European Missile Defense and Russia

Recent Russian-Western tension has been of much focus. Following the annexation of Crimea, increased interests in the causes of division between Russia and the West have resulted in numerous explanations. This paper aims to add to the debate by explaining the impact of the termination of the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the role of ballistic missile defense in the American-Russian strategic relationship. After reviewing relevant the role of strategic deterrence and missile deference, it then surveys a chronology of key events involving the AMB Treaty; including the Cuban missile crisis, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, Strategic Defense Initiative, and the emerging debates and threats following the Cold War that led to its dismissal. By highlighting defining moments of crisis and cooperation, it attempts to show the historic importance of the Treaty in defining and stabilizing the behavior between these two states. To further demonstrate the Treaty’s weight this study then reviews recent areas of cooperation following its dissolution like that of the NATO-Russian Council and how these efforts have been complicated by Russian objections to American-led missile defense programs like that of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA). In doing so, it hopes to add a new layer in the debate concerning explanations for the current crisis in relations by reviewing the Georgian and Ukrainian conflicts. It contends that the strategic implications of the ABM Treaty’s abandonment have been underestimated, and that the EPAA contributes greatly to the bifurcation of European security. The hope is that by identifying key areas of contention and their role in state relations, future areas of cooperation can be illuminated to mitigate the current crisis between Russia and the West.

International Affairs, 2009

The American decision to deploy missile defence in Poland endangered the central myth of Putin's regime (Russia's rebirth as a Great Power), challenged the status of Putin as Russia's strongman, and introduced an additional uncertainty into the carefully scripted campaign for succession to Putin. It also hit the raw nerve of Russia's reliance on nuclear weapons. The character of Russian policy-making has guaranteed the worst-case scenario evaluation of the American programme. The Russian elite's world view has magnified the problems resulting from the deployment into fears of a window of vulnerability.

International Affairs, 2012

During its first three years, the Obama administration compiled an impressive record on the politically fraught issue of European ballistic missile defence (MD) cooperation on three different levels: domestically, vis-à-vis Europe and NATO, and in relations with Russia. 1 The administration's MD design, known as the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA), will rely on land-and sea-based interceptors to shoot down missiles launched towards Europe by Iran or other Middle Eastern states. It has strong bipartisan support at home and is being implemented in close collaboration with NATO, which agreed in 2010 to make the protection of allies' territory from ballistic missiles a priority. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has ardently pursued MD cooperation with Russia, which has long regarded US missile defence as a threat to its own strategic deterrence capabilities. Given political realities in the US, the administration has little choice but to proceed with plans to deploy a European MD system. Nevertheless, its focus on MD cooperation as a kind of magic bullet in relations with both its European allies and Russia appears too ambitious, and risks doing more harm than good-unless the administration can do a better job of managing expectations, while embedding its ideas for MD cooperation into a broader security dialogue with both the Europeans and Russia.

The Strategist , 2022

Amid a heightened fear in Europe of the Russian missile threat, Germany has expressed an interest in buying the Arrow 3 missile-defence system, a joint Israeli–US system designed to confront long-range Iranian missiles. At the end of March, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz didn’t conceal the fact that he was seeking to defend his country from a Russian missile threat: ‘[A missile shield] is certainly among the things we are discussing, for good reason … We must all prepare ourselves for the fact that we have a neighbour presently ready to use force to assert its interests.’ This is an intriguing development for a number of reasons....

The overriding issue that dominated the three days of presentations and dialogue was the impact of "perceptions and misperceptions" on current U.S.-Russian relations. In many aspects, the United States and Russia have similar security concerns regarding the threats posed by terrorism and WMD proliferation. Moreover, there was complete agreement among the fifty participants that the potential for deliberate hostilities between the two countries was nonexistent. However, these apparent "unifying factors" were not perceived as sufficient to overcome the bilateral uncertainty and misunderstanding that currently surround strategic modernization efforts in both countries. On several occasions, workshop participants mentioned that the state of bilateral tensions reminded them of the atmosphere that existed in the early 1980s. As one Russian participant observed, "The classic Cold War model is reemerging-don't cooperate easily; don't give them anything…."

