What Next, Will Putin Target Nukes At Kosovo?

Russia's Increasing Belligerence Is Cause For Concern

By Daniel de Gracia, II, 2/19/2008 9:26:49 AM

During the heat of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Nikita Khrushchev sent a desperate telegraph to the Kennedy White House: "We and you ought not pull on the ends of a rope in which you have tied the knot of war. Because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you. I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. For such is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom they will clash like blind moles and then mutual annihilation will commence."

President Vladimir Putin would do well to consider the words of Khrushchev, considering the fact that he has effectively created a modern-day missile crisis between the post Cold War Russian Federation and the United States of America. Earlier this month, the Russian head of state threatened to target ICBMs at neighboring countries if they joined NATO and hosted anti-ballistic missile systems. Now, in the wake of Kosovo's recent decision to declare independence, Russia is warning the West not to recognize the new state. With France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, the UK, and as of Monday, the United States of America recognizing Kosovo's independence, one has to wonder: will Putin take it to the next level and threaten to target his ICBMs at Kosovo and anyone else who recognizes her?

In the past few weeks alone, Russian Tu-95 "Bear" nuclear bombers have been testing and buzzing air defenses around the world from Britain to Norway to Japan and recently even our own aircraft carrier USS Nimitz while sailing in the Pacific Ocean. On one incident, some twenty-two fighter planes of the Japanese Air Self Defense Force had to be scrambled to chase off the Russian bombers. For those of you who didn't grow up during the Cold War, the practice of approaching or briefly penetrating another nation's airspace with either reconnaissance aircraft or bombers armed with live nuclear weapons is a tactic structured at testing the target's air defense reaction time and determining what assets and facilities are employed in repulsing an attack (for the purposes of target selection). Politically, these incursions of air defense identification zones (ADIZs) represent an intimidation tactic which says, "Here's my finger in your chest. What are you going to do about it?"

This return to missile diplomacy by the Russian government must not be viewed as politics-as-usual or the regular brand of international one-upmanship. The fact that the United States and the former Soviet Union emerged from an almost half-a-century long Cold War arms race without triggering a global thermonuclear exchange should be considered a gift from God and an opportunity to shun the pall of weapons of mass destruction.

I find it impossible to believe that the general populations of either the United States of America or Russian Federation are interested in war with one another, let alone nuclear war. In the time that has transpired since the fall of the Soviet Union, there has been an explosion of collaboration and openness between our people and theirs. Our astronauts work side by side with their cosmonauts on the International Space Station. Russians routinely use products from American companies like Dell, IBM, and Texas Instruments. To add a more personal note to how much exchange has gone on, my cousin-in-law is a former Red Army soldier who married into my family.

And just a few weeks ago, I had lunch at the Hawaii State Capitol with Tanya Koshkina from the city of Chita in the Russian Federation, and I marveled at how much the newest generation of Russians knows and appreciates about America. With all this progress, why would anyone want to destroy what we have rebuilt with the wrecking ball of thermonuclear war?

USA NO LONGER HAS COLD WAR-STYLE COUNTERFORCE CREDIBILITY, RUSSIA DOES

President Kennedy remarked in December 1962 that "[T]here's no real reason why the United States and Soviet Union – separated by so many thousands of miles of land and water, both rich countries, both with energetic people – should not be able to live in peace." Though the old Soviet Union is no more, the same logic holds true for relations between the United States and the Russian Federation: there is absolutely no cause for enmity between either our governments or our people.

But instead, enmity in the form of military threats and dangerous arms buildups from the Russian Federation is exactly what we are seeing. Russia claims that the United States is dangerous and threatening, and that is why they, the victims, are merely acting in self-defense to American imperialism. If that's true, let's consider and contrast for a moment the differences between the Bush Administration's post Cold War arms policy versus that of the Putin Administration.

