Among the most significant cables that WikiLeaks divulged to the world are those obtained from the US embassy and its consulates in Russia. Covering the period from 2002 to 2010, they afford a peek under the hood of US-Russian relations during much of the first decade of the new millennium. Though tensions never reached a red line, as during the Cold War, conflicts were legion. For instance, the United States objected to Russia’s rollback of democratic reforms: circumscribing journalists, murdering dissidents, and seizing radio stations, as well as Vladimir Putin’s plan to abolish the election of governors and instead empower the Kremlin to appoint them.
Russia, meanwhile, objected to Nato’s granting of membership to countries of the former Eastern Bloc—Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, as well as the three Baltic states. After all, Mikhail Gorbachev believed that, in exchange for Russia accepting the reunification of Germany, NATO would not expand to the east, which would pose a geopolitical threat to Russia and lessen its sphere of influence. Nor was Russia pleased when President George W. Bush withdrew the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to continue development of a US missile defense system, including deployment in the former Eastern Bloc territories of Poland and the Czech Republic. Add American support for the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and one cannot help but understand Russian resistance to moves by the United States and NATO.1
Numerous cables will be explored that shed light on some of these issues, as well as satellite surveillance and nuclear-weapons treaties. First, though, we will briefly revisit the more sensational cables that gained notoriety when Western commentators zeroed in on them at the time of the leak. It is no surprise that they cast Russia in a bad light and failed to reflect Russian objections to United States policy.
Among these was a cable titled “Medvedev’s Address and Tandem Politics.” Classified by deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Moscow, Eric Rubin, it is a summary of the opinions by contacts of the embassy eight months after Medvedev had been elected president. Some, it reads, argue that “Medvedev continues to play Robin to Putin’s Batman, surrounded by a team loyal to the Premier and checked by Putin’s dominance over the legislature and regional elites” [08MOSCOW3343]. (Though the office was dissolved along with the Soviet Union, the term “Premier” is sometimes interchangeable with “prime minister,” Putin’s office at the time.)
Another cable reflecting poorly on Russia, titled “SecDef Gates’s Meeting With French Minister of Defense Herve Morin,” was classified by Alexander Vershbow, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs (mostly NATO). On that occasion, Gates sought to convince Morin to refrain from selling an amphibious assault ship to Russia—a plan to which other NATO states, as well as Georgia, also objected. The cable reads: “Some allies, because of their past experiences, are still very concerned with Russia and are not sure how much to trust the West. SecDef [Gates] observed that Russian democracy has disappeared and the government was an oligarchy run by the security services”[10PARIS170].
A cable titled “Questioning Putin’s Work Ethic” is sharply critical of Putin, though arguably of little more than prurient interest. Classified by the ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, it presented the insights of two native Russia watchers. New Economic School director Sergey Guriev said Putin had been “distracted” and “disinterested,” and the general director of the center for political information, Aleksey Mukhin, said, “the day-to-day operations of government [are] in the hands of the ‘actual Prime Minister,’” by which he meant First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov.
Though a poll showed that “most Russians continue to see Putin as ‘running’ the country … Eurasia Foundation Director Andrey Kortunov told us it is well known that Putin did not like coming to the Russian White House, where he was confronted with stacks of papers on issues of minuscule importance, on which he did not want to expend his energy” [09MOSCOW532].
Also attracting significant attention were those cables in which the embassy reported on how incorrigible it viewed corruption in Russia to be. A cable filed by Beyrle titled “The Luzkhov Dilemma” described Moscow and its mayor, Yury Luzkhov, who was soon to be dismissed from the post he had held since 1992, as his corruption had become too blatant even for the Kremlin. “Analysts identify a three-tiered structure in Moscow’s criminal world,” the cable reads, in which criminal elements “enjoy a ‘krysha’ (a term from the criminal/mafia world literally meaning ‘roof’ or protection) that runs through the police, the Federal Security Service (FSB), Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), and the prosecutor’s office, as well as throughout the Moscow city government bureaucracy.” To be more specific: “Luzhkov is at the top. The FSB, MVD, and militia are at the second level. Finally, ordinary criminals and corrupt inspectors are at the lowest level. This is an inefficient system in which criminal groups fill a void in some areas because the city is not providing some services” [10MOSCOW317].
