A few days ago, US Vice President Joe Biden officially announced that his country is ready to continue negotiations on nuclear arms reduction and already has a number of considerations on this subject. According to available data, as an additional argument in favor of the start of new negotiations, the United States cites the fact that if a new treaty is signed, both countries will be able to save a total of about eight billion dollars a year. The cost of such savings will be an additional reduction in the number of deployed and stored nuclear warheads.
At present, in accordance with the terms of the START III treaty, the United States and Russia may have at the same time no more than one and a half thousand deployed nuclear warheads. According to Kommersant, Americans consider it possible to reduce this number by about a third. At the same time, the US nuclear potential will not lose from such a reduction, since the proposal was developed based on the results of a special study and a change in views on potential targets and methods of using nuclear weapons. It is noteworthy that with a reduction in the number of deployed nuclear warheads, the total number of such weapons in the United States can be reduced by almost two times. Financially, this will have the following implications for the United States. It will be possible to reduce the number of promising strategic submarines needed from 10-12 to 8-10, which will result in a reduction in the cost of 15-17 billions of dollars. In addition, it will be possible to disband or transform one of the land rocket units and save about 350-370 million per year. With the current ongoing search for ways to save on military spending, this benefit looks more than interesting and promising.
The proposal to reduce nuclear arsenals, as it became known, is supported by several high-ranking US military and civilian officials, from the head of the Global Air Force Shock Command, Lieutenant General James Kowalski to a group of senators. In addition, among the supporters of further cuts, former Senator Chuck Hagel is seen, who is currently being appointed for the post of Minister of Defense. Thus, the likelihood of a reduction by the United States of its nuclear weapons is constantly growing. According to some sources, the proposal to reduce in the near future can be made even unilaterally, regardless of the views of official Moscow.
As we see, further reductions in nuclear weapons belonging to the United States have certain economic grounds. However, strategic weapons are clearly not the thing that Americans will reduce only for economic reasons. According to the available data, besides saving, a prerequisite to the reduction proposal was the revision of the strategy for the use of nuclear weapons. Some time ago, several divisions of the Pentagon and other related organizations prepared a report reviewing the current geopolitical situation and possible targets for nuclear weapons. Some details of this report were freely available, although they were not officially confirmed.
According to the available parts of the report, the United States no longer sees several countries as potential targets for their missiles. First of all, it is Syria and Iraq. The first is weakened by the civil war and will not pose any danger to the United States and its allies over the next few years, while the second one joined the category of US friends. As for other countries, for example, China, the DPRK or Russia, they continue to be on the list of goals. At the same time, the old strategy of using nuclear weapons - a strike with the destruction of the leadership of the enemy country and the infliction of fatal damage to its armed forces - is no longer considered effective and promising. According to the new report, it is enough to "keep the spotlight" on only the main economic, industrial and military goals. According to various estimates, such a change of strategy only in the case of Russia's containment will make it possible to have half as many missiles and warheads on duty.
It turns out that with the help of a new agreement or amendments to an existing START III, the United States will be able to, as they say, kill two birds with one stone. First, it will be possible to reduce the costs of maintaining and updating its strategic nuclear forces, and secondly, in the course of such savings, not only not to lose in a qualitative aspect, but also to a certain extent, to update our methods of using nuclear weapons. At the same time, this reduction can only be considered useful for the United States. Now it is not quite clear what conditions will be offered to Russia and, as a result, it is still too early to talk about the benefits for our country. For example, taking on new commitments may force our country to reconsider plans to create new means of delivery, which may significantly hit some defense enterprises.
In the context of the new American proposal, it is worth remembering the history of all previous agreements. START and other treaties similar to it were signed after many years of consultations, negotiations and information gathering. None of the parties wanted to lose anything and therefore, negotiations often turned into bargaining for a particular item. Therefore, the current proposal for additional reductions in nuclear weapons - if it interests the Russian leadership - will reach the stage of a ready-made treaty, in the best case, in the next few years. If Moscow doesn’t see anything useful in the American proposal, then the United States will either have to forget about saving and saving, or start it unilaterally. Perhaps in the second case, Washington will receive an additional argument in disputes in the form of a voluntary additional reduction of nuclear weapons, demonstrating the peaceability of the United States. However, in order to find out whether the United States will have such an argument or not, you need to wait for the results of the current negotiations.
On the materials of the sites:
http://kommersant.ru/
http://lenta.ru/
http://newsru.com/