Since President George W. Bush has taken office in 2001, the Pentagon has engaged in the policy of "transformational doctrine": a movement away from the Cold War-style military organization of hundreds of redundant facilities and personnel employing strategic bombers, submarines, and heavy tanks and a transformation into a leaner, slimmer, cost-effective military that emphasizes the ability to participate in minor regional conflicts, "operations other than war" (such as humanitarian assistance), and anti-terrorism/counter-insurgency operations.

In the past seven years, the Bush Administration has consistently canceled or scaled back production of offensive weapons which would give the United States a continuing edge against militaries as those employed by the Russian Federation or the People's Republic of China in favor of defensive weapons such as the anti-ballistic missile system.

The Pentagon canceled the RAH-66 stealth attack helicopter, canceled the AGM-129 stealth cruise missile, and canceled the advanced Crusader 155mm self-propelled artillery system, all of which would have given us a dominant edge – also known as counterforce credibility – in modern combat against the Russians.

In terms of retiring existing weapons platforms, the Pentagon retired the Navy's F-14 Tomcat (a fighter designed to shoot down Soviet nuclear bombers at extremely long range using the one-of-a-kind AIM-54 Phoenix missile) and is in the process of retiring the Air Force's F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter, a weapon system designed in the late 70s to allow penetration of heavily defended Soviet air defense networks to disable command, control, and communications facilities with either precision guided munitions or low-yield tactical thermonuclear weapons. Lockheed-Martin's advanced F-22 Raptor stealth fighter (featured in such glamorous contemporary films as "The Hulk" and more recently "Transformers") was originally intended to be produced in the thousands, then in the three hundreds, but at present, now only a couple hundred will produced. All of these decisions were made because the United States of America believes that Russia is no longer our enemy.

Can Russia make similar claims of transforming its military away from engagement with the United States? You might be shocked to find out what their track record is. Unlike the United States which has no plans to develop or mobilize new intercontinental ballistic missiles or deploy new multiple warhead missiles, the Russians are mass producing and deploying all across their countryside the advanced, three-stage SS-27 Topol-M (RT-2UTTH) missile, an ICBM which has a range of 6,900 miles and can accurately deliver six GLONASS-guided 550 kiloton warheads to any target in the United States of America. At present, the United States of America has no comparable system to match this – our most advanced missiles, the LGM-118A Peacekeeper ICBMs have been retired. The entire fate of the United States of America's land-based ICBM defense rests on single W87 warhead configuration LGM-30 Minuteman missiles – a weapon system so old and outmoded that its latest version came into service when Richard Nixon was still in office. At present, more than fifty of these missiles are being deactivated, reducing even further our ability to retaliate to a Russian first-strike.

At sea, Russian strategic power is just as intimidating: despite already possessing the massive, super-silent Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine, Russia is now replacing them with the advanced Borei-class submarine which will give them strategic dominance of the seas. The Ohio-class submarines of the United States Navy are antiquated and at present, have no foreseeable replacement – instead, several of them are being converted in line with "transformational doctrine" into conventional missile platforms for launching cruise missiles in support of minor regional conflicts or littoral warfare. As any Cold War era educated political scientist or military planner will tell you, "boomer submarines" are important because they are the ultimate platform for initiating a first strike and bypassing a target country's defense platforms.

Unlike ICBMs which take roughly thirty minutes to an hour to strike their targets, submarine launched ballistic missiles (or SLBMs) take only fifteen minutes or less to hit their targets because they can be launched right off the coast of a target. When you consider the time that it takes for a satellite to detect a missile's heat bloom or radar signature, followed by the time it takes for alert operators to identify and positively confirm the missile's flight path, followed last of all by the time it takes to place a call to the President of the United States or the Secretary of Defense for a decision, there simply isn't enough time to react to a submarine launch: by the time our Commander in Chief finds out that he needs to evacuate Air Force One, SLBM warheads will already be raining down on Washington. While Russia builds new submarines and new missiles to perfect this already devastatingly dangerous capability, we have no similar counterforce credibility in the area of boomer subs.

