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

(CBT); to mobilize international support in favor of
a Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty (FMCT); to extend
and strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT); and, most importantly, to draw bright lines for
preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons
state and for reversing North Korea’s nuclear weapons
status. 45 This is an ambitious, although not impossible,
agenda for nonproliferation, and it requires considerable
cooperation from existing legally recognized and
de facto nuclear weapons states. However, the United
States and Russia have a special responsibility for
leadership in this regard: they hold more than 90 percent
of the world’s nuclear weapons and, as well, the
historical responsibility for godfathering the nuclear
revolution in military affairs. Their management of
nuclear forces during and after the Cold War, despite
some scary moments and embarrassing political posturing
here and there, provide “lessons learned” for
other, and especially newer, members of the nuclear
weapons club.
One of these lessons is that further progress in horizontal
nuclear risk reduction (the spread of nuclear
weapons among additional states) requires the simultaneous
commitment by leading nuclear weapons
states to vertical risk reduction (limiting the growth
of existing arsenals, or preferably, reducing them in
size). The preceding point does not depend upon the
allegedly naive argument that a good example set by
the United States and by Russia automatically translates
into vertical or horizontal nuclear risk reduction.
Critics of nuclear risk reduction attack a straw man
here. The United States and Russia are not reducing
their numbers of long-range nuclear weapons and
launchers because of altruism. They are taking this
step because excessive numbers of nuclear weapons
are politically pointless and militarily useless.
433