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In Greek mythology, Pandora had a box she had been warned to never open. With no understanding of the consequences, and despite the warning, she opened the box, irreversibly releasing the plagues that would affect all of humanity forever. The American threat to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prohibits possession of missiles capable of striking targets at ranges from about 300 to 3,400 miles, will have similar consequences for humanity if it is also executed in spite of warnings and without considering the consequences.

One particularly difficult aspect of this situation is that the Russians and the Americans each accuse the other of flouting the treaty’s purpose in Europe by planning for, or deploying, nuclear-capable weaponry that could have a dual use — defensive on its face but potentially offensive after quick modification.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ukrainian servicemen are seen standing on an Armoured Personnel Vehicle (APC) through a broken window in the village of Horlivka, Donetsk region, on February 4, 2015. (Volodymyr Shuvayev/AFP/Getty Images)

The United States is on a dangerous trajectory in its relations with Russia, a nuclear superpower that believes itself to be under direct threat. Several former U.S. officials and top think-tank experts released a report calling on the West to provide military support to Ukraine. (Two of them, our colleagues at the Brookings Institution, expanded on the report a week ago on this page [“Ukraine needs the West’s help now”].) The logic of sending weapons to Ukraine seems straightforward and is the same as the logic for economic sanctions: to change Vladi­mir Putin’s “calculus.” Increasing the Ukrainian army’s fighting capacity, the thinking goes, would allow it to kill more rebels and Russian soldiers, generating a backlash in Russia and ultimately forcing the Russian president to the negotiating table.…  Seguir leyendo »

The U.S. government concluded this week that Russia violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty by testing a prohibited cruise missile. The question now is what to do.

Withdrawal from the treaty would be a mistake. The INF Treaty required the elimination of all U.S. and Soviet land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. As a result, the two countries destroyed 2,692 missiles.

In deciding how to respond, the Obama administration should consider the example set by President Reagan in 1983, when U.S. officials revealed that the Soviets had begun building a large radar installation at Krasnoyarsk, in central Siberia.…  Seguir leyendo »

In 1982, President Reagan noted the importance of arms-control treaty compliance stating, “Simply collecting agreements will not bring peace. Agreements genuinely reinforce peace only when they are kept. Otherwise, we are building a paper castle that will be blown away by the winds of war.”

Significantly, in a December 1985 report, Reagan stated, ” the Soviet Union has violated its legal commitments to the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty-1 Anti-Ballistic Missile (SALT I ABM) Treaty and Interim Agreement, the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons, and the Helsinki Final Act.…  Seguir leyendo »

When Secretary of State Chuck Hagel announced this month that the Pentagon would increase the number of missile interceptors in Alaska, he noted that the U.S. missile defense program in Europe would be restructured. This means cancellation of Phase 4 of the plan, which called for the deployment of upgraded interceptors in Eastern Europe.

The decision could open the way for resolving U.S.-Russian differences over missile defense, one of the thorniest problems on the bilateral agenda, and remove an obstacle to further nuclear arms reductions — if Moscow can say something other than “nyet.”

The initial Russian reaction gave little ground for optimism.…  Seguir leyendo »

In September 1991, President George H.W. Bush announced a series of sweeping measures fundamentally reshaping the American nuclear arsenal. One of them called for all U.S. ground-force tactical nuclear weaponsto be returned from overseas bases and dismantled. Similarly, all tactical nuclear weapons on surface ships and attack submarines, as well as those associated with land-based naval aircraft, were to be withdrawn.

Eight days later, President Mikhail Gorbachev reciprocated, declaring that similar steps would be taken for Soviet nuclear forces.

As a result of these so-called Presidential Nuclear Initiatives, or P.N.I.’s, thousands of nuclear weapons on both sides were ultimately taken out of service and in some cases eliminated altogether — all based on unilateral, parallel actions, and all without an arms control treaty.…  Seguir leyendo »

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s warning last week of measures Russia will take if the United States and NATO continue with their missile-defense program in Europe, while sounding tough, is not the end of the U.S.-Russian reset. It is more of a pre-election recess of Russian-American diplomacy.

But his statement, and more broadly the state of U.S.-Russian arms-control efforts, reveals a broad gap in how the nuclear powers perceive each other’s importance. For Washington, Russia has fallen far down on the list of priorities. The Russian political and security establishment, by contrast, continues to be obsessed with the United States.

In the televised statement, Medvedev warned that should the United States continue with plans to base antimissile systems in Europe, Russia would arm its ballistic missiles with advanced defense-penetration systems, deploy tactical missiles on the border with Poland, and possibly withdraw from the New Start nuclear arms reduction treaty.…  Seguir leyendo »

La reciente visita al Departamento de Estado de los Estados Unidos de Dmitri Rogozin, enviado especial del Presidente de Rusia para la cooperación con la OTAN en materia de defensa antimisiles, pone de relieve uno de los numerosos obstáculos para la cooperación ruso-estadounidense en materia de defensa antimisiles balísticos (DAB). Los ministros de Asuntos Exteriores y de Defensa de Rusia han afirmado la primacía del diálogo con los EE.UU., pero con perspectivas y prioridades diversas. Los diplomáticos de Rusia han adoptado en general, pero no siempre, una postura más dura, mientras que Rogozin ha estado impulsando un programa propio en materia de DAB.…  Seguir leyendo »

On April 8, 2010 Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev met to sign the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). The treaty entered into force in February, and the sides have already exchanged data on their forces.

