Let's count the warheads

The crisis has forced the Kremlin to moderate its belligerence. Well, how could it be otherwise if Russia’s survival depends on when America starts its “engine”. Moreover, it appears that we will have to borrow money from the West again. In short, you need to put on a tuxedo, put on a polite smile and go talk to the West. And in the West, for the Russian elite there is still one partner worthy of attention - America. Moreover, the Americans were the first to talk about “resetting” their relations with Moscow. For the Kremlin, this was a successful turn that one could only dream of. The “reset” allows us to close the chapter on both the Caucasian war and the political confrontation with America. Medvedev and Putin should thank Obama for this unexpected gift...

Both sides decided to “reset” relations where, it would seem, Moscow and Washington have the most mutual understanding - through a return to dialogue on strategic offensive weapons. True, for any observer this approach will seem strange. Moreover, it is not at all logical: well, how can relations be improved by returning to the mechanisms of the Cold War! But counting warheads is a return to the past. This is what the average observer will think. Let us listen, however, to what experts competent in this field will tell us.

Here is what Alexey Arbatov explains: “...In the most important area of ​​military-political security of Russia and the United States, the whole world as a whole, for the first time in forty years there will be a legal vacuum and growing uncertainty regarding each other’s strategic capabilities and intentions.” And indeed: in December 2009, the Russian-American Treaty on the Reduction of Strategic Offensive Arms (START) expires (it was signed in 1991 and entered into force in 1994). There is no new agreement. Therefore, a situation without rules arises, which can always be dangerous when nuclear powers do not trust each other. Especially. If there are fears that it will lead to a new nuclear race, which Russia has no chance of winning.

As authorities - Alexey Arbatov, Sergey Rogov, Vladimir Dvorkin - prove, it is primarily Russia that needs dialogue on issues of strategic offensive weapons. Thus, they tell us, by limiting its strategic offensive potential, Russia can redistribute funds to address other issues of its defense capability. Agree that in times of crisis, this would be a good decision for us. And then, anyway, as experts say, Russia will have to reduce the part of its nuclear arsenal that has served its purpose. So why not bargain with the Americans for something as compensation for a step that would inevitably have to be taken?!

Many sensible experts in Moscow and Washington have started talking about how negotiations on nuclear weapons issues are also a way to begin to restore mutual trust between Russia and the United States. This is what Rose Gottemoeller, who headed the American negotiator team, thinks so. “The first step in this process (in efforts to improve relations between Russia and the United States - L.Sh. ) should be steps to strengthen the existing superstructure of Russian-American relations,” Gottemoeller said, referring specifically to the dialogue on the future of START. She is confident that this dialogue “can play the role of a lifeline” for US-Russian relations. Let's trust the experts - they know what they are talking about. Especially when they talk about what they do. Let us wish them successful negotiations.

But at the same time, let's be curious and start asking questions. Why have disarmament negotiations between Russia and the United States become such an urgent need? Could it really occur to someone somewhere that Russia and America could start a nuclear war? Not really. Even the most rabid Russian experts on anti-Americanism are unlikely to risk talking about this. Most likely, the point is simply that Washington and Moscow have nothing more to talk about. There is no subject for discussion on which both sides could agree today. And both sides, in order to solve their problems (which, however, are not identical), need to close the chapter of confrontation. Therefore, we need to start at least with something where both sides can bring their positions closer together. It turns out that the only area where there is hope of bringing them closer together is the area of ​​yesterday’s “cold war”! This is what the incident turns out to be...

Another almost naive question: Why are such negotiations between the United States, on the one hand, and France and Great Britain, on the other, not needed at all? Well, here the answer is more than clear: because the USA, France and Great Britain are allies who organize themselves on the basis of the same principles. Therefore, they do not expect surprises from each other. Several years ago, naive Americans believed that relations with Russia had also reached such a level of trust that they could no longer count each other’s warheads or argue about their “quantitative ceilings.” How wrong the Americans were! In recent years, the Russian elite has successfully proven to them that this is far from true. Today, the Americans realized their mistake and sat down with the Russians at the table to count warheads.

And what does all this mean? The fact that the “nuclear dialogue” between Russia and the United States has again, as in Soviet times, turned out to be the main dish on the “menu” of our relations, means that both sides remain strategic opponents who have failed to transform their relations into a partnership mode. Why couldn't they? Because countries cannot be partners, one of which considers hostility towards the other as a factor of its consolidation. True, both sides tried to pretend that they could still portray the impossible - i.e. partnership. But they didn't last long.

Today, the failure of liberal reforms is forcing the Russian political class to return to a military-political dialogue with the United States. In the eyes of the Russian elite, this dialogue is a means to increase Russia’s global role and substantiate its claims to great power. And greatness, or rather, now an imitation of greatness, is the support of the Russian traditional state, to which the Russian ruling class has returned.

