After the trauma of Sept. 11 we find President George W. Bush eager for allies. This week we see him turning to Russia for cooperation and assistance. In fact, President Bush plans to meet with Russia's president and former secret police chief, Vladimir Putin. Some experts believe that Russia is the key to our victory in the war against terrorism. After all, Russia dominates Central Asia with troops and bases near the Afghan frontier. Russia also supports the Northern Alliance, which is presently bearing down on Kabul after recent U.S. carpet-bombing of the Taliban front lines.
It now becomes important, in terms of the President's war strategy, to win Russia's friendship, perhaps at a high price. The time is now ripe for a new arms control agreement, one that calls for deep cuts in American nuclear forces. Judging from recent policy statements, George Bush is going to offer up thousands of American nuclear warheads in exchange for the right to test a missile defense system. The president's logic is simple: Since the real threat today is from rogue states and terrorists, a large nuclear arsenal is not as important for America as national missile defense.
Unfortunately, the main threat to America's future is not from rogue states or terrorists. The main threat is from Russia, the principle supplier and trainer of global terrorists since World War II. Americans should be reminded that Russia's war machine was built on the idea of fighting and winning a future nuclear war against America. According to a leading Russian defector and two leading U.S. intelligence analysts, the fall of the Soviet Union did not change this logic. As crazy as that sounds, experts like Dr. Peter Vincent Pry and William Lee warn that Russia's nuclear war-fighting strategy has been improved since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the threat of nuclear aggression from Russia is growing instead of shrinking.
But isn't nuclear war insane? Doesn't it spell the end of all life on earth?
No, says Dr. Pry. "There is good reason for thinking that U.S. and Soviet counterforce attacks will result in collateral deaths numbering, at most, in the low millions, and not in the tens of millions..."
Pry is no amateur in this area. While working in the CIA's Office of Soviet Analysis he was given an award for "groundbreaking research" on Russian nuclear war planning. Pry knows that Russian leaders appreciate the real affects of nuclear weapons, properly used in a way that minimizes destructive environmental effects. Such usage could produce stunning military results, argues Pry in his 1990 two volume work, "The Strategic Nuclear Balance and Why it Matters."
Russian military and scientific experts have long held that nuclear war does not signify the end of the world, or the end of civilization. If the weapons are used responsibly, damage can be limited to key military objectives. "Random violence is anathema to the Soviet military mind," noted Mark Miller, another leading U.S. researcher and author of "Soviet Strategic Power and Doctrine."
A leading Russian expert in 1966, Col. M. Shirokov, wrote that in nuclear war "the objective is not to turn the large economic and industrial regions into a heap of ruins." Soviet Col. Gen. Makhmut Gareev wrote, "The assertion that nuclear war will not be a continuation of politics is completely fallacious." Russian war theorist A. S. Milovidov lectured Russian officers for many years with the following statement: "There is profound error and harm in the disoriented claims of bourgeois ideologues that there will be no victor in a thermonuclear war." The fact is, explained Milovidov, nuclear war has not ceased to "be an instrument of politics, as is claimed by the overwhelming majority of ... anti-war movements in the bourgeois world." Dismissing Western squeamishness regarding nuclear weapons, Milovodov insisted that theirs "is a subjective judgment."
The American expert, Peter Pry, concurs with these teachers (who educated the current crop of Russian generals). According to Pry, "the belief that nuclear war is not survivable is false."
Yet American strategic policy is now influenced by the view that nuclear war is a practical impossibility, that nuclear war is a self-defeating proposition. Here is an idea that leads to a double error. In the first place, U.S. policy-makers dismiss the utility of nuclear arms; in the second place they trust the Russians to honor arms control agreements when the Russians have rarely done so in the past, even in the post-Soviet era. This trust is based upon the assumption that the Russians share our view of the disutility of nuclear weapons.
"Let us call the Russians differently rational," suggests Pry. "They do not see things as we do."
Col. Stanislav Lunev, a high ranking Russian military defector, is far more blunt in assessing his former superiors. Russia's top leaders, he told me in August 1997, are "not human beings, but crazy persons." When I suggested this was too harsh a view, he did not spare an expression of contempt. Lunev knows the Russian General Staff. He worked for them, he debriefed them, he participated in their war planning and preparations. Lunev has told U.S. officials that Russia's strategists and leaders are "not normal people." In 1999, before Lunev was to speak in front of a small gathering of U.S. intelligence officials, I explained to him that except for a handful of experts who are routinely ignored, American officials do not think nuclear missiles are meant for actual combat. They regard nuclear war as impractical. Upon hearing this Lunev assumed a puzzled expression and asked, "But why?"
I told him that Americans believe the environmental destructiveness, the resulting human catastrophe of a nuclear exchange of any size, would be totally unacceptable and inconceivable. It would kill too many "whales and fishies," I added with sarcasm. During the session that followed Lunev could not break the spell of disbelief that gripped his American listeners. He finally shocked them by saying that for 30 years he had trained with the Russian military for one mission. It was the main mission of Moscow's war machine, he said, to win a future nuclear war against America.