While this monograph was being researched and written, Russian actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine brought U.S.-Russian relations to a new low in the post-Cold War era. Normal relations and conversations between the United States and Russia were apparently on hold during an unprecedented, and apparently intractable, crisis of European security. But the longer view of relations between the two former superpowers shows precedents that suggest relations stand a strong chance of early recovery, despite Russia’s hard line and unpalatable actions. With or without this recovery, some persistent challenges to the relationship will remain; the state of relations will affect how these challenges are presented, rather than the underlying contradictions themselves. One of these challenges is ballistic missile defense (BMD), and its implications for nuclear deterrence. For the past 7 years, plans for BMD capability in Europe have been a consistent sticking point in relations between the United States and Russia. In brief, Russia’s strenuous opposition to these plans is based on claims, not all of them disingenuous, that this capability is intended to compromise Russia’s nuclear deterrent capability. Yet all discussion of the subject highlights the U.S. current and proposed deployments and entirely ignores Russia’s own missile interception systems, which are claimed to have comparable capability. While Moscow continues to strengthen its armed forces and seeks to reduce the capability gap with the United States, the perception of vulnerability leads Russia to invest heavily in strategic weapons and aerospace defense, including both defense against nuclear missiles and precision guided munitions. Russia protests that U.S. SM-3 missiles pose a potential threat to strategic stability, and has made belligerent threats of direct military action to prevent their deployment. But no mention at all is made of the strategic implications of Russia’s own S-400 and S-500 systems, despite the fact that, if the performance and capabilities claimed for them by Russian sources are accurate, they pose at least as great a threat to deterrence as do SM-3s. This monograph therefore aims to describe Russia’s claims for its missile defense systems and, where possible, to assess the likelihood that these claims are true. This will form a basis for considering whether discussion of Russian capabilities should be an integral part of future conversations with Russia on the deployment of U.S. and allied BMD assets. An assessment of this kind requires an essential caveat. Research for this monograph has been conducted from open sources in Russian and English, and unclassified discussion with knowledgeable individuals on both sides of the debate. As such, it has obvious limitations, especially in a field where the fine detail of capabilities and deployments is highly classified. In addition, the proliferation of designations used by Russia for systems still in development, and the confused and contradictory reporting of them in open source media, adds a further layer of obfuscation. In the words of one assessment—tellingly entitled, “Experts Baffled by Profusion of Russian Missile Projects”—the resulting linguistic labyrinth has been further confused, perhaps deliberately, by a proliferation of new names in Russian reports. The descriptions in this monograph of specific Russian projects are therefore a synthesis of public declarations by Russia as carried in open sources, Executive Summary Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press rather than an authoritative and verified systems handbook. Nonetheless, they have value since responses to Russian claims for their missile defense systems must necessarily rely on public pronouncements.

The EU and NATO are facing an increasingly uncertain and complex situation on their eastern and south-eastern borders. In what the EU has traditionally conceived as its ‘shared neighbourhood’ with Russia and NATO its ‘eastern flank’, Moscow is exhibiting a growingly assertive military posture. The context of the Baltic and the Black Sea regions differs, but Russia’s actions in both seem to be part of the same strategy aiming to transform the European security order and its sustaining principles. The Kremlin seems to follow similar policies and tactics, mainly through the militarisation of the Kaliningrad Oblast and Crimea as the centrepiece of its strategy of power projection vis-à-vis NATO and the EU. An all-out war remains an unlikely scenario, but frictions or accidents leading to an unwanted and uncontrolled escalation cannot be completely ruled out. Tensions and military developments take place in both the Baltic and Black seas, but are not only about them. Russia is testing the Euro-Atlantic response and resilience at large. To assess how far it might be willing to go, it is necessary to evaluate how Russia perceives the West and its actions, taking into account the deep and entrenched clash of perceptions between Brussels and Moscow, and the worldview of the latter.

2007

Since spring 2006, Russian military commanders, and, subsequently, political leaders, consistently have attacked America's plans to station missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic and argued against the possible emplacement of such defenses in Ukraine and Georgia. (1) These programs appear to be leading to the revival of the idea that the US and NATO are the main threats to Russian security, a familiar, and perhaps congenial, position for the armed forces. (2) In this vein, in April President Putin announced the suspension of Russia's observance of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) because of these planned defenses. (3) Last month, Putin announced his decision to withdraw Russia from the CFE completely. Obviously, the missile defense plans bring together two things Moscow greatly opposes: NATO

