While the emerging multipolar system may have the potential for new cooperative structures, it also holds even greater threats to international security. If New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is not extended before its expiration in 2021, and the United States remains dismissive of a substantive dialogue on a broad set of strategic stability issues with Russia, prospects for future bilateral agreements are dim. This danger is heightened because long-standing U.S.-Russian cooperation to manage nuclear threats has all but collapsed. The combination of these competing perceptions in Moscow and Washington may create dangerous escalatory dynamics in a crisis. planners’ worst-case scenarios are of a Russian preemptive limited nuclear strike undertaken for military advantage. and/or NATO air strikes on critically important Russian targets, which could leave Russia with no option but to resort to nuclear use. They also extend to the possibility of U.S. forces’ ability to carry out a disarming or a decapitating strike. strategic conventional and nuclear capabilities, mean that nuclear weapons remain central to Russia’s deterrence considerations, and that America is at the core of Russian nuclear planning. Moscow fears a potential future conflict in which the West seeks to coerce or destroy Russia, using all tools of national power, including its military. It also views the United States as a rule-breaker that has destabilized countries around the world.
The Kremlin believes that Washington is unwilling to accommodate a politically, economically, and militarily strong Russia as a fellow great power. But Russians expect that, one way or another, nuclear weapons will remain important.įor the time being, Moscow sees deterrence of the United States as a primary national security challenge. As global power balances shift and new technologies emerge, the ways that nuclear weapons fulfill these tasks may change as well. As the geostrategic context evolves, Russia wants to protect and grow its global standing and its ability to respond to emerging threats.
Russia also views its nuclear arsenal as a source of continuing power and influence. A modernized nuclear arsenal is critical to Moscow’s effort to maintain strategic deterrence, which relies as well on capable conventional weapons to ensure potential adversaries eschew aggression. The world may be changing, but Russia’s leaders see nuclear weapons much as their Soviet predecessors did: as guarantors of peace and security among great powers.
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