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

CHAPTER 8
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVES ON NON-STRATEGIC
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Nikolai Sokov
Russian non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNWs)
remain a hot issue in U.S.-Russian relations, in North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (<strong>NATO</strong>)-Russian relations,
<strong>and</strong> in transatlantic <strong>and</strong> intra-European relations.
The reason they figure so prominently is simple:
Russia has many more NSNWs than the United States.
Since the United Kingdom (UK) <strong>and</strong> France no longer
have NSNWs, the European balance in that category
of nuclear weapons is massively skewed—an estimated
180 B-61 nuclear bombs the United States still
keeps in Europe vis-à-vis several thous<strong>and</strong> Russian
weapons, variously estimated to be between 2,000 <strong>and</strong>
7,000. A significant—but unknown—share of these is
deployed in the Asian part of Russia, but usually estimates
of the Western-Russian balance proceed from
the totality of the Russian NSNW arsenal.
On top of this imbalance, there are also concerns
about the safety <strong>and</strong> security of NSNWs in Russia.
Many believe that these weapons are highly vulnerable
to theft or diversion <strong>and</strong> that some of them lack
permissive action links (PALs) <strong>and</strong> thus could be used
by unauthorized persons. These concerns, which were
quite valid in the 1990s (the present author has written
about them in the past), should probably no longer occupy
our attention. Older weapons that lacked PALs,
which could have remained part of the arsenal 15 or
so years ago, have likely been eliminated or at least refurbished
<strong>and</strong> equipped with protection against unau-
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