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

thorized use. The massive shuffle of weapons, which
took place in the first half of 1990s, has long been over,
<strong>and</strong> there is no reason to believe that some are still
lying around unaccountable. Security of storage sites
has been increased as well, often with U.S. assistance.
Finally, there is concern about possible security
threats associated with the large number of Russian
NSNWs. These include several rather different problems.
First, some states in <strong>NATO</strong> (the Baltic states,
in particular) are troubled that Russia has deployed
short-range (tactical) nuclear weapons (TNWs) close
to their territories <strong>and</strong> plans to deploy more in Kaliningrad
Oblast, an exclave of Russian territory between
Lithuania <strong>and</strong> Pol<strong>and</strong>. This concern has once again
heated up acutely after President Dmitri Medvedev in
November 2011 threatened to deploy Isk<strong>and</strong>er tactical
missiles in that region in response to American plans
to station missile defense assets in Europe 1 (a previous
threat, in 2008, was withdrawn after the Barack
Obama administration revised earlier plans for missile
defense formulated under President George W.
Bush).
Other worries are more theoretical <strong>and</strong> have to do
with the nature of TNWs, which militaries generally
intend to embed with conventional forces during war.
Specifically, there is fear that such weapons could be
released to troops in time of crisis <strong>and</strong> that authority to
use them could be delegated to combatant comm<strong>and</strong>ers.
In this case, any acute crisis could easily result in
the early use of nuclear weapons, especially if comm<strong>and</strong>ers
in the field fear losing such weapons to a first
strike by the United States <strong>and</strong> <strong>NATO</strong>. This apprehension
is underst<strong>and</strong>able, given not only the overwhelming
qualitative superiority of U.S. conventional assets,
but also the fact that the Russian military appears to
ascribe to them almost mystical capabilities.
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