Agence France-Presse,
Washington: Russia may have test-fired a new rocket and warned of an “arms race” due to US missile shield plans in Europe — but analysts say a repeat of the Cold War bomb scramble is unlikely.
“I doubt very much … that the Russians are going to rush ahead and build a whole bucket load of these kind of missiles,” Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, told AFP.
She was referring to Moscow's announcement on Tuesday that it had successfully tested a RS-24 rocket, a new multiple warhead ballistic missile designed to overcome air defense systems.
“I think they would like to show the United States and the rest of the world that they are not impotent in the face of US missile defense,” she added, saying Russia was “posturing” on the “political issue” of missile defense.
Russia is locked in a diplomatic battle over US plans to expand its missile defense shield into central Europe.
The United States says the system, involving a planned radar base in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in neighboring Poland, would defend Europe against potential threats from Iran and North Korea, while posing no threat to Russia.
But Russia is furious at the plans.
Its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday accused the United States of sparking a new arms race. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had earlier described Russian concerns as “ludicrous.”
“There is nothing ludicrous about this issue because the arms race is starting again. Strategic stability is being damaged,” Lavrov told reporters Wednesday after a meeting of G8 foreign ministers near Berlin.
But US analysts doubt Russia has the means to take part in such a race.
“Russia's nuclear forces will continue to shrink, even with this new missile and its warheads,” said Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a specialist security think-tank in Washington.
The Russian ministry of defense refused to reveal the characteristics of the new missile but said it was designed to replace the Soviet-era RS-18 and RS-20 rockets.
“This test clarifies the message that Moscow has minimal assured destruction capabilities even with US military dominance and missile defenses,” Krepon said.
Political scientists Keir Lieber of Notre Dame University in Indiana and Daryl Press from the University of Pennsylvania detailed what they said was Russia's declining post-Cold War military clout last year in the journal Foreign Affairs.
“Even as the United States' nuclear forces have grown stronger since the end of the Cold War, Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal has sharply deteriorated,” they wrote. “What nuclear forces Russia retains are hardly ready for use.”
“Unless they reverse course rapidly, Russia's vulnerability will only increase over time,” they added.
“With the US arsenal growing rapidly while Russia's decays and China's stays small, the era of MAD (mutual assured destruction by nuclear weapons) is ending — and the era of US nuclear primacy has begun.”
“Arms-racing was a cold war phenomenon,” said Krepon. “We are now living in a world of power disparities, which means asymmetric responses, not arms racing.”
Moscow also may have other priorities beyond building stocks of weapons, Theresa Hitchens of the Center for Defense Information said.
The Russians “have got petrodollars coming in right now but they are trying to invest in lots of different things, particularly their space programs,” she said.
When it comes to building more rockets, “the Russians are going to have to make some choices where they want to spend their money. I don't really think that President (Vladimir) Putin wants a new Cold War with the United States.”