In the air, the situation is even bleaker when one compares the readiness and technology of the Russians to our own. During the Cold War, USAF strategic bombers were kept on constant, 24-hour alert, meaning that at any given point in time, aircraft armed with nuclear cruise missiles and/or nuclear bombs would be in the air, flying a pre-designated circuit through the sky to be ready to fly into Russia if hostilities broke out. Additional bombers and crews on the ground were likewise on alert, ready to scramble in fifteen minutes or less.

Supporting the bombers was a fleet of refueling planes constantly on alert to provide fuel to the entire strategic Air Force in the event of war, plus two airborne "Looking Glass" planes meant to maintain communication between the White House and the planes. That constant system of alert has been discontinued for almost two decades now. Our bombers are no longer regularly armed with nuclear weapons, our crews are not on ready alert, and the Looking Glass planes are retired. Contrast that with the Russians who have resumed their active alert flights and are conducting regular penetrations of Western airspaces. Why is Putin bringing us back to the brink?

Ask yourself, who is the real threat? While the United States is chopping up or retiring its offensive weapons in favor of defensive weapons, Russia is mass producing the weapons of World War III. In my estimation, if Russia were to launch a limited counterforce nuclear first strike against the United States of America right now, they would catch our entire bomber and fighter fleet on the ground, decimate all or most of our land based Minuteman ICBM silos, and leave us only with a few hundred warheads at sea in our Ohio-class subs to retaliate with. We would lose in a nuclear exchange with Russia – and that, dear friends, is why Putin is utilizing nuclear brinkmanship again, because he can. If Russia and China were to conduct a joint alliance attack against the United States using all of their nuclear weapons, we would be annihilated. Welcome to the present day.

We need to diplomatically engage Russia while we still have the chance to do so, and the people of the Russian Federation need to impress upon their leadership to stop taking the world back to the days of fear and threats. Our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has been perceived by the nations of the world as an opportunity to act belligerently in the absence of a US power to respond. Furthermore, we need to stop being so naïve at home and assume that everyone loves us and that all we have to do is create a Department of Peace focused on reconciliation between nations. Leaders like Putin understand force, power, and peace based on fear of retaliation. When you're dealing with a junkyard dog, you don't engage him with SPCA rules; you get a bigger, meaner, dog with sharp teeth and loud bark to get that junkyard dog to back down. This is the real world: even sheep have to be protected by a shepherd willing to chase off the wolves.

Russia's belligerence is not just a threat to our pride, it is a threat to our national safety. With bombers darting in and out of opposing airspaces and buzzing aircraft carriers, the potential for accident and panicked response is extreme. Let's say hypothetically speaking that the situation in Kosovo causes Russia to step up its armed bomber patrols and incursions into Western airspaces, and in the process of chasing off one of their planes, one of our planes inadvertently collides with theirs. In the confusion, Russia thinks that we shot down one of their planes, so they retaliate by torpedoing one of our aircraft carriers at sea. We retaliate by sinking their submarine. The Russians then place their strategic military forces on full alert, and Putin's advisers tell him that he must launch a first strike – and if he does, it's certain he can get away with it. What's to stop that from happening?

I don't want an arms race between the United States and Russia, but if they are going to keep threatening us with nuclear weapons, we need to re-establish counterforce credibility. It's time for the Pentagon planners to stop thinking like Donald Rumsfeld and start thinking like Gen. Curtis E. LeMay who built a strategic system based on the core belief of maintaining peace through the threat of overwhelming force. The problem with the United States of America is that throughout our history, our people wait for violence to be done to our borders before we wake up. At Pearl Harbor, we slept. On September 11th, we slept. Because our people hate preemptive strikes (even when they may prevent first strikes against us), America has throughout her history suffered outrageous acts of violence from aggressors before finally realizing that we live in the real world and there are real enemies. What grave peril awaits us now, as a result of our ignorance?