Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s State-of-the-Nation speech Thursday represents a liminal event in the East-West strategic balance – and an ominous one.<\/p>\n
That the strategic equation is precarious today comes through clearly in Putin\u2019s words. The U.S. and Russia have walked backwards over the threshold of sanity first crossed in the right direction by their predecessors in 1972 with the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.<\/p>\n
Amid the \u201cbalance of terror\u201d that reigned pre-1972, sensible statesmen on both sides concluded and implemented the ABM treaty which, in effect, guaranteed \u201cmutual assured destruction\u201d – the (altogether fitting) acronym was MAD – if either side attempted a nuclear attack on the other. MAD might not sound much better than \u201cbalance of terror,\u201d but the ABM treaty introduced a significant degree of stability for 30 years.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The treaty itself was the result of painstaking negotiation with considerable understanding and good faith shown by both sides. The formidable task challenging us intelligence specialists was to be able to assure President Nixon that, if he decided to trust, we could monitor Soviet adherence and promptly report any violations. (Incidentally, the Soviets did cheat. In mid-1983 we detected a huge early warning radar installation at Krasnoyarsk in Siberia – a clear violation of the ABM treaty. President Reagan called them on it, and the Soviets eventually tore it down.)<\/p>\n
During the U.S.-Soviet negotiations on the ABM treaty, a third of the CIA Soviet Foreign Policy Branch, which I led at the time, was involved in various supporting roles. I was in Moscow on May 26, 1972 for the treaty signing by President Richard Nixon and Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. I recall not being able to suppress an audible sigh of relief. MAD, I believed, would surely be preferable to the highly precarious strategic situation that preceded it. It was.<\/p>\n
Cornerstone of Stability<\/strong><\/p>\n In his speech on March 1, President Putin included an accurate tutorial on what happened after three decades, noting that Moscow was \u201ccategorically against\u201d the US decision in 2002 to withdraw from the ABM treaty. He described the treaty as \u201cthe cornerstone of the international security system.\u201d<\/p>\n Putin explained that under the treaty, \u201cthe parties had the right to deploy ballistic missile defense systems in only one of its regions. Russia deployed these systems around Moscow, and the US around its Grand Forks land-based ICBM base [in North Dakota].\u201d (He did not mention the aborted attempt to deploy a second installation at Krasnoyarsk.)<\/p>\n The Russian President explained: \u201cThe ABM treaty not only created an atmosphere of trust, but also prevented either party from recklessly using nuclear weapons \u2026 because the limited number of ballistic missile defense systems made the potential aggressor vulnerable to a response strike.\u201d<\/p>\n Putin was saying, in effect, that no matter how bad – even mad – the MAD concept may seem, it played a huge stabilizing role. He added that the US rejected all Russian proposals toward constructive dialogue on the post-ABM treaty situation, and grossly underestimated Russia\u2019s ability to respond. The Russian President then gave chapter and verse, cum video clips, on an array of new Russian weaponry which, he claimed, rendered missile defense systems \u201cuseless.\u201d The show-and-tell segment of Putin\u2019s speech has been widely reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n New York Times<\/em> Skeptical<\/strong><\/p>\n David Sanger, the New York Times<\/em>\u2019 go-to guy on key issues, who is among the best in the trade on reporting as \u201cflat facts\u201d things like WMD in Iraq and \u201cRussian meddling,\u201d wrote the lede on Putin\u2019s speech in Friday\u2019s NY Times<\/em> together with Neil MacFarquhar. The meme this time is not flat fact, but skepticism<\/a>: \u201cDo these weapons really exist? Or is Putin bluffing?\u201d<\/p>\n In support of their skepticism, Sanger and MacFarquhar blithely report that \u201canalysts writing on Facebook and elsewhere leaned toward the bluff theory.\u201d So, QED!<\/p>\n And echoing former National Intelligence Director James Clapper\u2019s insight that Russians are \u201ctypically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever,\u201d Sanger and MacFarquhar remind NYT readers that \u201cdeception lies at the heart of current Russian military doctrine.\u201d<\/p>\n The two NYT journalists did get one thing right at the very end of their article; namely, \u201cFor years, Mr. Putin has chafed at the perceived disrespect showed to him and Russia by the United States. \u2018Nobody listened to Russia,\u2019 he said near the end of his speech, to huge applause. \u2018Well, listen now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Russians, like all proud and gifted people, resent attempts to demean or marginalize them. Putin may have seen his speech, in part, as a blistering response to former President Barack Obama\u2019s dismissive comments that \u201cRussia doesn\u2019t make anything\u201d and is no more than \u201ca regional power.\u201d<\/p>\n Door Still Open to Talks<\/strong><\/p>\n It is to be hoped that the Marine generals running US defense policy, rather than calling Putin\u2019s bluff, will now encourage President Donald Trump to take up Putin\u2019s latest offer to \u201csit down at the negotiating table\u201d and \u201cwork together \u2026 to ensure global security\u201d – taking into account that \u201cstrategic parity\u201d is now a reality.<\/p>\n Referring to what he called \u201cour duty to inform our partners\u201d about Russia\u2019s claimed ability to render ABM systems \u201cuseless,\u201d Putin added: \u201cWhen the time comes, foreign and defense ministry experts will have many opportunities to discuss all these matters with them, if of course our partners so desire.