Strategic Arms Research Articles

Escalation Ladder and the Game of Chances in the Ukraine war of 2022

The paper refers to the most recent developments during the 2022–2023 Ukraine war, analysed from the perspective of selected insights derived from deterrence studies, most notably the escalation ladder. The reason for the publication is to point out dangerous escalatory steps in the context of Putin’s Russia-Ukrainian war, including the abolishment of strategic arms control and tactical nuclear weapons deployment in the EU neighbourhood. V. Putin’s regime’s steps towards seizure or control of Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant were discussed internationally as a severe humanitarian hazard. The pre-1989 deterrence debate could add a vital research perspective missing in the analytic frames of the New Cold War. Notably, the developments of the 2023 conduct of the Ukraine war with the support of the West countering the impact of a nuclear crisis scenario (tactical arsenal employment) could be analysed in the context of earlier concepts of limited war (1960s), as well as further elaborations on conditions of mutual vulnerability.

US Deterrence against Russia and China (based on strategic documents of J. Biden administration)

The contemporary world order is rapidly changing, which is manifested, inter alia, in the growing erosion of the US global military superiority. This trend is acknowledged in the US military-strategic and policy planning documents. In this context the strengthening of the military potential of both the Russian Federation and the PRC, coupled by the expansion of political and economic cooperation between them, is a matter of particular concern for the US ruling elites. At the same time, recognizing a problem does not mean assessing it correctly. A closer examination of key strategic documents published in recent years shows that if from a political and military point of view, the US strategists come up with a generally rational list of measures aimed at countering the challenge, posed by Russia and China, from an ideological point of view they doggedly follow liberal-hegemonic premises that are increasingly inconsistent with current international political realities. The author notes that the policy of D. Trump and J. Biden administrations towards China is characterized by a high degree of continuity. The main role in containing the PRC should be played by a system of military-political alliances with the countries of Southeast and South Asia located along the perimeter of its borders. In addition to the alliances inherited from the Cold War, the Biden administration is seeking to develop new ‘bloc structures’ in the Indo-Pacific region, in particular the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD). However, not all countries in the region, in particular India, support the anti-Chinese orientation of the US initiatives. Washington’s relations with Moscow deteriorated sharply after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, but even before that, the United States faced serious challenges in maintaining strategic parity with the Russian Federation. This primarily concerns the quantitative, rather than qualitative side of the equation: according to the US military strategists, Russia has made significant progress in modernizing its strategic nuclear forces and developing fundamentally new types of nuclear delivery vehicles. At the same time, the Biden administration’s approaches to building relations with Moscow are no less ideological than in the case of the PRC, which makes the prospects for resuming Russian-American (and ideally trilateral Russian-American-Chinese) negotiations on strategic arms control extremely vague. The question arises to what extent this ideologized foreign policy of the Biden administration meets the new international realities and the strategic interests of the United States itself.

Losing LeninInst Internationalism in Claude McKay’s Lost Novel

Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik movement, believed that a flourishing Black proletariat consciousness was the catalyst needed for a Communist revolution in the United States of America at the turn of the twentieth century. Thus, the Bolshevik egalitarian ideology of antiracism attracted Black Americans and anchored support for the global Communist agenda of Leninist Internationalism.After Lenin’s death in 1924, his protégé Joseph Stalin becomes the new leader of Soviet Russia and signs and sustains a strategic arms alliance with Italy. In his Harlem-set lost novel Amiable with Big Teeth (AWBT), Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay chronicles how this decision places Stalin at odds with the Black American allies of Leninist Internationalism.Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini invades Ethiopia in 1935 and because Stalin remains committed to the Italo-Soviet Pact, the Black American community in AWBT views this commitment as an endorsement of the colonial suppression of Ethiopia’s Black sovereignty and thus a violation of Lenin’s antiracism ideology.With the demise of Leninist Internationalism in the Stalin era, AWBT argues that the Pan-Africanist agenda of Black-led organizations is more adept at forging antiracist and antiimperialist transnational bonds. However, Blackness is not a monolith and McKay’s lost novel must soon confront the uncomfortable reality that even within Black-led organizations, ethnic differences can easily supersede racial allegiance.AWBT is ultimately a story about the arduous, and sometimes impossible, task of building an ideological identity across diverse national borders and racial groups.