The last cable that I will single out for attracting media attention is titled “Litvinenko Assassination: Reaction in Moscow.” Classified by Ambassador William Burns, it itemized the various theories about the November 2006 poisoning death of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London. In 1998, Litvinenko was one of a group of FSB officers who accused their superiors of attempting to assassinate Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky in Great Britain, where he had been granted asylum. Litvinenko had also written a book in which he accused the FSB of staging the Russian apartment bombings in 1999 that killed almost 300 people, as well as other acts of terrorism, in order to secure Vladimir Putin’s election.
The theories cited in the cable are all over the map, alternately blaming Putin and attempting to discredit him. For example, linking the murder of Litvinenko with that of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a staunch opponent of Putin and his pursuit of the Second Chechen War, may have been only natural. But the rationale, as laid out by Aleksey Venediktov, the head of an independent radio station, was anything but. The cable reads:
In his telling, both murders, with perhaps more to come, are part of an effort to force Putin to remain in office beyond 2008 by, in effect, making him persona non grata in the West. (Putin has repeatedly insisted he will leave when his term expires in 2008.) … Venediktov pegged the two assassinations to rogue or retired FSB or military intelligence agents controlled by forces either within or without the Kremlin. Putin, Venediktov thought, is well aware of the game being played, but is powerless to stop it; in part because he is not certain whom to hold responsible. Venediktov subscribed to the generally-held view here that Putin values his reputation in the West, and that sabotaging it is one path to having him reconsider his decision to leave the Kremlin in 2008. [06MOSCOW12751]
Apparently, the agents thought it would be beneficial to the FSB to keep in office a former lieutenant colonel of its predecessor, the KGB. Implicated in Litvinenko’s death, Putin would seek to redeem his reputation. In the event, the cable reads, “the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Masha Lipman cautioned against falling prey to conspiracy theories.” She noted that recent violence may partly have reflected a sense, “at least in the Kremlin, that Putin no longer is fully in control as his power wanes with the approaching end of his term.” The cable’s crucial comment is that “Whatever the truth may ultimately be [about Litvinenko]—and it may never be known—the tendency here to almost automatically assume that someone in or close to Putin’s inner-circle is the author of these deaths speaks volumes about expectations of Kremlin behavior” [06MOSCOW12751].
Before and during the Cablegate dump, many foreign-policy experts reflexively questioned whether it would hurt US-Russia relations. For instance, Fred Weir reported for the Christian Science Monitor:
Russia’s former ambassador to Belgium, Dmitry Ryurikov, says it is … going to roil the diplomatic waters, perhaps for years to come.
“This is a ticklish issue, and it might cause damage to relations, scandal, refutations, and even lead to lawsuits … One group of people might read them and say, “We told you that [the Americans] can not [sic] be trusted,” and another group might say, “[W]e always knew that these people [who talk privately with US diplomats] are rascals who are ready to sell out their country,” he says.2
In the same vein, Heather Hurlburt wrote in the New Republic:
Russian leaders are likely to get skittish about continuing the depth of intelligence-sharing they’ve moved to under the current Administration, as Sam Charap of the Center for American Progress noted: “The ramifications for US-Russia relations are difficult to overstate. So much rests on trust between individuals in a relationship like that where baggage of mutual suspicion extends decades back.”3
Whether those concerns have been realized is difficult to determine. Since Russia’s support for separatists in Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea, US-Russia hostility may have eclipsed any distrust sown by Cablegate. But concern about damage done to relations between states is not the domain of WikiLeaks: let diplomats clean up their own messes. Ironically, though, what may have angered Russians more than any cable was a document described in a cable. Far from classified, it was open source.
Foreign Affairs is the organ of the Council on Foreign Relations. Steeped in the belief that elites must guide democracy, the Council has worked with the US government to ensure American hegemony. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation funded the War and Peace Studies Group, a secret Council project in collaboration with the US Department of State to develop a plan for US domination after World War II.4
In a 2006 Foreign Affairs article titled “The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy,” the political scientist duo Keir A. Lieber and Darryl G. Press wrote: “If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left with only a tiny surviving arsenal—if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest or inefficient missile defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes.” In fact, Lieber and Press wrote, “It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike.” Because of factors such as “a series of improvements in the United States’ nuclear systems” and “the precipitous decline of Russia’s arsenal,” they concluded that, “for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy.”5
Shortly after publication of the article, the ambassador to Russia, William Burns, classified a cable titled “US Nuclear Primacy Article Hits a Nerve”:
Aleksey Arbatov, a former Duma Defense Committee Deputy Chairman, raised the article in a March 28 meeting with us. He acknowledged that the authors were not well-known, but said the article’s publication in Foreign Affairs nonetheless gave it the aura of a “semi-official statement.” Arbatov, who chairs an advisory group on strategic issues at the Security Council, told us officials there were dismayed. He said some in the Kremlin saw the article as part of a series of salvos aimed at Russia and pointed to “demeaning” references to Russia in the US National Security Strategy, the accusation that Russia passed military information to Saddam, and the lack of US recognition for Russia’s prerogatives in its neighborhood.
