CHAPTER 17

The Scorpion King

South Korea played host for President Obama’s second Nuclear Security Summit, convened from March 26-27, 2012 in the capitol city of Seoul. Some 53 heads of state, along with representatives from the UN, IAEA, EU and INTERPOL, gathered in the modernistic Coex Convention & Exhibition Center, located in the trendy Samseong-dong of the Gangnam-gu district, where the attendees worked on an expanded agenda that included discussions on the security of radiological sources and, in light of the March 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukishima, Japan, the interface between nuclear security and safety. For the U.S., the priority for this summit was the minimization of production of highly enriched uranium (HEU), to include, where feasible, the conversion of HEU nuclear reactors to use lightly enriched uranium (LEU) fuel. For their part, Russia and the U.S. agreed to jointly down-blend the HEU equivalent of approximately 3,000 nuclear weapons to LEU levels.1

The U.S.-Russian uranium down-blend deal provided a deceptive indicator of cooperation in a relationship that was devolving by the day. The “Russian Reset,” initiated a little more than three years past, had lived up to the misspelled label on the symbolic button Secretary of State Clinton had handed Foreign Minister Lavrov—“peregruzka,” or overload. Obama and his team had tried to accomplish too much with too little investment in improving relations with Russia. The architect of the “reset,” Michael McFaul, had cut his teeth in the former Soviet Union as a visiting scholar at Moscow State University in 1990, where he finished up his doctoral dissertation. (He was awarded his Ph.D. by Stanford in the following year.)

It was during his time as a visiting scholar that McFaul began to blur the line between pure academia and policy activist. In 1990, McFaul signed on as a consultant with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), self-described as “a nonprofit, nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization that has supported democratic institutions and practices in every region of the world.”

The NDI was founded in 1983 as an action arm of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), created by Congress under the eponymously named National Endowment for Democracy Act. The congressional action was in response to an executive decision on the part of President Ronald Reagan, promulgated under National Security Decision Directive-77, to promote so-called “public diplomacy” operations in furtherance of U.S. national security interests. McFaul dual hatted as a visiting scholar and as NDI’s official Field Representative in Moscow.

As the NDI’s representative in Moscow, McFaul actively supported “Democratic Russia,” a coalition of Russian politicians led by Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Federation, even though the official U.S. policy at the time was to support Mikhail Gorbachev, the president of the Soviet Union. McFaul likened Yeltsin to the “catalyst for the Cold War’s end.” While recognizing Yeltsin as “the unquestioned leader of Russia’s anti-Communist movement,” McFaul noted that Yeltsin’s embrace of Democratic Russia was more a byproduct of the realization that such an alliance was needed to defeat the Soviet regime, than a genuine embrace of liberal ideas.

This realization seems absent, however, from McFaul’s later apologia about the decade of corrupt, ineffective governance that defined Yeltsin’s time as the president of Russia.

McFaul had become enamored with the concept of Russian “democracy” but he could not define it with any precision. In his 2001 book, Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin, McFaul throws the term “democracy” around freely, only acknowledging (in a footnote) that, in the context of Russia, it may not exist. The reality was that Yeltsin, far from an idealistic paragon of democratic virtue, was little more than the hand-picked puppet of the United States.

In 1999, Yeltsin, his health ravaged by alcohol and his legacy haunted by a decade of corruption and mismanagement, stepped aside (“peacefully and constitutionally,” according to McFaul) in favor of his hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin. Within a period of less than two years (Putin assumed power on New Year’s Eve in 2000, and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution was released in 2001), McFaul declared that the former KGB officer had “inflicted considerable damage to democratic institutions” in Russia.

There were, however, no genuine democratic institutions in Russia on which to inflict damage when Yeltsin stepped aside—Russia’s first president had seen to that by destroying the Russian Parliament in 1993 and rigging an election (with extensive American support) in 1996. It was everything Putin could do, upon his accession to the presidency, to right the Russian ship of state, let alone reinvent something (Russian democracy) that had never existed to begin with.

McFaul’s problem with Putin centered not on what he had done as president as much as the fact that he was president. There was an inherent inconsistency between McFaul’s theory of Russian “democracy” and the reality of Putin. Putin viewed the collapse of the Soviet Union as “a major geopolitical disaster of the century.” He had stood next to Yeltsin as he debased himself and Russia in conversations with President Bill Clinton. If one thing was for certain, Putin would never allow himself to behave in a similar manner.

McFaul’s “reset” policy was intended to reassert American influence on the Russian body politic in a post-Putin Russia. As such, when Putin announced in 2011 that he would again run for president, McFaul’s “reset” policy collapsed. Under the “reset,” the Obama administration, at McFaul’s urging, provided funding through the auspices of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the NED, NDI, and other non-governmental organizations to Russian civil groups that had coalesced into a political opposition to Putin’s 2012 presidential ambition. It was McFaul who encouraged Secretary of State Clinton to speak out in support of the Russian opposition in December 2011.

Putin and the Russian government responded by accusing Clinton of interfering in the domestic political affairs of Russia. This charge was only enhanced by the actions of McFaul himself who, after being appointed by Obama to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Russia in late 2011, made it one of his first actions to invite the leaders of the various Russian opposition groups to the U.S. embassy to meet with him. After Putin won his bid for election in March 2012, the Russian President immediately set out to ban foreign funding for Russian non-governmental organizations. USAID, the NED, NDI, and other organizations used to channel U.S. money to Russian political entities were evicted from Russia.

McFaul’s role in the U.S. interference in the Russian 2012 election put in motion everything that followed. Russian perception was that McFaul and the Obama administration had purposefully put their thumb on the scale of Russia’s presidential election to keep Putin from winning. This perception poisoned U.S.-Russian relations going forward.2

When President Obama met with the outgoing Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, in Seoul, the writing was already on the wall regarding the worsening of U.S.-Russian relations. This didn’t preclude Obama from trying to get Medvedev, with whom he enjoyed cordial relations, to send a message to Vladimir Putin, who at the time of the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit, was the President-elect. A telling exchange between the two men was caught on an open microphone:

Obama: “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.”

Medvedev: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…”

Obama: “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

Medvedev: “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”³

Medvedev did as promised, but the Russian President-elect was not inclined to receive entreaties from the United States. The “reset” was a thing of the past, and in the aftermath of what the Russians viewed as U.S. interference in the 2012 Russian presidential election, relations with a Putin-led Russia were going to be very different than they had been under Medvedev stewardship.

Putin was inaugurated on May 7, 2012. In the days leading up to the inauguration, President Obama dispatched Tom Donilon, his National Security Advisor, to Moscow to meet with Putin and his national security team in an effort to forge a new relationship regarding arms control. Putin met with Donilon for more than two hours, during which time Donilon outlined some U.S. proposals for arms reductions and forwarding Obama’s invitation to meet with President Putin during the upcoming G8 Summit at Camp David, Maryland, scheduled for May 18-19, which would include a formal meeting at the White House and a state dinner and reception. Putin listened to Donilon patiently, before informing him that he would not be attending the G8 Summit, and as such could not take Obama up on his offer of a White House visit.4

The two leaders did meet briefly during the G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, in mid-June, but this meeting was dominated by events unfolding in Syria, where the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad was engaged in a running battle with a mix of moderate protestors and wellarmed Islamic extremists. The U.S. was pushing for decisive action on the part of the United Nations. Putin, wary of U.S.-led UN interventions in the aftermath of the Libyan experience, balked. Obama spent most of his face-to-face time with Putin in a futile effort to get the Russian leader to change his mind.⁵

As Obama had intimated to Medvedev, the summer and fall of 2012 would be consumed by his reelection bid. The Russians were hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vladivostok in September. While the APEC gathering was seen as an ideal venue for the two presidents to discuss relations between their two countries, Obama was going to be tied up throughout the month of September campaigning. The U.S. side requested that the Russians reschedule the APEC summit for mid- to late-November, after the election took place; Russia refused.⁶

With an Obama-Putin summit no longer in the cards, the U.S. sought the next best thing—a meeting between Putin and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who would attend APEC in Obama’s place. Again the Russians balked, noting that Clinton was not a head of state, and had no standing for such a meeting. While an informal Putin-Clinton meeting was eventually arranged, taking place during a state dinner where the two were seated next to each other, the detailed discussion of policy matters was done between Clinton and the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov.

It was during this meeting that the U.S. became cognizant of the depth of sensitivity on the part of the Russians regarding U.S. interference in their election. Without warning, Lavrov informed Clinton that the Russians were demanding that the U.S. close all USAID operations in Russia. While created to facilitate economic development, USAID operations in Russia had morphed away from its traditional role of economic development into the promotion of democracy, funding various Russian organizations involved in fostering a free press and promoting human rights. These thematics were identical to the political platform of the Russian opposition, and the new Putin-led government, still angered over Clinton’s remarks made the previous December, viewed USAID as little more than a facilitator of Russian opposition politics.7

The shutting down of USAID operations in Moscow wasn’t the only casualty of the worsening U.S.-Russian relationship: in October 2012, Russia announced that it would not be renewing the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) agreement, better known as the Nunn-Lugar initiative, after the two U.S. Senators, Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, who sponsored the program back in 1992. The CTR agreement allowed the United States to assist in securing and eliminating Soviet-built weapons of mass destruction. Russia, however, viewed the agreement as an infringement on its sovereignty and security, and opted to let the accord lapse in 2013.⁸

Relations between the Obama administration and Russia only worsened when, in December 2012, President Obama signed into law the “Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012.”⁹ The law was named after the Russian tax advisor to an American businessman, William Browder, who died while imprisoned on corruption charges. The Magnitsky Act, as it became known, allowed the U.S. to deny visas to Russian officials identified under the Act as being involved in human rights violations. For Russia, the Act was yet another example of the U.S. interfering in Russian domestic affairs.¹⁰

Despite the difficulties that had emerged in 2012, President Obama hoped that 2013 might see a turnaround in U.S.-Russian relations. The President had hoped to be able to publicly unveil a bold new nuclear disarmament initiative seeking reductions in both the U.S. and Russian stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons during his State of the Union address. This plan, which would further reduce the number of warheads permitted under New START from 1,550 to some 1,000 to 1,100, had been approved by both the State Department and the Department of Defense in October 2012, but kept under wraps for fear that its publication could hurt Obama at the polls in November. However, when Vice President Biden broached the idea to his counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, at the Munich Security Conference in early February 2013, it was not well received.¹¹

The main problem was missile defense. “The U.S. missile defense system is surely one of the key issues on today’s agenda because it involves Russia’s vital interests,” Russian President Putin observed to the media at the time. Like Obama, the Russians held out hope that relations between the two nations could get back on track, especially once the Clinton-Gates tandem of Secretary of State/Secretary of Defense was replaced by a new slate consisting of John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, both of whom the Russians viewed as foreign policy realists. “But naturally,” Putin said, “as our American partners proceed with developing their own missile defense, we shall have to think of how we can defend ourselves and preserve the strategic balance.”12