Russia’s approach to arms control: caught between asymmetry and the desire for strategic stability

ABSTRACT This paper analyses Russia’s approach to strategic arms control with a particular focus on two central yet largely paradoxical principles: strategic stability and asymmetry. A rise in asymmetries in the capabilities of the United States and the Russian Federation, global shifts in power, and a proceeding deterioration of U.S.–Russia relations have marked the post-Cold War era, challenging traditional arms control regimes based on strategic stability understood in terms of parity in the nuclear arsenals of the two most potent nuclear powers. Somewhat counterintuitively, the developments in the military-technological sphere that undermine the very principle of parity concurrently incentivise Russia to invest in asymmetric solutions to counterbalance these tendencies and maintain strategic stability. By analysing the views of Russian military experts, the article takes a look at the INF Treaty, New START and hypersonic weapons to examine the past, present and future challenges to the U.S.–Russian arms control architecture. It arrives at the conclusion that Russia’s home-grown solution to its security conundrum is a perplexing mix of a desire for strategic stability-cum-parity in strategic arms control and a pragmatic emphasis on asymmetries while it tries to preserve its position, which is symptomatic of the paradoxical nature of strategy itself.

Opening Up Arms Control Silos

Over the years, countless undergraduate students in survey courses and special subjects have been lectured about U.S. President Richard Nixon’s May 1972 visit to Moscow, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty’s (ABMT) signing, and the agreement that concluded the first round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). Images of Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev putting pen to paper in the Kremlin’s grand St. Vladimir Hall will be familiar to hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of students who have studied U.S. and Soviet foreign policy, the Cold War, and the arms race. Yet, this outward appearance of amity and compromise between leaders with their metaphorical fingers on the metaphorical buttons of thousands of nuclear weapons belies the lengthy and, at times, vicious bureaucratic infighting that plagued the SALT and ABMT negotiations. It is this very bureaucratic complexity that the late Patrick J. Garrity (who sadly passed away on May 10, 2021) and Erin R. Mahan seek to address in Averting Doomsday: Arms Control During the Nixon Presidency. Not only do they concern themselves with personal and institutional factors that influenced Nixon’s arms control agenda policies, but they also make a welcome effort to encompass the entirety of arms control. This ambitious aim brings together an assessment not just of strategic nuclear issues, but also of nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear testing, chemical weapons control, and biological weapons control. These areas are frequently left in silos—pun apologetically intended—and treated as distinct issues. Garrity and Mahan are therefore to be praised for such a comprehensive approach.

A farewell to New-START? Strategic arms control under pressure amid war in Ukraine

Moscow’s unilateral suspension of the last remaining strategic nuclear arms treaty between Russia and the U.S. signifies both peril and opportunity for future nuclear security.

Проблема сокращения стратегических вооружений в контексте современных российско-американских отношений

Introduction. The article presents an analysis of the process of reducing strategic arms of Russia and the United States. The author gives an assessment of the Soviet-American détente and the Soviet-American disarmament treaties as laying the political normative and legal foundation for the development of the disarmament process after the end of the Cold War. The study analyzes the Russian-American New START Treaty concluded by Presidents B. Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in 2010. Particular attention is paid to the problem of mutual inspections by Russia and the United States during the implementation of START-3. Materials and methods. The study is based on the analysis of Soviet-American and Russian-American treaties in the field of disarmament, materials from the Russian Foreign Ministry, the American administration of J. Biden, and publications in the American press. A systematic integrated approach, specific historical and comparative historical methods were used. Analysis. According to official data from the Russian Foreign Ministry, the American side resorted to certain “tricks” - not only actually reducing weapons, but achieving final results by converting some weapons into non-nuclear or training ones. The Russian department could not confirm that these strategic weapons were rendered unusable as provided for by the treaty. In the context of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis and the beginning of the Russian SVO the following issues became particularly difficult in the process of mutual verification of disarmament: the cessation of regular air traffic, the extension of flight times, which could contribute to the “leakage” of confidential information; the complexity of the visa regime for Russian specialists, especially in transit countries; difficulties in making Russian payments for verification services; the lack of unambiguous guarantees of providing the opportunity for aircraft of the Russian Ministry of Defense with inspectors on board to fly through the airspace of Western countries closed to Russia. Results. A conclusion is drawn about the importance of signing New START treaty, which became a major milestone in the development of relations between Moscow and Washington in the military-political sphere. Violation of mutual inspection activities in the context of sanctions imposed by the West against Russia violated the principles of equal access to the Treaty verification mechanisms, created clear advantages for the American side and led to the suspension of Russia participation in New START.

