8 anxious questions about the consequences of breaking the rocket treaty between Russia and the United States - ForumDaily
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8 troubling questions about the consequences of breaking the rocket agreement between Russia and the United States

US President Donald Trump 20 October announced that the US will withdraw from the treaty prohibiting Russia and America to have in service and develop medium and short range missiles. After that, Trump's national security adviser John Bolton came to the talks in Moscow and in an interview with the newspaper Kommersant said that Russia, which constantly violates it, was to blame for the breach of the treaty. Moscow, in turn, blames Washington for violations.

Фото: Depositphotos

«Medusa”Figured out why the two countries with thousands of intercontinental missiles also need medium-range missiles, which of them violated the treaty more and what would happen if the agreement really ceased to operate.

Recall what happens:

  • On Friday, US President Donald Trump announced that From 2 February, the United States unilaterally suspend all obligations under an agreement on liquidation medium-range and shorter-range missiles (PRSP) and begin the procedure for withdrawing from the treaty.
  • “We will proceed as follows. Our answer will be a mirror. The American partners have announced that they are suspending their participation in the contract, and we are suspending ", - said Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting with the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs Sergey Shoigu and Sergey Lavrov.
  • The agreement signed in 1987 between the USSR and the USA is one of the most important agreements that ensured a state of "strategic stability" in the world, which practically guaranteed that a nuclear war would not start. Now this state is under threat.

1. Why do we need medium and short range missiles? What are they more dangerous than intercontinental?

By the end of 1970, the world had almost ceased to be afraid of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). It was enough for the opposing countries in the Cold War to ensure that the missiles and charges were approximately equal, and that the early warning means for launching ICBMs worked reliably. This ensured “nuclear deterrence”: each side understood that if it launched its missiles, it would also be destroyed by retaliation.

The main advantage of short-range and medium-range missiles is that they reach the target in a very short time. If intercontinental missiles take tens of minutes to deliver a warhead to the enemy’s territory, then “small” and “medium” take just minutes. The USSR and the USA in 1970 – 80-e constantly suspected each other that such missiles could become the main tool of a “preventive strike” designed to destroy launchers and control and communications facilities.

In 1976, the USSR adopted a new medium-range Pioneer complex (SS-20 according to NATO classification). After reviewing the data on plans for the production of new missiles (hundreds of pieces with three warheads on each), American intelligence concluded that in such numbers Moscow might need them only to unleash a war in Europe.

The medium-range missiles were not covered by the agreements on the limitation of nuclear weapons of the early 1970-s, and the Soviet authorities believed that they could be made in any quantities without regard to the US opinion. As Marshal Sergey Akhromeev wrote in his book, at the end of the 1970-s, the United States even tried to agree with the USSR that Moscow would not deploy (put in a combat position) new medium-range complexes more than it had managed to deploy by that moment. Akhromeyev himself (then head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff) believed that the Americans needed to give such guarantees, and even reported about it to the Politburo. But the Politburo decided otherwise. According to the book “The Rocket Shield of the Fatherland” published in the 1999 year of the Russian Ministry of Defense, in 1975, the 567 warheads were deployed on medium-range missiles. In the 1983 year, the 1374 warheads were already deployed on such missiles, including the new Pioneers.

Yegor Gaidar, in his book The Death of an Empire, argued that the main reason for such mass production of the Pioneers was not military considerations, but the desire of the Soviet leadership to load the industry.

Washington responded to a new threat: US President Ronald Reagan deployed Pershing-II medium-range missiles in West Germany in 1983. In the event of war, they were supposed to strike at the Pioneers launchers. The Soviet leadership (as follows from the declassified documents of American intelligence and the memoirs of the defector, the former KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky) explained the deployment of "Pershing" by other goals. The Politburo believed that missiles capable of reaching Moscow in five to eight minutes were needed in order to quickly “decapitate” the USSR — until the leadership had time to decide on a counterstrike. But the Soviet intelligence was wrong, exaggerating the Pershing-II range: in fact, the missiles from the home areas in the Federal Republic of Germany did not reach Moscow.