Of course, the shock to Lunev's listeners was only temporary. Trumped by a hedonistic market culture, the words of a Russian military officer were not likely to resonate with economic optimists living under the world's foremost shopping mall regime. Indeed, nuclear doomsday propaganda feeds latter-day hedonism which places momentary enjoyment above long-term planning. This not only facilitates consumerism, but suggests as well that all defensive measures are ultimately futile.
"Over the years," noted Pry, "numerous theories have been propounded about how a nuclear war might set in motion some phenomenon that could kill all human life on the planet." For example, it has been alleged that nuclear war would deplete the ozone layer, tip the balance of nature into catastrophe, trigger "nuclear winter" or cover the planet with deadly fallout. "Rebuttals to these theories by defense professionals are rarely mentioned," argues Pry, " and never get equal attention."
Doomsday scenarios have not deterred Russian military planners. Despite serious economic challenges, the Russian Federation has retained its arsenal of heavy nuclear missiles while developing a new generation of road mobile ICBMs -- a class of weapons the United States does not even possess!
The reason for this, argues Lunev and Pry, is found in the fact that Moscow believes in nuclear firepower. Nuclear missiles can be used to completely alter the global pecking order. The Russian General Staff knows that nuclear weapons are not only usable and practical, they are also cheaper and faster. In fact, Russia's war doctrine advocates the use of nuclear weapons to achieve rapid victory.
All of this is well known, yet ignored by American wishful thinking. President Bush, by his own testimony, is the first to deny this reality. After all, he has looked into the soul of Russian President Vladimir Putin and finds a good man. Could the former head of Russia's secret police, nicknamed by his colleagues "the little Andropov," be a good man? Even Senator Joseph Biden was worried by President Bush's assessment of Putin, hoping that this was not meant seriously.
But as Bush and Putin meet to discuss the most critical arms control proposals of our time, we may discover that Bush trusts the Russian leader and believes that "progress" in arms control is possible and desirable. In keeping with this, Bush may propose the elimination of U.S. nuclear arms as a kind of bribe, so that Moscow will agree to allow the testing of American anti-ballistic missiles.
Yet Russia already possesses anti-ballistic missiles of its own, which makes U.S. nuclear reductions doubly dangerous. This fact may sound unlikely, even impossible, yet it is the truth. Russia has not only deployed ABM defenses around Moscow, but a leading U.S. intelligence official (now retired) has documented the existence of a wide-area national missile defense in the former Soviet Union involving thousands of interceptor missiles. In fact, no credible attempt has been made to refute the claims of former CIA and DIA analyst Bill Lee, author of "The ABM Treaty Charade" (published by the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C., Monograph Number 25).
We have long known that the START II Treaty proposes to reduce Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals by two-thirds. But now we hear that the U.S. arsenal will be reduced even further in the face of Russia ABM superiority. What is dangerous, in this situation, is that Moscow routinely cheats on arms control treaties. The Kremlin cheated or fudged on SALT I. They cheated on the ABM Treaty, on START I, as well as on various chemical and biological weapons treaties.
How could they get away with this?
It is really quite simple. American diplomats and spymasters don't want their political bosses to look like blithering idiots in the wake of Russian trickery. Once a bureaucrat, currying high political favor, does something inherently dishonest he must continue in that dishonesty or lose his position. Therefore, America's security establishment long ago began to deny Russia's nuclear warfighting stance and its treaty-breaking. As Lee explains, the CIA systematically suppressed data indicating Russia was pursuing a war-winning counter-force nuclear strategy in the 1970s and 1980s. According to Lee, "CIA files were loaded with evidence, classified and un-classified, contradicting its position on all these issues: Soviet military doctrine, strategy, nuclear targeting objectives, and the Politburo's economic priorities."
The CIA's analysis of Russia's military strategy and ultimate objectives, during most of the Cold War, was "indefensible," says Lee. This state of affairs, sadly, continues to this day and has resulted in a continuing regime of bad advice given to ill-informed politicians. The START II Treaty which is now up for revision and adoption, is therefore terribly dangerous. "[T]he START II Treaty limit of some 3,500 strategic warheads is below the safe threshold," says Lee. Imagine going even lower than 3,500, perhaps as low as 1,500? As Lee explains, "The number of U.S. targets for a Russian counterforce strike [that would destroy the U.S. nuclear forces] probably will not exceed 600 aim points -- 500 ICBM silos, plus command/control centers, nuclear storage sites, airfields, and a few Trident bases."
Lee is not alone in deriding the START II Treaty. Dr. Peter Vincent Pry also argues consistently against the START process. In his 1999 book, "War Scare," Pry warns against recent National Intelligence Estimates which play down the threat from Russia. Writing of the Russian Federation under Boris Yeltsin, Pry says, "I grew more and more concerned about the increasingly lax attitudes of the U.S. government toward the possibility of a Russian nuclear attack...."
These lax attitudes were fostered by the supposed collapse of the Soviet Union. "My concern turned to alarm," explains Pry, "on February 28, 1996, when the U.S. intelligence community finally caved in to the politically correct view of a vanishing Russian nuclear threat."
