The origins and realities of the INF Treaty
Recently, more and more questions have arisen regarding the operation of the Treaty between the USSR and the USA on the elimination of their medium and shorter range missiles (INF) from December December 8. Periodically, both in Russia and in the USA, statements are made about the possibility of getting out of it. Of course, first of all it concerns the sustainability of this agreement - does it correspond to the realities of today? To do this, remember the conditions for the deployment of the INF and history negotiations, as well as to assess modern threats.
POLITICAL ASPECTS OF DEPLOYMENT OF RSD
The decision to deploy medium-range missiles (RSD) in Europe refers to the days of the administration of US President Jimmy Carter. According to Henry Kissinger, “in fact, the arguments in favor of medium-range weapons were political, not strategic,” and stemmed from the very concern that had previously spawned a debate between NATO allies on strategy. "If the European allies of America really believed in its readiness to resort to nuclear retribution with the help of weaponslocated in the continental United States or sea-based, new missiles on European soil would not be needed. But America’s determination to do likewise was precisely called into question by European leaders. ”
The coming to power of President Jimmy Carter in 1977 intensified the contradictions between the White House administration and the West German partners.
The United States believed that, due to its specificity, Europe could not be the main theater of military operations with the use of nuclear weapons. Here, it was supposed to use neutron and precision weapons against the Soviet armed forces. In this regard, in the military-political circles of Germany, there were fears that the United States is seeking to "regionalize" the possibilities of nuclear war.
In his speech at the London Institute for Strategic Studies in October 1977, German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt insisted on maintaining political and military balance as a prerequisite for security and detente. He feared that the American allies would either "surrender" Western Europe, or turn it into a "battlefield." Bonn was afraid that Europe would become a “bargaining chip” in the Soviet-American confrontation. In essence, the position of G. Schmidt reflected the structural conflict that occurred in NATO during this period.
America tried to dispel European fears. It means that the question was whether Western Europe could count on US nuclear weapons in the event of a repulse of the Soviet attack, which has Europe as its goal.
There are other, more complex explanations. In particular, it was argued that, at first, the new weapon allegedly united the strategic defense of Europe with the strategic defense of the United States. It was argued that the Soviet Union would not launch an attack by superior conventional forces until medium-range missiles in Europe were destroyed, which, thanks to their close proximity and accuracy of hitting, could disrupt Soviet command posts and provide the US strategic forces with an all-destructive attack. hitting Thus, the RSD closed the gap in the "intimidation" system. In this case, the defense of Europe and the United States found themselves in a “bundle”: the Soviet Union would be deprived of the opportunity to attack any of these territories without incurring the risk of an unacceptable universal nuclear war.
It is necessary to take into account the fact that such a “bundle” was the answer, as G. Kissinger believes, and to the growing fears of German neutralism throughout Europe, especially in France. After the defeat of the German Chancellor G. Schmidt in 1982, European circles began to fear the return of the German Social Democratic Party to the positions of nationalism and neutralism. In the framework of the open discussion in the FRG regarding the US strategy, the well-known SPD politician Egon Bar wrote that morality and ethics are more important than Atlantic solidarity and agreement with the new American strategy will complicate the prospects for the unification of two German states. French President Francois Mitterrand in 1983, made a zealous advocate of the US plan for the deployment of medium-range missiles. Speaking in the German Bundestag, he said: "Anyone who plays to the separation of the European continent from the Americas can, in our opinion, destroy the balance of power and, therefore, prevent the preservation of the world."
In May, 1978, when, according to NATO estimates, the Soviet Union deployed the first 50 mid-range missile complexes SS-20 (RSN-10 Pioneer), the CPSU General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev visited Bonn. The meeting with the German Chancellor G. Schmidt was reduced to discussing the problem of "Euroracket". Brezhnev rejected the accusations of Schmidt that the Soviet Union is seeking unilateral superiority in the military field. The famous Soviet diplomat Julius Kvitsinsky (USSR Ambassador to Germany in 1981 – 1986) explained German policy by saying that the West German leadership was in a hurry with the idea of uniting the country. In his opinion, West German diplomacy sought “to achieve from the USSR truly substantial and one-sided reductions in its nuclear potential, with all the political and psychological consequences of this for the situation in Europe. West Germany was in a hurry. She feared that it would be virtually impossible to restore the unity of Germany in 30 – 50 years. ”
From the point of view of G. Kissinger, expressed in his monograph “Diplomacy”, L.I. Brezhnev and his successor Yu.V. Andropov used to oppose the deployment of medium-range missiles in Europe to weaken Germany’s connection with NATO. He writes that when Helmut Kohl visited the Kremlin in July 1983, Yuri Andropov warned the German chancellor that if he agreed to the deployment of Pershigov-2, “the military threat to West Germany will increase many times, the relations between our two countries will also undergo serious complications. " “As for the Germans in the Federal Germany and the German Democratic Republic, they will have, as recently said by someone (in Pravda), to look through a dense paling of rockets,” Andropov noted.