In response to the deployment of the Pershing, Moscow sent its latest Oka short-range missiles to Eastern Europe. All of these mutual deployments have caused the most serious aggravation regarding the two camps since the time of the Caribbean crisis.

2. Why the United States and the Soviet Union refused to missiles?

After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR, the leadership of the CPSU decided to soften relations with the United States. Negotiations that had been interrupted many times about the mutual withdrawal of short-range and medium-range missiles from Europe were resumed. As a result, Gorbachev and Reagan decided not to remove the missiles, but to completely destroy this class of weapons, at the same time banning the development and testing of new models.

Soviet inspector examines Pershing-II rocket destroyed in the USA in 1989
MSGT Jose Lopez Jr. / Wikimedia commons

The Treaty on Medium and Small-Range Missiles (DRMD) between the USSR and the USA was concluded in 1987. Not only ballistic, but also any land-based missiles with a range of more than 500 kilometers and less than 5500 kilometers were banned. The Soviet Union at that time had an advantage in this class, so the US needed to destroy 846 missiles, and the USSR exactly one thousand more. As Gaidar wrote, the leadership of the USSR already felt the approach of the economic crisis, and therefore decided to make serious concessions during the negotiations.

Cruise missiles were also banned - several hundred American Gryphons (the ground-based version of Tomahawk, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, including) and several dozen Soviet-launched RK-55 Relief. Cruise missiles do not have the main advantage of ballistic - a short approach time to the target (their speed is comparable to a passenger plane), but due to the low profile of the flight with a "rounding-up relief" they are hardly noticeable to radar. Moscow, as a “goodwill gesture,” pledged to destroy even the Oka short-range missiles, although their range did not reach 500 kilometers.

Sea, submarine and airborne missiles were not banned, which also gave an obvious advantage to the United States. By the beginning of the 1990's, they had already armed with thousands of Tomahawks on ships and submarines and AGM-86 on airplanes, while the USSR had just begun production of such cruise missiles and relied almost entirely on ground-based forbidden missiles.

3. And what, all the missiles really destroyed?

Yes. The treaty provided for a strict control mechanism and mutual inspections. The last Pioneers, Pershings and Tomahawks of the land base were destroyed in May 1991. The Oka complexes survived the rest of the “forbidden” missiles, because they were in service with the Warsaw Pact countries (without nuclear warheads). Bulgaria and Slovakia destroyed the last complexes in 2002 year in exchange for financial assistance from the United States.

4. Do other countries have such rockets?

Now medium-range missiles are the basis of China’s nuclear forces: there are over a thousand such missiles in service with the PRC. President Donald Trump made it clear that their presence in China is another reason for the United States to relinquish the limitations of the INF Treaty. John Bolton, in an interview with Kommersant, said that the contract could be preserved only if other countries joined it. But the chances that China will abandon its missiles, according to Bolton, are zero, so the agreement is doomed.

Russia officially has no complaints about China, but, as President Vladimir Putin stated in 2014, also worried that “only we and the United States limit ourselves”. According to Putin, from the countries with nuclear weapons and medium-range missiles, Russia is most concerned about Pakistan, a country "with such a complex and so far, unfortunately, unstable political regime."

In 2016, Pakistan put into operation Shahin-3 missiles with a range of up to 2750 kilometers, capable of delivering a warhead to the remote islands of the Andaman Bay, belonging to the main enemy of the country - India. If a rocket is launched in the opposite direction, it can reach Moscow. In India, the Agni-3 rocket is in service with a range of up to 5000 kilometers, which can cover targets almost anywhere in Russia. The newest North Korean missiles have about the same range.

Another country with nuclear weapons (albeit not officially recognized), armed with medium-range missiles, is Israel. Its main regional rival, Iran, has also developed such missiles, but does not yet possess nuclear warheads.

Previously, medium-range missiles were in the UK and France. Great Britain removed from service its Thor missiles of American construction back in the 1960. France has written off the latest ground-based S3 complexes in the 1996 year, preferring sea-based missiles to them.

5. Why is the US accusing Russia of violating the treaty?

At the end of 1980 and in 1990, only the Communists spoke about the injustice of the INF Treaty in Russia. After the United States withdrew from the anti-missile defense treaty and began to create missile defense in Europe, the leadership of the Russian Defense Ministry also attacked the INF.

