Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

The Obama administration also decided not to
press Russia to address nonstrategic nuclear weapons
in the negotiations on the New START. When asked
about the issue at the April 6, 2009, session of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace conference
on nuclear nonproliferation, chief U.S. New START
negotiator Rose Gottemoeller said that, while President
Obama was concerned about nonstrategic warheads:
“My own view is that the immediate START
follow-on negotiations will not be the area where that
issue is immediately pursued.” Instead, she simply
advocated that “we should begin exploring the issues
with the Russian Federation and decide how to
fit that into the agenda.” At the same session, Sergey
I. Kislyak, currently the Russian Ambassador to the
United States and an influential figure in determining
Russia’s strategic arms control policies, argued that,
while nonstrategic nuclear weapons would need to be
eliminated “if you decide to move to the world free
of nuclear weapons,” for the moment Russia and the
United States “have enough work to do now to focus
on things that are doable,” adding that, “when you
go to substrategic, there will be a lot of other things
that needs to be entered into the play.” Among these
issues, Kislyak cited “the imbalances in conventional
weapons [and the] appearance of new systems that
maybe are non-nuclear, but designed to do the same
job.” 66
The provisions of the New START Treaty—the
term encompasses the main treaty text, a protocol
specifying some additional rights and obligations of
the parties, and the technical annexes—will not affect
the TNW issue directly but will help define Russian
military planning for future nuclear scenarios. Many
provisions legally confirm reductions that have already
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