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Serious battles over a not so serious issue

The situation relating to the proposed deployment of a missile defence system in Europe and the threat of a Russian moratorium on the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty can be traced to the ambitions of the sides concerned and their reluctance to understand each other. This could lead to an unwarranted aggravation of relations.

There are many rational grounds for Russia to be displeased over the deployment of the American missile defence elements in Europe and the situation over the CFE. Practically all Russian military experts are aware that the U.S. national missile defence (NMD) in its present shape, and given its technical capabilities, poses no threat to Russian strategic nuclear forces. However, they are puzzled by the choice of Poland and the Czech Republic as the sites for the NMD facilities.

Surely, the American military cannot seriously believe that Iran is capable of building intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and that it can target U.S. territories. Both projections belong in the realm of psychiatry rather than military or political forecasting. This naturally makes the Russians feel that the NMD is aimed against them, and not against the Iranians. And there is a growing sense that those to be installed in silos in Poland will not be ground-based interceptor (GBI) missiles, but medium-range missiles within a very short striking distance of targets in Russia’s European part.

The 1987 Treaty on Medium and Shorter Range Missiles bans missiles with a range of between 500 km and 5,500 km only for Russia and the U.S. This does not worry the U.S. too much because it has no enemies in the Western Hemisphere. The situation is not so simple for Russia. Many countries in or around its perimeter already have, or are building, medium and shorter-range missiles.

This gives Russia a great temptation to renounce the Medium and Shorter-Range Missile Treaty. The medium-range missiles deployed in the Urals and Siberia can reach any point in Europe and Asia to compensate for the American missile defence system in Eastern Europe and the missile arsenals of the Asian countries in or around Russia’s perimeter, without bringing in more valuable and expensive ICBMs.

The CFE Treaty was signed in a totally different geopolitical situation and is largely irrelevant. There are several reasons why Moscow is displeased with the current situation. Above all, it is the presence of the “grey zone” in the Baltics (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are not CFE members and theoretically can have their own armed forces of any strength and foreign troops of any size on their territories).

Nor can one tolerate the failure of NATO countries to ratify the “adapted CFE Treaty,” although Russia has withdrawn all its troops from Georgia and has a very small force in Moldova, which has no heavy equipment and whose duty it is to guard the huge ammunition dumps left over from the Soviet Army. Russian troops are, in fact, protecting Europe from an uncontrolled spread of huge quantities of weaponry and explosives from these dumps. Russia’s grievances about the CFE are well justified, but they are largely theoretical.

So, it is not in Russia’s interests to break off the treaty because it would give NATO a theoretical chance to parlay its economic superiority into military superiority. The question is whether the European NATO countries want to be drawn into a new arms race. Besides, if such a race is resumed, after all, Russia will definitely pull out of the Medium and Shorter-Range Missile Treaty to make up for its lag in conventional arms. It should be noted that the resumption of the Pioneer medium-range missiles production will not be a fundamental problem for Russia because they are essentially analogous to the currently produced Russian Topol ICBMs, except that they have two instead of three stages. — RIA Novosti

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