old Soviet-era defense complex in a November
speech, saying it is "archaic" and unable to "meet
modern military and political challenges."
This is why,
in November, the Russian Security Council considered a draft document
outlining how the Russian defense industry can be modernized. Putin
is well aware that Russia's national security depends upon Russia's
growing integration into the global economic system as a full-fledged
member. By gaining access to world markets, Russia can obtain the
funds and investment needed to conduct "technical and technological
modernization" in a timely and efficient manner.
Through an
aggressive campaign of state-directed investment in things like
the construction of a new nation-wide fiber-optic network and broadband
transmission stations (in part relying upon tax revenues generated
by increased oil and gas exports), Putin hopes that by 2010 Russia
will have a highly developed information and communications infrastructure
at its disposal. This would facilitate the revival of an industrial
sector that is both a manufacturer and a consumer of domestically
produced high technology products, including communications equipment
and imaging systems, which could be marketed to the civilian sector
but also utilized in upgrading Russia's defense capabilities.
Putin's calculations
may be misguided; after all, during the 1970s, Venezuela and Mexico
both drastically overestimated the impact of oil revenues in funding
ambitious development programs. However, Russia is expected to achieve
an eight-percent growth rate this year, and the country seems poised
for extensive economic recovery over the next several years. U.
S. policymakers should seriously consider whether it is in American
national interests to have, in a decade, a prosperous Russia that
feels compelled to invest in the research and development of things
like glide- and maneuverable-reentry vehicles capable of evading
interception by any of the proposed missile-defense systems that
could be deployed by the United States. (Actually, plans for such
a system have already been drawn up, but lack of funds has prevented
any serious efforts at development — something that the Chinese
are reportedly interested in remedying).
This is why
it is in U. S. interests to take Putin up on his offer to start
fresh negotiations to define a new framework for Russian-American
strategic relations (and it may not be a bad idea to include the
other principal nuclear powers of the world in that process). While
the current frail condition of Russia may lead some to conclude
that the U. S. should act unilaterally, taking Russian interests
into account — over such contentious issues as the second round
of NATO expansion — is a policy which could pay significant
dividends for the United States several years down the road.
Washington
should seriously consider the advice proffered, however unintentionally,
by the Chinese magazine Liaowang this past August, when it
noted that "Economic interests are the key bargaining chips
for the U. S. and Russia to reach a compromise." Increasingly,
Russia's future prosperity lies in its integration with the Western
alliance. Sixty-seven percent of its exports will be consumed in
European Union countries by 2005. Russia, now the world's second
largest producer of oil, needs Western expertise and capital to
fully tap and exploit its energy reserves; in turn, Russia could
emerge as a viable alternative to the Middle East as the principal
supplier of energy to Europe. Russia has not had this degree of
economic integration with the rest of Europe since before the Bolshevik
Revolution.
After World
War II, the United States rejected the so-called "pastoralization"
plans for Germany and Japan — leaving these two rivals in a
permanently weakened and subordinated position. Instead, the reconstruction
of the industrial and technological base of these two countries
— and their integration into the world market — helped
to stabilize Central Europe and East Asia. Moscow's current weakness
should not blind us to the potential that an economically resuscitated
and technologically modernized Russia could play — for good
or ill — across the Eurasian landmass.
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