OSW Point of View No. 76, 2019

The collapse of the Soviet bloc’s structures (the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact) and then of the Soviet Union itself in 1989–1991 was a kind of geopolitical earthquake in Europe. The main political and legal successor of the USSR, the Russian Federation, had to determine its place in the European order that was being formed, including the security sphere. The new Russia, which inherited from the USSR its membership in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) and the newly established North Atlantic Co-operation Council (NACC), declared its attachment to European democratic values, suggesting that it was ready to embark on close co-operation and, at some point in the future, even join the European and EuroAtlantic security structures (including NATO) that had been formed during the Cold War era in opposition to the USSR. However, Russia’s Soviet legacy also included elements of its strategic culture, political concepts and a significant share of personnel whose views had already been formed. This, in turn, meant that both the will and ability of Russia’s most senior state authorities to put these declarations into practice were highly uncertain. Even though, due to the economic crisis and process of disintegration, Russia turned out to be weaker than the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s, it did not relinquish either its status as a powerful state or the related idea – viewed in maximalist terms – of political sovereignty (even from the West). The government elites of the Russian Federation (like the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his aides before them) wanted to create a new security architecture in Europe. If constructed according to Moscow’s concepts such an architecture would lead to marginalisation or disbanding of the existing Western security structures (especially NATO) and curbing the US presence and influence in Europe. Above all, it would ensure Moscow’s de facto participation in the decision-making processes concerning European security. In addition, Russia did not wish to relinquish its objective of maintaining its zone of influence in the post-Soviet area (temporarily excluding the Baltic states). It was ready to use military force to foment and capitalise on political and ethnic conflicts in this area to achieve this goal. It also launched a political campaign to counter the efforts of Central European countries – the former (involuntary) participants of the Soviet bloc – to join NATO, attempting to create a more or less formal buffer zone in this region. The overriding goals of Russia’s European security policy have remained unaltered, regardless of the various initiatives taken by Moscow: strategic control of the post-Soviet area, the existence of a security buffer zone in Central Europe and the transformation of the existing NATO-based security system in Europe in a manner that would maximise Russia’s political and security influence and minimise that of the USA. What has changed and been diversified are the institutional solutions Moscow has employed in an attempt to achieve these goals: basing European security on the OSCE (predominant in its policy in the 1990s) or as part of a special partnership with NATO (mainly in the first decade of the 2000s) or through attempts to use the European Security and Defence Policy to enhance security co-operation with the EU. Over time, the Kremlin’s ambitions were gradually curtailed after Russian foreign policy had suffered further defeats. When it was launching the campaign against NATO enlargement eastwards, Moscow initially concentrated its efforts on the Visegrad Group countries, then on the Baltic states and finally, as the enlargement process continued, on Ukraine and Georgia. Initially, the security buffer zone in Central Europe was intended to separate the areas of NATO and Russia (and other CIS countries). However, when this proved impossible, it was to be established inside NATO on its eastern flank. From today’s perspective, it can be concluded that none of the strategic goals of Russia’s European security policy have been achieved. Even through Russia has created economic, political and security structures controlled by it in the post-Soviet area, their range, effectiveness and scale of real control of the member states’ policy is far from meeting Russian expectations. The NATO–Russia Founding Act, which imposes quite imprecise restrictions on the deployment of the Allied forces on NATO’s eastern flank, albeit politically dead, is still formally respected by NATO. However, the regular reinforcement of the Allied (and bilaterally US) military presence on the eastern flank – formally as part of the so-called ‘regular rotation’ – undermines the buffer zone idea. Regardless of discussions that recur from time to time, Russia has also been unable to create any European security system as an alternative to the existing one, especially a system that would offer Moscow veto power. Furthermore, the aggressive and revisionist foreign policy that has been sustained since the second half of the 2010s on President Vladimir Putin’s initiative has led to a crisis in relations with the West, in some respects even more serious than the one that prevailed during the Cold War era. The causes of this include: Russia’s de facto withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) regime; undermining the system of measures for building trust and security in Europe (blocking further adaptation of the Vienna Document and violations of the Treaty on Open Skies); the erosion of the system of nuclear weapons control, provoked by Russia due to violating the INF treaty and, most importantly, Russia’s acts of military aggression in Europe (in 2008 against Georgia and in 2014 against Ukraine), involving real territorial annexations and Russia’s numerous military provocations and ‘hybrid’ actions against NATO member states and nonaligned countries. At present, Russia needs to choose: whether it should continue the present confrontational approach in its European security policy or even toughen it, thus taking the risk of increasing political, economic and security costs, or seek détente with the West, probably at the expense of certain concessions (including those as part of the Minsk process covering the conflict with Ukraine in Donbass), and by starting once more to honour at least some of the agreements concerning European security. Moscow’s decisions may be affected by a number of factors. The most essential of these seem to be the factors linked to the domestic situation in Russia, possible personnel changes inside the Russian government and an evolution of the perception and understanding of the international and regional situation by the Russian government. The present aggressive policy pursued by Russia seems incapable of being altered without major changes in these areas.

Ante Portas, 2019

The issue of the international security has become more pressing actual in 21 st century due to the appearance of new dangers and challenges in the modern world, which were not typical for the previous century. On the background of geopolitical transition, the role of strategic offensive arms and weapons of mass destruction has become more important. In the modern world, it is important to maintain strategic parity on arms when global challenges pose a serious threat to all humanity. In this paper, we discussed the reasons for the cancellation of the Treaty on the Elimination of intermediate-range and short-range missiles of 1987 and the dangers that are threatening the world. The USA and Russia have officially announced that they are starting modernizing and producing ballistic missiles and what is more important, their policies are forcing other countries to produce similar arms. The paper focuses on the security environment of the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Sea regions, the dangers that resulted from the cancellation of the abovementioned agreement. The Politics of Strategic Bullying in the Bipolar Era, the "Cold War" phenomenon and geopolitical processes of New Cold War is also discussed in this paper. Also, discussing the role of strategic offensive arms and defining NATO's role in ensuring international security has an important place in this paper.