President Obama passed on making a detailed announcement during his State of the Union address, building on what he had hoped would be momentum garnered by the one-two diplomatic punches, one delivered by Joe Biden at Munich and the other by his National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon, whom Obama had planned to dispatch to Moscow armed with a personal letter from the American president to his Russian counterpart. Donilon’s trip was originally scheduled to take place in early February 2013, but the failure of Biden’s outreach at Munich to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, made it clear Donilon would not be well received. Instead, Obama limited his comments at the State of the Union regarding nuclear disarmament to a single sentence: “We’ll engage Russia to seek further reductions in our nuclear arsenals and continue leading the global effort to secure nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands.”¹³ Donilon’s trip was pushed off until March, and then again to April.¹⁴

Relations between Russia and the U.S. were further strained by ongoing disagreements about how to proceed vis-à-vis Iran’s nuclear program. Negotiations ongoing in Astana, Kazakhstan were at loggerheads, and the Obama administration was quickly coming to the realization that economic sanctions were failing to hold back Iranian development in the field of uranium enrichment.¹⁵ The U.S. and Russia were also at odds over the issue of Syria, where the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was fighting a broad-based rebellion supported by outside powers, including the United States, was on the line.¹⁶

Throwing an additional curve ball into the mix was the announcement by North Korea on February 12—one day before Obama was to deliver his State of the Union address—that it had tested a “miniaturized and lighter nuclear device with greater explosive force than previously” which, if true, meant North Korea had perfected a warhead capable of being delivered to its target via ballistic missile.¹⁷

Both the Iranian nuclear program (an exclusively peaceful program which the U.S. feared could be converted to military use) and North Korean one (a military program with little potential, as currently configured, for civilian application) represented a direct challenge to the nonproliferation aspirations inherent in the NPT which Obama had articulated so strongly in favor of during his Prague speech in April 2009. Obama believed, however, that to be seen as credible in the eyes of the world while leading the charge against both North Korea missile and Iran’s nuclear power ambitions, the U.S. in particular had to be seen as being serious about its commitment to nuclear disarmament as set forth in Article IV of the NPT. For this reason, continued cuts in the size of the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals above and beyond that required by New START were critical to creating the appearance of U.S. support for a nuclear-free world.

To help bring Russia onboard, the Obama administration announced, on March 16, 2013, that it was cancelling the fourth and final phase of the Bush-era missile defense system. Obama had previously cancelled the deployment of ten modified ground-based interceptor missiles in Poland, but the overall missile defense system was left in abeyance as options going forward were considered. By cancelling the fourth phase, Obama was precluding the deployment of advanced interceptor missiles capable of targeting long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles, including those belonging to Russia. It was the fourth phase of the Bush-era missile defense system that Russia had objected to the most. Even though it was purely conceptual, with no practical work having been done toward operationalizing the concept, the move was designed to help assuage Russian concerns, and thereby clear the way for Donilon’s oft-delayed mission to Moscow.18

Missile defense, however, was still a reality. While the Bush-era system was terminated in its totality, the Obama administration was moving forward with a plan to deploy a modified Mark 41 Aegis missile launch system, complete with target acquisition radar, at a site in Deveselu, Romania, and another in Poland. In June 2012, implementing arrangements were signed between Romania and the U.S. that paved the way for construction operations to begin at Deveselu. From the Russian perspective, Obama had merely replaced a missile defense system bearing his predecessors name with one bearing his own.¹⁹

On April 15, Donilon finally arrived in Moscow, accompanied by Rose Gottemoeller, the assistant secretary of state who had led the efforts to negotiate the New START treaty. In Moscow Donilon was joined by Michael McFaul, the former head of the Russian desk at the National Security Council and, at the time of Donilon’s trip, served as the U.S. Ambassador to Russia. Donilon and his entourage had a busy day of meetings, beginning with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, before travelling to the Kremlin to meet with Nikolai Patrushev, the general secretary of the Russian Security Council. During the meeting with Patrushev, President Putin made an appearance, where he sat with Donilov for nearly an hour, during which time Donilov delivered Obama’s personal letter. Donilon later met with Yuri Ushakov, a senior adviser to Mr. Putin on foreign policy and a former ambassador to the United States, and the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov. Afterwards, Mr. Ushakov addressed the media, where he characterized both Donilov’s meetings and Obama’s letter as constituting “positive signals.” Obama’s letter, Ushakov noted, “covers military-political problems, among them missile defense and nuclear arsenals.”20

But the timing of Donilon’s Moscow trip was awkward. Just days before he arrived, President Obama had signed off on an Executive Order, acting on the Magnitsky Act, which banned several senior Russian officials, including some in the personal orbit of President Putin, from travelling to the United States. This ban angered the Russians and clouded the overall atmosphere of the Donilon mission. Even in this tense environment, Donilon achieved his goal of agreeing to additional reductions in nuclear weapons stockpiles of both nations, and for cooperation regarding the ballistic missile threat from Iran (largely manufactured, a fact the Russians were quite aware of) and North Korea (very real). Perhaps most importantly, Donilon received commitments from the Russians for a pair of face-to-face meeting between Obama and Putin, the first to take place on the sidelines of a Group of 8 meeting in Northern Ireland in June, and a more substantive summit between the two leaders to be held in Moscow, during Obama’s visit to St. Petersburg, Russia in September, during the G20 Summit.²¹

Obama had a game plan—to meet with Putin during the G8 Summit in Ireland and establish some sort of rapport and agreement that could carry forward in the form of mutual reductions in nuclear weapons. There were two pressing matters, however, that needed to be cleared up before the President could have a “clean” meeting with Putin—one where they could focus on the reduction of nuclear weapons. For this purpose, Obama dispatched his new Secretary of State, John Kerry, to Moscow on May 7, for meetings with Sergey Lavrov and Vladimir Putin.

The first issue was Syria. The U.S. was pushing for a military solution that would force Syrian President Assad out of office. This, however, would require a Security Council resolution, which in turn required either Russian support or abstention. And since the Libya fiasco, Russia was in no mood to be facilitating yet another western-backed exercise in regime change in the Middle East.22

The second matter was particularly touchy, given the desire to move forward on new arms control initiatives. Sometime in 2007 or 2008, U.S. intelligence analysts began observing activity indicating that the Russians were developing a new ground-launched ballistic missile. The specific intelligence tip-offs appeared to include aerial imagery of the Kapustin Yar missile test facility, telemetry collected from various test launches of missiles, and all-source monitoring of Russian weapons acquisition processes.

The intelligence community assessed that the Russians had flight-tested, produced, and deployed a cruise missile with a range capability prohibited by the INF treaty. The U.S. identified the missile in question as the 9M729, produced by the Novator design bureau. Complicating matters further was that the 9M729 missile closely resembled other cruise missiles Novator was developing at the time. The U.S. intelligence analysts assessed that Russia had conducted the flight test program for the 9M729 missile in a way that disguised the true nature of their testing activity as well as the capability of the missile by carrying out parallel development and deployment of other cruise missiles that were not prohibited by the INF treaty.

Novator appeared to be conducting simultaneous tests of multiple similar systems. During the timeframe in question, Novator was working on upgrading the guidance and control systems of the 3M14 “Kaliber” sea-launched cruise missile—with a range of well over 2,500 miles, but as a sea-launched system, not covered by the INF Treaty—as well as the 9M729, a ground-launched missile. Russia appeared to have tested the new guidance and flight control system on the 3M14 missile, and then tested the same system on the 9M729. (Guidance systems are not covered by the INF Treaty.) The U.S. analysis was not absolute, but rather a matter of analytical supposition. But the analysts believed in their conclusions, and imparted this belief to U.S. policymakers, such as Rose Gotemoeller, the principal U.S. arms control negotiator, who accompanied John Kerry to Moscow to personally inform the Russians of the U.S. concerns.²³

Kerry’s visit was a bust, with the Secretary of State unable to find any common ground with the Russians on the issue of providing military support to the anti-Assad rebels. The best Kerry could hope for was a joint statement that embraced the ongoing peace process in Geneva. But Kerry and the Russians were of a different mind on what exactly this meant; the Secretary of State believed that Assad had to step down before a new government could be formed, while the Russians held that Assad was a permanent part of any negotiation over the future of Syria. Likewise, Gotemoeller’s presentation on possible INF treaty violations fell on deaf ears.24

Given the outcome of the Kerry/Gotemoeller Moscow trip, it came as no surprise that the meeting between Obama and Putin at Loch Erne, Ireland on June 17, was likewise a disaster. Syria dominated the agenda, and neither side could reach agreement with the other over any issue of substance. Nuclear disarmament was never even broached.²⁵

Undeterred, President Obama left Ireland for Berlin, where he was scheduled to give a speech in the city that helped launch his Presidential campaign in 2008, and which—he hoped—would rekindle the cause of nuclear disarmament that he had championed in Prague back in April 2009. To help generate momentum for this cause, the White House released new guidance regarding America’s nuclear posture which aligned “U.S. nuclear policies to the 21st century security environment.” This new guidance reaffirmed the importance of maintaining a credible nuclear deterrence, but with a major new caveat that “the United States will only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.”²⁶ The previous iteration of the NPR, published in 2001, had linked the employment of nuclear weapons with the need to be seen as presenting a viable deterrent, meaning weapons could be used even if a vital national interest was not threatened.²⁷

This new guidance, the White House noted, “narrows U.S. nuclear strategy to focus on only those objectives and missions that are necessary for deterrence in the 21st century. In so doing, the guidance takes further steps toward reducing the role of nuclear weapons in our security strategy.” It also directed the Department of Defense to “examine and reduce the role of launch under attack in contingency planning, recognizing that the potential for a surprise, disarming nuclear attack is exceedingly remote.”²⁸

While Obama’s new guidance reaffirmed the U.S. commitment for maintaining “a safe, secure and effective arsenal that guarantees the defense of the U.S. and our allies and partners,” it declared that following “a comprehensive review of our nuclear forces, the President has determined that we can ensure the security of the United States and our allies and partners and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent while safely pursuing up to a one-third reduction in deployed strategic nuclear weapons from the level established in the New START Treaty.” To accomplish this, the guidance stated, “The U.S. intent is to seek negotiated cuts with Russia so that we can continue to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures.”29

While Obama’s speech was delivered in a German city, to a German audience, his intended target sat in Moscow. It was to Vladimir Putin that Obama made his salient points. “Peace with justice,” Obama said, “means pursuing the security of a world without nuclear weapons—no matter how distant that dream may be. And so, as President, I’ve strengthened our efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and reduced the number and role of America’s nuclear weapons. Because of the New START Treaty, we’re on track to cut American and Russian deployed nuclear warheads to their lowest levels since the 1950s.”³⁰

He then got to the heart of his speech.