Former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar also joined the chorus of lamentation in the March 29 Financial Times, noting that the Foreign Affairs article had had “an explosive effect … Even Russian journalists and analysts not inclined to hysteria or anti-Americanism have viewed the article as an expression of the US official stance.” Gaidar argued that “if someone had wanted to provoke Russia and China into close cooperation over missile and nuclear technologies, it would have been difficult to find a more skillful and elegant way of doing so.”
Anger over the article may have spurred another Russian to an act of bravado—instead of his usual expressions of anxiety—about missile defense:
Colonel General Nikolai Solovstov, Commander of Russia’s strategic rocket forces, focused on the article’s assertion that BMD [ballistic missile defense] technology could give the US a shield for a first strike. He stated in an interview: “We have always managed to find resources for preserving and renewing our strategic nucleaer [sic] potential. Current technologies make it possible to develop new missiles and other weapons for outsmarting even the most effective ABM system.”
Burns concludes: “The article’s forecast of US nuclear primacy plays to deep-seated Russian fears and undermines efforts to build confidence that our BMD efforts do not come at the expense of Russian security” [06MOSCOW3333].
The conviction held by Russians that US missile defense in Europe is directed not at Iran, as the United States maintains, but at Russia, will be examined in a later section.
Bordering Russia to the north, South Ossetia, site of the nine-day Russo-Georgian War of 2008, is for all practical purposes an autonomous ethnic region of Georgia. At the same time that Georgia declared its independence from Russia, in 1991, South Ossetian leaders sought to secede from Georgia. In response, Georgia mounted a military offensive, but was defeated by South Ossetian secessionists, backed up by Russians fighting unofficially. In 1993, Georgia struck South Ossetia again, as well as Abkhazia, another ethnic enclave in the northwest of Georgia, to prevent it, too, from seceding. Again, Georgia lost, and both provinces retained their autonomy.6
In 2003, thousands convened to protest the results of a parliamentary election and to call for the resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze, a holdover from the Soviet era. When he dispatched armed forces into the streets, demonstrators offered them red roses, in response to which many soldiers disarmed. Demonstrators then stormed the parliament, where Shevardnadze was giving a speech. Their leader, Mikhail Saakashvili, waved a rose in front of his face, and the Rose Revolution was on the verge of success. The following year, the pro-Washington, pro-NATO Saakashvili was elected president, and his party swept parliamentary elections.7
When Georgia intensified its military presence at its border with South Ossetia in August 2008, the secessionists saw it as a provocation and attacked. At around 6:00 p.m. on August 7, Georgia declared a ceasefire, but less than five hours later it mounted a sneak attack on Tskhinvali, South Ossetia’s capital, with rockets and artillery, then invaded with 1,500 troops. In the end, the Georgian assault on South Ossetia killed an estimated 160 South Ossetians, as well as forty-eight Russian troops.
