Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future - Strategic ...

the moment. By and large, this concern is now limited
to conservative quarters. It should be noted however,
that decline of this concern rests, to a large extent, on
continued reliance on nuclear weapons. Even wellknown
liberal expert Aleksei Arbatov emphasized
recently that “as long as Russia has a reliable nuclear
deterrence capability, the scenario of a massive and
extended conventional air and missile U.S. strikes using
high-precision conventional weapons remains an
artificial threat.” 71 Without it, Russia could have been
much more concerned about U.S. conventional strike
capability.
Second, in a large-scale conflict conventional assets
can do many of the same things as nuclear weapons,
but are more usable. To some extent, this is not
so much a concern as envy—where the United States
could utilize conventional assets Russia is still limited
to nuclear options. The recent Nuclear Posture Review
was assessed by Russian experts from precisely that
angle—the United States no longer needs nuclear
weapons for its security and can (or will in the near
future) support almost all missions with conventional
assets. 72
Third, and finally, it is difficult to distinguish a
long-range delivery vehicle with a conventional warhead
from the same vehicle equipped with a nuclear
warhead. Since trajectories toward the majority of
likely targets cross Russian territory or closely skirt it,
they could be interpreted by the early warning system
as an attack. 73 This concern appears real and needs to
be addressed—the Russian military are clearly not
going to be satisfied with U.S. notifications in case of
a launch and will want the ability to verify it independently.
Very limited (nonexistent for all practical
purposes) Russian capability to detect single launches
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