The US and Russia may resume dialogue on strategic stability issues

Russia received a proposal from the United States to systematically resume dialogue on strategic stability. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov announced this on October 25. According to him, the proposals were submitted in an informal form and now the Russian side is studying them in an interdepartmental format. “There are no elements of novelty there. This is a well-known position, it’s just brought together. We are calmly studying this and will respond to the Americans at the appropriate time. In what form, it’s too early to say,” the diplomat added.

Ryabkov believes that the American proposal does not mean an immediate resumption of dialogue on strategic stability: “They propose to put the dialogue on strategic stability and arms control on a systematic basis, and to do this in isolation from everything that is happening.” According to him, the Russian side is not ready for this. The reason is the fundamentally hostile course of the United States towards Russia. In such conditions, “a return to dialogue on strategic stability, including the topic of strategic offensive weapons” is simply impossible, the deputy minister concluded.

Moscow unilaterally suspended participation in the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (START), the last document of its kind with Washington. According to President Vladimir Putin, Russia suspended the treaty and did not withdraw from New START. In his message to the Federal Assembly on February 21, the Russian leader explained this decision by saying that the guaranteed shelf life for combat use of certain types of nuclear weapons in the United States was expiring and Washington was already thinking about the possibility of natural testing of its nuclear weapons “taking into account the fact that the United States is developing new types of nuclear weapons.”

In this situation, the Ministry of Defense and Rosatom must ensure readiness to test Russian nuclear weapons, Putin said: “We, of course, will not be the first to do this, but if the United States conducts tests, then we will conduct them too. No one should have any dangerous illusions that global strategic parity can be destroyed.”

The START Treaty was concluded by Russia and the United States in 2010 and provided for the reduction of strategic offensive weapons. By 2018, these had been reduced to 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed ballistic missiles, submarines (SLBMs), and deployed heavy bombers (HBOs), and 1,550 warheads on deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and HBs.

Another step that Russia took six months later was the withdrawal of ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). This decision, made already in October, balances Russia’s status under the agreement with the United States, said Konstantin Vorontsov, Deputy Director of the Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on October 16. “Withdrawal of ratification does not mean our country’s intention to resume nuclear testing. As Russian President Vladimir Putin said, we will not be the first to conduct nuclear tests. Responsibility for how the situation will develop lies entirely with the United States,” he noted.

The next day, during the consideration of the bill to revoke ratification, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that the United States had not ratified the CTBT for 23 years. “Russia remains a state that signed the treaty with all the ensuing rights and obligations,” said Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, on October 25, when the CTBT treaty was considered by the chamber. “The cancellation of ratification does not weaken the constructive approach to the CTBT, but restores the parity of obligations in relations with the United States in the field of nuclear arms control.”

The problem is that Russia and the United States have different views on the possibilities of restoring dialogue, says Oleg Krivolapov, a senior researcher at the Department of Military-Political Studies at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to the expert, the United States would like to gradually stabilize the bilateral format of strategic relations. Russia has made it clear more than once that it is open to discussing these initiatives, but only if the United States offers something more significant than consultations. Krivolapov suggests that one such proposal could be a revision of the security architecture in Europe. He also notes that Americans may well use such proposals as a PR move, but this is not the main thing for them, Krivolapov concluded.

The fact that the Americans proposed something can already be interpreted positively, says Dmitry Stefanovich, a researcher at the Center for International Security at IMEMO RAS. On the other hand, the fact that these proposals took so long to prepare shows what a deep failure has occurred in Russian-American interaction on strategic issues. The Russian reaction is absolutely expected; now the conditions for resuming a healthy dialogue in this area are hardly visible, the expert continues. But alternative scenarios lead nowhere in the long term; accordingly, given the American side’s readiness to resolve a wide range of issues, the search for solutions in the field of strategic stability should become a key priority, the expert concludes.