Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America (26 page)

The Russians have been eagerly modernizing for years. In 2008, Medvedev announced that he wanted to build a “guaranteed nuclear deterrent system” and a “system of aerospace defense” by 2020, mostly in response to America’s plans to move ballistic-missile defense systems into Eastern Europe. In order to “achieve dominance in airspace,” Medvedev then said, “we plan to start serial production of warships, primarily nuclear-powered submarines carrying cruise missiles and multifunctional submarines.”
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Four years later, an objective source (at least when it comes to Russia)—China’s Xinhua News—reported that Russia’s modernization was proceeding as planned, with Russia rearming to a level not achieved since the fall of the Soviet Union.
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Those in Washington concerned with the American build-down have had plenty of signs to worry them from Russia’s actions in recent years.

In March 2013, Russia launched an operational drill of its nuclear weapons. The drill tested the transport and deployment of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons near the European border, and came in the wake of increased test flights of Russian nuclear bombers over Guam and simulations of bomber runs over California and Alaska.
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In April 2013, the Russian government announced that work was under way on a new generation of rail-based ICBM missiles. Older
American-Soviet agreements prohibited rail-based launchers, but the New START treaty did not mention them. Additionally, Russia is working on a new generation of strategic bombers, to be completed by 2020.
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In May 2013, the Russian government announced that it would soon deploy the first of its newly designed Yars-M ICBM systems. The Yars-M is said to have a greater capacity to penetrate missile-defense systems such as those the Obama administration is setting up in Eastern Europe. The missile “is one of the military technological measures that the Russian military-political leadership has devised in response to the development of a global missile-defense system by the Americans,” said Victor Yesin, a retired Russian strategic forces commander.
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Long before 2013, the Russians were using their marked advantage in tactical nuclear weapons to pressure and intimidate other nations. As we observed when looking at the New START Treaty, tactical nukes, where Russians have a huge numerical advantage, have come to play a vital role in Russian military thinking. While Russia and the United States have both heavily reduced their strategic stockpiles, tactical stockpiles have rarely been the focus of international treaties. As Russia’s conventional forces continue to suffer from structural weaknesses, Russian strategists have come to see their tactical arsenal as a substitute for conventional strength in some cases.
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In 2009, Moscow launched an exercise along its borders from the Baltic States to Finland, with simulated use of such weapons accompanied by actual cyber attacks on the communications of nearby countries. In November 2011, Nikolai Makarov, the chief of the Russian general staff, stated that local conflicts could escalate to the use of tactical or strategic weapons: “The possibility of local conflicts practically along the whole periphery of our borders has increased sharply. . . . Under certain conditions I do not exclude the possibility
that local and regional armed conflicts could turn into major wars, including the employment of nuclear weapons.”
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Russia’s stance on tactical nukes is shaped by its understanding of the geopolitical environment. Russia views these weapons as a key part of its defense not only against Europe or America, but also China or Japan. Unlike the United States, protected by wide oceans, Russia is surrounded by nuclear-armed states that it views as potential rivals. Unless Russia’s view of its neighbors changes, it is unlikely that the government will abandon its tactical arms. And that goes double for the times when Russia is led by a determined nationalist such as Vladimir Putin, who promises to use military intervention (including preventive intervention) to protect Russian citizens “wherever they may be.” One Russian expert refers to tactical nukes as weapons of “regional deterrence.”
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The Russian posture shouldn’t surprise the United States, especially given New START, which essentially reduced an American advantage in deployed strategic weapons to parity with Russia, while leaving untouched the Kremlin’s advantage in tactical weapons. By reducing its nuclear advantage, the U.S. also allowed the Kremlin to rein in its own nuclear budget, which remains aggressive even though it no longer has to play catch-up as it did during the 1980s. The eased budgetary pressure allows Moscow to devote more money to modernizing its navy and air force, as detailed in the last chapter.

Finally, recent events demand that we view the Russian nuclear posture also in the context of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, signed by Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and Britain in 1994. In that agreement, Ukraine, then the world’s third-largest nuclear power, agreed to give up
all
of its nuclear weapons—transferring them to Russia—in exchange for guarantees that the signatories would “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” and “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial
integrity or political independence of Ukraine.”
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Twenty years later, Ukraine is a denuclearized nation threatened with absorption into Vladimir Putin’s Russia—and the Budapest Memorandum has no binding power to compel the U.S. or Britain to do anything about it.

China

It took an act of God for the world to get any sense of how much China was building up its nuclear arsenal.

In 2008, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake rocked China’s Sichuan Province, killing roughly 70,000 people and leaving more than 18,000 missing.
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“It looked like toothpaste being squeezed out,” said a local who described the collapse of buildings as if they were volcanic events. “No, it wasn’t [magma]. It was these concrete pieces. The eruption lasted about three minutes.”
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In addition to the tragic loss of life, the event exposed to the world the extent of China’s nuclear-weapons reserves.

Beijing sent nearly 150,000 soldiers, including radiation-containment specialists, to secure and conceal nuclear facilities scattered throughout Sichuan.
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In the Chinese blogosphere and some Western outlets, rumors swirled that the quake had been caused by an accidental nuclear blast. That rumor could not be corroborated, but the event revealed the clearest picture yet of China’s nuclear stockpile. Even with the new data, information about this stockpile remains scarce and shrouded in secrecy.

In 2006, we thought that China had 145 deployed warheads. That was probably a low estimate; conservative estimates put the figure around 350, which might also be too low. Experts such as the Russian general Viktor Yesin believe that the Chinese have closer to 1,800 warheads in their arsenal.
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China could have up to 850 of these ready to be launched.
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Whatever the real numbers are, the Sichuan quake
made clear that the Chinese are running a far more sophisticated operation than most observers understood.