We should build on this momentum and take new actions to reduce nuclear risk and shape a safer world.

First, the United States and Russia should initiate early negotiations to further reduce their strategic arms. New START permits each side up to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads. They could negotiate to reduce that level to 1,000 deployed strategic warheads — with corresponding cuts in strategic missiles and bombers — which would leave each with more than enough to assure its security.…  Seguir leyendo »

For decades, American inspectors have monitored Russian nuclear forces, putting into practice President Ronald Reagan's favorite maxim, "Trust, but verify." But since the old START Treaty expired last December, we have relied on trust alone. Until a new treaty comes into force, our inspectors will not have access to Russian missile silos and the world's two largest nuclear arsenals will lack the stability that comes with a rigorous inspection regime.

Before this session of Congress ends, we urge senators to approve an arms control treaty that would again allow U.S. inspectors access to Russian strategic sites and reduce the number of nuclear weapons held by both nations to a level not seen since the 1950s.…  Seguir leyendo »

No other initiative has more near-term potential to ease the NATO-Russian relationship out of its petulant, impacted state, while giving a positive jolt to the revived but tentative and unfocused interest in an improved and more inclusive European security system, than missile-defense cooperation.

Were North America, Europe and Russia to make defense of the entire Euro-Atlantic region against potential ballistic missile attack a joint priority, they would — apart from addressing a concrete problem — in a single stroke undermine much of the threat analysis that sets Russia against NATO, and prove that trilateral cooperation on a key security issue is possible.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Obama announced Friday that he had concluded a follow-on to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia. He characterized the cuts that it would make in the two nations' nuclear arsenals as a major step toward his goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. In practice, however, the so-called "New START" accord will contribute primarily to the denuclearization of the United States and to making the world a more dangerous place. Accordingly, it would be more accurate to call it "False START."

The first thing to note about the Obama treaty is that it confers real advantages on the Russians.…  Seguir leyendo »

Yesterday, President Obama presided over the United Nations Security Council meeting that passed a resolution seeking to strengthen the international commitment to limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. A week ago, he announced that the United States will not deploy — at least, not in the foreseeable future — a missile defense site in Central Europe, including powerful radar in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland.

Is there a link between the two events? I believe there is. Yet initial comments by many political figures and journalists have for the most part ignored this key relationship.

Instead, many are asserting that canceling the Eastern European missile defense was simply a concession to Russia, which must now reciprocate with a concession of its own.…  Seguir leyendo »

The future of missile defense in Europe is secure. This reality is contrary to what some critics have alleged about President Obama’s proposed shift in America’s missile-defense plans on the continent — and it is important to understand how and why.

First, to be clear, there is now no strategic missile defense in Europe. In December 2006, just days after becoming secretary of defense, I recommended to President George W. Bush that the United States place 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland and an advanced radar in the Czech Republic. This system was designed to identify and destroy up to about five long-range missiles potentially armed with nuclear warheads fired from the Middle East — the greatest and most likely danger being from Iran.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Obama's decision to shelve the Bush administration's missile defense plans has created a crisis of confidence in Washington's relations with Central and Eastern Europe. The defense architecture the administration proposes may make more strategic sense in addressing the immediate Iranian threat. Nevertheless, it runs the risk of shattering the morale and standing of transatlantic leaders in the region who now feel politically undermined and exposed. The roots of this crisis lie less in missile defense than in policy failures over the past decade. Understanding and rectifying those errors is key to getting back on track with our allies.

Our first mistake was being overly optimistic about what would happen when these countries joined NATO and the European Union.…  Seguir leyendo »

Russian leaders never liked the idea that the United States, Poland and the Czech Republic were cooperating on missile defense to confront an emerging Iranian threat. The notion that two former Warsaw Pact states that Moscow used to control would be hosting 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a corresponding radar facility in the Czech Republic was unacceptable. Kremlin leaders alleged that the system was meant to target Russia, not counter Iran, and they had threatened to scuttle unrelated arms control negotiations with the United States unless Washington backed down.

With the Obama administration's announcement Thursday that it is indeed abandoning the Polish and Czech sites, Moscow's complaining appears to have worked.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Vladimir Putin of Russia has made an offer that President Bush cannot refuse — not if Mr. Bush truly wants substantive international cooperation on missile defense. Last month, Mr. Putin offered to give America access to data from a Russian early-warning radar unit in Azerbaijan that can observe the launching and flight of any long-range ballistic missiles from Iran. The offer was part of Mr. Putin’s effort to keep the United States from setting up its own missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The Azerbaijan proposal makes sense in two ways: it could end the diplomatic tussle over the Eastern Europe plan, and it could also be a more effective check on Iran.…  Seguir leyendo »