Is the nuclear briefcase a dummy?

I will say right away that Yuri Nikolaevich Baluevsky is the most educated and enlightened chief of the General Staff since the time of Nikolai Vasilyevich Ogarkov. And I, like several experts whom I managed to call, can only guess at what exactly made the general say what he said at the press conference held on Saturday.

It was dedicated to Russian claims against the United States. The main thing is that it presented a new argument why elements of the US global missile defense system pose a threat to international security. As Baluevsky argued, “if we assume that Iran ever tries to launch a missile attack on the United States, then the anti-missile missiles launched from Poland to intercept them will fly in an easterly direction, i.e. towards Russia. In shape and size, the anti-missile missile is practically no different from an ICBM and will most likely be perceived by the Russian Federation missile attack warning systems as an attacking ICBM, i.e. as an act of aggression."

At the same time, an authoritative military leader claimed something strange: Russia supposedly has an automated missile launch warning system, in which the launch is automatically recognized with minimal human intervention. All this was reminiscent of the old story about the mysterious Soviet “Dead Hand” system. But even this, according to rumors, assumed the automatic launch of missiles after a massive nuclear strike.

Until now, it was believed that in the event of a missile launch in the direction of Russia, someone with the highest authority would decide whether it was a massive nuclear attack capable of disarming Russia, or a single launch. Now, according to Yuri Baluevsky, the decision on a nuclear missile strike is made by a computer.

If this is so, then this means: the nuclear suitcases that special officers carry behind the president are nothing more than a sham. After all, all the same, the decision on a retaliatory nuclear strike (that is, the decision to eliminate life on planet Earth) will be made not by the President of the Russian Federation, but by some kind of machine gun. In this case, Russia relies significantly more on its computer systems than the United States. The Americans still have a decision-making system for a retaliatory strike based on the human factor. First, information about a possible strike is assessed by the general on duty at the headquarters of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense System), then by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and then the decision on a retaliatory strike is made personally by the US President.

In addition, it is not at all clear how the American-Soviet agreement on procedures for the exchange of information in the event of an unauthorized missile launch from the territory of one of the countries fits into this “automatic” scheme. In this case, it was even planned to create special information exchange centers. But now Russia has forgotten about this.

It is also surprising how the highest representative of the military leadership evaluates the American proposals to resolve the problem around the missile defense system. Moscow stated that the US written proposals differ decisively from the proposals of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, voiced in Moscow.

It must be said that the Americans speak very vaguely on this subject: they have, they say, made important proposals that will help resolve differences with Russia. The Russian General Staff, on the contrary, made the situation extremely specific, comparing the verbal promises of the ministers with the written proposals of Washington. If this is true, then the United States has indeed seriously pulled back. In particular, they seem to have abandoned their promise to “activate” missile defense elements and “load” interceptor missiles only if evidence is received that Iran has dangerous nuclear missile technologies.

However, there are worrying points here. It is obvious that Washington would like to arrange a real diplomatic bargaining. In this case, the initially stated position differs from the formally made offers, so that there is something to bargain about. But for some reason Russia absolutely does not want to bargain. Moreover, she does not want to find out what exactly the Americans mean when they talk, for example, about “bringing the system to full combat readiness.” It is also unclear to Russian general staff officers and diplomats what powers our liaison officers will have, whom the Pentagon is ready to allow into its holy of holies - the command post of the US global missile defense system.

If Moscow truly wanted to address existing concerns, President Putin could have contacted Bush directly and asked why the initial proposals were so different from subsequent ones. One could ask the Americans exactly what meaning they put into this or that term. Finally, for some reason Moscow is reluctant to find out exactly what powers Russian liaison officers at American command posts may have.

For one simple reason - the Kremlin is completely uninterested in this. Moscow is not interested in reaching a mutually acceptable agreement on missile defense. Putin wants the scandal and the farcical Cold War to continue. Even at the risk of turning the main attributes of presidential power, such as a nuclear briefcase, into fiction.