The Nuclear Challenge

US-Russian Strategic Relations After the Cold War

Christoph Bluth

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138721654
• eBook ISBN: 9781351760706
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This title was first piblished in 2000: Christoph Bluth provides a comprehensive and timely analysis of strategic nuclear arms policy in the United States and Russia and examines the collaborative efforts to reduce nuclear weapons through arms control and render nuclear weapons and fissile materials in Russia secure. He concludes that the end of the Cold War has created new and unprecedented dangers and that these dangers require a greater political will and cooperation which have so far been lacking.

1 The Strategic Paradox

The strategic nuclear 'amis race' was arguably the most dramatic feature of the Cold War. It was the existence of two large and growing arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons and the capability to inflict total devastation at any part of the world that gave the East-West confrontation its global character and imbued it with an apocalyptic quality. One of the peculiar paradoxes of the political processes whereby the Cold War ended is that while the military confrontation in Europe was effectively ended by the Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe and the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty regime, the strategic nuclear force postures remained virtually intact. Communism has virtually disappeared as a political force, the Warsaw Pact has been dissolved. Eastern Europe is now free, and the Soviet military machine that kept the Communist regimes in power and threatened to roll over Western Europe at short notice has removed itself from the scene. Indeed, the might Soviet Union itself has fallen. And yet, vast arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons are still in place, capable of destroying the economic foundation and annihilating the population of the other side. The end of the Cold War should in principle also mean the end of the strategic nuclear confrontation. As the Russian government is seeking a close co-operative relationship with the United States, the political function of large strategic nuclear arsenals needs clarification. It seems strange for two countries who are partners or even allies to target nuclear weapons at each other. Although there has been a symbolic agreement between Russia and the United States not to target weapons at each other, the technical means for mutual destruction at short notice are still in place. So far, the United States and Russia have found themselves unable to emerge from the eerie twilight zone of mutual assured annihilation.

An additional problem arises from the fact that Russia is passing through a profound economic and social crisis. In this context, the huge arsenal of advanced nuclear and conventional weapons produced and deployed or stockpiled by the former Soviet Union represents a potential security risk of enormous magnitude in an environment where governmental control over all institutions in society has become weak and uncertain. To provide for the security and safety of nuclear weapons and materials, to prevent the illicit smuggling of plutonium and highly enriched uranium and to prevent nuclear scientist from selling their expertise to other states has become the focus of a concerted joint effort by the United States and Russia.

This purpose of this study is to look at the role of strategic nuclear arms control in US-Russian relations. The principal assumption here is that after the Cold War this relationship is in a process of transition from a fundamental mutual antagonism to one of partnership. The fate of nuclear weapons and the formulation of nuclear weapons policies must of course be seen in the context of the international security environment as a whole. It is the purpose of this chapter to look at some of the principal features of this environment and explain the fundamental directions of nuclear weapons policy that suggest themselves with a high degree of urgency.

The end of the Cold War has raised very fundamental questions for the security and defence establishments, particularly in Europe and North America. First of all the new international security environment has to be understood. This must involve an analysis of the end of the Cold War and its implications, the range of threats or potential future threats to national security and the proper instruments required to meet them. Then a reassessment of the requirements for military capabilities may be possible.

Interpreting the end of the Cold War

Neo-realist analysis, such as it has been recently expounded by, for example, John Mearsheimer and Kenneth Waltz,¹ explains the Cold War on the basis of the basic principles of how states interact in the international system and the role of the balance of power. According to realism, anarchy prevails in the international system and therefore relations between states are inherently prone to conflict. This manifests itself in a behaviour of the maximisation of power and security. Since no international organisation is ultimately capable of enforcing order, every state has to provide for its own security. In order to achieve this, a state constantly seeks to improve its relative power position. This requires building up military capabilities and at times the use of military force.²

In the neo-realist understanding of international relations, the East-West conflict, which emerged in the aftermath of World War II was a natural consequence of the post-war balance of power and is best understood as the rivalry between two Great Power systems.