But we have more work to do. So today, I’m announcing additional steps forward. After a comprehensive review, I’ve determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third. And I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures.

At the same time, we’ll work with our NATO allies to seek bold reductions in U.S. and Russian tactical weapons in Europe. And we can forge a new international framework for peaceful nuclear power and reject the nuclear weaponization that North Korea and Iran may be seeking.

America will host a summit in 2016 to continue our efforts to secure nuclear materials around the world, and we will work to build support in the United States to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and call on all nations to begin negotiations on a treaty that ends the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons. These are steps we can take to create a world of peace with justice.³¹

It was a bold speech, containing a bold initiative which Obama hoped could be brought to fruition when he met with Putin at the Moscow Summit scheduled for September. But the initiative never had a chance. On June 23, four days after Obama’s Berlin speech, an American contractor working for the National Security Agency named Edward Snowden landed in Moscow onboard a flight from Hong Kong. Snowden had recently turned over a massive trove of highly classified documents to reporters which detailed operations by the NSA targeting U.S. citizens in violation of their Constitutional rights, as well as NSA activities against other nations and international leaders, including those who were ostensibly allied with the United States. His arrival in Moscow, and Russia’s subsequent granting of asylum, were greeted with anger and dismay by the Obama administration. In retaliation, the U.S. announced that President Obama would not attend the planned Moscow Summit in September. Obama’s nuclear gambit had, yet again, stalled.32

The demise of the September Moscow Summit marked the functional end of President Obama’s dream of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reductions. While he and Putin would meet several more times while Obama was in office, their discussions centered on other issues—Syria, Ukraine, Iran and allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Never again would the two leaders engage in substantive talks about nuclear disarmament. In August 2013, reports emerged from inside Syria alleging that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, killing thousands. President Obama had previously declared that any use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government was a “red line” which, if crossed, would trigger an American military response. Russia, however, stood in the way of the U.S. getting Security Council blessing for such an attack. Instead of green lighting an American response, Russia worked with Secretary of State John Kerry to instead get Syria to agree to getting rid of the totality of its chemical weapons capability under the supervision of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). This disarmament activities, which included the bulk of Syria’s chemical weapons stock being turned over to the U.S. for destruction, took place throughout the remainder of 2013 and well into 2014, dominating U.S.-Russian relations.³³

While Syria was being disarmed of its chemical weapons, a crisis erupted in Ukraine after demonstrations against Ukraine’s pro-Russian President, Viktor Yanukovych, turned violent. Russian suspicion about the role played by the U.S. in fomenting and encouraging these demonstrations was heightened when the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, was caught discussing U.S. interaction with Ukrainian opposition figures with an eye for their taking over from Yanukovych.34

On February 23, 2014, the situation in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev deteriorated dramatically, with armed demonstrators facing off against riot police in a series of bloody confrontations that left dozens killed and hundreds injured. Yanukovych fled to Moscow on February 28; the next day Russian troops took control of the Crimean Peninsula, an event which engendered the condemnation of both the European Union and the United States, which demanded that Russia withdraw immediately. When Russia refused, both the EU and U.S. imposed economic sanctions designed to punish Russia and compel compliance with their demands. Instead, Russia upped the stakes, moving to protect the interests of the majority Russian-speaking populations who lived in the regions of eastern Ukraine.³⁵

The crisis with Iran over its nuclear program also dominated the U.S.-Russian agenda. In 2013, confronted with the failure of U.S.-led sanctions to contain Iran’s nuclear power program, President Obama authorized exploratory meetings with Iranian officials with an eye to reaching an agreement where Iran would be permitted to enrich low-level uranium to be used to manufacture fuel rods used in nuclear power plants in exchange for Iran agreeing to restrictions, among others, on the number of centrifuges it could operate and the amount of uranium it could enrich and to stringent inspections of its nuclear program. These talks progressed to the point that in July 2015, Iran was able to formalize an agreement with the U.S., the EU, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, China and Russia. This agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action, or JCPOA, was signed on July 15, and was implemented in early 2016. It was considered one of the few areas of U.S.-Russian cooperation during this time.³⁶

If the U.S. and Russia were cooperating on the issue of Iran’s nuclear power program, the same could not be said on the issue of Syria. By the summer of 2015, Syrian opposition forces, many of whom were backed by the U.S., destabilized Syria to the point that President Assad’s future was in doubt. In September, in an effort to save Assad, Russia dispatched military forces, including a sizeable contingent of combat aircraft, to Syria, where they had immediate impact, halting the advances by the Syrian opposition and, in concert with the Syrian Army, began driving the rebel forces back. Russia’s intervention, which occurred at the request of the Syrian government, although modest in comparison to previous U.S. military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, was decisive, and took the U.S. totally by surprise, frustrating the Obama administration’s hopes that regime change in Syria could be achieved by years end.37

No event, however, impacted U.S.-Russian relations during Obama’s tenure in office more than the unremitting allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections. Despite the personal popularity that Barack Obama had engendered during his time in office, Democratic Party presidential succession was not a guarantee. The Democratic Party’s presumed nominee, Obama’s former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, found herself in a surprisingly tight primary contest with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. On the Republican side, some 17 major candidates vied for their party’s nomination, including several political heavyweights like the former Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, and two sitting Senators, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

The candidate that dominated the Republican race, however, was Donald Trump. From the moment he came down the escalator of the eponymous tower where he resided with his family in the heart of New York City, Trump captured the imagination—and support—of many Americans dissatisfied with the “politics as usual” approach taken by Trump’s political opponents. By the spring of 2016, the Republican nominee was no longer in doubt—the New York City real estate mogul would be contesting the Democratic nominee for the highest office in the land.

Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, did not have such an easy path to win her party’s nomination. Her task was complicated by the release, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, held in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from July 25-28. These emails exposed collusion between the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary campaign to undermine and sabotage the campaign of her opponent, Bernie Sanders. While Hillary survived the scandal that followed, her image suffered greatly on the eve of her having to face Donald Trump in the national election. The leak of the emails was interpreted by the FBI and CIA as representing the weaponization of information accessed by Russian intelligence during a cyber attack on the computer servers of the DNC and other entities and personnel involved in the Hillary campaign.

Complicating matters was the fact that Hillary Clinton’s Republican opponent was on record encouraging better relations between the U.S. and Russia. “I want a better relationship with everybody. And with Russia, yeah,” Trump told a reporter from Russia Today in March 2016. “If we can get along with Russia, that’s very good.”38 Trump’s declared proclivity for better U.S.-Russian relations, however, opened the door for his political opponents to accuse Russia of having, through the release of the DNC emails transmitted by parties unknown to Wikileaks, of actively intervened in the 2016 election on the side of Trump.³⁹ These accusations were first voiced by Robby Mook, a campaign advisor to Hillary Clinton, in the aftermath of the DNC cyber-attack.⁴⁰ They gained additional traction after Donald Trump, in a moment of off-the-script ad-libbing he was well known for, commented at a press conference during the Democratic Convention, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”⁴¹ Wikileaks, having repeatedly promised their release, made the emails public the next day, leading many—including the FBI—to conclude that there was a cause-effect relationship between Trump’s statement and the actions of those who released the emails.⁴²

The controversy surrounding the allegations that Russia was intervening in the U.S. 2016 Presidential election dominated U.S.-Russian relations from mid-summer 2016 through the remainder of the Obama administration, and beyond. In Obama’s final meeting with Putin, on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China, the two leaders had a frosty meeting where they discussed Syria, Ukraine and Russian interference in the U.S. electoral process. Obama’s advisors had pressed the American president to warn the Russians that any effort by Russia to interfere with the actual conduct of the election would be considered “an act of war.”⁴³ Obama demurred, opting instead to tell the Russian president to “cut it out,” adding that “there would be serious consequences” if Russia did not.⁴⁴

The release of emails embarrassing to Hillary Clinton, however, continued, prompting Obama to use a new cyber link that was part of the so-called “Red Phone” connecting the White House with the Kremlin to send a more pointed message. “International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace,” the message, which was transmitted on October 31, 2016, read. “We will hold Russia to those standards.”⁴⁵ The irony of the U.S. lecturing Russia on the legality of offensive cyber warfare in light of the U.S. employment of the Stuxnet virus against Iran seemingly escaped the President.46

On November 9, 2016, Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election to become the 45th president of the United States. In the weeks between his electoral victory and inauguration, America was overrun with hysteria about all things Russian. The FBI announced it was conducting a counterintelligence investigation into possible collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russian government, while the Intelligence Community, with CIA Director John Brennon taking the lead, produced a report detailing the scope and scale of what it alleged to be Russian interference.⁴⁷

Congress became involved, initiating several investigations conducted at the behest of various House and Senate committees. These hearings transcended administrations, meaning that the new Trump administration did not have the luxury of being able to separate whatever new policy vision it may have had vis-à-vis Russia from the Russian policy of the Obama administration. One of Congress’s first actions after Trump was sworn in as President was to impose additional sanctions on Russia, as well as codify existing sanctions that had been put in place by President Obama, in order to curtail Trump’s ability to leverage the lifting of sanctions as a means of improving relations with Russia. Faced with veto-proof Congressional support of the bill, Trump had no choice but to sign it into law.⁴⁸

The challenges Trump inherited from President Obama were serious ones, especially when it came to issues pertaining to nuclear non-proliferation. Trump’s approach to these complex problems was haphazard, unfocused and inherently contradictory. Regarding North Korea, Trump took a very confrontational stance which brought the United States to the brink of waging war on the reclusive Asian nation, before backing down and engaging in an unprecedented program of personal diplomacy with the North Korean leader, Kim Jung-Un, the goal of which was to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons. On Iran, Trump at first belittled the JCPOA, and then withdrew from it altogether, setting in motion a crisis with Iran that brought the U.S. and Iran to the brink of war, and had Iran on the cusp of withdrawing from the NPT altogether.

As bad as Trump’s policies toward North Korea and Iran were, they paled in comparison to his approach regarding the strategic nuclear balance between the U.S. and Russia. While many in Congress feared that Trump had a soft spot for Russia, when it came to the issue of the nuclear balance between Russia and the U.S., Trump was very much a hardliner, something which he made clear in an interview given to Reuters on February 23, 2017, shortly after Trump took office.

