THE LATEST STAGE OF DIALOGUE ON MISSILE DEFENSE COOPERATION ON MISSILE DEFENSE COOPERATION

Viktor Litovkin

The December 2011 Meeting of the NATO-Russia Council held in Brussels, Belgium, at the Foreign Minister level ended with nothing.

The parties had been unable to agree on missile defense and calm the ap-prehension that had made life difficult for politicians, the military, and the public in Moscow, Washington, and Brussels in recent years. Yet again, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced at a press conference,

“they listen to us, but they don’t hear us,” ¹ while NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen reiterated that “NATO does not present a threat to Russia, and the BMD being established in Europe is not aimed against Russia.” ² As usual, his words were not believed in Moscow.

The dialogue on the problem of missile defense between Russia and NATO and Russia and the United States has continued nearly without a single day of interruption for the past forty years. However, it became particularly tense after 2001, when the Bush administration made the decision to withdraw from the 1972 ABM Treaty, which both sides had called “the cornerstone of strategic stability.” The U.S. president and members of his team explained this action as being for the protec-tion of the naprotec-tional interests of the United States, pointing to the fact that unpredictable regimes in certain “rogue” states, including Iran, North Korea, and Syria, were developing missile and nuclear technology that could pose a threat to the United States or its allies in Europe. To protect them from such a threat, they plan to deploy missile defense facilities in Europe (specifically in the Czech Republic and Poland) as part of the U.S. global BMD system.

Moscow’s initial reaction to the U.S. decision was rather calm.

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, made a statement on the is-sue that was broadcast on television. “Russia, like the United States and unlike other nuclear powers, has long possessed an effective system

to overcome antimissile defense,” he said. “So I can say with full confi-dence that the decision made by the president of the United States does not pose a threat to the national security of the Russian Federation.” ³ “I believe that the present level of bilateral relations between the Russian Federation and the United States should not only be preserved but should be used for working out a new framework of strategic relations,”

Vladimir Putin emphasized. “Along with the problem of anti-missile de-fense a particularly important task under these conditions is putting a le-gal seal on the achieved agreements on further radical, irreversible and verifiable cuts of strategic offensive weapons, in our opinion to the level of 1,500-2,200 nuclear warheads for each side.” ⁴

The conciliatory tone of this statement can be explained by the fact that Moscow and Washington were preparing to sign the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) that would limit each side’s in-ventory to 1,700-2,200 operationally deployed nuclear warheads.

The Kremlin was reluctant to risk the ratification of this Treaty by the U.S. Congress. The SORT Treaty was signed in the Russian capital by Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush on May 24, 2002, came into force on June 1, 2003, after ratification by the U.S. Senate and Russian State Duma, and was to have been implemented by December 31, 2012.

The two sides planned to agree on measures to ensure transparency and verification procedures in the future, but they never returned to it.

Soon, when it became known that the United States had made plans to deploy ten GBI interceptors in hardened silos within Polish territory that would be capable of striking ballistic missiles at ranges of 1,500-5,000 km, and to build a multi-functional Raytheon XBR (X-band) radar site in the Czech Republic that would be part of a global BMD sys-tem and be used to guide GBI interceptor missiles, the Kremlin’s at-titude changed dramatically. This was even more the case when in 2004 the United States reached an agreement with Denmark on the upgrade of its long-range radar in Thule, Greenland. Information in the press about U.S. BMD interceptors planned for deployment on British territory prompted the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to issue the follow-ing statement: “The American side continues to reassure us that neither the U.S. MD system now being established nor its foreign bases are di-rected against Russia. However, our question remains unanswered: what

Chapter 9. The Latest Stage of Dialogue on Missile Defense Cooperation 169

sort of security or guarantee will there be for such ‘not directed against’?

Until it gets an answer, the Russian side must consider this a potential threat to the security of Russia.” ⁵

The Russian Ministry of Defense took the same stance as the MFA.

In 2005, Army General Yuri Baluyevsky, the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, in an interview with the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza threatened the countries that were to take part in the creation of the Missile Defense in Europe: “Go ahead and build that shield.

