March 29, 2004
The Empire Strikes Back
I find Russia's lack of faith disturbing...
Russia has reportedly unveiled a new weapons system that will bypass or otherwise circumvent the US missile defense system.
This announcement is unusual, and must be seen on the examining table to really understand it. Russia needs no special weapon system to bypass US missile defense. With thousands of deliverable nuclear vehicles, Russia can easily saturate any defense the US is likely to deploy for the next 35 years. Once again proving the Russian axiom, quantity has a quality all it's own...
So why the announcement? Why the lack of faith in their current nuclear stockpile? A myriad of reasons come to fore, not the least of which is the desire to still be seen as a counterweight to US global power hegemony. But a more worrisome matter lies at the heart of the US missile defense system - it's designed to interecept a relatively small attack, not a large one, at least with current and near-future technology.
By deploying this technology domestically, Russia can attempt to sanitize it publicly. The exportation of this technology to regimes that are unable to deploy a saturation attack on the United States, i.e. North Korea, will relegitimze a nuclear threat from the very countries that the missile defense system is meant to render moot.
A great deal of pressure must be brought to bear to prevent Russia from exporting this technology. In the end, this is likely no more than a chip Russia will play at the table with the US. As the US welcomes former Soviet satellites into NATO, the Russian leadership will be under pressure domestically, and will expectedly bark more, but hopefully bite less.
Posted by MEC2 at March 29, 2004 11:49 PM