“We’ve fallen behind on nuclear weapon capacity,” Trump said. “And I am the first one that would like to see…nobody have nukes, but we’re never going to fall behind any country even if it’s a friendly country, we’re never going to fall behind on nuclear power.” Trump noted that it would be wonderful if “no country would have nukes, but if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack.” 49

Trump took particular aim at the New START treaty, declaring it to be a “one-sided deal like all other deals we make. It’s a one-sided deal. It gave them things that we should have never allowed.” The new president also discussed the allegations that Russia had tested a cruise missile in violation of the INF treaty. “To me, it’s a big deal,” he said. “If I meet (Putin), if and when we meet, I would bring it up. It’s a big deal. Because it’s a violation of an agreement that we have.”⁵⁰

As a candidate, Trump famously campaigned on his intention to try to be friends with Russia and Vladimir Putin. (“Wouldn’t it be a great thing if we could get along with Russia?” Trump asked at a campaign rally in July 2016.) But the Trump presidency was dogged from the start by accusations of collusion with Russia to help influence the American presidential election in Trump’s favor. These accusations adversely impacted the Trump administration’s efforts to steer a new course in U.S.–Russian relations.⁵¹

One of Donald Trump’s cornerstone foreign policy positions was that America’s membership in NATO was “obsolete” in a post–Cold War era when the focus is more on countering global terrorism than containing Russian ambition. This policy came under increasing attack by the president’s political opponents, who were concerned about the possibility of a quid-pro-quo arrangement between Trump and the Russians. A terse meeting between President Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and NATO foreign ministers at the end of March 2017 only reinforced concerns over the Trump administration’s apparent willingness to turn its back on the decades-old alliance in favor of improved relations with Moscow.

The Trump administration’s seeming blind eye toward Russia’s ongoing support for the legal government of President Assad in Syria—along with its 2014 (Crimean-supported) annexation of Crimea and its continued meddling, in the U.S. view, in eastern Ukraine—stoked fears among proponents of NATO that Trump’s pro-Russian policy was strengthening Moscow to the detriment of the United States and Europe. Improved coordination between the Russian and American militaries in de-conflicting their respective efforts to fight the Islamic State in Syria only furthered concerns that transatlantic relationships were being sacrificed in the name of “fighting terrorism” (an ironic conclusion, bearing in mind that the U.S. played a major role in supporting many of the jihadist forces Russia was fighting in Syria).

These concerns over possible de-confliction seemed to evaporate in the aftermath of the April 7, 2017, American cruise missile strike against Syria. Almost overnight, the promise of improved U.S.–Russian relations was quashed as Russian anger over the American attack, coupled with American consternation at Moscow’s perceived coddling of the Assad regime in the face of its alleged use of chemical weapons, appeared to sink any chance of diplomatic rapprochement between the two nuclear superpowers. “[T]he current state of U.S.–Russia relations is at a low point,” Secretary Tillerson told a press conference at the conclusion of a tense two-day visit to Moscow following the American action against Syria. “There is a low level of trust between the two countries.”

The breakdown in relations manifested itself further when President Trump, in a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House the day Secretary Tillerson departed Moscow, reversed course on the viability of NATO, noting that, “I said [NATO] was obsolete; it’s no longer obsolete.” While Trump explained the alliance’s new relevance in terms of the role it could play in the war on terrorism, Stoltenberg’s focus was on Europe and the deployment of the American military there. “Over the past months,” he said, standing next to Trump at the White House, “thousands of U.S. troops have been deploying to Europe, a clear demonstration that America stands with allies to protect peace and defend our freedom.”

Stoltenberg clearly had Russia on his mind. “NATO,” he declared, “is in the process of implementing the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War. And one element of that is to increase our military presence in the eastern part of the alliance. And we are now deploying four battle groups to the three Baltic countries and Poland, and there have also been more U.S. forces in that part of Europe.”

The confidence expressed by Stoltenberg regarding NATO’s military presence in the Baltics and Poland, however, did not change the reality that, when it came to confronting Russia, NATO was at a distinct disadvantage. A RAND study on “Reinforcing Deterrence on NATO’s Eastern Flank” concluded that even NATO’s bolstered posture would fall far short in the event of an actual shooting war with Russia, and that Russia would overrun the Baltics within 60 hours of a conflict breaking out.

According to RAND, a viable defensive deterrent would require a military posture seven times greater than the one currently employed by NATO and the United States—a commitment that, given NATO’s member states’ resistance to increased military spending, is as unrealistic as it is unsustainable. “We don’t want a new Cold War,” Stoltenberg declared during his visit to the White House. “We don’t want a new arms race.”

The European aversion to paying for its own collective defense was front and center during President Trump’s speech on May 25, 2017, at the new NATO headquarters in Brussels. Ostensibly this was an occasion to celebrate the transatlantic bond between North America and Europe symbolized by NATO and its collective security guarantee built around the premise that when one member is attacked, all will come to its defense. This guarantee, articulated in Article 5 of the NATO Charter, has been invoked only once in the history of NATO, after the September 11 terror attack on the United States.

In his speech, Trump lambasted the alliance, noting that, “Twentythree of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they’re supposed to be paying for their defense.” This failure on the part of Europe and Canada impacted NATO’s ability to participate effectively in the war on terror, Trump observed, and adversely impacted NATO’s ability to “close the gaps in modernizing, readiness, and the size of forces.”

The Trump insistence that NATO increase its conventional military capability to confront any Russian aggression in Europe played a crucial role in shaping the U.S. nuclear deterrence posture for NATO. Its provenance, however, was brought to light in testimony delivered to the House Armed Services Committee in June 2015 by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, who declared that “Russian military doctrine includes what some have called an ‘escalate to deescalate strategy’—a strategy that purportedly seeks to deescalate a conventional conflict through coercive threats, including limited nuclear use.”52

Robert Work, however, was wrong. Provision 27 of the 2014 edition of “Russian Military Doctrine” states that Russia “shall reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy. The decision to use nuclear weapons shall be taken by the President of the Russian Federation.”53

So, the Trump administration inherited this “made in America” misrepresentation of Russian nuclear doctrine from the Obama administration—though Trump had made it clear that he intended to be “at the top of the pack” when it came to nuclear weapons capability. His desire was translated into formal policy with the release of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review in March 2018.⁵⁴

The 2018 NPR gave voice to a strategic vision of the Trump administration when it came to nuclear policy and posture that had been previously hinted at, such as a $1.2 trillion modernization of the nuclear TRIAD, the manned strategic bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) that serve as the heart of America’s nuclear deterrent.

Other aspects of the 2018 NPR, however, were also disconcerting. The principles of deterrence outlined in the 2018 NPR were modeled on past policy pronouncements by previous administrations, in particular the 2010 NPR published by the Obama administration: “[T]o acquire and maintain the full range of capabilities to ensure that nuclear or non-nuclear aggression against the United States, allies and partners will fail to achieve its objectives and carry with it the credible risk of intolerable consequences for the adversary.”

However, whereas the 2010 NPR sought to de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons in deterring a non-nuclear attack (citing improvements in American conventional and anti-missile capabilities) and pointedly embraced Article IV of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), which places the onus on states to eventually rid themselves of nuclear weapons, the 2018 NPR made no mention of Article IV. Instead, it eschewed traditional nuclear disarmament pathways in favor of a more aggressive posture that sought to make nuclear weapons more accessible to American policymakers when formulating deterrence.

The Obama administration had continued the Bush-era policy of “open ocean” targeting of ICBMs and SLBMs, ensuring that any accidental launch of a missile would deliver its nuclear payload to the middle of the ocean, thereby reducing the chances of miscalculation of intent. The 2018 NPR, however, allowed for “open ocean” targeting for ICBMs only—SLBMs were exempted. This exemption was part of an overall trend that reversed the Obama-era policy of de-emphasizing the role of nuclear weapons in American military planning and operations. “The United States,” the 2018 NPR declared, “will apply a tailored approach to effectively deter across a spectrum of adversaries, threats and contexts.”

This “tailored approach” was reflective of the NPR’s contention that, when it came to nuclear deterrence, there was no “one size fits all” policy. Rather, the United States would employ an “expanding range of limited and graduated options” that threatened “intolerable damage” in order to deter nuclear and non-nuclear attacks. Moreover, the 2018 NPR stated that “combatant commands and service components will be organized and resourced for this mission, and will plan, train to integrate U.S. and non-nuclear forces and operate in the face of adversary nuclear threats and attacks”—in short, the U.S. military would, going forward, actively prepare for nuclear war.

The 2018 NPR contained a vision of nuclear conflict that went far beyond the traditional imagery of mass missile launches. While ICBMs and manned bombers were to continue to be maintained on a day-to-day alert, the tip of the nuclear spear was now what the NPR called “supplemental” nuclear forces—dual-use aircraft such as the F-35 fighter armed with B-61 gravity bombs capable of delivering a low-yield nuclear payload, a new generation of nuclear-tipped submarine-launched cruise missiles, and, as previously noted, submarine-launched ballistic missiles tipped with a new generation of low-yield nuclear warheads.

The danger inherent in the integration of these kinds of tactical nuclear weapons into an overall strategy of deterrence was that it fundamentally lowered the threshold for their use. This was a critical reality given the context of real-world scenarios being pursued by the Pentagon, such as the potential for conflict with North Korea. A contemporaneous study done by MIT provided a comparison between an attack on five North Korean nuclear infrastructure targets using ten 450-kiloton warheads delivered by American ICBMs, and an attack against the same target set using twenty .3 kiloton B-61 bombs.55 The ICBM attack destroyed all targets and killed 2 to 3 million North Koreans; the B-61 strike destroyed all targets, while limiting casualties to a few hundred deaths at each target. Such statistics were more than theoretical; at the time the 2018 NPR was published, American B-2 bombers were flying practice bombing missions against North Korea, using B-61 bombs as their payload.

The nuclear deterrence policy laid out in the 2018 NPR, however, used a broader brush than previous nuclear posture reviews when it came to nuclear weapons use. Noting that the United States had never adopted a “no first use” policy, the 2018 NPR stated that “it remains the policy of the United States to retain some ambiguity regarding the precise circumstances that might lead to a U.S. nuclear response.” In this regard, the NPR stated that America could employ nuclear weapons under “extreme circumstances that could include significant non-nuclear strategic attacks.”

Moreover, the NPR walked back from previous assurances made by the United States not to use nuclear weapons against signatory nations of the NPR who were in good standing with the provisions of that treaty, promulgating declaratory policy that stated that “given the potential of significant non-nuclear strategic attacks, the United States reserves the right to make adjustments in the assurance that may be warranted by the evolution and proliferation of non-nuclear strategic attack technologies and U.S. capabilities to counter that threat.”

The issue of “non-nuclear strategic attack technologies” as a potential precursor for nuclear war was a new factor that previously did not exist in American nuclear policy. The United States had long held that chemical and biological weapons represented a strategic threat for which America’s nuclear deterrence capability served as a viable counter. But the threat from cyberattacks was different, if for no other reason than the potential for miscalculation and error in terms of attribution and intent. According to the parameters outlined in the 2018 NPR, a nuclear strike could be considered in cases where a nation, like Iran, that had been subjected to a cyberattack initially perpetrated by the United States or its allies, decided to repurpose the malware and counterattack.