You had better think, though, what might fall down upon your heads afterwards.” ⁶ In particular, it was suggested that in response to the de-ployment of GBI interceptors, Russia might deploy the new Iskander-M tactical missiles (capable of high-accuracy strikes on bases of GBI in-terceptor missiles within their operating range of up to 480 km) within the borders of Kaliningrad Oblast.

Finally, as President Vladimir Putin indicated in February 2007:

“Our military specialists do not think that the missile defense systems the United States wants to deploy in Eastern Europe are aimed at coun-tering threats from say, Iran or terrorist groups of some kind… The tra-jectories of missiles launched from, say, Iranian territory, are already well known. We think therefore that these arguments do not carry much weight. This does directly concern us, of course, and it will lead to an appropriate response. […] Our response will be asymmetrical, but it will be highly effective.” ⁷

The meaning behind this threat was soon explained by Army General Baluyevsky, who stated that Russia was prepared to renounce the entire legal and treaty-based system of arms control ⁸ and, in particular, would unilaterally withdraw from the 1987 Soviet-American Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF): “Although the treaty does not expire, the possibility exists for a party to abandon the treaty [unilaterally],”

said Baluyevsky, “if it provides convincing evidence that it is necessary to do so. We have such evidence at present. Many countries are current-ly developing and modernizing medium-range missiles. Unfortunatecurrent-ly, by adhering to the INF treaty, Russia lost out on many unique missile systems.” ⁹ Although according to the above statement, the general had cited reasons that were not related to the U.S. BMD system, this did not seem to bother anyone.

Pentagon head Robert Gates responded to Baluyevsky’s remarks by emphasizing: “They [the Russians] know perfectly well that the ballis-tic missile defense that we’re contemplating and proceeding to negotiate in Europe is no threat to Russia.” ¹⁰ Gates suggested that Russia might be

“concerned about the developing medium-range ballistic missile threat to their south and to their east.” However, the deployment of the Iskander systems in Kaliningrad Oblast to counter a threat from the South was, to say the least, strange, in his words.

Washington initiated a broad diplomatic and media campaign to convince Moscow that the “third site” strategic BMD in Europe was solely intended to counter Iranian and North Korean missile strikes against the United States. U.S. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley began talks with Moscow, and Director of the Missile Defense Agency Lieutenant General Henry Obering and Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried held a press briefing in Washington. All of them called the Russian response “inadequate.” General Obering empha-sized the technical side of the issue: “With the radar that we have there that we have proposed, it is a very narrow beam radar. It has to be queued. And so even if we wanted to try to track Russian missiles with that radar, we could only track a very, very small percentage of those missiles. And even if we could, passing that information off and hav-ing an interceptor try to intercept the Russian missile, we can’t do it.

The interceptors that we would place in Europe are not fast enough to catch the Russian ICBMs.” ¹¹

Nevertheless, Moscow remained unswerving in its assessment that missile defense in Europe would pose a threat. Even former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in spite of the mutual sympathy and respect between him and Vladimir Putin, was unable to convince the Kremlin that the American military policy did not involve any malicious intent against Russia.

On April 26, 2007, Vladimir Putin presented another possible re-sponse to the U.S. missile defense deployment: this time, rather than an announcement that the Iskander system was being deployed on the Baltic Sea coast, it was instead announced that Russia was on the verge of withdrawing from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). It is difficult to say to what extent these threats alarmed the United

Chapter 9. The Latest Stage of Dialogue on Missile Defense Cooperation 171

States. It is quite certain, however, that in terms of strategic approach, these statements threw U.S. politicians and strategists into a state of very serious confusion.

A fundamentally new situation occurred, however, at the 2007 G8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, where Putin offered the early warn-ing radar in Gabala, Azerbaijan (leased by Russia) to the United States for use in monitoring ballistic missile launches from the South (i.e., from Iran). At the same time, Putin insisted that this option would remove the need to deploy U.S. missile defense in Europe (even though it was not explained how a radar could replace interceptor missiles in counter-ing a missile strike).

