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

particular, Russian Government representatives insist
they will retain sufficient—if not necessarily equal—
nuclear weapons capacity to overcome any U.S. attack.
Russian leaders also see their nuclear forces as
essential for deterring threats by the other nuclear
powers—including not only NATO allies, Britain and
France, but also China, though the Chinese threat is
never mentioned by name. When Russia’s new Military
Doctrine was being revised, one of its main authors,
Army-General Makhmut Gareyev, argued that:
The nuclear weapons of all major nuclear powers are
ultimately designed to be used against Russia, whether
we want to admit it or not. In this context, the task of
curbing a potential aggressor by means of a strategic
nuclear deterrent is becoming more important than in
the past. 27
Similarly, “The Strategy of National Security of the
Russian Federation to 2020,” approved on May 12,
2009, also sees a major threat to Russia’s security in
how the other countries aim to achieve overwhelming
dominance in the military sphere through their development
of strategic nuclear forces; precision, information
weapons; strategic weapon systems with non-nuclear
warheads; global anti-missile defense systems;
and by militarizing outer space. It describes nuclear
weapons as essential for compensating for any weakness
in Russia’s conventional forces. 28
Although the process of modernizing Russian conventional
forces was underway at the time the 2009
National Security Strategy was written, it was (and
still is) moving at a slow pace. 29 For this reason, when
looking at U.S. and NATO superiority in advanced
conventional military technologies, and China’s potential
conventional advantages in Central and East
378