Video Above: Everything You Need to Know About Russia’s Nuclear Weapons and Strategy
By Peter Huessy, President of Geostrategic Analysis, Potomac, Maryland
President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putinhave met in Geneva and now over the next weeks and months, we will find out what progress the two made in improving the relationship between the two nations. Going into the meeting, the conventional wisdom was that the one area of potential progress was on nuclear “arms control,” with attention centered on reducing overall warhead numbers and adopting policies such as “no first use” of nuclear weapons.
However, a person must be wary of such future deals as Russia has indicated it wants to stop U.S. missile defenses and the development of U.S. long-range prompt conventional strike systems, without necessarily curtailing any of their own military capability. Remember Putin rejected the very same day when previously offered by the United States a reduction by one-third in the New START level in 2013.
In short, while arms control can be useful, it can also be fraught with danger given what Russia seeks to curtail, especially America’s strong conventional deterrent.
For example, although hypersonic speed missiles are already in the nuclear arsenals of the two countries, capturing conventional forces of hypersonic capability under a follow-on to New START is Putin’s objective—a deal he would try and not observe while insisting that the United States stick religiously to any such limits.
Additionally, Putin also wants to have limits on space deployments which would largely prohibit the United States from being able to defend its space assets by being able to take out Russian or Chinese assets as a deterrent capability. On top of which Putin wants to significantly restrict the number and geographic area of U.S. and allied missile defenses.