The explanation given for the fact that the East-West confrontation did not result in military conflict between the main protagonists (hence the term 'Cold War') and the absence of war in Europe during the last 45 years (described as the 'Long Peace' by John Lewis Gaddis) is the bipolar distribution of power which is seen as contributing to stability and the development of large strategic nuclear arsenals which raised the cost of war to an unacceptable level.³

This interpretation of the Cold War leads to a very specific analysis of the post-Cold War security environment. The collapse of the bipolar system may result in instability and large-scale conflict if no balance of power emerges that can hold the emerging inter-state rivalries in check. The policy prescription advanced by Mearsheimer is that to re-establish the stability of the international system in Europe, the United States and the Western European states (in particular Britain and Germany) should balance the multipolar system emerging in Europe with military forces (including nuclear forces) against states that threaten to start a war. This implies a new balance of power arrangement to compensate for an apparent Russian inability to continue to function as a Great Power. John Mearsheimer suggested for example the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Germany. Together with a continued American commitment to Europe and a continuation of NATO these are the conditions deemed necessary for coping with ethnic conflicts, potential inter-state rivalries in Europe and for maintaining stability in the region as a whole.⁴ There are important reasons why the neo-realist analysis and policy prescriptions should not be accepted. First, the stability of the bipolar world is generally overstated. The global nature of the bipolar conflict meant that while direct military confrontations between the principal protagonists were avoided, there were major proxy wars at the periphery and many regional conflicts became polarised along Cold War lines and were fuelled with the influx of large quantities of high-technology weaponry from both sides. While the 'long peace' prevailed in Europe because of the risk of nuclear war, there is no reason to assume that there would have been unending conflicts in Europe without the Cold War. On the other hand, the conflicts that exist now are at least in part a product of Soviet imperialism and the Cold War.

Realist analysis is misled in its interpretation of the bipolar conflict. The East-West conflict cannot be understood simply as the natural rivalry between two great power systems. It was a more fundamental antagonism involving the legitimacy of different types of socio-economic organisation and the legitimacy of certain political elites for which the pursuit Great Power interests was an essential instrument to perpetuate their own existence and ambitions. Neo-realist analysis fails to explain these specific features of the East-West conflict.⁵

Furthermore, neo-realist analysis completely fails to account for the end of the Cold War.⁶ While the power of the Soviet Union and its empire were clearly in decline in the 1980s, and while this decline would no doubt at some time in the future have rendered the Soviet empire unsustainable, these systemic factors do not account for the timing and direction of the changes.⁷ As long as substantial strategic and theatre nuclear forces were deployed by the Soviet Union, together with conventional forces sufficient to quell any rebellion in Eastern Europe, the military position of the Soviet Union was not under imminent threat. The economic crisis followed perestroika and the restructuring of Soviet foreign relations. If the Soviet Union had decided to use the political and military instruments of power in the same manner as before Gorbachev assumed the leadership, it could have easily defended its position. The collapse of Soviet power and the dissolution of the Soviet state itself therefore fundamentally contradicts neo-realist analysis, according to which the perpetuation of their own existence and the maximisation of their power is the most fundamental objective that states pursue.

The long-term decline in Soviet power could have led to a variety of different responses, but the kind of political reform which occurred was perhaps the least expected one. Indeed, in continuity with the long established parameters of Soviet foreign policy a greater assertiveness abroad and a more sustained endeavour to improve the economy by a more determined use of the authoritarian instruments of government and the ideological structures for political socialisation would have been expected. It is both the timing and peaceful nature of the end of the Soviet empire that defy explanation by the neorealist or the structural realist paradigm. The changes in the international system were not inevitable consequences of changes in the balance of power.⁸

