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

propriations, which is very important due to the current
economic situation in Russia. 1
Many, if not most, Russian politicians <strong>and</strong> experts
still look at <strong>NATO</strong> as an aggressive bloc, capable of
attacking Russia. In their view, Russia should be on
the alert to preclude attempts to make it vulnerable
through supposedly benign calls for nuclear disarmament.
It may thus be much more difficult for the United
States to negotiate TNWs with Russia than it was
to conclude the recent START III treaty on strategic
nuclear weapons. The greater number <strong>and</strong> complexity
of factors at play have raised the threshold at which
mutual agreement becomes likely. Indeed, the sheer
number of conditions which Russian politicians <strong>and</strong>
arms experts link to the issue of TNW reduction suggests
that TNWs are for Russians the only realistic answer
to the myriad of security challenges facing them.
RUSSIAN MILITARY SECURITY CONCERNS
First of all, issues related to the role of TNWs in the
military context look much more security-sensitive to
Russia than to the United States <strong>and</strong> <strong>NATO</strong>. Indeed,
there may be some good reasons for such a Russian
perspective. Thus negotiations on TNWs <strong>and</strong>, correspondingly,
on all related aspects may not start soon.
The Russian official position at the moment rests on
the very sensitive dem<strong>and</strong> for the withdrawal of all
TNWs to national territories of their owners as a precondition
for the start of any negotiations related to
those weapons. This ultimatum is aimed at the essentially
symbolic number (if compared with the nuclear
deployments during the Cold War) of U.S. nuclear
gravity bombs—about 200 or fewer—located in five
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