Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present:

invoking the prospective emergence of new nuclear states—most prominently, Iran and NorthKorea. Although such states would have relatively small arsenals of nuclear missiles, their military-politicaland military-strategic behaviors would be difficult to predict, compared to the behaviorof the oldest members of the nuclear club—the Russian Federation, the U.S., China, Franceand Great Britain—as well as that of the club’s most recent members, such as India and Pakistan.The author would like to note that the problem of ensuring strategic stability in contemporaryconditions must be solved in part by developing programs and concrete measures that are asymmetricin nature. These problems must be examined in the context of the new system of geopoliticalcoordinates that has essentially emerged before our eyes over the past 10 to 12 years.Strategic stability can be ensured with greater reliability if the process is thought of within thesame paradigm, relying on the logic of thinking that is common in contemporary scientific culture,and standing firm on the soil of modern scientific knowledge, refusing to yield to admonitionsby charlatans and adventurists who, as a rule, pursue their own selfish goals.We should watch out for possible breakthroughs in the development of different technologies,means of destruction, and weapon systems that can undermine the balance one way or another,creating circumstances under which the opponent may become able to surprise us in the militarytechnicaland operational-strategic domains that arise in crisis situations. This applies not onlyto military technologies, but also to technologies that initially appear to be completely civilian innature.The scientific approach to the issue (the author refers here to both the natural and the social sciences)doesn’t always boil down to questions of common sense. With the help of science, one cansometimes come to conclusions (and this applies to the problem of strategic stability too) thatmay run contrary to the everyday perceptions of a person who is not interested in science, contraryto his understanding of what appears on the surface to be rational from the point of view ofcommon sense.There are certain cycles in the development of both missile defense and strategic offensive weapons.These technical systems, which play very important roles in life-and-death issues faced bymodern civilization, as well as in ensuring the national security of existing states, develop inclearly non-linear patterns.Politicians who must deal with the issue of strategic stability do not need advanced educations inthe natural sciences or engineering, but they do need to know the overall scientific logic of creating,operating and developing complex social and human-machine systems if they are to understandthe patterns of technical evolution that define, to a large extent, how strategic stability isensured. The state leadership must be able to rely on a sufficiently robust national community oftechnocrats when solving problems related to this issue.8Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present: Theoretical and Applied Questions