As of mid-March 2017, the new nuclear arms race between Russia and the US is well afoot. The consequences for global peace and stability may well be dire.
Reports have emerged that the US Navy has so dramatically increased the precision killing power of its formidable D-5 Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) that the American underwater arsenal alone can now completely eliminate the entire stationary silo-based Russian arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).
At last year's St. Petersburg Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin could barely contain his outrage at the nonchalance with which the US was proceeding with its trillion-dollar nuclear modernization program, especially how the so-called "missile defense system" was being used as a convenient media and public relations cover to in fact develop far more rapid and effective offensive nuclear, first-strike capabilities. The end goal of everything being crystal clear: to render Russia's massive nuclear arsenal essentially obsolete, its missiles overwhelmed by an anti-missile shield if not simply exposed to the debilitating blitz of a preemptive attack the speed and surprise of which was never feasible throughout the last century's Cold War, and which in practice ended up being little more than the aspiration of Ronald Reagan's celebrated "Star Wars" program of the early-to-mid 1980s.
Star Wars is now coming back alright - with a vengeance. There can be no other intent of such a massive and ambitious US nuclear modernization program than to once more tip the scales of doomsday supremacy in the West's favor: the best defense, in nuclear as well as conventional warfare, is as ever a good offense.
From Russia's perspective, what's so troubling about the new US nuclear arms push is that it all seems to boil down to squeezing its early warning window to virtually nil: the crux of Washington's efforts to gain a nuclear edge on Moscow seems to be to render the existing Russian early warning network utterly incapable of giving sufficient advance notification of a preemptive strike.
Russia's predicament, being as it is still far behind the US in any kind of space-based strategic detection system, is that it now has less than ten minutes of total preparation before the cream of its strategic nuclear arsenal is eliminated in a sea-launched first strike by America's feared Ohio-class "boomer" subs, each with their 24 Trident II D-5 missiles carrying between them a whopping 192 half-megaton, independently targeted warheads. With the addition of the chilling "super-fuze" technology to dramatically augment both the precision and timing of their detonations, the US Navy now needs as little as two to three such boomers stationed off Russia's Arctic coast - still practically undetectable by available Russian sonar technology - to wipe out Russia's entire stationary land-based nuclear deterrent within a mere 600 seconds.
No wonder the urgency of Russia's recent push for nuclear modernization, which has itself set off alarm bells in the Pentagon as to the relative frustratingly slow progress of its own land-based and air-launched nuclear upgrades. In the interests of sheer survival, the Kremlin has had no option but to reduce the warning-to-launch interval for its silo-based rockets to a mere four minutes or less - matching for the first time their American counterparts.
Worse is set to come. Should Moscow determine that American plans for augmenting rapid first-strike are indeed far more ambitious - that they indeed will include not merely new-generation ultra-fast cruise missiles ("scramjet" systems) which will be conveniently deployed in forward areas via so-called "missile defense systems" as well as on nuclear attack subs and new stealthy destroyers, but eventually will include true space-based platforms like hypersonic weapon delivery vehicles which can hypothetically be stationed permanently adjacent to or even directly above Russian airspace - then little will stand in the way of a full-blown Star Wars competition for the ultimate high ground in combat.
Realistically, that day is still a ways off if it comes, but in the meantime the real problem nonetheless for the Kremlin is how to preserve a credible nuclear deterrent in the face of an ever more formidably prompt American first-strike posture. And realistically, its response can only be an essentially asymmetric one, given its technical and financial shortfalls vis-à-vis Washington.
While Russia can eventually match US super-cruise missiles with its own, these would mainly be effective against ground-based NATO targets to the west; the overwhelming American superiority at sea and in the air, however - that is, the Arctic and the Pacific - necessitates a fundamental dispersal of the bulk of Moscow's land-based deterrent. So in the coming decade, we should at the very least expect to see two wide-scale developments: 1) the scattering of Russian silos from their existing clusters which date to the last Cold War to a considerably larger constellation of far more solitary deployments, 2) the introduction of much greater numbers of truck-launched mobile systems, which themselves along with their support networks must be augmented for prolonged off-roading and constant concealment maneuvers.
Further, as the actual US missile defense capability improves and expands, Russia will have little choice but to boost the sheer number of missiles and warheads to ensure that an appreciable portion of its deterrent can indeed penetrate.
Russia may also determine that the best asymmetric investments are to be made in countering the fundamental American strength: space-based surveillance and reconnaissance. It may find common cause with China in spending heavily on anti-satellite and anti-radiation countermeasures; yet this would have the effect of only accelerating the American push into truly next-generation space systems, i.e. the hypersonic glide bomber and other advanced high-altitude drones.
Taken together, given how formidable the technical and monetary demands of keeping apace with the US, it appears inevitable that Russia will enter into a full-blown strategic alliance with China: the two individually by themselves simply cannot hope to block American supremacy from reasserting itself in their respective spheres of influence, and must increasingly work and move in lockstep to balance it.
China for its part would prefer to not acquire a massive nuclear arsenal of its own, despite its capability to do so - this would take far too much away from its priority of economic modernization, and sour relations with America so badly that this goal is unacceptably compromised. Beijing thus needs Moscow to remain the militarily superior party - and will gladly lend its increased (and still increasing) technological and financial muscle to aid the latter's belated quest to stay generally abreast of the Americans. The already extant Chinese edge over Russia in such areas as surface warships and drones will be of particular interest to both sides: filling Russian deficiencies is vital to China's security, and doing so is far less costly to Sino-US relations than becoming the new Russia itself.
Thus, as of spring 2017, as the world enters the post-post-Cold War era in earnest, it stands to reason that nuclear arms races are far from a thing of the past. The only question more consequential than the Sword of Damocles lingering over from the post-Cold War period (1991-2014), namely that of nukes in the hands of rogue states and actors, is the renewed conundrum of how nukes will play their long-established role in great power competition and dealing, with all the implications this has for both the diplomatic and military aspects of the overarching international system still dominated by just a few select marquee players. And as this piece makes clear, this latter question is far more consequential, in fact.
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