Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

nario had left open the intervention of a powerful hypothetical
opponent in support of the separatists after
their defeat on the Onon.
CONCLUSION
Short of a diplomatic revolution to end Russia’s
international isolation in the Far East, we can expect
the continuation of a Janus-like policy of looking to
economic integration with the rest of the Asia-Pacific
world, while exercising against these unnamed hypothetical
opponents. Russia’s Vostok-2010 exercise did
not define the role of theater nuclear forces in the Far
East—whether they will be the response of necessity
or become a true second order response—giving Moscow
the capacity to manage such a conflict toward a
political solution that does not put into risk the territorial
integrity of Russia or its survival as sovereign state.
Much will depend upon Russia’s capacity to rearm its
forces with advanced conventional capabilities, which
will depend on the adaptability of its military industrial
complex and on its capacity to escape its relative
geostrategic isolation in the Far East if relations with
China should deteriorate.
In recent articles, Aleksandr’ Khramchikhin raised
two issues that make this problem particularly difficult.
First, he did a strategic assessment of the threats faced
by Russia on all strategic axes and then examined the
military capabilities available to deal with them. He
noted conventional military deficiencies in the west,
the south, and north, but said that Russia’s defenses
in the east were clearly the weakest of all. In this, he
included the defenses covering Sakhalin and the Kuril
Islands, but focused on the Sino-Russian border in
Siberian and the Far East. There he described Russia
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