In Putin’s opinion, “the system we establish would include all of Europe without exception.” Apart from that, it would eliminate the possibility of missiles falling on European countries because they would fall either into the sea or the ocean. Most importantly, a joint radar station in Azerbaijan, according to Putin: “would eliminate our need to deploy a missile strike system in the immediate vicinity of our European borders and the U.S. need to deploy a missile strike system in space.” ¹²

The Russian president emphasized that “this work would have to be multifaceted and involve all European countries. We agreed with George that our experts will begin working on this as soon as possible.” Putin also stressed the need for each side to consider the concerns of the other, and to ensure “equal access” to the system for all sides and transparency of its work, as the main conditions for joint usage of the Gabala radar. He concluded, “then we will have no problem.” ¹³

Bush was clearly not prepared for Putin to make such a proposal.

Following the meeting with the head of the Russian state, he said, “He made some interesting suggestions. As a result of our discussions, we both agreed to have a strategic dialogue, an opportunity to share ideas and concerns between our State Department, Defense Department, and military people.” He characterized the overall dialogue as “very constructive.” ¹⁴ The White House acknowledged that the Russian pro-posal had been a surprise to the United States. “As far as I know, this is the first time that’s been formally raised in conversation with us,”

said State Department Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey at the Daily Press

Briefing.¹⁵ In turn, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, who had accompanied the President in Heiligendamm, noted that it was the ad-ministration’s view that by making such a proposal, Putin had confirmed that Moscow shared U.S. concerns about the existence of a potential mis-sile threat to Russia, Europe, and the United States from such “rogue”

states as Iran. At the same time, he underlined that Washington under-stood Russia’s anxiety regarding the potential appearance of elements of American strategic potential in Europe.

In response to Moscow’s apprehension, Washington even proposed the creation of a joint commission consisting of the two Ministers of Defense and two heads of Foreign Ministries that would provide a framework for negotiations on the BMD issue. It was called the 2+2 Commission and included Robert Gates and Condoleezza Rice on the American side, and Anatoliy Serdyukov and Sergey Lavrov on the Russian side. However, even this commission was unable to ease ten-sions between the two countries on the issue.

At the Kennebunkport U.S.-Russia Summit on July 1-2, Putin de-veloped his proposal for the joint use of the Gabala radar further by of-fering to include the missile early warning radar in Armavir, which was then under construction, in the common system. It was also suggested to put the American BMD system under the control of the NATO-Russia Council, making it a European missile shield, and to create joint early warning centers in Moscow and Brussels. However, although George W.

Bush characterized these ideas as bold and strategic, he made it clear that the United States had no intention of abandoning its plans, confirm-ing that he continued to believe that the Czech Republic and Poland were to become an integrated part of the BMD system.

In commenting on the results of the Summit in Kennebunkport, First Deputy Prime Minister and former Minister of Defense Sergey Ivanov said, “If the United States accepts our proposals, then we will no longer need to deploy new missiles in the European part of Russia, includ-ing Kalininclud-ingrad.” ¹⁶ In the United States and Europe this statement was taken as further evidence of Moscow’s preparedness to pursue an “asym-metrical response” to Washington’s plans.

In an interview on the CNBC television channel, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rejected the Russian proposal for the United

Chapter 9. The Latest Stage of Dialogue on Missile Defense Cooperation 173

States to abandon the plan to deploy the BMD system in Europe. Almost simultaneously, in an interview on the Russian Vesti Nedeli TV program, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov reiterated the view of the Russian leadership that “the deployment of interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic will pose an obvious threat to Russia,”

as the planned radar site would be able to monitor the European terri-tory of Russia up to the Urals.¹⁷ Ivanov repeated that in response Russia would consider deploying Iskander theatre ballistic missile systems to the European part of the country, including Kaliningrad.¹⁸ Russia pro-posed that instead of the American BMD system, the Europeans cre-ate a unified system of missile defense by 2020 with equal access to its control granted not only to the NATO countries, but also to all European states, including neutral countries.