Likewise, a cyber intrusion such as the one alleged to have been perpetrated against the Democratic National Committee and attributed to Russia could serve as a trigger for nuclear war, something the highly politicized rhetoric regarding the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election claimed. The DNC event was characterized by influential American politicians, such as the Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, as “an act of war.” Moreover, former vice president Joe Biden hinted that, in the aftermath of the DNC breach, the United States was launching a retaliatory cyberattack of its own, targeting Russia. The possibility of a tit-for-tat exchange of cyberattacks that escalated into a nuclear conflict would previously have been dismissed out of hand; with the publication of the 2018 NPR, it entered the realm of the possible, with further ensuing dangers.

The 2018 NPR spoke of an “expanding range of limited and graduated responses” available to American commanders as if this is a new concept. American nuclear planners have always sought to provide the decision makers with as broad a range of options as possible when it came to the employment of nuclear weapons. The difference with the 2018 NPR is that the United States would now actively consider the use of nuclear weapons in a first-strike capacity involving non-nuclear threats. This posture represented a game changer—any potential nuclear-armed adversary would now, logically, factor in the probability, during times of crisis, of an American nuclear first strike. The logical response for these potential adversaries would be to be prepared to launch a preemptive first strike of their own against the United States.

The 2018 NPR was published in February 2018. On March 1, 2018, Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, delivered his State of the Nation address to the Russian Federal Assembly (the Russian national legislature, consisting of the State Duma, or lower house, and the Russian Council, or upper house). The first half of his speech dealt with Russian domestic issues. The second half, however, was a direct response to the 2018 NPR.

Putin outlined developments in Russian strategic military capability. These developments, Putin noted, collectively signaled the obsolescence of America’s strategic nuclear deterrence, both in terms of its present capabilities and—taking into account the $1.2 trillion nuclear weapons modernization program President Trump unveiled in the 2018 NPR—anything America might pursue in the decades to come.

Putin put the blame for the state of current affairs between Russia and the U.S. on the shoulders of the Americans. “Back in 2000,” Putin said, “the U.S. announced its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Russia was categorically against this. We saw the Soviet-U.S. ABM Treaty signed in 1972 as the cornerstone of the international security system… [t]ogether with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty [START], the ABM Treaty not only created an atmosphere of trust but also prevented either party from recklessly using nuclear weapons, which would have endangered humankind…[w]e did our best to dissuade the Americans from withdrawing from the treaty. All in vain.”56

“The U.S. pulled out of the treaty in 2002,” Putin observed. “Even after that, we tried to develop constructive dialogue with the Americans. We proposed working together in this area to ease concerns and maintain the atmosphere of trust. At one point, I thought that a compromise was possible, but this was not to be. All our proposals, absolutely all of them, were rejected. And then we said that we would have to improve our modern strike systems to protect our security. In reply, the U.S. said that it is not creating a global BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] system against Russia, which is free to do as it pleases, and that the U.S. will presume that our actions are not spearheaded against the U.S.”57

Putin then built on his well-known position, delivered in his 2005 State of the Nation address, that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century” that created a “genuine drama” in which “the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.” Putin noted that “apparently, our partners got the impression that it was impossible in the foreseeable historical perspective for our country to revive its economy, industry, defense industry and armed forces to levels supporting the necessary strategic potential and, if that is the case, there is no point in reckoning with Russia’s opinion, it is necessary to further pursue ultimate unilateral military advantage in order to dictate the terms in every sphere in the future…”⁵⁸

“We ourselves are to blame,” Putin said. “All these years, the entire 15 years since the withdrawal of the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, we have consistently tried to reengage the American side in serious discussions, in reaching agreements in the sphere of strategic stability.” However, Putin observed, the United States “is permitting constant, uncontrolled growth of the number of anti-ballistic missiles, improving their quality, and creating new missile launching areas. If we do not do something, eventually this will result in the complete devaluation of Russia’s nuclear potential. Meaning that all of our missiles could simply be intercepted.”⁵⁹

Putin pointed out that in 2004, he put the world on notice about Russia’s intent to defend itself, telling the press: “As other countries increase the number and quality of their arms and military potential, Russia will also need to ensure it has new generation weapons and technology. … [T]his is a very significant statement because no country in the world as of now has such arms in their military arsenal.”⁶⁰

“Why did we do all this?” Putin asked his audience, referring to his 2004 comments. “Why did we talk about it? As you can see, we made no secret of our plans and spoke openly about them, primarily to encourage our partners to hold talks. No, nobody really wanted to talk to us about the core of the problem, and nobody wanted to listen to us. So listen now. …”61

To those who in the past 15 years have tried to accelerate an arms race and seek unilateral advantage against Russia, have introduced restrictions and sanctions that are illegal from the standpoint of international law aiming to restrain our nation’s development, including in the military area, I will say this: Everything you have tried to prevent through such a policy has already happened. No one has managed to restrain Russia.⁶²

If Putin’s State of the Nation address was intended as a message to President Trump about the dangers of pursuing an aggressive nuclear posture, it went unheeded. The concept of “escalate to deescalate” as official Russian military doctrine had become ingrained in official U.S. nuclear doctrine. Moscow, the 2018 NPR claimed, “threatens and exercises limited nuclear first use, suggesting a mistaken expectation that coercive nuclear threats or limited first use could paralyze the United States and NATO and thereby end a conflict on terms favorable to Russia. Some in the United States refer to this as Russia’s ‘escalate to deescalate’ doctrine.”

In response to this “made in America” Russian threat, the 2018 NPR identified a requirement to modify a number of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with low-yield nuclear warheads to strengthen U.S. nuclear deterrence by providing U.S. military commanders with a weapon that addresses “the conclusion that potential adversaries, like Russia, believe that employment of low-yield nuclear weapons will give them an advantage over the United States and its allies and partners.”⁶³

As was the case with Robert Work’s 2015 congressional testimony, the 2018 NPR did not provide the source for the existence of a Russian “escalate to deescalate” doctrine, except to note that it originated in the U.S.—not Russia. Nonetheless, based upon the 2018 NPR, President Donald Trump requested that the Defense Department acquire a new low-yield nuclear warhead for the Trident SLBM.

In response to President Trump’s request, a letter, signed by a laundry list of notable American statesmen, politicians and military officers, including former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William Perry and the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General James Cartwright, was sent to the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, stating that there was no need for this new “low yield” warhead. The letter furthermore noted that the premise of this warhead—the so-called “escalate to deescalate” Russian doctrine—was derived from a “false narrative” combining non-existent Russian intent with an equally fictitious “deterrence gap” that could only be filled by the new nuclear weapon. This letter fell on deaf ears—the U.S. started manufacturing low yield nuclear warheads at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Texas in early 2019.64

The 2018 NPR also served to hamstring the Trump administration when it came to nuclear nonproliferation issues in general. In preparation for the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the United Nations convened the 2019 Preparatory Committee (“PrepCom”) at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City from April 29 to May 10, 2018. It was the goal of all attendees to try and make up for the disastrous 2015 NPT Review Conference, which had ended with the attendees hopelessly deadlocked and unable to issue a final consensus report. Determined to avoid a similar fate, the participants wrestled for eleven days with what had emerged as a fundamental disconnect among the parties to the NPT, namely whether the NPT functioned solely as a non-proliferation treaty, and those who wanted the disarmament commitments inherent in Article IV of the NPT strengthened.

While the nuclear weapons states, joined by those nations who enjoyed protection under the umbrella that nuclear weapons provided, opposed the adoption in the final consensus document of any strong language concerning their Article IV disarmament obligations, the non-nuclear states, emboldened by the adoption in July 2017 of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons by the United Nations General Assembly,⁶⁵ sought to reiterate the recommendations of the 2010 NPT Review Conference regarding the “catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons” as well as the need for a “legally-binding norm to prohibit nuclear weapons.” This disconnect, while contributing to the failure of the PrepCom to produce a final consensus document, helped focus attention on the differences between the various member states regarding the concepts of “security” and “nuclear disarmament.”⁶⁶

To compensate for the anticipated inability of the NPT Review Conference to reach consensus on anything of substance, the Trump administration submitted a proposal entitled “Creating Environment for Nuclear Disarmament,” or CEND. Many NPT members believed purpose of the CEND initiative, which had scheduled an inaugural plenary for July 2019, was to deflect attention away from the failure of the nuclear weapons states, and in particular the United States, to fulfill their Article IV obligations. However, much to the surprise of the attendees, the U.S. approach toward facilitating discussions under the CEND rubric were both sincere and productive. Even Russia sent a delegation. In the end, the CEND process initiated a meaningful discussion among the attendees about the challenges to the global security environment and what must be done to ameliorate them in order to facilitate the goal of nuclear disarmament.67

“There is a new strategic reality out there,” President Donald Trump’s hardline National Security Advisor, John Bolton, declared during a visit to Moscow on October 23, 2018. The purpose of Bolton’s visit, on the other hand, was to announce to the Russians that the United States would be withdrawing from the 31-year-old Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. “This was a Cold War bilateral ballistic missile-related treaty,” Bolton said, “in a multi-polar ballistic missile world.”⁶⁸

“It is the American position that Russia is in violation,” Bolton told reporters after a 90-minute meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Russia’s position is that they aren’t. So one has to ask how to ask the Russians to come back into compliance with something they don’t think they’re violating.”

Left unsaid by Bolton was the fact that the Russians have been asking the U.S. to provide evidence to substantiate its allegations of Russian noncompliance, something the Americans have so far failed to do. “The Americans have failed to provide hard facts to substantiate their accusations,” a Kremlin spokesperson noted last December after a U.S. delegation briefed NATO on the allegations. “They just cannot provide them, because such evidence essentially does not exist.”

Bolton’s declaration mirrored an earlier statement by President Trump announcing that “I’m terminating the agreement [the INF Treaty] because they [the Russians] violated the agreement.” When asked if his comments were meant as a threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump responded, “It’s a threat to whoever you want. And it includes China, and it includes Russia, and it includes anybody else that wants to play that game. You can’t do that. You can’t play that game on me.”

The Chinese missile program, however, was not linked to the INF treaty. No treaty vehicle existed between China and the U.S. to limit intermediate and shorter-range missiles. Given this disconnect, many observers believed that Chinese missiles were merely an excuse for the U.S. to withdraw from the INF Treaty. For its part, China made it clear that the U.S. decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty would have a “negative” impact on China’s national security, compelling it to push ahead with the development of new, more modern medium-range missiles to counter any American build-up in the region.

