Page 4 of 4 US missiles hit Russia where
it hurts By M K Bhadrakumar
disrupting Russia's ties with
Europe, damaging its international standing, and
isolating it within its geographical space. The US
decision regarding the missile-defense deployments
in Eastern Europe further reinforces Russian fears
of a concerted US strategy of encirclement.
Evidently, Moscow takes the United States'
deployment in Europe very seriously. No amount of
US propaganda that the
deployments are intended
against Iran carries conviction in Moscow. As the
Russians see it, the X-band tracking radar in the
Czech Republic will pry deep into the European
part of Russia up to the Urals, while the
anti-missile base in Poland is intended to provide
cover for the radar.
The belief is rooted
in Moscow that the US missile-defense deployments
aim at destroying Russia's strategic parity with
the US. An essay featured in Foreign Affairs
magazine in its March-April 2006 issue titled "The
rise of US nuclear primacy" received huge
attention among the Russian strategic community.
It held out a chilling warning: "The age of MAD
[mutual assured destruction] is nearing an end.
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 ... Russia and China - and the rest of the
world - will live in the shadow of US nuclear
primacy for many years to come."
The
Russian military assesses the threat perception by
linking the proposed ABM deployments in Poland and
the Czech Republic with the offensive capability
that the US has developed over recent years in
terms of the new Tomahawk generation of cruise
missiles with a range of 3,500 kilometers. They
are of such high speed and precision that they are
impossible to intercept.
The Russian
military has assessed, and the Russian leadership
is convinced by now, that in reality the ABM
system is an integral part of a formidable US
strategic system that could incrementally within
the next five years or so give the US a
first-strike capability. For instance, over the
past three years alone, more than 6,000 Tomahawk
missile launchers have been deployed extensively
on US naval platforms. As of now, the US possesses
the capability to shell all strategically
important targets on Russian soil.
In
comparison with the US strategic buildup in the
post-Cold War era, post-Soviet Russia's strategic
nuclear arsenal has sharply deteriorated. Russia
is estimated to possess almost 40% fewer
long-range bombers, 60% fewer intercontinental
ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and 80% fewer
ballistic-missile submarines.
But what the
Russians fear the most is that the proposed ABM
systems in Central Europe will plug important gaps
in the overall US capability to launch a
devastating first strike on Russia's nuclear
capability. For instance, the proposed radar in
the Czech Republic would be capable of determining
the parameters of the trajectories of Russian
ballistic missiles during the first few seconds
after their launch (as against the gap of several
minutes needed under the existing shipboard or
space surveillance systems), which would make it
far easier to bring down the missiles.
Russian military experts have written how,
with a surreptitious concentration of its naval
strike formations in the regions of the Barents
Sea and the Baltic Sea, US cruise missiles could
target at one go the Russian silo and mobile ICBM
launchers as well as submarines with ballistic
missiles and strategic air groups. Such a strike
could also target simultaneously the armed forces'
command points, its missile-defense systems,
airfields, naval bases and communications systems.
A second strike could follow using
deck-based aircraft on aircraft carriers and the
strategic air force targeting land forces and
military-industrial complexes on the whole. A
Russian military expert, Mikhail Volzhenskiy,
wrote recently in Izvestia, "The probability of
such a scenario is very high. We recall
Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Iraq, where the
American operations commenced with the
concentrated use of long-range cruise missiles.
Undoubtedly, our political and military
leaderships have taken into account this
experience in working out their strategy ... Thus
we perceive the deployment of the ABM system in
Europe in particular as an attempt to unilaterally
destroy the existing balance of forces on the
continent and in the world."
Curiously,
Putin echoed the same thoughts last Thursday when
he said, "There is no need to fear Russia's
actions, and they are not aggressive ... They are
aimed at maintaining balance in the world order,
and are extremely important for maintaining peace
and security globally." In other words, Moscow has
intended the recently tested Iskander as its
response to the US ABM systems in Europe.
Moscow has decided against the option of
withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear
Forces Treaty and instead chosen to work on an
improved version of its famous Topol-M
intercontinental missiles, which are the only
missiles in the world with the capability to
accelerating to supersonic speed while at the same
time changing direction twice a minute (so as to
avoid radar detection), and can be fired also to
shorter ranges. They are strategic as well as
theater missiles and are practically invulnerable
to the ABM. Their MIRVed (multiple independently
targetable re-entry vehicle) version can carry up
to 10 independently targetable warheads.
The implicit Russian strategy is to
destroy the US ABM systems in Europe in the first
15-20 minutes after a perceived US cruise-missile
strike, with the help of several specially located
ICBMs targeted at Europe or shorter-range missiles
with nuclear warhead elements. The approximate
flying time to targets in the Czech Republic would
be 10-15 minutes, as compared with the estimated
2.5 to three hours needed for a US cruise-missile
attack to hit all Russian targets.
At the
same time, within an estimated 20 minutes, nuclear
missiles fired from Russian submarines in the
North Sea could hit targets in Poland. In sum, as
Professor Vadim Kozyulin of the Russian Academy of
Military Sciences put it, Moscow's strategy is to
make it clear that "a conflict with Russia cannot
be contemplated without incurring [unacceptable]
losses for the attacking side". Moscow envisages
that such a paradigm will leave Washington with no
choice but to negotiate. But for the moment at
least, Washington doesn't seem impressed.
Any Putin-Bush meet in Heiligendamm is
more likely to produce tedious arguments than
meaningful negotiations. Unlike Oskar's drum,
which was burdened by the human condition, Bush's
drum excitedly anticipates victories to come -
beyond the defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a
career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for
more than 29 years, with postings including
ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey
(1998-2001).
(Copyright 2007 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