The first division of the Iskander missile system was deployed in 2007. This is a heavily upgraded version of the Oka missile destroyed by the INF Treaty, which was produced at the same plant. The development of the complex began immediately after the conclusion of the INF in the 1988 year. Formally, the first modifications of the Iskander did not violate the terms of the contract, since they had a distance of less than 500 kilometers.

Last year, the New York Times reported that Russia deployed two battalions of modified launchers with four cars each. The complex, called the Iskander-K, according to a newspaper source in US intelligence, is armed with a new missile - a modification of the X-101 aviation cruise missile with a range of up to 5000 kilometers. According to another version, this rocket is a land version of the Caliber missile complex. According to the NYT, it is visually impossible to determine which particular missile is on a mobile launcher - a ballistic or long-range cruise, which creates an additional danger for NATO forces in Europe.

Obviously, such a rocket would violate the INF Treaty, but Russia claims that the Iskander-K missiles cannot fly further than 500 kilometers. Although, according to the official television channel of the Ministry of Defense "Star", the distance to raise "quite possible" even up to thousands of kilometers. At the same time, according to the INFMT, it is impossible to produce cruise missiles that are able to fly further 500 kilometers, even if they have never been tested at such distances.

In 2012 and 2013, the Russian military tested the Rubezh ballistic missile RS-26 at a distance of less than 5500 kilometers. Under the contract, any ballistic missile capable of hitting a target at such a “close” (relative to intercontinental projectiles) distance should be prohibited. In 2017, the Frontier project was closed. Instead, Russia is going to develop the Avangard complex, hypersonic planning units for intercontinental missiles, which, according to Vladimir Putin’s message to the Federal Assembly this spring, “are capable of breaking through any missile defense”.

6. Why does Russia accuse the USA of violations?

Indeed, Russia also claims that the United States violates the treaty. At the start of the 2000, the United States created a real medium-range missile Hera. Formally, it fell under the ban, but was used only as a training target for the American and Israeli missile defense systems. In addition to this target missile, the Russian authorities made claims to the American unmanned strike systems Reaper and Predator. In their opinion, the Americans simply “bypassed the treaty” in this way.

The only obvious violation of the United States INF Treaty is the deployment in recent years of the American missile defense system in Romania. The Mark-41 installations for launching Standard Missile 3 interceptors anti-missile systems capable of shooting down ICBMs can also launch Tomahawk cruise missiles. The SMRD explicitly prohibits any complex on which medium-range missiles were tested. As with the Iskander launchers, in the case of the Mark-41, it is impossible to visually determine which rocket is preparing to launch.

7. Where and when can the US and Russia deploy new missiles? Will they be more powerful than those that were destroyed under the contract?

Land-based cruise missiles both countries can deploy without any problems, the whole question is only in financial capabilities. Russia has already begun the deployment of Iskander-K; The United States may resume the ground-based Tomahawks program. In addition, the United States is developing a new cruise missile, 57 million dollars have already been allocated for research.

The creation of medium-range ballistic missiles is no longer a priority for both countries. Russia has postponed the Frontier project until at least 2027; nothing is known about the US plans to create an analogue of the "Pershing".

The main difference between modern missiles and 1987 analogs of the year is accuracy: now the missiles can be massively used with non-nuclear combat units against most targets, almost without loss of effectiveness and without casual casualties. At the same time, the "toxicity" of medium-range missiles for international relations will continue: no one can know for sure what type of warhead is on a particular missile, what is its exact range and target. So, they will always scare the enemy with their unpredictability.

8. What about the rest of the nuclear weapons?

John Bolton offered Donald Trump to withdraw from the strategic offensive arms treaty (START-3). This contract, which limits the number of deployed intercontinental missiles and warheads, expires in the 2021 year, and its extension is unlikely. Russian politicians are already talking about the imminent collapse of the entire system of limiting nuclear weapons.

But in the coming years, the world will not face a new arms race in the style of the Cold War: in order to build missiles in the hundreds and thousands, countries will have to seriously raise their military budgets. This is unlikely to happen: Russia, in any case, has been cutting defense spending in recent years.

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