I will quote Andrei Piontkovsky, who outlined the reasons for the desire of the Russian elite to resume disarmament negotiations with America: “The system of treaties on offensive and defensive strategic weapons was extremely important for the Soviet leaders. It legally established their status as leaders of a superpower equal (at least in the most important military-strategic sphere) to the United States. For Russian leaders, for whom the possibility of mutual suicide with the United States remains, perhaps, the only attribute of their superpower, the erosion not of this possibility itself, but of the system of treaties officially declaring it (the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, the expiration of the START-1 Treaty) is psychologically painful " Well, if Russia and America remain adversaries (although they sit in the G8) and continue to act in the paradigm of “mutual assured destruction,” then it is really better to introduce these relations into a civilized channel with the help of a new treaty. This is what Russian and American negotiators are doing today.

But let's show curiosity once again and ask the question: can a “nuclear dialogue” lead to an allied relationship between Russia and the United States, as some optimists in Moscow have begun to talk about? This certainly won't happen. Achieving allied relations with Washington, similar to the relations between the United States, on the one hand, and Great Britain and France, on the other, is achieved by other means, namely through the identity of standards. In the meantime, we will have to watch how Russia and the United States will look for a way to play two mutually exclusive roles: on the one hand, to continue mutual nuclear deterrence, and on the other, to imitate cooperation. But how is even limited cooperation possible between countries whose elites are pondering the degree to which “mutually assured destruction” will be successful? Meanwhile, this is exactly what many sensible people in Moscow and Washington dream about. And most importantly, they believe in it! Well, we’ll have to remind them of Bernard Shaw’s favorite saying: “Hope is but disappointment deferred.” Even if Russian and American negotiators develop trust in each other, successfully negotiate a post-START agreement, and the presidents approve their proposals, what will this change in American-Russian relations? Will it create more incentives for mutual trade? Will it open up more opportunities for dialogue between societies? Will it help Russia modernize itself?

The disarmament priority in the current dialogue between Russia and America suggests the opposite. Not only that the United States and I have nothing to talk about on other issues. This priority also suggests that Americans no longer believe in the possibility of Russian transformation. They no longer believe that Russia will become a normal democratic society. Consequently, from their point of view, in relations with Russia it is necessary to resolve, first of all, issues of strategic security, i.e. security of the West in a situation where Russia remained an alien civilization for the West.

And, by the way, such a turn in the style of Realpolitik is a gift both for Russian traditionalists, who are perfectly integrated into the West in a personal capacity, and for American realists, especially in the business environment, who perfectly pursue their interests by collaborating with Russian realists. In short, in both capitals there are circles that have managed to personally formulate a partnership format for themselves and feel good about it. I will not judge how much this format helps to realize the interests of the United States as a state. But it certainly does not facilitate the implementation of Russia’s national interests, if by these interests we mean its transformation into a democratic and prosperous state. Realpolitik is an excellent means of maintaining the status quo, i.e. a traditional state in which the Russian elite has settled so comfortably.

A more alarming result of the predominance of military-strategic dialogue in Russian-American relations is also possible. Sergei Karaganov spoke about him, with whom I agree in this case. “The return of military-political topics to the center of dialogue (Russia and the United States - L.Sh. ) threatens that the parties will again begin to look at each other as potential adversaries, consider mostly meaningless military balances and find imbalances, the meanings of which will be to swell... - Karaganov warned. — Arms limitation and reduction is not only a tool for regulating the arms race and easing tensions, but also, as the experience of the Cold War has shown, it is successfully used to inflate and continue it, and even to stir up mistrust. Even worse, the resumption of the process of arms limitation and security dialogues will revive and bring back to the fore the old knights of the Cold War with their usual thinking. And they will again enthusiastically begin counting warheads and inventing non-existent threats.” They have already come to the fore and started doing this.

There is a certain amount of sad irony in this. Until recently, America, in the person of President Bush and his administration, without realizing it, helped the Russian elite find arguments to consolidate society through confrontation with the United States. Today the Kremlin is trying to use its relations with Washington to solve the same problems, but through dialogue. In a word, the Russian ruling team managed to invent a technology for transforming the West and the United States, in particular, into a factor in the reproduction of the anti-Western and anti-American system!

The very fact that professional anti-Americanists unexpectedly found themselves in the forefront of supporters of Russian-American warming makes us think about what the intrigue of the “reset” is and what it can lead to.

“So, are you against normalizing relations with America,” the reader will be indignant. No way! Both hands are in favor. But I am for such normalization, which has serious grounds, and is not an attempt at another imitation in the name of completely different goals. I am for a normalization that would facilitate Russian modernization and Russia’s inclusion in the community of developed democracies, and not one that helps Russian traditionalists survive and American realists solve their problems.