\u201d<\/p>\n Putin also said, \u201cWe are greatly concerned by certain provisions of the revised Nuclear Posture Review,\u201d which envisages a nuclear response<\/a> to \u201cconventional arms attacks and even to a cyber threat.\u201d<\/p>\n He described Russia\u2019s military doctrine, as \u201cvery clear and specific\u201d: \u201cRussia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons solely in response to a nuclear attack, or an attack with other weapons of mass destruction against the country or its allies, or an act of aggression against us with the use of conventional weapons that threatens the very existence of the state.\u201d<\/p>\n With burgeoning threats against Iran and Syria, it is to be hoped that someone in Washington thinks to ask Putin which countries he includes among Russia\u2019s allies.<\/p>\n White Lies Nobody Believes<\/strong><\/p>\n Dana White, Pentagon spokeswoman, told reporters Thursday, \u201cOur missile defense has never been about\u201d Russia. Now, as Harry Truman would have put it, the Russians \u201cweren\u2019t born yesterday.\u201d Putin has been extremely derisive toward those promoting the bromide that ABM installations in and around Europe are designed to defend against missiles from Iran — or North Korea.<\/p>\n In an unusually candid remark on missile defense on April 17, 2014, the day before Crimea was annexed, Putin told a national TV audience<\/a>: \u201cMissile defense \u2026 is no less, and probably even more important, than NATO\u2019s eastward expansion. Incidentally, our decision on Crimea was partially prompted by this.<\/em>\u201d (Emphasis added)<\/p>\n To take some liberties with Shakespeare, \u201cThe fault is not in our stars, but in our Star Wars.\u201d Ever since President Ronald Reagan was sold on the notion that a \u201cStar Wars\u201d ABM system could provide the US with complete protection from missile attack, exceptional opportunities to restrain – or even put an end to – the nuclear arms race have been squandered. Victory has gone to the arms profiteers – those whom Pope Francis described to Congress as the \u201cblood drenched arms merchants.\u201d<\/p>\n The ABM project has been called, with justification, the world\u2019s largest corporate welfare program. Jonathan Marshall today explains quite well<\/a> what should scare us – still more billions likely to be thrown at the makers of systems that, most serious scientists and engineers agree, can always be defeated, and comparatively cheaply, way or another.<\/p>\n Three Decade-Old Conundrum<\/strong><\/p>\n During the mid-80s, I had a front-row seat watching President Ronald Reagan blow what appeared to be a golden chance for a comprehensive peace. I had spent most of my CIA career focusing on Soviet foreign policy and was able to tell the senior US officials I was briefing that Mikhail Gorbachev, in my view, was the real deal. Even so, I was hardly prepared for how far Gorbachev was willing to go toward disarmament. At the 1986 summit with President Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland, Gorbachev proposed that all nuclear weapons be eliminated within ten years.<\/p>\n Reagan reportedly almost rose to the occasion, but was counseled to reject Gorbachev\u2019s condition that any research on antiballistic missiles be confined to laboratories for that decade. \u201cStar Wars,\u201d the largest and most wasteful defense-industry program in recent memory, won the day.<\/p>\n I know the characters who, for whatever reason, danced to the tune of \u201cStar Wars,\u201d Reagan\u2019s benighted, wistful wish for an airtight defense against strategic missiles.<\/p>\n The naysayers to peace included ideologues like CIA Director William Casey and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, windsocks like CIA Deputy Director Robert Gates and one of his protégés, Fritz Ermarth, a viscerally anti-Russian functionary and former Northrop Corporation employee, who was a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of Soviet and European Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC) during Reykjavik.<\/p>\n According to author Jim Mann, several years after Reykjavik, Ermarth reflected on how he had been wrong in being overly suspicious of Gorbachev and how the intuition of Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz had been more perceptive.<\/p>\n What Now?<\/strong><\/p>\n By all appearances, President Putin is as interested in stemming the strategic arms race as was Gorbachev. On Thursday, Putin talked about this particular moment being liminal – he called it \u201ca turning point for the entire world.\u201d Will there be anyone in Washington at the other end of the phone, if Moscow calls? If, in effect, the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media complex answers, ABM developers will continue to fatten their purses and squander our children\u2019s future.<\/p>\n It may be time to recall the admonition of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a speech he gave 65 years ago:<\/p>\n Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. <\/em>\u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. \u2026 This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. [\u2026] Is there no other way the world may live?<\/em><\/p>\n ‘Nuff said.<\/p>\n Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army Infantry\/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst for a total of 30 years and now servers on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). <\/i>Reprinted with permission from Consortium News<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s State-of-the-Nation speech Thursday represents a liminal event in the East-West strategic balance – and an ominous one. That the strategic equation is precarious today comes through clearly in Putin\u2019s words. 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