The Europeans had initially balked at the idea of deploying American INF weapons on their territory, fearful that the weapons would be little more than targets for a Soviet nuclear attack, resulting in the destruction of Europe while the United States remained unharmed. To alleviate European concerns, the U.S. agreed to integrate its INF systems with its overall strategic nuclear deterrence posture, meaning that the employment of INF nuclear weapons would trigger an automatic strategic nuclear response. This approach was designed to increase the deterrence value of the INF weapons, since there would be no “localized” nuclear war. But it also meant that given the reduced flight times associated with European-based INF systems, each side would be on a hair-trigger alert, with little or no margin for error. It was the suicidal nature of this arrangement that had helped propel Gorbachev and American President Ronald Reagan to sign the INF Treaty on December 8, 1987.

For its part, Russia tried its best to save the INF treaty. Russia had made the point from the start that the 9M729 missile was not capable of ranges that violated the INF Treaty. To assuage U.S. concerns, the Russians provided a static display of the 9M729 that showed its propulsion system to be identical to that of the 9M728 missile, which operates at ranges below the threshold set by the INF. In fact, the larger warhead and increased size of the guidance and flight control systems on the 9M729 resulted in a range less than the 9M728. Russia indicated that it was willing to go further—for example, removing the missile from its sealed launch canister for a more technical evaluation by U.S. specialists—to reinforce realization of the 9M729’s compliance.

The U.S. refused to participate in such an exercise. Andrea Thompson, the undersecretary for arms control and international security, met with her Russian counterparts in January 2019, prior to the final decision being made to withdraw from the INF Treaty. “I was there to listen,” Thompson noted, “but my objective and the message was clear from the administration that Russia must return to full and verifiable compliance with the INF Treaty.” According to Thompson, the only acceptable solution was “the verifiable destruction of Russia’s noncompliant missile system.”

Thompson’s Russian opposite, Sergei Rybokov, responded by noting, “Clearly, the United States was no longer interested in obtaining our substantive response to their questions. This once again showed us that our efforts at transparency have no impact on the decisions taken by the United States, and that they have taken all their decisions a long time ago and are only waiting for Russia to plead guilty.”

The U.S. decision to withdraw from the INF treaty further exacerbated a deteriorating relationship with Russia. The issue went beyond issues of disarmament. Russia had been signaling its displeasure over U.S. sanctions even before Trump came into office. In July 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin had warned that U.S. sanctions were “driving into a corner” relations between the two countries, threatening the “the long-term national interests of the U.S. government and people.”69 Russia opted to ride out U.S. sanctions, in hopes that there might be a change of administrations following the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections. Putin made it clear that he hoped the U.S. might elect someone whose policies would be more friendly toward Russia, and that once the field of candidates narrowed down to a choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Putin favored Trump.

“Yes, I did,” Putin remarked after the election, during a joint press conference with President Trump following a summit in Helsinki in July 2018. “Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.”⁷⁰

Putin’s comments only reinforced the opinions of those who embraced allegations of significant Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election as fact and concluded that Putin had some sort of hold over Trump. Trump’s continuous praise of Putin’s leadership style only reinforced these concerns.

Even before he was inaugurated, Trump singled out Putin’s refusal to respond in kind to President Obama’s levying of sanctions based upon the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia had interfered in the election. “Great move on delay (by V. Putin)—I always knew he was very smart!” Trump Tweeted.⁷¹ Trump viewed the Obama sanctions as an effort to sabotage any chance of a Trump administration repairing relations with Russia, and interpreted Putin’s refusal to engage, despite being pressured to do so by the Russian Parliament and Foreign Ministry, as a recognition of the same.

This sense of providing political space in the face of domestic pressure worked both ways. In January 2018, Putin tried to shield his relationship with President Trump by calling the release by the U.S. Treasury Department of a list containing some 200 names of persons close to the Russian government, including 96 “oligarchs” from a Forbes magazine ranking of Russian billionaires as a hostile and “stupid” move.72

“Ordinary Russian citizens, employees and entire industries are behind each of those people and companies,” Putin remarked. “So all 146 million people have essentially been put on this list. What is the point of this? I don’t understand.”⁷³

From the Russian perspective, the list highlighted the reality that the U.S. viewed the entire Russian government as an enemy and is a byproduct of the “political paranoia” on the part of U.S. lawmakers. The consequences of this, senior Russian officials warned, “will be toxic and undermine prospects for cooperation for years ahead.”⁷⁴

While President Trump entered office fully intending to “get along with Russia,” including the possibility of relaxing the Obama-era sanctions, the reality of U.S.-Russian relations, especially as viewed from Congress, has been the strengthening of the Obama sanctions regime. These new sanctions, strengthened over time by new measures signed off by Trump, have had a negative impact on the Russian economy, slowing growth and driving away foreign investment. It is the reality of Trump’s policy of sanctioning Russia, more than anything else, that has poisoned the possibility of better relations with Russia.

This toxic relationship threatens to unravel the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia—the New START treaty. The importance of this treaty was reinforced following a deadly accident in northern Russia in August 2019 which caused the U.S. arms control community to stand up and take notice. The Russians claimed they were testing “isotopic sources of fuel on a liquid propulsion unit,” and that only after the test was completed did the engine explode.

Many Western experts believe that the Russians were testing a nuclear-powered cruise missile, the 9M730 “Burevestnik”—known in the West by its NATO designation, the SSC-X-9 “Skyfall”—and that a miniature nuclear reactor these experts believe was used to power the missile exploded. No one outside the Russians responsible for the failed test know exactly what system was being tested, why it was being tested, how it was being tested, and why that test failed. The Russian government had refused to provide any details about the test. “When it comes to activities of a military nature,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a press conference a few days after the accident, “there are certain restrictions on access to information. This is work in the military field, work on promising weapons systems. We are not hiding this,” he said, adding, “We must think of our own security.”

“Something obviously has gone badly wrong here,” U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said after the accident. Bolton observed that Russia was seeking to “modernize their nuclear arsenal to build new kinds of delivery vehicles, hypersonic glide vehicles, hypersonic cruise missiles,” noting that “dealing with this capability…remains a real challenge for the United States and its allies.”

This challenge manifested itself in the ongoing discussions between the U.S. and Russia regarding the extension of the New START treaty on strategic arms reduction, scheduled to expire in early 2021. “If there is going to be an extension of the New START,” U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said, “then we need to make sure that we include all these new weapons that Russia is pursuing.”

Esper’s demands were problematic—the new Russian weapons under development were directly linked to the decision by the George W. Bush administration in 2002 to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, a 1972 agreement that limited the number and types of ABM weapons the U.S. and then-Soviet Union could deploy, thereby increasing the likelihood that any full-scale missile attack would succeed in reaching its target. By creating the inevitability of mutual nuclear annihilation (a practice referred to as “mutually assured destruction,” or MAD), both the U.S. and Soviet strategic nuclear forces served as a deterrent against one another.

From the Russian perspective, the deployment by the U.S. of modern ABM systems in the aftermath of its withdrawal from the ABM treaty threatens its strategic nuclear force and thereby nullifies its deterrent potential. As such, only by building a new generation of modern nuclear delivery systems specifically designed to defeat U.S. ABM capability could Russia reassert its strategic nuclear deterrent.

Complicating matters further was the notion put forward by Esper that the weapons Putin unveiled in 2018 would require that the New START treaty be modified prior to any extension, impeding what otherwise would simply have been an automatic extension, based upon mutual consent, for a five-year period. The Russians took umbrage over this position. “If we want to really comprehend the core of the matter,” Vladimir Yermakov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister for nonproliferation and arms control, told the Russian press, “it should be noted that the New START Treaty covers specific categories of strategic arms, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), heavy bombers and ICBM and SLBM launchers. The Treaty,” Yermakov emphasized, “does not cover any other weapons systems.”

Regarding the failed August test of the suspected 9M730, Yermakov declared: “This also concerns the relevant research and development projects.” Yermakov categorically rejected the proposition put forward by Esper, noting that “the question of hypothetically extending the New START Treaty with certain weapons systems that do not fit into the aforementioned categories is absolutely unacceptable.”

Esper’s position, Yermakov said, did not take the Russians by surprise. “As of late,” Yermakov said, “we have been hearing U.S. officials express doubts more and more often as to whether extending the New START Treaty makes sense. It is hard to perceive this as anything other than a conscious effort to lay the required media groundwork and to invent pretexts for declining to extend the agreement after it expires in February 2021 and to obtain absolute freedom to build up the U.S. nuclear arsenal, even to the detriment of strategic stability and international security.”

The Russian position on the extension of the New START treaty, Yermakov said, was that it would “be a reasonable and responsible step, making it possible to prevent a complete breakdown in the area of strategic stability,” and “would also provide extra time to consider joint approaches towards new weapons systems that are currently emerging and possible new arms control treaties.” But before any extension could be considered, the Russian side insisted that the U.S. resolve an outstanding issue of treaty compliance that centered around 56 Trident SLBM launchers and 41 B-52H bombers that were “converted” from their nuclear mission in a way that does not render them incapable of accomplishing that mission. Such conversions are permitted under the New START treaty “by rendering [the Trident SLBM launchers and B-52H bombers] incapable of employing ICBMs, SLBMs, or nuclear armaments.”

For the Trident SLBM launchers, the conversion was done by removing gas generators of the ejecting mechanism from the launch tube and bolting the tube covers shut. The problem, for the Russians, is that this procedure is reversible, meaning that the launcher could still be used to launch SLBMs simply by removing the bolts and replacing the gas generators. Likewise, the B-52H modifications involve the removal of launch equipment from the aircraft. The aircraft still retains a socket that would allow the arming mechanism of a nuclear weapon to be connected to the removed equipment, which means the B-52H could be converted back to its nuclear role simply by reinstalling the equipment.

According to Yermakov, “Russian inspectors are unable to verify the results of the re-equipping under the procedure stipulated by the Treaty.” From the Russian perspective, the issue of the noncompliant “conversion” of the Trident SLBM launchers and B-52H bombers is of “fundamental significance”; any extension of the New START can only be discussed, the Russians maintain, once the United States “fully return to complying with the spirit and the letter of the treaty.”

The foundation upon which U.S.-Russian cooperation regarding New START was constructed is fragile, founded as it was on the unilateral abrogation of the ABM Treaty in 2002, the ongoing compliance issue regarding the conversion of treaty-accountable items under New START, and the precipitous decision on the part of the Trump administration to withdraw from yet another landmark arms control agreement, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which went into effect on August 2, 2019. It would be the INF Treaty that would deal the fatal blow to U.S. credibility when it came to arms control.

At the same time the U.S. was accusing Russia of violating the INF Treaty with the 9M729 missile, Russia was voicing similar concerns about the Mark 41 “Aegis Ashore” vertical launch system that the U.S. had installed in both Poland and Romania as part of its ballistic missile defense shield. The Mark 41 originally was designed for service on naval vessels. In this role, its launcher system could be configured to launch either the SM-6 surface-to-air missile, or the Tomahawk sea-launched cruise missile.