MILITARY POINT OF VIEW
On the other hand, from a military point of view, the deployment of mid-range US missiles was part of the strategy of "flexible response" and gave Washington the opportunity to choose intermediate variants of a universal war aimed at America. In the middle of the 1970-ies, first in the USA and then in the USSR, systems of laser, infrared and television guidance of missiles at the target were created. This made it possible to achieve great accuracy in hitting the target (up to 30 meters). Experts talked about the possibility of inflicting a decapitating or "blinding" nuclear strike, which would allow the elite of the opposite side to be destroyed before a decision was made on a retaliatory strike. This led to the idea of the possibility of winning the "limited nuclear war" due to the gain in flight time. US Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger announced on August 17 the concept of a decapitation (aka counter-elite) strike with the new US nuclear policy framework. The emphasis in the means of containment shifted to the means of medium and shorter range. In 1973, this approach was enshrined in key US nuclear strategy documents.
In order to implement the doctrine, the United States began to modify the Forward Based System located in Western Europe. As part of this plan, the US-British interaction on ballistic missiles on submarines and medium-range missiles has increased. In 1974, Britain and France signed the Ottawa Declaration, under which they pledged to develop a common defense system, including the nuclear field.
In 1976, Dmitry Ustinov became the USSR Defense Minister, who was leaning toward a tough response to the US actions to implement the "flexible response" strategy. To this end, the USSR began to build up an ICBM with an ICGM and at the same time carry out a cover of the “European-strategic” direction. In the USSR 1977, under the pretext of modifying the outdated RSD-4 and RSD-5 complexes, it began to deploy Pioneer on the western borders of the RSD-10, each of which was equipped with three individual-targeting warheads. This allowed the USSR to destroy NATO’s military infrastructure in Western Europe — control centers, command posts, and especially ports — in a matter of minutes (the latter made it impossible to land American troops in Western Europe in the event of war).
NATO APPROACHES
In the NATO countries there was no single approach to assessing the deployment of new Soviet missiles. At a meeting with the three leaders of Western Europe - Helmut Schmidt, Valerie Giscard d'Estaing and James Callaghan - in Guadalupe in 1979, Jimmy Carter promised to deploy American missiles in Europe. However, this was not enough for the leaders of Germany and Great Britain. They also insisted on a policy of mutual reduction of missiles in Europe. At the same time, the question of the effectiveness of NATO in countering the “Soviet threat” was put in strict form before the American president.
Thus, the policy of a “dual solution” (dual-track), adopted by NATO at the Council session in Brussels 12 December 1979, was achieved. The NATO decision provided for the deployment of American Pershing-572 and cruise missiles (2 and 108, respectively) in European countries of 464 in parallel with the initiation of negotiations with the USSR on restoring military-political balance. The short flight time of the Pershing-2 missiles (8 – 10 minutes) gave the United States the opportunity to deliver the first strike at command posts and launchers of Soviet ICBMs.
Negotiations within the “double solution” policy have failed. Until November 1981, negotiations on “Euro-missiles” were not started.
ZERO OPTION
In November, 1980 of the year in the US presidential election was won by Republican Ronald Reagan, who followed a tougher approach. American political scientist Bradford Burns stated that “President R. Reagan pursued the US foreign policy, based on the conviction that the global power of the United States must be absolute in the last decade of the 20th century. The main thing in this conviction is the need and the ability to impose its will on the whole world. ”
In 1981, the Reagan administration proposed a “zero option” unacceptable for the Soviet side - the US does not deploy medium-range and cruise missiles in Europe, and the USSR eliminates its RSM-10 “Pioneer” missiles. Naturally, the USSR refused it. Firstly, there were no American missiles in Europe, and the Soviet leadership considered the "liquidation of the Pioneers" to be an unequal exchange. Secondly, the American approach did not take into account the RSD of Great Britain and France. In response, Brezhnev put forward an “absolute zero” program in 1981: the withdrawal of the RSD-10 should be accompanied not only by the US refusing to deploy the Pershing-2 RSD, but also by withdrawing tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, as well as eliminating the American advanced-based system. In addition, the British and French RSD were to be eliminated. The United States did not accept these proposals, citing the superiority of the USSR (the Warsaw Pact) in conventional armed forces.