What alarmed Pry was a report issued by Clinton's National Intelligence Council, which presented the declassified findings of NIE 95-19, entitled "Emerging Missile Threats to North America during the Next Fifteen Years." According to Pry, top U.S. experts on Russian force modernization strongly disagreed with this report, which amounted to a whitewash. "Many experts," says Pry, "including President Clinton's former CIA director, R. James Woolsey, condemned NIE 95-19."
What Pry's 1999 book sought to point out, was that Moscow had "raised the specter of nuclear war nearly a half dozen times since 1991 and continues building nuclear blast shelters and technologically advanced strategic forces, despite a ruined economy."
Once again, Americans should ask themselves why Russia continues to prepare for World War III?
But most Americans will not get past the fact that their own intelligence services have deceived them regarding the Russian threat -- a fact that runs contrary to common sense. Many assume that the "military industrial" complex seeks to magnify threats to justify defense expenditures which result in lucrative contracts. But this out-of-date view does not take into account the Clinton administration's rape of our defense industries, and the infamous "last supper" episode at which Clinton officials told America's military-industrial complex that their place at the federal trough was being taken away. No doubt there was whimpering, but Clinton's people held the power and who could stop them from reducing the military by more than half?
Meanwhile, the Russians were cheating on their arms control obligations throughout the 1990s and the intelligence bureaucracy was not eager to catch them out. After all, it was not what the President wanted to hear. In addition, covering up for Russian cheating was part of a long-established pattern in the U.S. intelligence community.
Consider the testimony of William R. Graham, who wrote the forward to Lee's book, "The ABM Treaty Charade." In 1982 Graham was appointed by President Reagan to serve as the Chairman of the General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. After the committee members were confirmed by the U.S. Senate, they were tasked by Reagan to review the history of past arms control agreements with Russia. Did the Russians comply with the agreements signed in the 1970s? "It took the General Advisory Committee about a year to review the entire record," wrote Graham. "Neither the institutions of the State Department nor the Intelligence Community were cooperative..."
Many readers may wonder at this. Why wouldn't the State Department and the intelligence community cooperate with a Presidential committee looking into the issue of Russian compliance with arms control agreements? But this is a naive question. As noted earlier, bureaucrats who craft arms control agreements, who confidently assure politicians that "U.S. national technical means" is all-in-all sufficient to keep the Kremlin honest, are averse to embarrassment over past stupidities. And pursuing arms control with Moscow is nothing if not stupid.
According to Graham, "[T]he General Advisory Committee, aided by a few knowledgeable individuals, was able to produce a highly classified report of nearly 300 pages that made use of U.S. national technical means to uncover a systematic pattern of Soviet violations of their arms control commitments..."
This above testimony is not hearsay. These are the words of the man himself, the chairman of the committee charged by Reagan with finding the facts. Russia's rulers are compulsive treaty-breakers and cheats, and the U.S. intelligence community doesn't want to acknowledge this depressing reality. Having trusted the Russians, having assured everyone that the arms control process is a worthwhile process and the Russians are trustworthy partners, the emerging scandal of the 1970s and 1980s had to be covered up and extended. "Predictably," wrote Graham, "the arms control apologencia attacked not the behavior of the Soviets, but rather the General Advisory Committee's report."
As Putin and Bush come together this week, America will be asked to pay a high price in exchange for a weak ABM system unlike the one Russia already has. According to Bill Lee, "Documenting Soviet violations of the ABM Treaty from the time the negotiations began through the demise of the Empire to contemporary Russia, which inherited the Soviet national anti-ballistic missile (NABM) defenses, also documents one of the major U.S. intelligence failures of the Cold War. The full consequences of this failure have yet to be realized, and could turn out to be tragic indeed."
These are sobering words from an intelligence analyst whose past predictions and prognostications proved right again and again.
This week's summit between Bush and Putin will begin on Tuesday. According to the Washington Post, President Bush is willing to go as low as 1,750 strategic nuclear warheads to secure Russia's agreement. In this deal Russia would supposedly drop to 1,000 warheads. But Russia cannot be trusted to keep its end of the bargain. In fact, Russian officials are suggesting even lower numbers because Russia has no intention of honoring the agreement. If history is any guide to the future, Russia will retain a large nuclear arsenal while America weakens itself. (In this context everyone should wonder, with so many emerging nuclear powers in Asia, why Russia would want to strip itself of its best weapons at this time?)
U.S. optimists will say that Russia is economically crippled and cannot build many missiles. The truth is, with underground factories of unknown capacity deep beneath places like Yamantau Mountain, Russia's actual missile production capacity is unknown. Since U.S. officials are not permitted access to the Yamantua facility, since weapons production is suspected there, Russian compliance cannot be monitored. U.S. national technical means cannot penetrate through 1,000 feet of rock, steel and concrete.
U.S. nuclear forces have maintained the peace for decades. Having a large and terrifying nuclear arsenal has kept us free and safe. Tampering with force size and structure now, after Russia has spent a decade modernizing its forces, and after Russia has joined up with China, is blatantly foolish.
Let us hope that President Bush turns his back on this arms control business.