The European Union’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, headed by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, later reported: “None of the explanations given by the Georgian authorities in order to provide some form of legal justification for the attack” were legitimate. Nor was it “possible to accept that the shelling of Tskhinvali with Grad multiple rocket launchers and heavy artillery would satisfy the requirements of having been necessary and proportionate.” In support of the secessionists, Russia launched air strikes and sent troops into South Ossetia, as well as Abkhazia. Still, Tagliavini herself said, “In particular, there was no massive Russian military invasion under way, which had to be stopped by Georgian military forces.”8
Meanwhile, in hopes of diminishing Russia’s influence and reinforcing the sovereignty of an independent former Soviet state, the United States seemed to take Saakashvili at his word. A cable titled “South Ossetia Sitrep 1: Fighting in South Ossetia Escalates,” classified by Ambassador John Tefft, comments on the initiation of hostilities on August 7:
From evidence available to us it appears the South Ossetians started today’s fighting. The Georgians are now reacting by calling up more forces and assessing their next move … Deputy Minister of Defense Batu Kutelia told Ambassador at mid-day August 7 that Georgian military troops are on higher alert, but will not be deploying in response to Wednesday’s events. [08TBILISI1337]
A cable the next day, classified by Tefft and titled “South Ossetia Sitrep 2: Georgia Claims to Control Much of South Ossetia, Fighting Continues,” showed the US embassy again accepting the account of Saakashvili, who, according to the cable,
has said that Georgia had no intention of getting into this fight, but was provoked by the South Ossetians and had to respond to protect Georgian citizens and territory … [He] confirmed that the Georgians had not decided to move ahead until the shelling intensified and the Russians were seen to be amassing forces on the northern side of the Roki Tunnel.
Worse, Tefft’s cable reads, in a tacit admission that the embassy was ignoring evidence out of deference to Washington, “All the evidence available to the country team supports Saakashvili’s statement that this fight was not Georgia’s original intention.” Among that evidence:
Key Georgian officials who would have had responsibility for an attack on South Ossetia have been on leave, and the Georgians only began mobilizing August 7 once the attack was well underway. As late as 2230 last night Georgian MOD and MFA officials were still hopeful that the unilateral cease-fire announced by President Saakashvili would hold … Only when the South Ossetians opened up with artillery on Georgian villages, did the offensive to take Tskhinvali begin. [08TBILISI1341]
In fact, OSCE observers at the scene neither saw nor heard evidence of South Ossetian artillery attacks prior to Georgia attacking Tskhinvali. They claimed that “the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali began at 2335 on Aug. 7 despite the ceasefire.”9
In 2007, Russia caught the US embassy off-guard by raising the issue of Google Maps. A cable classified by the deputy chief of mission, Daniel A. Russell, titled “US-Russia Security Talks,” states that the United States assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance, and implementation, Paula De Sutter, and the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of Security and Disarmament Issues, Anatoliy Antonov
had begun a dialogue on outer space issues at their meeting in Paris on January 25 … De Sutter offered a proposed joint Presidential Statement on the free access to and use of outer space for peaceful purposes … [Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey] Kislyak segued from space cooperation to concern over Google satellite maps available on the Internet. He clothed his comments as repeating reactions from various other governments which objected to the precise identification of their industrial and military assets. He noted that Google Map [sic] covered all areas of the world except the United States [at the time]. In his view the exact coordinates created a handbook for terrorists to plan strikes. He claimed three dimensional representation raised a serious question that should be addressed by the United Nations. The [Government of Russia] was planning an international meeting to discuss all aspects of outer space, security and terrorism.
Perhaps blindsided, the assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, John Rood, “acknowledged that Internet map availability was a new topic. He urged examination of the topic in future discussions. Kislyak responded that there were legal and practical concerns for both military and civil areas [07MOSCOW1877_a].
Russia raised objections that were obviously legitimate. Alas, no further cables document whether or not the United States addressed its concerns. Furthermore, US inability to anticipate the depth of, or its blithe lack of concern for, Russia’s reactions to satellite surveillance also applied to US deployment of missile defense in Europe. From the beginning, missile defense—basically anti-aircraft on steroids—has long been a powder keg of controversy between the United States and Russia. Before exploring cables detailing US-Russian discussions on the subject, some background is required on why missile defense both rattles Russia and is considered destabilizing to the nuclear-weapons balance.
In 1983 President Ronald Reagan introduced the Strategic Defense Initiative, presciently ridiculed as “Star Wars” at the time because it sounded like as much of a fantasy as it does to this day. Patriot missiles were deployed in the Middle East during the first Gulf War and, while they achieved little success, the idea of missile defense, at least against smaller nuclear arsenals, caught on.
At the Reykjavík summit in 1986, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposed eliminating half of all strategic (as opposed to tactical, or battlefield) nuclear weapons. In exchange, he asked that Reagan refrain from implementing missile defense for the next ten years. Reagan’s team responded with an offer to eliminate all ballistic missiles within the same time span, while retaining the right to missile defense thereafter.