In 1982, the Soviet position was corrected. The USSR declared a temporary moratorium on the deployment of the RSD-10 "Pioneer" before signing a comprehensive agreement. In addition, in 1982, it was proposed to reduce the number of Pioneer RSD-10 to a similar number of French and British RSD. But this position did not cause understanding among the NATO countries. France and Britain declared their nuclear arsenals "independent" and declared that the problem of locating American RSD in Western Europe is primarily a question of Soviet-American relations.
PACKAGE LOCKING
The US attempt to establish a “missile fence” in Europe was successfully foiled by Moscow. Photo from www.defenseimagery.mil
The situation changed in March 1983, when the Reagan administration announced the launch of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SOI) program. The PIO envisaged the creation of a full-scale space-based missile defense system that could intercept the Soviet ICBMs in the upper stage of the flight trajectory. The analysis showed that a bundle of "Euro-rockets - SOI" poses a threat to the security of the USSR: first, the enemy will deal a decapitating strike with "Euro missiles", then counter-force using ICBMs with a MILV and then later intercept a weakened strike of strategic nuclear forces. Therefore, in August 1983 of the year, Yuri Andropov, who came to power on 10 on November 1982 of the year, stated that negotiations on RSD will be conducted only in package with negotiations on space weapons (ITN). At the same time, the USSR assumed unilateral obligations not to test anti-satellite weapons. These events are called "packet blocking".
But the USA did not agree to conduct “package” negotiations. In September, 1983, they began to deploy their missiles in the UK, Italy, Belgium. November 22 1983, the German Bundestag voted to deploy Pershing-2 missiles in the Federal Republic of Germany. This was negatively perceived in the USSR. 24 November 1983, Yuri Andropov made a special statement, which spoke about the growing danger of a nuclear war in Europe, the withdrawal of the USSR from the Geneva talks on “Euro missiles” and the adoption of retaliatory measures — the deployment of the Oka operational tactical missiles (OTP-23) in GDR and Czechoslovakia. Having a range of up to 400 km, they could practically sweep the entire territory of Germany, causing a preventive disarming strike at the locations of Pershing. At the same time, the USSR sent its nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines close to the US coast for combat patrols.
UNLOCKING THE PACKAGE
Attempts to resume contacts began after the death of Yuri Andropov. At his funeral for 14 February, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US Vice President George W. Bush attended. They offered to resume negotiations on "Euro-missiles", provided that the USSR "unlocks the package." Moscow agreed to resume negotiations only on “package” terms. 1984 June 29 of the USSR in a special note proposed to resume negotiations. However, the United States rejected these proposals. As the Soviet Union continued to deploy the OTP-1984 in Czechoslovakia and the GDR, the United States announced in the summer of 23 about the deployment of Lance tactical missiles with neutron warheads.
Promotion was achieved on February 7 1985. At a meeting in Geneva, the USSR Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and the US Secretary of State George Schulz agreed that the negotiations on "Euroracket" would be held separately from the negotiations on space weapons.
Negotiations resumed after Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU 10 in March 1985. The USSR and the United States began to discuss the terms of the negotiations. America did not achieve great success in the field of SDI research, since it was difficult to create an effective missile defense system at that level of development of science and technology. But the Soviet leadership feared the unpredictable consequences of an arms race in space. According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, “the SDI project reflected the timely awareness of the fact that the dynamics of technological development changes the ratio between offensive and defensive weapons, and the perimeter of the national security system moves into outer space. The PIO, however, concentrated mainly on one single threat coming from the Soviet Union. With the disappearance of the threat, the project itself lost its meaning. ”
By this time, the position of the USSR in the negotiations has changed. In the summer of 1985, Moscow imposed a moratorium on the deployment of OTP-23 in Czechoslovakia and the GDR. Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan attempted to reach an agreement at the negotiations in Geneva in November 1985. It ended in failure: the US refused to withdraw the RSD from Europe, and the USSR was close to re-blocking the package. But after Gorbachev announced in January 1986 a program for the phased elimination of nuclear weapons throughout the world, the USSR made a number of serious concessions. At a meeting in Reykjavik 10 – 12 in October 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev proposed a large-scale reduction of nuclear weapons, but only “in package” with the United States abandoning the PIO. Since it was not possible to agree on a common nuclear missile disarmament, the parties decided to start with the most acute problem - medium-range missiles in Europe. The USSR agreed to "unblock the package" - to negotiate RSD separately from the PIO.
