Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

to bring to reason anyone who could try to test the
strength of our borders or tap our natural resources. 55
In his May 2006 address to the Federal Assembly, Putin
likewise stressed that Russia could not afford to
wage a quantitative arms race with the United States,
but instead had to rely on less costly, asymmetric
means in designing Russia’s strategic deterrent. 56
Yet, Russian leaders are caught in a vicious circle.
They hesitate to shift funds away from their nuclear
arsenal at a time when Russia’s conventional forces
lack sufficient strength to counter a NATO conventional
military offensive. But by refusing to transfer
substantial financial or other resources to the country’s
conventional forces, Russian decisionmakers cannot
wean themselves away from their dependence on nuclear
deterrence. By some estimates, up to 40 percent
of the Ministry of Defense’s annual budget has been
devoted to developing the fundamentally troubled
Bulava SLBM, around which Russia’s next generation
of strategic submarines have been designed. 57 Russian
force planners could resolve this spending dilemma if
they abandoned the need to defend against implausible
threats such as an American nuclear attack or a
NATO conventional invasion, and instead focused on
managing small-scale wars, insurgencies, and terrorist
threats within Russia and neighboring states.
Adopting a new force-sizing standard, however,
would require a top-level decision by the Russian
leadership that the West no longer presented a mortal
threat, which the Russian leadership has consistently
refused to do. 58 Until now, they have merely added the
new challenge of resisting insurgents and terrorists to
the traditional requirement of deterring and defeating
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