That is when Gorbachev made the game-changing proposal that both sides abolish all nuclear weapons within ten years. Swept up in the moment, Reagan and Secretary of State George Schultz agreed, but they could not abide Gorbachev’s condition that missile defense research be confined to laboratories for that period. Ultimately, Reagan, Schultz, and their team were unable to set aside their deeply ingrained distrust of Russians and agree to that condition. The irony is that missile defense lacked the ability to close any windows of vulnerability in US national security that might be left ajar while the United States and Russia disarmed. Its powerlessness to block a major nuclear attack lingers to this day and, along with its destabilizing component, makes a formidable case for discontinuing its development.
But the Reykjavík summit did pave the way for the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned weapons suitable for Russia to launch at Europe and for the United Sates to launch at the Soviet Union from Europe. However, since 2012 the United States has complained that Russia is violating the treaty, and in 2014 it formally notified Russia of a breach. Also, not long after his inauguration, President George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which limited the number of anti-ballistic missiles that could be used against a ballistic missile attack, in order to develop missile defense further.10
One might be forgiven for wondering how a defense system can be destabilizing. Why exactly does simply fending off—not even retaliating against—a nuclear attack constitute an “existential threat” in its own right? But, counterintuitive as it may seem, missile defense is provocative. To begin with, it prompts the state with negligible or no missile defense to think that it needs to mount a nuclear attack before the other state’s more advanced missile defense system becomes operational. Never mind that no system is of much use against a massive attack. Perhaps most frighteningly of all, the state with the more advanced—or, more accurately, less rudimentary—missile defense system is prompted to engage in a first strike against the nuclear weapons of the state with the less advanced system in order to keep that state’s attack from overwhelming the missile defense of the first state. Finally, the state with the less advanced system feels compelled to build more nuclear weapons, both to make up for those it might lose in a first strike and also to overwhelm missile defense. Destabilizing enough for you?
As if missile defense were not provocative enough already, tensions ratcheted up when the Bush administration decided to expand missile defense to Europe in the form of ground-based midcourse interceptors and radar in, respectively, Poland and the Czech Republic. The Obama administration continued with what it called a “phased adaptive approach,” consisting of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system (currently sea-based, but eventually intended to move onto Polish and Romanian soil) against short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.11
According to the United States, the purpose of missile defense in Europe is to provide protection from the ballistic missile arsenal that Iran obtained from North Korea. But the range of most of Iran’s ballistic missiles, not very accurate to begin with, is 500 kilometers. Reaching Europe would require them to be fired from Iran’s Persian Gulf coastline, and leave them vulnerable to attack. Some of Iran’s missiles are longer-range and capable of reaching Israel, but are at least as inaccurate.12
In 2013 the United States canceled the fourth, last, and most controversial phase of the Phased Adaptive Approach—long-range interceptors theoretically capable of stopping Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missiles.13 Nevertheless, in 2014, the United States reiterated that, despite budget problems, it still planned to deploy those land-based Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland.14
The lack of a genuine threat to Europe from Iran’s missiles is foremost among the reasons that Russia claims that US missile defense is directed against its missiles. Also, the proximity of US missile defense to Russia is of a piece with its sense of US and NATO encroachment on its homeland, which also threatens to shrink its sphere of influence on former Soviet and Eastern Bloc states. The United States, meanwhile, maintains that Russia’s objections are just a diplomatic ploy: Russia cannot possibly believe that missile defense is directed against Russia, because Russia’s missiles, as everyone knows, would overwhelm it. Besides, the United States seeks Russian cooperation with its program. Or you can look at it like Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, who wrote in Foreign Policy that, fundamentally, most of Russia’s concern “is probably sheer terror at the persistent technological advantage held by the United States in light of Russian vulnerabilities.”15
Some of the cables illustrate Russian objections to US missile defense in Europe, none more so than a 2007 cable classified by Deputy Chief of Mission Daniel A. Russell titled “US-Russia Strategic Security Talks.” A representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense named Col. Ilian presented Russian reactions to missile defense in Europe by means of a PowerPoint presentation. The bullet-points included:
•The Russians disputed or disagreed with most US assumptions and decisions regarding threats posed by North Korean or Iranian ICBM development. US forecasts, such as the 1998 “Rumsfeld Commission” and 1999 “National Intelligence Estimate,” had proven incorrect. At best, Iran and North Korea currently have missiles with a maximum range of 2,500 kilometers, which presents no threat to the US and essentially no threat to Europe. The Russians predict the range of Iranian BMs would increase to no more than 3,500 kilometers by 2015. Even this range poses a threat only to the eastern portion of the European continent.
