Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THE
FEAR OF A NEW NUCLEAR ARMS RACE
What has changed is, first, the collapse of U.S./
<strong>NATO</strong> <strong>and</strong> Russian conversations on missile defense.
On October 21, 2011, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov,
speaking on the radio station Golos Rossii (Voice of
Russia) said that Russia saw no evidence of progress
on <strong>NATO</strong>-Russia cooperation on European missile
defense because the United States had declined to
provide any legally binding statement on the European
missile defense system disavowing deployment
against Russia. 4 For the next 10 days, the Russian government
in one forum or another repeated its warnings
about lack of progress on a Russia-<strong>NATO</strong> agreement
on European missile defense. On October 25, Robert
Bridge reported that President Dmitri Medvedev had
warned that failure to make a deal on missile defense
would lead to a new arms race: “In the coming decade
we face the following alternatives. . . . Either we reach
agreement on missile defense <strong>and</strong> create a full-fledged
joint mechanism of cooperation, or . . . a new round
of the arms race will begin.” 5 A week later Lavrov repeated
his statement that no progress had been made
on Russia-<strong>NATO</strong> cooperation in missile defense.
Within the next few days, the Russian press was full
of accounts of the beginning of that very arms race.
Lavrov declared: “The situation is serious <strong>and</strong> we will
certainly raise this question during the coming contacts
on the level of presidents of Russia <strong>and</strong> the U.S.
<strong>and</strong> the leaders of the leading <strong>NATO</strong> member states.” 6
Medvedev’s arms race view became common
knowledge just a day before Lavrov’s statement. It
began with a story out of the United Kingdom (UK)
carried by The Guardian, which proclaimed that a new
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