From the Russian perspective, the Mark 41, when placed in a ground-launch configuration, became an INF-capable system, since it could launch a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) of proscribed range. The U.S. was adamant in its rejection of these claims, noting that the Aegis Ashore systems in Poland and Romania were configured to launch SM-6 surface-to-air missiles only. The Russians, however, insisted that there was no physical way to make this determination, noting that the INF Treaty required that similar systems be denoted with unique visually distinctive features; the U.S. dismissed the Russian position as a “technicality.”

On August 18, the U.S. conducted a test launch of a GLCM from a Mark 41 launch cannister that had been bolted to a flat-bed trailer, making it a de facto ground launcher. The GLCM flew to ranges greater than those permitted by the INF Treaty. Technically, the U.S. was not in violation of the INF treaty at the time of the test, because it had expired on August 2, some 16 days prior. But those 16 days hold the key to understanding just how seriously Russia took this test. According to a transcript of a meeting Putin held Friday with members of the Russian Security Council, he declared that by conducting a missile test a mere 16 days after the INF Treaty ended, it was “obvious that it was not improvisation, but became the next link in a chain of events that were planned and carried out earlier.”

The mistrust of U.S. intent that was manifested in what Russia viewed as the disingenuous approach taken by the U.S. regarding the INF treaty—falsely accusing Russia of a violation regarding the 9M729 missile all the while preparing for a break-out scenario involving the Mark 41 “Aegis Ashore” ABM system which would in itself violate the INF treaty—carried over into the totality of U.S.-Russian interactions relating to strategic defense issues. No longer could Russia afford to take at face value any U.S. contention that its actions were not aimed at undermining Russian security. Across a broad spectrum of military activity, covering anti-missile defense, conventional military operations, and strategic nuclear preparations, Russia was now compelled to assume a worst-case scenario which, given the stakes involved, put the world on the edge of a nuclear abyss.

The U.S.-led Defender Europe 20 military exercises provided a case in point. Ostensibly designed to promote peace through deterrence, Defender Europe 20, which involved the deployment of some 30,000 American servicemen and women and 13,000 pieces of equipment—including tanks, armored fighting vehicles and artillery pieces—in the largest such effort since the U.S. military stopped conducting the Return of Forces to Germany (Reforger) exercises at the end of the Cold War, in fact only increased the prospects of a deadly war with Russia on European soil.

Following Crimea’s joining of Russia after a referendum in 2014, and the outbreak of separatist fighting in the Russian-speaking portions of eastern Ukraine, the U.S.-led NATO alliance had been struggling to assemble a conventional military force capable of deterring possible Russian aggression against the Baltics and Poland. For its part, the U.S. began rotating an armored brigade consisting of some 1,500 soldiers into Poland on a full-time basis, as well as deploying prepositioned stocks of military vehicles and equipment for additional forces that would be flown in. Defender Europe 20 represented the first full-scale exercise of this complete force.

For its part, Russia had not been idle. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Army underwent a major reorganization, standing down the massive armored formations that had been preparing for a war with NATO, and instead focusing on smaller, more agile formations conducive to regional security. A major ground war in Europe no longer factored in Russian military thinking. This changed, however, once NATO began building up its forces in Poland and the Baltics. Russia reactivated two Cold War offensive-minded military formations, the 1st Guards Tank Army and the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army, creating a powerful offensive capability designed to defeat any aggressive NATO moves into western Russia. Russian military forces in the exclave of Kaliningrad were likewise bolstered.

While the U.S. and NATO contend that exercises such as Defender Europe 20 make Europe more stable and secure by giving teeth to the concept of a European deterrence to any potential Russian aggression, in fact there can be no deterrence if both sides are prepared to act in response to the actions of the other. From the Russian perspective, Defender Europe 20 was but the latest in a series of aggressive moves by NATO, dating back to the expansion of the alliance into the territories of the former Warsaw Pact countries following the collapse of the Soviet Union, which have generated causal responses that make war with Russia more likely than not.

On February 4, 2020, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood issued a statement announcing that the U.S. Navy “has fielded the W76-2 low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warhead.” Rood’s statement noted that the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review “identified the requirement to ‘modify a small number of submarine-launched ballistic missile warheads’ to address the conclusion that potential adversaries, like Russia, believe that employment of low-yield nuclear weapons will give them an advantage over the United States and its allies and partners.” Rood was referring to the discredited belief that Russian nuclear doctrine embraced an “escalate to deescalate” model of operation. “This supplemental capability,” Rood concluded, “strengthens deterrence and provides the United States a prompt, more survivable low-yield strategic weapon; supports our commitment to extended deterrence; and demonstrates to potential adversaries that there is no advantage to limited nuclear employment because the United States can credibly and decisively respond to any threat scenario.”75

Later that month, during a visit to U.S. Strategic Command headquarters, at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper participated in a classified military exercise which depicted U.S. forces in Europe, fighting as part of a NATO contingency, engaged in combat operations with the Russian military. According to the scenario, Russia implemented its “escalate to deescalate” doctrine, employing a low-yield nuclear weapon against a site located on the territory of a NATO ally. The U.S. retaliated by launching a “limited response” using submarine-launched ballistic missiles armed with the new W76-2 warhead. The purpose of the exercise was to make sure that the Secretary of Defense was familiar with the processes involved in the decision to launch the W76-2 warhead in a “limited response” scenario involving Russia.⁷⁶

While the wargame that Secretary Esper participated in involved the U.S. responding to a Russian first use of nuclear weapons, the reality is that, given the disparity of forces in Europe, it is unlikely that there would develop a scenario which had Russia using nuclear weapons to offset NATO conventional military superiority. The converse, however, does not hold true—if there was a conventional war in Europe between NATO and Russia, it is highly likely that Russia would rapidly overrun the NATO defenders, creating a situation where NATO would need to consider employing nuclear weapons as a last resort.

During the testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 25, 2020 of General Tod Wolters, the commander of U.S. European Command and, concurrently, as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) also the military head of all NATO armed forces, General Wolters engaged in a short yet informative exchange with Senator Deb Fischer, a Republican from the state of Nebraska, which underscored the real danger of such a scenario occurring.77

Following some initial questions and answers focused on the alignment of NATO’s military strategy with the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the U.S., which codified what Wolters called “the malign influence on behalf of Russia” toward European security, Senator Fischer asked about the growing recognition on the part of NATO of the important role of U.S. nuclear deterrence in keeping the peace. “We all understand that our deterrent, the TRIAD, is the bedrock of the security of this country,” Fischer noted. “Can you tell us about what you are hearing… from our NATO partners about this deterrent?”

Wolters responded by linking the deterrence provided to Europe by the U.S. nuclear TRIAD with the peace enjoyed on the European continent over the past seven decades. Fischer asked if the U.S. nuclear umbrella was “vital in the freedom of NATO members”; Wolters agreed. Remarkably, Wolters linked the role of nuclear deterrence with the NATO missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere outside the European continent. NATO’s mission, he said, was to “proliferate deterrence to the max extent practical to achieve greater peace.”

Then came the pièce de résistance of the hearing. “What are your views, Sir,” Senator Fischer asked, “of adopting a so-called no-first-use policy. Do you believe that that would strengthen deterrence?”

General Wolters’ response was straight to the point. “Senator, I’m a fan of flexible first use policy.”

When seen in the context of the recent deployment by the U.S. of a low-yield nuclear warhead on submarine-launched ballistic missiles carried onboard a Trident submarine, however, Wolters’ statement was downright explosive, especially in the context of the fact the U.S. had just prior to General Wolter’s testimony carried out a wargame where the U.S. Secretary of Defense practiced the procedures for launching this very same “low yield” weapon against a Russian target during simulated combat between Russia and NATO in Europe.

In a statement to the press on February 25—the same date as General Wolters’ testimony, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister stated that “We note with concern that Washington’s new doctrinal guidelines considerably lower the threshold of nuclear weapons use.” Lavrov added that this doctrine had to be viewed in the light “of the persistent deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons on the territory of some NATO allies and the continued practice of the so-called joint nuclear missions.”

Rather than embracing a policy of “flexible first strike,” Lavrov suggested that the U.S. work with Russia to re-confirm “the Gorbachev-Reagan formula, which says that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be unleashed.” This proposal was made 18 months ago, Lavrov noted, and yet the U.S. had failed to respond.

Complicating matters further were the Defender Europe 20 NATO military exercises then underway in Europe. The fact that these exercises took place at a time when the issue of U.S. nuclear weapons and NATO’s doctrine regarding their employment against Russia was being actively tracked by senior Russian authorities underscored the danger they posed.

On February 6, General Valery Gerasimov, the Russian Chief of Staff, met with General Wolters to discuss Defender Europe 20 and concurrent Russian military exercises to be held nearby to deconflict their respective operations and avoid any unforeseen incidents. This meeting, however, was held prior to the reports about a U.S./NATO nuclear wargame targeting Russian forces going public, and prior to General Wolters’ statement about “flexible first use” of NATO nuclear weapons.

Once news of Secretary Esper’s nuclear wargame became known, General Gerasimov met with French General François Lecointre, the Chief of the French Defense Staff, to express Russia’s concerns over NATO’s military moves near the Russian border, especially the Defender Europe 20 exercise which was, General Gerasimov noted, “held on the basis of anti-Russian scenarios and envisage training for offensive operations.”

General Gerasimov’s concerns must be considered in the overall historical context of NATO-Russian relations. Back in 1983, the then-Soviet Union was extremely concerned about a series of realistic NATO exercises, known as Able Archer ‘83, which in many ways mimicked the modern-day Defender 2020 in both scope and scale. Like Defender Europe 20, Able Archer ‘83 saw the deployment of tens of thousands of U.S. forces into Europe, where they assumed an offensive posture, before transitioning into a command post exercise involving the employment of NATO nuclear weapons against a Soviet target.

So concerned was Moscow about those exercises, and the possibility that NATO might use them as a cover for an attack against Soviet forces in East Germany, that the Soviet nuclear forces were placed on high alert. Historians have since observed that the threat of nuclear war between the U.S. and the USSR was at that time the highest it had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

The ghost of Able Archer ‘83 weighed heavily on the concerns expressed by General Gerasimov. The unprecedented concentration of offensive NATO military power on Russia’s border, coupled with the cavalier public embrace by General Wolters of a “flexible first strike” nuclear posture by NATO, more than replicated the threat model presented by Able Archer ’83.

Viewed in this context, it would not be a stretch to conclude that, given the confluence of factors presented by the Defender Europe 20 exercise, the nuclear war drill conducted by Secretary Esper, and General Wolter’s flippant embrace of “flexible first strike” before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the threat of nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia was the highest it has been since Able Archer ’83.