•The Russians said the MD sites in Poland and Czech Republic, if effective against Iranian BM threats, would also be effective against Russian ICBMs. The direction of flight of Iranian missiles practically coincides with Russian missiles based at Kozelsk and Tatishevo …
•The Russians contend that to better protect Europe from Iran, the proposed MD sites should be located in Turkey, France and Italy. If located there, they would not threaten Russian ICBMs.
•Radar coverage from the Czech Republic would provide early detection and would lead to MD interception of Russian ICBMs, in addition to Iranian missiles. The Russians contend that radar-based elements of MD in Czech Republic could be rapidly reoriented from the south to the east …
•The Russians believe that 10 interceptors is only the beginning of a MD in Europe and that the site could be enhanced by increasing the number of interceptor missiles, increasing interceptor missile velocity, and using separating warheads for BM destruction.
•The Russians also expressed concerns that MD interceptors in Europe could have anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities.
•Based on Russian calculations, US interceptor missiles in Europe could “catch-up” and destroy Russian ICBMs.
•The Russians said debris caused by an interception posed a far greater risk of danger than the US has briefed. A 100 gram fragment would be enough to pierce through a five-floor building from rooftop to ground floor. If the BM had chemical, biological, or radiological agents, the payload could be spread over a great area in the atmosphere.
[07MOSCOW1877_a]
In a 2009 cable classified by Ambassador Beyrle titled “Missile Defense, JDEC, Non-Proliferation Negotiations,” another feature of missile defense alarmed Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov, who
pointed to one of the briefing slides showing … how a radar in the Czech Republic would track across Russian territory and that it would be difficult—or almost impossible … to intercept missiles along such a track. A radar in the Czech Republic would not be able to ensure the necessary data flow for interception of a missile from Iran, it could only enable the US to distinguish between real and decoy launches originating in Russia. [09MOSCOW1491_a]
Clearly, Russia’s grievances, seldom expressed in the West, are convincing. In the “US-Russia Strategic Security Talks” cable, ISN Assistant Secretary John Rood presented US justifications for missile defense in Europe:
North Korea’s launches of the Taepo-Dong missile in 1998 and last year’s July 4 launch of the Taepo Dong-2, even if not completely successful, clearly indicated that North Korea was already a threat … Regarding Iran, Rood said that relations between the US and Iran are poor and that President Ahmadinejad’s public remarks on wiping Israel “off the map” and achieving “a world without America,” as well as regular demonstrations where “Death to America” is commonly heard, are all representative of a threatening view. He noted that when Iran paraded its Shahab-3 missile a few years ago, it carried a sign saying “USA can do nothing,” clearly indicating that the absence of missile defenses at that time was clearly a factor in Iran’s interest in ballistic missiles. The US, Rood said, perceived the BM threat from both North Korea and Iran as serious. [07MOSCOW1877_a]
Rood’s response befits a hard-right commentator more than a representative of the US government. Deputy Foreign Minister Kislyak responded that he
agreed that Russian and American threat assessments were different. He said North Korea was not in ICBM production, let alone Iran. To reach the US, he said, any missile from either of those two countries would need to travel at least 8000 kilometers. Iran’s capabilities in liquid and/or solid fuel are limited, and Russia would know if Iran was preparing to expand research. He agreed that the Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s remarks were unacceptable but asked, rhetorically, if such statements reflected the country’s capabilities. [07MOSCOW1877_a]
That last sentence, especially, is difficult to refute. A later cable, titled “Russia-US Missile Defense Negotiations, Part 2: Assessing Qabala, The Iranian Threat, and Czech Radar Capabilities,” describes Russian objections in more detail. Classified in 2009 by the ambassador to Russia, William Burns, it reads: “[R]egarding the need to stop Iranian missiles as the rationale for stationing missile defense in Europe: ‘Russia’s assessment was that the US exaggerated the state of Iranian R&D, the technical level of its rocket and missile sectors, and the capabilities of its scientists.’”