This proposal received no response. Moreover, the NATO states unan-imously supported the U.S. plans to deploy the “third missile defense site” in Poland and the Czech Republic, the foreign ministers of which had already signed the appropriate agreements with Condoleezza Rice for deploying the missile defense elements within their borders.

The confrontation between Russia and the United States on the issue of the “third missile defense site” in Poland and the Czech Republic ended after the inauguration of the new American president, Barack Obama, in 2008. The new president canceled the plan set forth by George W. Bush to deploy ten GBI interceptors and an X-Band radar in Central Europe. This decision was made not as a gift to the Kremlin, but because the missiles that were to be loaded into Polish silos were found to be not very effective, and in fact nearly half of them failed trials.

Obama considered it irrational to waste budgetary resources on unreli-able technology.

On September 17, 2009, President Obama made a special state-ment on missile defense. He announced that the Pentagon would be pre-pared to resume development of a global BMD system while adjusting the plans for deploying its third ring in Poland and the Czech Republic, which were so vigorously pursued by the former U.S. Administration. He said that the United States continues to consider Iran’s missile program a potential threat and intends to help its European allies to ensure their security. The United States had not abandoned its plans to deploy

land-based BMD elements in Europe; it had only delayed the start of their deployment until 2015.

On the same day, September 17, the White House unveiled a program of BMD deployment in Europe, which it planned to carry out in four phases.

The first phase (completed in 2011) entailed the deployment (in Europe) of missile defense systems that had already been developed and proven, including Aegis BMD-capable ships, SM-3 Block IA inter-ceptors, and a transportable AN/TPY-2 radar, to provide the capability to counter regional ballistic missile threats.

The second phase (time frame for completion – by 2015) antici-pates the deployment of a more powerful version of the SM-3 interceptor (Block-IB) (once the necessary testing has been completed) in its sea-based and land-sea-based modifications, and also the placement of the more advanced sensors that are required to broaden the area defended against short- and medium-range missile threat.

The third phase (time frame for completion – by 2018) will entail the development, testing, and deployment of a more advanced SM-3 (Block IIA) interceptor.

The fourth phase of BMD deployment (time frame for completion – by 2020) involves the deployment of the SM-3 (Block IIB) interceptor “to enhance our ability to counter medium- and intermediate-range missiles and potential future ICBM threats to the United States from the Middle East.” ¹⁹ It is anticipated that U.S. Navy ships will be on patrol off the European coast with interceptor missiles on board until land-based BMD elements are deployed. The United States has already reached agreement with Romania and Spain.

Just as eight years before, Moscow initially met these plans from Washington with relative calm. The reasons for this were the same as before. In the context of ongoing negotiations on the New START Treaty that was to replace START-I, which was due to expire on December 5, 2009, the Kremlin had no interest in aggravating relations with the White House, especially since the new Treaty was to include the phrase, “rec-ognizing the existence of the interrelationship between strategic offen-sive arms and strategic defenoffen-sive arms, that this interrelationship will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced.” ²⁰ In

oth-Chapter 9. The Latest Stage of Dialogue on Missile Defense Cooperation 175

er words, the document was to confirm the interrelationship between strategic offensive weapons and missile defense.

The New START Treaty was signed by the presidents of the two countries in Prague on April 8, 2010, and provided that over a ten-year span the two countries’ nuclear warheads would be reduced to 1,550 and deployed strategic launchers would be reduced to 700, with an ad-ditional 100 such launchers being stockpiled. Nearly all of the transpar-ency, notification, verification, data exchange, and inspection principles

The New START Treaty was signed by the presidents of the two countries in Prague on April 8, 2010, and provided that over a ten-year span the two countries’ nuclear warheads would be reduced to 1,550 and deployed strategic launchers would be reduced to 700, with an ad-ditional 100 such launchers being stockpiled. Nearly all of the transpar-ency, notification, verification, data exchange, and inspection principles