The interaction of the Soviet state with the international system cannot be satisfactorily explained on the properties of the international system alone, but needs to be based on an analysis of internal developments. One theoretical framework that seeks to provide the connection between domestic and international politics is David Easton's systems theory of international relations which defines political interactions, as distinct from other kinds of interaction, as being principally oriented toward the 'authoritative allocation of values for a society'.⁹ The values of Soviet society were defined by Marxism-Leninism as interpreted by the Communist Party, which meant Stalin until March 1953. The policies of Stalin's successors Malenkov and Khrushchev could be understood as an attempt to redefine the basic values of Soviet society in order to pursue policies that they believed would resolve the dilemmas that the Soviet Union faced. The development of the doctrine of 'peaceful co-existence' and the emphasis on economic and political rather than military competition with the West can be seen as part of the system of values Khrushchev was advocating which affected both domestic and foreign policy. The role of the Soviet Union in the international system can be accommodated within this approach. Despite the official adherence to the goal of 'world socialism' in which the Soviet Union would play a leading role, there were evidently deep differences about the how the Soviet Union should adapt to the international environment. The Khrushchev period is instructive because there were two clear alternatives advocated by different parts of the Soviet elite. One was the pursuit of a more overtly hostile policy towards the West, accompanied by greater investments in military production; the other was the line of 'peaceful co-existence', accompanied by a shift in resources towards agriculture and consumer goods production. It was not self-evident that the Soviet Union was forced by the external environment to follow one or the other; their distinction lay primarily in the consequences for Soviet society.¹⁰ A similar analysis applies to Gorbachev's New Political Thinking. New Political Thinking challenged both the realist and the Marxist-Leninist theories of international relations (as hitherto understood) by proposing a new set of values based on global interdependence and human values. The logical corollary of New Political Thinking was the demilitarization of East-West relations. It implied the abandonment of the unilateral maximisation of national security on the basis of military forces and the search for mutual security based on political relations. This was accompanied by domestic political reform beginning with a campaign for glasnost' and leading to the introduction of major elements of genuine democracy.¹¹

The consequences of these changes were clearly not foreseen by Gorbachev and his supporters in the Soviet political elite. While the policies were successful in so far as they did radically alter East-West relations, the application of new thinking to relations with Eastern Europe exposed the political fragility of Soviet control and resulted in the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet military withdrawal. The introduction of genuine elections and the promotion of glasnost' allowed the development of a political culture which destroyed the homogeneity of the existing political system. The failure of the economic reforms intensified the process of social and political disintegration, resulting in the end of the Soviet Union.

It is important to emphasize that the transformation of the role of the military factor in East-West relations and particularly on the continent of Europe can be interpreted as a change in the value system on which Soviet foreign relations were based. The most potent manifestation of this was no doubt the abandonment of the 'Brezhnev doctrine' in relations with Eastern Europe. Another was the endeavour by the Soviet Union to integrate with rest of the world community, particularly in the context of a variety of multilateral institutions which it once opposed. It also manifested itself in a fundamental change in Soviet behaviour in the United Nations, the most prominent example of which was the support of UN Security Council resolutions and the measures taken for their implementation against Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.¹² The crisis of the Soviet system was not merely one of economic decline, but also one of political legitimacy. The collapse of Soviet communism was not only the collapse of a hegemonic power bloc, but also the rejection of one system of values and norms in favour of another.

Towards a new international system in Europe?

The misinterpretation by the neo-realists of the nature of the Cold War and the reasons for its end leads to a false characterisation of the system of states in Europe after the Cold War. The potential for inter-state conflict predicted by John Mearsheimer is nowhere apparent in Europe except on the territory of states which have now fallen apart, such as certain parts of the former Soviet Union and the former Republic of Yugoslavia.¹³ These conflicts can be interpreted either as civil conflicts or post-colonial conflicts. It is therefore correct to say the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav state, which created stability on their territories by the constant threat of force has resulted in instability and conflict. On the other hand it is important to emphasize that European states after the Cold War do not seem to be naturally prone to military conflict. Quite the opposite appears to be the case; the principal objective of virtually all Central and Eastern European state is to join various Western multilateral organisations such as NATO and the European Union and thereby accept the consequent constraints on their foreign policies.

The critique of neo-realist analysis could be expressed by stating that a realist approach to international relations based on the Hobbesian analogy is not readily applicable to relations between liberal democracies. Not only have there been no wars between liberal democracies, but they are not perceived to threaten one another and the balance of power between liberal democracies has been relevant only in the context of responses to ot...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The Strategic Paradox
• 2 The United States: A Strategic Nuclear Power in the 21st Century?
• 3 Russian Strategic Arms Policy after the Cold War
• 4 Strategic Nuclear Weapons of the former Soviet Union outside Russia
• 5 Strategic Arms Control after the Cold War
• 6 Co-operative Threat Reduction: Safe and Secure Dismantlement of Nuclear Weapons
• 7 Co-operative Threat Reduction: Dealing with Nuclear Proliferation
• 8 The Nuclear Challenge
• Bibliography
• Index