In fact, according to the cable, Russia objected to the very assumption on the part of the United States that “Iran was strategically committed to the development of ICBMs, with [Vladimir Venevtsev of the SVR (the Russian foreign intelligence service)] concluding that it was not in Iran’s doctrine.” As paraphrased in the cable, Venevtsev said, “The level of sophistication of North Korea’s ICBM technology for long range missiles [which it provided Iran] was inflated,” as was “the track record of [Russia’s] transfers to Iran.” Venevtsev also noted: “The US failed to take into account the limits on the development of the Shahab-3 system, caused by the lack of test range equipment, with Russia maintaining that the Shahab was simply the [North Korean] No Dong, but renamed.”
Venevtsev further maintained that “Iran did not enjoy technical mastery of the design process, but upgraded and reverse-engineered others’ systems; its engineers were insufficient in number and not highly skilled; and, consequently, Iran was still dependent upon North Korean engines.” Then “Venevtsev concluded that given the weakness of the Iranian program, the US and Russia had the opportunity to monitor its development and undertake joint measures over time” [07MOSCOW5106].
Returning to the 2007 “US-Russia Strategic Security Talks” cable, Deputy Foreign Minister Kislyak also “stressed that Russian concerns about the dangers of a false alert and possible miscalculation remained.”16
The [Government of Russia] had not come up with a mechanism that could adequately discriminate between a nuclear-tipped SLBM and one with a conventional warhead. The US had not offered any information that allayed these concerns. Rood agreed that we needed to continue to discuss this issue, but stressed that the risk of a misinterpretation of a hostile launch was low. DASD [Deputy Assistant of Defense Brian] Green explained that the number of SLBMs with conventional warheads would be limited and pointed out that CBMs could be put in place that would reduce the chances for error. The US was waiting on a Russian response to our non-paper on the subject. [Lt. Gen. Evgeniy Buzhinskiy, deputy chief of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Main Administration for International Military Cooperation] highlighted the possibility for error given the limited time the Russians would have to respond once a launch was detected and certain “automatic” features of the Russian launch warning system. [07MOSCOW1877_a]
Differentiating between the varieties of launches also played a central role in the New START Treaty negotiations. Instead of being concerned with the distinction between real and decoy, however, this time Russians were concerned with separating nuclear from conventional strikes. New START is a replacement for the START I Treaty, which expired in 2009. Signed by President George H. W. Bush and Soviet president Gorbachev in 1991, START I was the most drastic arms control treaty in history. For the United States it represented a decrease of about 80 percent of its nuclear-weapon arsenal from its peak during the Cold War.17
Once in force, New START reduced the maximum number of deployed US and Russian strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 each (not including the inactive warhead stockpile). But, because the Russians held that warheads were nothing without their delivery systems, a unique system for adding up warheads was implemented in which, no matter how many warheads it carries, a bomber counts as only one.
In a cable titled “START Follow-on Negotiations,” lead US New START negotiator Rose E. Gottemoeller (the Department of State’s assistant secretary for arms control, verification, and compliance) shed light on the dispute over distinguishing between types of strikes, on the way in which the method of tabulating the number of warheads was adopted, and the bearing each issue had on the other. Ambassador Mikhail Streltsov of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
noted that in her statement on the previous day,18 the US Secretary of State referred to the title of the new treaty as bearing on strategic “nuclear” arms. In this context, it was necessary to consider whether non-nuclear-armed ICBMs and SLBMs should be considered START items. There is a further question, he added, of whether new types of non-nuclear missiles will be considered ICBMs and SLBMs. What should be counted? Warheads or “nuclear” warheads? The Joint Understanding signed in Moscow by the two Presidents, he reminded the group, referred to strategic delivery vehicles and their associated warheads, not associated “nuclear” warheads.
Meanwhile, deputy head of the US delegation Dr. Ted Warner (secretary of defense representative to the New START negotiations)
commented that, since the beginning of their discussions, the US and Russian sides have had a markedly different view of how to treat conventionally-armed ICBMs and SLBMs. The Russian side has proposed that the deployment of such systems should be banned, while the US side proposes that new types developed and tested solely for non-nuclear warheads should not be subject to the limitations of the SFO [START Follow-on] Treaty.
In the summary at the start of the cable, Gottemoeller had explained:
The Russian side commented extensively on issues related to counting rules, but returned repeatedly to the question of conventional warheads on ICBMs and SLBMs. Amb Streltsov used a lengthy commentary on “what should be counted” in an attempt to demonstrate that there were ambiguities and inconsistencies in the US approach, arguing the nuclear or non-nuclear status of deployed ICBMs and SLBMs would be difficult to determine. He further questioned how it would be possible to distinguish whether a warhead was conventional or nuclear after it was launched.