What we do know is that China is committed to growing its nuclear capabilities alongside expansion of traditional military forces. We know that China has taken steps to improve the ability of their nuclear installations to withstand an attack, beefing up their capacity to conduct a nuclear counterstrike.
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These steps have included developing a watered-down version of the U.S. triad and increasing the use of mobile launchers. We know that China continues to develop new missile capabilities and upgrade older missiles, and continues to analyze and improve the structure of its nuclear-forces management.
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This also includes building what some call an Underground Great Wall of China—stretching more than 5,000 kilometers through northern China—that houses nuclear weapons.
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China is also part of a pan-Asian arms race over short- and intermediate-range missiles, which has involved North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Iran. The U.S. and Russia are precluded from developing these missiles by the 1987 INF treaty.
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We know that the Chinese will soon have five nuclear-powered submarines capable of launching a new class of nuclear-tipped missile, the JL-2, with an estimated range of more than 7,400 kilometers. The Pentagon calls this China’s “first credible sea-based nuclear deterrent,” which means that China now has two legs of its nuclear triad.
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We also know that China is well known internationally for announcing a “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons. By this, it means that it would use nukes only in response to a nuclear attack on China, and that China would not use or even threaten nuclear attack on any non-nuclear state. (President Obama emulated this stated approach in his Nuclear Posture Review.) That sounds encouraging, but as with everything that comes out of Beijing’s official channels, one must be skeptical.

That became all too clear a few years back, when a senior Chinese general warned that if the U.S. attacked China with conventional weapons in a conflict over Taiwan, Beijing might retaliate with nuclear weapons. The general was then promoted.
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As it has with Russia, the Obama administration has treated the Chinese nuclear offensive with kid gloves. In exchange for Chinese help in containing Kim Jong Un’s nuclear provocations in North Korea, Obama offered to rein in U.S. missile-defense activities. The offer included cancelling deployment of two destroyers, both outfitted with the Aegis missile-defense system, and also cancelling the delivery to Japan of another long-range missile-defense radar system. These offers were music to Chinese ears; Beijing had objected to both of these deployments. Of course, what the Obama administration sees as help with North Korea and steps toward improved relations with Beijing can only strengthen Beijing’s hand in the region—and weaken the leverage, and the defenses, of our Pacific allies, especially Japan and Taiwan.
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Iran

The United Nations General Assembly has seen some remarkable displays over the course of its history, but the performance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the annual meeting in 2012 may have topped them all. Holding a crude, almost childish, diagram of a cartoon bomb, marked with horizontal lines much like a fund-raising thermometer would be, Netanyahu explained that each line drawn across the bomb represented a stage in the Iranian nuclear program. The bottom line, about two-thirds from the bottom of the bomb, marked the point at which the bomb was 70 percent “full” of enriched uranium; the next line, 90 percent; and the final portion (topped off with a fuse) represented completion. Netanyahu said that the Iranians had reached the 70 percent stage—the cultivation of
low-enriched uranium—and were well on their way to reaching the 90 percent stage, the cultivation of medium-enriched uranium.

Given their current pace of work, he said, the Iranians would probably complete this second stage by spring or summer 2013. Then all that would stand between them and their first bomb would be the final steps: the high-enriched uranium stage, which might take only a few months longer, he said. Iran would have the bomb at that point.

“Ladies and gentlemen, what I have told you now is not based on secret information,” Netanyahu said. “It’s not based on military intelligence. It’s based on the public reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Anybody could read them.”

Then, taking out a red marker, he asked: “If these are the facts—and they are—where should a red line be drawn?” His reply: “A red line should be drawn right here.” With this, he drew the line across the neck of the bomb, at the border separating the end of the 90 percent stage from the beginning of the final stage, thus cutting off Iran’s ability to complete its enrichment program.

“At this late hour,” Netanyahu said, “there is only one way to peacefully prevent Iran from getting atomic bombs, and that’s by placing a clear red line on Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.”
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Netanyahu’s demonstration drew its share of mockery, but it accomplished its goal: Little else from the meeting made news. To those who found him belligerent and provocative, a criticism familiar to Netanyahu, he said: “Red lines don’t lead to war; red lines prevent war. Iran uses diplomatic negotiations to buy time to advance its programme. The international community has tried sanctions, has passed some of the strongest sanctions. Oil exports have been curbed, and the Iranian economy has been hit hard. But we must face the truth that sanctions have not stopped Iran’s nuclear drive.”
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Indeed, since 2000, the Iranians have sat down for nuclear talks six times; except for a temporary suspension of the enrichment program at one point, the
talks have accomplished nothing. We’re closer than ever to a nuclear-armed Iran.

The much-heralded U.S.–Iran “interim” nuclear deal, signed in November 2013, has done nothing to change this—on the contrary, it has all but guaranteed it. As we discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, the deal offers Iran at least $7 billion in sanctions relief for Iran in exchange for extremely modest concessions that nevertheless allow Iran to continue enriching uranium and proceed with major aspects of its nuclear program. Even with all these benefits, it took Iran just days to cross some of the “red lines” Obama claimed he had laid down—for instance, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, announced that Iran will continue construction at its heavy-water research reactor at Arak.
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And the Iranians couldn’t resist tweaking the Americans publicly, taking issue with Washington’s characterization of the deal.

“We did not agree to dismantle anything,” Zarif defiantly told CNN, irked by what he saw as the Obama administration’s misrepresentation of Iranian concessions.
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Indeed, many in Congress already have buyer’s remorse, as do U.S. allies Israel and Saudi Arabia—hardly common bedfellows. If reports in the British
Sunday Times
are accurate, the two countries were working together on a contingency plan to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, should the agreement fail to rein in its program.
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