DOUBLE ZERO
In the autumn of 1986, Moscow proposed a variant for the withdrawal of the RSD: the USSR retracts the Pioneer missiles outside the Urals, while the US exports the Pershing-2 and ground-based cruise missiles to North America. Washington agreed to accept this option. However, December 24 1986 of the year against him in a categorical form, Japan. In Tokyo, they feared that the USSR would re-target the RSD-10 Pioneer to Japan. 1 January 1987 was opposed by the People's Republic of China, where they also feared that the Pioneer RSM-10 would be redirected to Chinese facilities.
As a result, in February 1987, the USSR proposed a new conceptual “double zero” approach. However, 13 – 14 on April 1987 of the year US Secretary of State J. Schulz, who flew to Moscow, demanded that the short-range missiles — the Oka operational tactical missiles (OTP-23) - be added to the agreement.
The Oka complex, based on the technical solutions adopted and their execution, was unique and had no analogues in the world. The Oka missile was never tested for a distance over 400 km and, in accordance with this accepted criterion, should not have been ranked among the limited. Despite this, Schulz expressed outrage at the fact that the USSR was trying to “push” dangerous weapons, citing a somewhat smaller radius of its operation. The Americans threatened that in response to the refusal of the USSR to dismantle the Oka, they would upgrade the Lance missile and deploy it in Europe, which would be a rejection of nuclear disarmament. Marshal of the Soviet Union Sergey Akhromeev was against the concession on the Oka rocket. It should also be noted that the liquidation of the Oka station in the working bodies (the so-called “small and big fives”), in which they prepared draft directives for negotiations, did not go through the approval procedure. These working bodies included, respectively, senior officials and the leadership of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Military Industrial Commission, the Ministry of Defense, the KGB and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Final agreement was reached at negotiations with the participation of Eduard Shevardnadze in Washington in September 1987. The USSR agreed to develop a unified classification for INF and to include the OTR OTR in the future contract, although they did not fall under the definition of an INF. The United States, in turn, promised to destroy Tomahawk’s ground-based cruise missiles and abandon the deployment of Lance-2 neutron warheads in Central Europe.
December 8 The Washington Treaty was signed by the terms of which the parties agreed to destroy medium (from 1987 to 1000 km) and shorter (from 5500 to 500 km) range as a class of nuclear missiles under the control of their inspectors. The INF Treaty provides for not to produce, not to test and not to deploy such missiles. It can be said that with the achievement of an agreement on the destruction of the “Euroracket”, “nuclear eurostrakhi” also disappeared. He was the forerunner of the Treaty between the USSR and the USA on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms (START-1000).
MODERN THREATS AND CHALLENGES OF RUSSIA
The national security dilemmas of the first decades of the 21st century, naturally, are qualitatively different from those of the 20th century. At the same time, the traditionally accepted strategic views, of course, remain fundamental to security. Moreover, since the leading world states continue to improve and develop new types of weapons, maintaining technological superiority or parity between them remains an important imperative of their national security and foreign policy.
According to Z. Brzezinski, which he outlined in his book Choice: World Domination or Global Leadership, “number one in the list of threats to international security — a full-scale strategic war — still represents a danger of a higher order, although it is no longer the most likely prospect . In the coming years, one of the main tasks of the American political leadership in the field of security will remain maintaining the stability of the nuclear deterrence of the United States and Russia ...