Многосторонний стратегический диалог: дилеммы и препятствия

In the foreign policy section of the President V. Putin’s Address to the Federal Assembly on February 21, 2023, the most conspicuous was the new subject – the suspension of Russia’s participation in the New START Treaty. Among the reasons provided as justification of this decision was the absence of limitations on the nuclear forces of the two U.S. NATO allies – the Great Britain and France. Most probably, the main reason for the decision of the Russian leadership on the New START was political in nature – countering the policy of the U.S. and its allies, aimed at the defeat of Russia in the military conflict in Ukraine. At the same time, the suspension of the New START is prone with the break of the treaty-based strategic relationship of the two nuclear superpowers and the collapse of the whole regime of nuclear arms control. Still, provided improvement of the international politics: peaceful settlement of the military conflict in Ukraine, moving of the West and Russia away from the overwhelming confrontation – the resumption of the strategic limitation dialogue between the U.S. and Russia is possible. However, the subject of involving the Great Britain and France in arms control will stay on the agenda. Thirty years ago, the sum of their forces was about 4% of the strategic forces of each of the two superpowers, whereas now it is close to 35% due to the reductions of the U.S. and Russian strategic arms since 1991. Resolving this problem would require innovative application of legal norms and the use of the experience and precedents elaborated during half a century of strategic negotiations.

Editor's Note

Editor's Note

The Many Faces of SALT

Abstract This interpretive essay explores the multiple, changing faces of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. When SALT I was being negotiated in the early 1970s, it was generally viewed as the product of contemporary arms control theory that stressed the value of crisis stability. The U.S. national security adviser at the time, Henry Kissinger, justified the talks in those terms while also positioning them as part of a broader attempt to forge a détente with the Soviet Union. But after the Cold War ended, Kissinger claimed that he had really been engaging in a holding operation to buy time for the U.S. government to rebuild support for a more assertive policy. Declassified documents reveal that he and President Richard Nixon hoped that technological innovations would yield military and political advantages. The two of them believed that previous administrations had failed to overcome dangerous military vulnerabilities and that the United States could get a better deal because the USSR was more anxious for an agreement than Nixon and Kissinger were. In the end, however, this did not prove to be the case, and SALT was little different from the sorts of policies Nixon and Kissinger had scorned. But SALT I was a centerpiece of détente and a symbol of U.S. and Soviet leaders’ recognition that each side had a legitimate interest in the other's military posture.

The United States and Strategic Arms Limitation during the Nixon-Kissinger Period: Building a Stable International System?

Abstract The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) played a key role in U.S.-Soviet relations in the early 1970s. This article reassesses some aspects of the SALT process in the light of important evidence that has become available in recent years. The key question is whether U.S. policy in the SALT negotiations was rooted in strategic stability theory—that is, in the idea that both major powers should work out an arrangement that would guarantee the survivability and effectiveness of both sides’ strategic nuclear forces, thereby reducing whatever incentive either of them might have to strike first in a crisis. The notion that U.S. policy on SALT was rooted in that theory is essentially a myth—although a myth that had important political consequences. The SALT process of the 1970s, as shaped by decisions made during the administration of Richard M. Nixon, helped pave the way for the hardening of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union in the early 1980s—scarcely the result supporters of nuclear arms control had been hoping for a decade earlier.

The long view: Strategic arms control after the New START Treaty

ABSTRACT The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), and Matt Korda, a senior research associate with the project. This edition features unique contributions from FAS Impact Fellow and international lawyer Jessica Rogers. The Nuclear Notebook column has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987. This issue examines the topic of strategic arms control after the expiration of the New START Treaty in February 2026. We explore potential avenues for constructive engagement between the United States and Russia and consider how to optimally balance arms control options that are legally possible and politically feasible. To see all previous Nuclear Notebook columns, go to https://thebulletin.org/nuclear-notebook/.

Gas dynamics features of physico-chemical processes in the SRM large-sized charges at open firing

The problem of utilization of solid rocket motors (SRM) with large-sized charges is a relevant objective. This is due to the decommissioning of SRM that failed or were rejected during production and operation, as well as with the implementation of strategic arms reduction treaties. Comparative analysis of SRM with large-sized charge utilization methods showed that the simplest, most productive, and relatively safe technique is open firing. At the same time, the information on the dynamics of harmful substances emission into the environment is needed to conduct quantitative assessment of the concentrations of environmentally hazardous combustion products formed during open firing. The calculation of intraballistic parameters in SRM makes it possible to estimate the consumption parameters of harmful gaseous and condensed combustion products entering the atmosphere. Also, it allows analyze the spatial and temporal course of the concentrations of these substances and optimize ways to reduce environmental hazards. The mathematical model and results of gas dynamics parameters calculation at the open firing of large-sized SRM with the demounted nozzle unit and forward bottom are submitted. The key features of realized flow modes are marked: significant pressure differentials along the length of the SRM in the initial stage of its activity; transonic velocities of intrachannel flow; erosion effects on the initial stages of burning rate.