The Russians may have been referring to the Conventional Trident Modification program—a plan to arm Trident II SLBMs with conventional warheads that was killed by Congress in 2008.19 Still, Congress provided funding for the research and development of its successor, the conventional prompt global strike (CPGS), which entails arming a ballistic missile, or a glider that operates at hypersonic speed (at least five times the speed of sound), with conventional weapons. It would thus emulate the ability of nuclear warhead-equipped ballistic missiles to strike anywhere in the world within one hour. To American military planners, this “niche capability,” as it has been called, may have been the greatest leap in fine-tuning a first strike since the 1960s. At that time, President John F. Kennedy’s secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, engineered a shift in nuclear policy from the Eisenhower era’s massive retaliation, which called for an all-out response to even a minor nuclear attack, to a modulated response.
Russians, however, looked at it from another perspective. Streltsov asked how the United States was “going to prove/demonstrate its nuclear or non-nuclear character?” In other words, what was to stop Russia from responding to all ballistic missile attacks as if they were nuclear? Warner conceded “the point that Streltsov had made about ‘nuclear ambiguity’—it would be extremely difficult to determine the payload, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, while a strategic missile was in flight. But he recalled that the US side had spoken in the past about possible steps to mitigate this problem, which might include advance notification” [09MOSCOW2607_a].
It is tough to expect Russia to take it on faith when the United States announces that it is about to launch conventional ballistic missiles, and that there is no need to respond with a nuclear strike. Russia may also be wondering what exactly qualifies a target for a strike by the United States with a conventional, instead of nuclear, warhead, unless it was, in fact, a nuclear installation.
The patronizing attempts that the United States made to allay Russian concerns about a conventional warhead mounted on an ICBM or SLBM parallel its assurances that missile defense stationed in Europe is not directed at Russia. As recently as December 2013, RIA Novosti reported:
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that Russia was “preparing a response” to plans by the United States to develop a new fast-strike weapons platform capable of hitting high-priority targets around the globe … “They may experiment with conventional weapons on strategic delivery platforms, but they must bear in mind, that if we are attacked, in certain circumstances we will of course respond with nuclear weapons,” Rogozin said.20
Nor is that the end of the risks posed by conflating conventional with nuclear strikes. In the cable’s summary, Warner wrote:
Russian head of delegation Amb Antonov argued there would be a negative impact globally if conventionally-armed ICBMs and SLBMs were deployed. He also alleged that failure to constrain the development of such weapons would pose a dilemma for both the United States and Russia if third countries carried out missile tests, claiming that they were conventional but which the United States and Russia suspected covered a nuclear program. He also commented that there were already discussions in Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) circles that US deployment of such weapons could lead to an arms race in long-range conventional ballistic missiles.
Warner’s response was anemic. He “recognized the Russian side had not judged the US approach to the handling of missiles with conventional warheads as positive.” But “he reminded the Russian side that the United States had not judged their proposal to ban the deployment of conventionally-armed strategic missiles as ‘positive’ either” [09MOSCOW2607].
The Cold War was a chronicle of misunderstanding. The United States consistently overestimated the size of Russia’s nuclear-weapons arsenal. The Soviet Union concluded from US policies and deployments that the United States was seeking to launch a nuclear first strike. In the years since, as documented in the WikiLeaks collection of cables from the US consulates and the embassy in Moscow, the United States has refused to sufficiently acknowledge Russian concerns about US nuclear weapons and missile defense. It acts as if Russia is being obtuse, as if it were obvious that the United States has no interest in an offensive attack on Russia with ballistic missiles—nuclear or conventional—or in defending itself against Russia with a provocative missile defense system. Russia cannot help but feel, at best, patronized—and, at worst, threatened.
Instead of wasting time and resources lamenting the effects of the cables on international relations and harassing WikiLeaks, the United States needs to overhaul its foreign policy. Continuing to view a state such as Russia as a rival in a zero-sum game, as well as an energy resource and an emerging market, instead of as representing a people, only perpetuates conflict. The source of other states’ mistrust of the United States is much deeper than the revelations of the minutes of US diplomats’ meetings with the diplomats of those states.