At the same time, it should be expected that the revolution led by the United States and due to scientific and technological progress in military affairs will bring to the fore various means of warfare below the nuclear threshold and, more generally, will contribute to the devaluation of the central role of nuclear weapons in modern conflict . It is likely that the United States will produce - if necessary, and unilaterally, a significant reduction in its nuclear potential, while simultaneously deploying one or another variant of an anti-missile defense system. "
This approach is currently being implemented by the United States in a “fast global strike” strategy, which involves delivering a destructive disarming strike with offensive, high-precision modern conventional weapons in the shortest possible time at targets anywhere in the world, combined with a reflection of a possible counter-attack by “impenetrable” global missile defense systems. Thus, the United States, while lowering the nuclear threshold, is at the same time projecting military force onto the entire globe, thus achieving global military dominance. This is facilitated by the presence of powerful naval forces controlling the space of the oceans, as well as the presence of more than 700 US military bases in 130 countries. Thus, the possession of America at the moment incomparable with other countries of the scale of geopolitical superiority gives it the opportunity for decisive intervention.
As for European security, politically, after the disappearance of the Soviet threat and the transition of Central Europe to the West, preserving NATO as a defensive alliance against an already non-existent threat does not seem to make any sense. However, based on the views of Brzezinski, “the European Union and NATO have no choice: in order not to lose the laurels acquired in the Cold War, they are forced to expand, even if with the entry of each new member, the political cohesion of the European Union is disturbed and the military-operational cooperation within the Atlantic organization is complicated .
In the longer term, the expansion of Europe will remain the single main task, which would be most facilitated by the political and geographical complementarity of the EU and NATO structures. Expansion is the best guarantee of such steady changes in the European security landscape, which will expand the perimeter of the central zone of the world on the planet, facilitate the absorption of Russia by the expanding West and involve Europe in joint efforts with America in the name of strengthening global security. ”
Here they have the right to ask the question, which Russia is Brzezinski talking about? About that, apparently, Yeltsin's Russia, which, according to him, after the end of the cold war, was “relegated to an average power”. But Russia can hardly exist in such a status, since it has historically developed and developed as a great world power.
In relation to the weak link that facilitates the takeover of Russia, the outstanding Russian thinker Ivan Ilyin wrote in the article “On the Disbandors of Russia”: “some believe that the first victim will be a politically and strategically impotent Ukraine, which will be easily occupied and annexed from the West at a favorable moment; and the Caucasus will quickly ripen for conquest. ”
Henry Kissinger’s views on the approaches of some Western politicians to the question of possible ways of Russia's integration into the Western community are curious. In particular, Russia's entry into NATO and possible membership in the European Union as a counterweight to the United States and Germany. “None of these courses is appropriate ... Russia's membership in NATO will turn the Atlantic Alliance into a mini-UN security tool or, on the contrary, into an anti-Asian — especially anti-Chinese — alliance of Western industrial democracies. Russian membership in the European Union, on the other hand, would divide the two shores of the Atlantic. Such a move would inevitably push Europe, in its search for self-identification, to further alienate the United States and force Washington to pursue a corresponding policy in the rest of the world. ”
At present, thanks to the aggressive US foreign policy and the efforts of the NATO countries, led by Washington, which provoked the “Ukrainian crisis,” Europe once again became the “field” of the heightened opposition between Russia and the West.
The degree of confrontation between the two nuclear powers increased significantly. The approach of NATO forces to the borders of Russia and the deployment of NATO and US bases, including global strategic missile defense systems, in Eastern European countries has disturbed the balance in the coordinate system of international security. Moreover, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, for the first time, potential adversaries of Russia gained an advantage in conventional armed forces on the European continent. Once again on the security agenda, the question arises about the flight time of offensive weapons, allowing them to deal a decapitating strike. This problem may become critical in the event of a technological breakthrough in the field of creating hypersonic weapons delivery systems, which, according to expert estimates, may occur in the next 10 years. The NATO enlargement process shows that the presence of strategic nuclear forces in Russia, based on the paradigm of modern development, in the future will be increasingly difficult to turn into political advantages.
The Ukrainian crisis has, on the whole, exposed a serious problem in relations between Russia and the West in connection with the strategy of the global security system promoted by the USA and Europe, based on the idea of an expanding West (EU and NATO). Reflecting on the coming Russia, Ivan Ilyin in the publication “Against Russia” writes: “M.V. Lomonosov and A.S. Pushkin was the first to understand the originality of Russia, its peculiarity from Europe, its “non-European character”. F.M. Dostoevsky and N.Ya. Danilevsky was the first to understand that Europe does not know us, does not understand and does not like us. Many years have passed since then, and we must test for ourselves and confirm that all the great Russian people were perspicacious and right. ”
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