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

where cruise-missile-armed surface ships <strong>and</strong> attack
submarines can attack Russia’s strategic nuclear forces
on l<strong>and</strong> <strong>and</strong> at sea with conventional means, while
Aegis-equipped warships can intercept the surviving
Russian ballistic missiles launched in retaliation. 50 Khramchikhin
has been a persistent critic of Russian reactions
to U.S. -<strong>NATO</strong> plans for missile defense, writing
a three-part article for Voenno-promyshlennyikur’er (The
Military-Industrial Currier) in October <strong>and</strong> November
2011. Khramchikhin asked, “Who Is Against European
Missile Defense?” 51 He concluded that the building
of the U.S.-<strong>NATO</strong> missile defense system without
Russian cooperation did not pose a threat to Russian
strategic nuclear forces in the absence of a Russian attack
upon Europe or the United States. Khramchikhin
did recommend a prudent investment in maintaining
Russia’s offensive nuclear forces to keep them at the
limits provided by START III <strong>and</strong> proposed the creation
of an aero-space defense system. Khramchikhin
concluded: “Finally, A[ero] S[pace] D[efense] will
serve us very well in case of war with China, which, in
distinction from a war with <strong>NATO</strong>, is quite likely. But
that is another topic entirely.”
That other topic relates directly to Russian tactical
nuclear forces, as Karaganov made clear. Karaganov
<strong>and</strong> Khramchikhin might argue about the likelihood
of a Russo-Chinese war. Russia’s political leadership
simply does not speak of a military threat from China.
But Russian defense analysts are broadly agreed
that Chinese defense modernization has turned a
mass-industrial army into a force for the information
age. Aleks<strong>and</strong>r Kondrat’ev, one of Russia’s leading
commentators on the U.S. approach to the informationalization
of warfare, in March 2010 provided an
in-depth analysis of the Chinese approach to network-
142