Fear -- noun

Moscow and Washington are arguing again about “absolute weapons”

Yesterday, the domestic military-industrial complex celebrated an anniversary, which, moreover, turned out to be very relevant: March 4 marked exactly 40 years since the day when the B-1000 anti-missile missile launched from the Soviet Sary-Shagan test site was the first in the world to intercept and destroy the warhead of a ballistic missile . It was from this event that the construction of the current world order essentially began. A system whose stability to this day is ensured by one of the most powerful human feelings - fear. The guarantee of mutual destruction turned out to be much more reliable than any solemn promises. The fierce confrontation between two world ideologies never turned into an open conflict - neither the East nor the West possessed an absolute weapon that would allow them to defeat the enemy and at the same time avoid a crushing retaliatory strike.

However, in the near future the situation may change fundamentally: Washington's plans to deploy a national missile defense system (NMD) are a new approach to the eternal theme of absolute weapons. True, its novelty is very relative: replacing the “absolute sword” with the “absolute shield” does not fundamentally change anything, since the result is the same - one of the parties gets rid of fears. This is where it comes time for everyone else to be afraid.

Moscow’s attempts to give the anniversary the loudest public sound possible are quite understandable. The national military-industrial beau monde, who gathered for a ceremonial meeting at the Russian Agency for Control Systems (RASU), did not even try to hide the fact that the creation and testing of the domestic missile defense system was “one of the most important strategic operations of the Cold War.” The technological breakthrough of the Soviet defense industry, which managed to achieve success in “firing missiles at missiles,” dashed the American idea that intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear and thermonuclear warheads (at that time their development was still underway) would become the “absolute weapon”, the possession of which was secretly dreamed by each side. Moreover, the gap from the United States turned out to be so great (the American anti-missile missile was able to hit a target for the first time only 23 years later) that Washington had no choice but to agree with Moscow’s proposals to sit down at the negotiating table. The result was not only an agreement on the limitation of missile defense systems - the notorious treaty of 1972, from which the Americans are now threatening to withdraw, but also the first global disarmament pacts: SALT-1 (strategic arms limitation) from the same 1972 and the subsequent SALT-2 . And from these, START-1, the INF Treaty (refusal of the use of medium- and shorter-range missiles), and START-2 later “grew.” As a result, the total volume of nuclear missile arsenals has sharply decreased, and a number of types of weapons of mass destruction have been abandoned in principle.

As Russian Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who was present at the ceremonial meeting at RASU, said, “we still hope to convince the Americans of the need to preserve the existing system of strategic balance at the negotiating table, and not resort to all sorts of symmetrical or asymmetrical measures to do this.” Nevertheless, now Russia has much less chance of being heard: the current state of the domestic military-industrial complex and the economy as a whole does not allow for such successful “strategic operations” as before. And our American counterparts, among whom specialists from the “Reagan school” predominate, stand firm on their position. True, Moscow's policy has become more flexible - its reminders about “missile defense priorities” are now addressed not so much to the United States itself as to its European allies, who are already not enthusiastic about American plans to deploy NMD. The recent transfer of Russian proposals for EuroBMD to NATO Secretary General George Robertson was accompanied by persistent reminders: we are so far the only country that has been able to deploy a combat-ready missile defense system. This refers to the Moscow A-135 missile defense system, put into service in 1995 and designed to “repel a limited nuclear strike on the Russian capital and the central industrial region.”

Nobody has canceled fear as the basis of nuclear deterrence. And this means that either we will learn to be afraid along with the entire world community, or we will try again to follow the usual path. That is, we will make you fear us.

Yuri GOLOTYUK