Missile Defense is a Political Thing

The problem of the U.S. missile defense in Europe has increased tensions again between Russia and the U.S. The leader of the election race of the American Republican Party Mitt Romney in the electronic version of the Washington Foreign Policy weekly, published on March 27, writes that the current president of the United States ?is malleable on the issue of missile defense and in other areas of nuclear safety.? And then ? ?not having got significant concessions from Russia, he abandoned plans to create facilities of our missile defense system in Poland (bases of silo-deployed ballistic missiles). He has given Russia new restrictions of our own nuclear arsenal? (i.e., signed a new START Treaty).

Moscow and Washington have never agreed on a second visit of Barack Obama to Russia, and last week announced the cancellation of the May summit NATO - Russia in the U.S. Instead, in May, the Russian Defense Ministry will provide proof of the potential danger of European missile defense for the Russian nuclear forces. This will be done at an international conference organized by the military department, where militaries and experts from around the world will be invited. The new Chairman of the State Duma Committee for International Affairs Alexei Pushkov stated the termination of reset. However, in late August of last year, Putin said there was no reset in the field of missile defense: ?As for the problem of missile defense in Europe I do not see any ?reset?. In this area, it does not exist really.?

Realizing the need to compensate the damage inflicted on the negotiations on missile defense by a tough campaign rhetoric, Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev have made conciliatory statements ?on the sidelines? of the just concluded summit on nuclear security in Seoul. Medvedev called the past three years after the beginning of the reset ?the best? in recent years in bilateral relations, and Obama stressed that he could not wish a better negotiator than Medvedev.

The meeting scheduled for May between Obama and Putin within the framework of the upcoming G8 summit in Camp David could initiate a new rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. On March 28, Obama confirmed his previous statements, noting that ?over the next 9-10 months, experts will work on technical aspects of missile defense, which are the main cause of our (Russia and the U.S. - N.Kh.) tensions.? According to him, ?it will be possible to make progress by 2013, if the technical issues are resolved.? The fact is that after the elections in November this year the Democratic Party hopes to regain control of the House of Representatives and expand their faction in the Senate.

The importance of pre-election debate in the two countries should not be exaggerated. It is also clear that its degree, both among Russian and American parliamentarians, is much higher than that of representatives of the executive power, who aim not so much at increasing their own popularity, as at achieving results.

At the same time the opinion of notorious experts can not be ignored. Computer simulation conducted by the Russian Ministry of Defense shows that at the rate of antimissiles of 5 km/s the possibility of interception significantly increases. The U.S. plans to get similar antimissiles in 2018 during the deployment of the third phase of Missile Defense (SM-3 Block IIA). When deploying the missile defense fourth phase scheduled for 2020, the characteristics of the U.S. antimissile (SM-3 Block IIB) will be further improved. This may increase the likelihood of intercepting Russian missiles. It is unknown yet what rate the antimissiles will be able to develop in the most modernized version. The report has it that it is 7-8 km/s. Therefore, Moscow offers to come to an agrement about the maximum speed of interceptors and the territory of their deployment. At the same time, according to Academician Alexei Arbatov, modern solid fuel ICBMs gain speed over three to four minutes of up to 7 km/s. It is hoped that before the 2020 the U.S. SM-3 antimissiles will not hinder Russian Topols and Yars.

Currently, there are four Russian requests to the U.S. in order that we can agree on missile defense. The two are well known - it is the signing of a legally binding document on non-direction of NATO missile defense systems against the Russian strategic nuclear forces, and the proposals on a joint missile defense system. The two others, less known to public at large - transparency and confidence-building measures, as well as a set of objective criteria, with the use of which the Russian side could independently draw conclusions about compliance of actions of the U.S. and NATO in the anti-missile sphere with their assurances. These criteria must also be developed jointly with the Americans. Transparency means a better understanding of what is happening and where.

In the February interview with Echo Moskvy radio station the editor-in-chief of the Independent Newspaper, Konstantin Remchukov said that experts in the field of missile defense confidentially informed him that when Putin becomes president, he will agree on everything with Americans. ?Many people tell me that as soon as he achieves that the United States in its missile defense doctrine, in writing, makes an amendment separated by commas that it is not directed against Russia, many of our objections to the missile defense will be removed immediately... Moreover, I would even put forward a hypothesis that our military budgets will be sharply reduced.?

Another sensitive issue for the Russian negotiators, except the speed of interceptors, this is the location of the NATO missile interceptors. It is recognized that the closer NATO interceptors to Russia?s borders, the more chances they have ?to zero the Russian strategic potential.? However the aforementioned Academician Alexei Arbatov believes that the closer the antimissile launcher to the launching site of the ballistic vehicle, the less time a missile defense system has to perform a cycle of breathtaking complexity of detecting the launch, calculating the trajectory of target and issuing a flight assignment for the antimissile, its launching to the future position with the purpose and terminal homing for contact-shock target destruction. If the collision-course interception is carried out from a greater distance, in the middle or at terminal phase of the ballistic missile trajectory, the time operating parameters of all missile defense systems and the requirements to the antimissiles speed are much ?softer? (although the task of target selection is much more difficult).

A number of experts in Russia and abroad believe that the deployment of future advanced interceptors of Standard-3 type neither in Romania, Poland, nor on shipboard in European seas, but in the U.S., Canada and in the fleet off the American coast - could more effectively cover the territory of North America, if it was a case of the defence from Russia (and then only from individual and small group strikes).

In general, the controversy surrounding European missile defense?s proximity to Russian borders, even purely theoretically affect only a relatively small part of strategic forces, deployed in three western Strategic Missile Forces bases on the European territory, but in no way touch the main missile forces in the depth thereof and east of the Urals.

What stands out is the information of chief research scientist of the Center of International Security, IMEMO, Zinoviy Dvorkin, that within the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative, presented on February 3-4 in Munich, in staged versions of the European missile defense architecture until 2020 there are no American ships with missile defense systems in the Baltic and Black Seas and in the northern seas, which cause an increased concern of the Russian leadership. In addition, an analysis of the deployment of European missile defense programs shows that if its funding is not reduced, then by 2020 it will have consisted of not more than fifty SM-3 Block 2A, 2B antimissiles, which at the end of the decade may gain a theoretical possibility of interception intercontinental missiles.

If these options of architecture are formally agreed, we can hope for further harmonization of other aspects of cooperation between Russia and the U.S. in the field of missile defense.

But so far we should wait for the results of the U.S. presidential elections. After all, the missile defense, according to Dmitry Medvedev, ?...it is not only a defensive initiative; it is also a political thing, which is used by various political forces for their own political interests, including interests related to the parliamentary and presidential elections.?