After seventy-five years of addiction to nuclear weapons, stretching from the first use of the atomic bomb against Japan, to the most recent wargame envisioning a nuclear exchange with Russia, the United States has demonstrated that it is incapable of freeing itself from that which, if employed, would lead to its own demise. Like Aesop’s scorpion, the United States has conned the world into believing that everyone can safely coexist in an environment where the United States can freely advocate the preemptive use of nuclear weapons without fear of consequence. From Roosevelt to Trump, the United States has emerged as the Scorpion King, the most irresponsibly dangerous nation the world has ever known, because unlike any other, the United States freely advocates the use of that which would destroy the planet.

Like Aesop’s frog, the world labors on in the misguided belief that the United States is a rational actor, and therefore not prone to the kind of irrational actions which would lead to a world-ending general nuclear exchange. But the available facts do not support such a conclusion. The casual manner in which the United States has shed itself of the encumbrance of binding nuclear arms control treaties and agreements while simultaneously engaging in a nuclear arms race where the weapons being procured are seen as a viable component of American military power projection suggests that the United States was custom cast as Aesop’s scorpion. Not just any scorpion, however, but rather the Scorpion King, capable of killing not only the frog and itself, but all others as well.

Too late will the world ask the question, “Why?”

And there will be scant few alive to hear the Scorpion King’s painfully obvious reply, “It is in my nature…”

ENDNOTES

1 https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/NuclearSecuritySummit

2 The passage on McFaul is taken from the author’s article, “How ‘Reset’ Man McFaul Helped Torpedo U.S.-Russia Relations,” in The American Conservative, May 28, 2019, and is used with permission.

3 Amy Sherman, “Obama’s hot mic moment with Russian president in 2012 was unrelated to Ukrainian aid in 2014,” PolitiFact, November 14, 2019 (https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/nov/14/obamas-hot-mic-momentrussian-president-2012-was-u/).

4 Michael McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace (Mariner Books: New York, 2018), 322–323.

5 Matt Spetalnick and Gleb Bryanski, “Obama to press Putin on Syria at G20 amid skepticism,” Reuters, June 17, 2012 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g20-obama-putin-idUSBRE85H07920120618).

6 McFaul, op. cit., 358–359.

7 Ibid., 362–363.

8 “Russia to Drop Cooperative Threat Reduction Deal with U.S.: Report,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, October 12, 2012 (https://www.nti.org/gsn/article/russia-drop-cooperative-threat-reduction-deal-us-report/).

9 https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/pl112_208.pdf

10 McFaul, op. cit., 367–369.

11 “Newer START: Obama to unveil nuclear reduction, charm Russia into joining?,” February 11, 2013, RT.Com (https://www.rt.com/usa/nuclearreduction-us-russia-925/).

12 “Reset redux: Washington’s ‘secret letter’ to Moscow provokes speculation,” February 13, 2013, RT.Com (https://www.rt.com/russia/russia-uspushkov-moscow-nuclear-global-zero-100/).

13 Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Obama dares Congress to get the job done,” CNN.Com, February 13, 2013 (https://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/13/opinion/slaughter-sotu-address/index.html).

14 David M. Herszenhorn, “As U.S. Seeks Security Pact, Obama Is Set to Meet Putin,” The New York Times, April 15, 2013 (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/world/europe/tensions-high-us-security-chief-meets-withputin.html).

15 Nadezhda Khamitova, “First Day of Iran Nuclear Program Talks Ends with No Significant Results; Talks to Continue on Feb. 27,” The Asia Times, February 26, 2013 (https://astanatimes.com/2013/02/first-day-of-iran-nuclearprogramme-talks-ends-with-no-significant-results-talks-to-continue-onfeb-27/).

16 https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/syria-2013.htm.

17 Justin McCurry and Tania Branigan, “North Korea stages nuclear test in defiance of bans,” The Guardian, February 12, 2013 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/12/north-korea-nuclear-test-earthquake).

18 David Herszenhorn and Michael Gordon, “U.S. Cancels Part of Missile Defense that Russia Opposed,” The New York Times, March 16, 2013 (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/world/europe/with-eye-on-north-korea-uscancels-missile-defense-russia-opposed.html).

19 https://www.globalsecurity.org/space/facility/deveselu.htm.

20 David M. Herszenhorn, “As U.S. Seeks Security Pact, Obama Is Set to Meet Putin,” The New York Times, April 15, 2013 (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/world/europe/tensions-high-us-security-chief-meets-withputin.html).

21 Ibid.

22 Miriam Elder, “Russia and U.S. pledge Syrian Conference with Both Sides,” The Guardian, May 7, 2013 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/07/russia-us-syria-conference).

23 The passages about the 9M729 missile and Novator were adapted from my article in The American Conservative, “How Politics Trump Intel in the U.S.-Russia Nuke Treaty Pullout,” February 25, 2019, and used with permission. (https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-facts-how-politicstrumped-intel-in-nuke-treaty-pullout/).

24 Michael Gordon, “U.S. Says Russia Tested Cruise Missile, Violating Treaty,” July 28, 2014, The New York Times, July 28, 2013 (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/world/europe/us-says-russia-tested-cruise-missile-in-violationof-treaty.html).

25 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-18/leaders-gather-for-g8-summit-in-northern-ireland/4761386.

26 https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/19/fact-sheet-nuclear-weapons-employment-strategy-united-states.

27 https://fas.org/wp-content/uploads/media/Excerpts-of-Classified-Nuclear-Posture-Review.pdf.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/19/barack-obama-berlinspeech-full-text.

31 Ibid.

32 McFaul, op. cit., 376–377.

33 Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic, April 2016 (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/).

34 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957.

35 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/05/ukraine-russia-explainer.

36 https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheet/Timeline-of-Nuclear-Diplomacy-With-Iran.

37 Charles Lister, “Russia’s intervention in Syria: Protracting an already endless conflict,” Brookings Institute, October 15, 2015 (https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/russias-intervention-in-syria-protracting-an-already-endlessconflict/).

38 https://www.rt.com/usa/336501-trump-russia-relations-putin/.

39 Scott Ritter, “Time to Reassess the Roles Played by Guccifer 2.0 and Russia in the DNC ‘Hack’,” TruthDig, July 28, 2018 (https://www.truthdig.com/articles/time-to-reassess-the-roles-played-by-guccifer-2-0-and-russia-in-thednc-hack/).

40 Jeremy Herb, “Mook suggests Russians leaked DNC emails to help Trump,” Politico, July 24, 2016 (https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/robbymook-russians-emails-trump-226084).

41 Ivan Levingston, “Trump: I hope Russia finds ‘the 30,000 emails that are missing’,” CNBC.com, July 27, 2016 (https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/27/trump-hope-russia-finds-the-30000-emails-that-are-missing.html).

42 Ella Nilsen, The Mueller indictments reveal the timing of the DNC leak was intentional, Vox, July 13, 2018 (https://www.vox.com/2018/7/13/17569030/mueller-indictments-russia-hackers-bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-democraticnational-convention).

43 William M. Arkin, Ken Dilanian and Cynthia McFadden, “What Obama Said to Putin on the Red Phone About the Election Hack,” NBC News, December 19, 2016 (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/what-obama-said-putin-redphone-about-election-hack-n697116).

44 Louis Nelson, “Obama says he told Putin to ‘cut it out’ on Russian hacking,” Politico, December 16, 2016 (https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/obama-putin-232754).

45 Arkin, Dilanian and McFadden, op. cit.

46 Kim Zetter, “How Obama Endangered Us All with Stuxnet,” The Daily Beast, November 13, 2014 (https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-obamaendangered-us-all-with-stuxnet).

47 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/read-us-intelligencereport-russian-hacking-2016-campaign/.

48 Andrew Desiderio, “Congress: Trump Won’t Implement Russia Sanctions—and He Won’t Tell Us Why,” The Daily Beast, October 23, 2017 (https://www.thedailybeast.com/congress-trump-wont-implement-russiasanctionsand-he-wont-tell-us-why?ref=scroll).

49 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-interview-highlightsidUSKBN1622RG.

50 Ibid.

51 The passage about Trump and NATO is adapted from an article written by the author entitled “Bumbling Toward a New Cold War with Russia,” published in The Washington Spectator on July 6, 2017, and used with permission (https://washingtonspectator.org/new-cold-war-ritter/).

52 Mark B. Schneider, “Escalate to Deescalate,” Proceedings, February 2017 (https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017/february/escalate-deescalate).

53 https://www.offiziere.ch/wp-content/uploads-001/2015/08/Russia-s-2014-Military-Doctrine.pdf.

54 The passages about the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review have been adapted from an article by the author published in The American Conservative and is used with permission. Scott Ritter, “Trump Nuke Plan Resets the Doomsday Clock,” February 1, 2018.

55 Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The New Era of Counterforce,” International Security, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Spring 2017) (https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/isec_a_00273_LieberPress.pdf).

56 http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/56957.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid.

63 https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF.

64 https://livableworld.org/council-sends-letter-to-leader-mcconnellasking-him-to-reject-new-warhead/.

65 https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/.

66 Shivani Singh, “2019 NPT PrepCom and Article VI: Faultlines, and the Future,” Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, June 27, 2019 (http://www.ipcs.org/comm_select.php?articleNo=5594).

67 https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-04/features/creatingenvironment-nuclear-disarmament-striding-forward-stepping-back.

68 The passages about the INF and New START treaties are adapted from an article by the author published by The American Conservative and is used with permission. Scott Ritter, “Trump Surrenders to John Bolton on Russia and Arms Control,” October 26, 2018 (https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-surrenders-to-john-bolton-on-russia-and-arms-control/).

69 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/17/vladimir-putincondemns-us-sanctions-against-russia.

70 Eugene Scott, “Trump Dismisses the Idea that Putin wanted him to win. Putin just admitted that he did,” The Washington Post, July 16, 2018.

71 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-vladimir-putin_n_5866b8e1e4b0eb58648952e0.

72 https://www.timesofisrael.com/putin-us-took-hostile-step-inpublishing-russia-oligarch-list/.

73 https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/30/list-russian-politiciansoligarchs-flourished-under-putin-376822.

74 Ibid.

75 https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2073532/statement-on-the-fielding-of-the-w76-2-low-yield-submarinelaunched-ballistic-m/.

76 Marcus Weisgerber, “Esper Plays Nuclear War: Russia Nukes Europe, U.S. Fires Back,” Defense One, February 21, 20120 (https://www.defenseone.com/politics/2020/02/esper-plays-nuclear-war-russia-nukes-europe-us-firesback/163268/).

77 The passages about General Wolters’ testimony and the Russian response are taken from an article by the author published in Russia Today, and is used with permission. Scott Ritter, “The threat of a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia is now at its greatest since 1983,” February 29, 2020 (https://www.rt.com/op-ed/481959-nuclear-war-russia-nato/).