The Limits of Détente: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1969–1973

The Limits of Détente: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1969–1973

Shaping strategic arms trade controls: A multivariate approach

AbstractThe objective of this study is to measure the stringency of strategic arms trade controls across countries and explain the variation herein. This regulatory framework is implemented by sovereign states to control the international transfer of military‐strategic items that potentially contain a security risk. For the purpose of this study, I apply a two‐stage approach. In the first step, I employ factor analysis on more than sixty regulatory indicators related to the rigorousness of and compliance to strategic arms trade controls in a particular country to construct two new measures. The first measure is related to the extent of implementing arms trade laws and legislation, while the second captures the enforcement and control of this kind of regulation. The individual country scores indicate that there exists substantial variation in the extent to which countries implement and enforce strategic trade regulations. Therefore, in the second step, I use the predicted factor scores as a dependent variable in a Bayesian Model Averaging analysis to test several economic and political theories and find the key drivers of the stringency of strategic arms trade regulations and control policies. The general findings of this analysis suggest that the implementation and enforcement of strategic arms trade controls are primarily determined by the trade‐off between two competing policy objectives: national security on the one hand and domestic economic interests on the other. In particular, the implementation effort of arms trade laws and legislation is mainly explained by economic factors, while the degree of enforcement and control is more associated with political factors.

Soviet-American Strategic Arms Limitation and the Limits of Co-operative Competition

ABSTRACT The United States and the Soviet Union concluded two sets of strategic arms limitation talks – SALT I and II – during the 1970s. Drawing on recent revisionist scholarship, this analysis assesses the success of SALT I and SALT II’s relative failure and I by framing Soviet-American strategic arms control in the 1970s as an exercise in co-operative competition, the pursuit of competitive strategies through nominally co-operative means. Whilst SALT I achieved a temporary balance between the co-operative and competitive elements of arms control, SALT II’s demise was in large part due to the fundamental contradictions at the heart of both superpowers’ use of strategic arms limitation as an instrument of co-operative competition. The analysis concludes by assessing the implications of this analysis for strategic arms control in a new era of great-power rivalry.

Dialogue between the United States and Russian Federation on the Issue of Strategic Stability after the Start of the Special Operation in Ukraine

The Russian military special operation in Ukraine has become a serious challenge for the dialogue between Moscow and Washington on strategic stability issues. Meanwhile, this dialogue is extremely important in the context of the ongoing strategic arms race (nuclear and non-nuclear) and shifts in the balance of strategic forces as a result of the rise of China. The United States and the Russian Federation may simply not have enough time to work out an agreement on strategic arms reduction, which should replace the START-3 Treaty. The latter expires in less than four years.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS REMAIN THE MAIN DETERRENCE AGAINST POSSIBLE AGGRESSION

The renewal of superpower status competition has led, among other things, to enhancing the emphasis on nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence, all of which relate to China and/or Russia. The challenge of deterrence – discouraging states from taking unwanted actions, especially military aggression – has again become a main issue in defence policy. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which was signed by the United States and Russia, could be seen as “just one step in a longer journey”. Russia’s reassertion of its status as a major world power has mostly included recurring references by Russian officials to Russia’s nuclear weapons capabilities and its status as a major nuclear power. China’s nuclear-weapon capabilities are much more modest than Russia’s, but China is modernising its nuclear forces as part of its overall military modernisation effort. Across the globe and in many different domains, the United States is now dealing with a more immediate requirement for effective deterrence than in any other time since the end of the Cold War. Because many potential adversaries are significantly more capable than they were a decade or more ago and the risks of actually fighting a major war are more significant than ever, deterring such a conflict becomes even more imperative.

Arms Control as Wedge Strategy: How Arms Limitation Deals Divide Alliances

Abstract Strategic arms control is in crisis. The United States and Russia have retreated from agreements that formed the framework for post–Cold War arms cuts and strategic stability, such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The only strategic arms control agreement between the United States and Russia (i.e., New START) expires in 2026. The political forcefield that sustained the old framework has been altered by major technological revolutions and China's rise. Motives for strategic arms control are conventionally framed in terms of their potential to enhance stability by limiting certain weapons, avoiding costly arms races, or preserving military advantage. But states can also use strategic arms control to divide adversaries. Wedge strategy theory explains how arms control can do so by affecting adversaries' threat perceptions, their beliefs about the costs and benefits of formal commitments, and their degree of trust in one another. Three landmark strategic arms control negotiations (the Five-Power Treaty and the Four-Power Treaty at the Washington Naval Conference, the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) show how the wedge motive informed these negotiations and influenced great power relations. The wedge logic remains relevant today. For example, the United States may employ future arms control agreements to drive a wedge between China and Russia, and it must be cautious about arms control deals with North Korea that would negatively affect its relationship with South Korea.

Soviet ABM and US-USSR Strategic Debate

The Soviet decision to develop and deploy the anti-ballistic missile system (ABM) may touch off a major arms race unless agreement is reached at the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. It certainly ha...