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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 3/3/18

Putin Claims Strategic Parity, Respect

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Russian President Vladimir Putin's State-of-the-Nation speech Thursday represents a liminal event in the East-West strategic balance -- and an ominous one.

That the strategic equation is precarious today comes through clearly in Putin's words. The U.S. and Russia have walked backwards over the threshold of sanity first crossed in the right direction by their predecessors in 1972 with the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Amid the "balance of terror" that reigned pre-1972, sensible statesmen on both sides concluded and implemented the ABM treaty which, in effect, guaranteed "mutual assured destruction" -- the (altogether fitting) acronym was MAD -- if either side attempted a nuclear attack on the other. MAD might not sound much better than "balance of terror," but the ABM treaty introduced a significant degree of stability for 30 years.

The treaty itself was the result of painstaking negotiation with considerable understanding and good faith shown by both sides. The formidable task challenging us intelligence specialists was to be able to assure President Nixon that, if he decided to trust, we could monitor Soviet adherence and promptly report any violations. (Incidentally, the Soviets did cheat. In mid-1983 we detected a huge early warning radar installation at Krasnoyarsk in Siberia -- a clear violation of the ABM treaty. President Reagan called them on it, and the Soviets eventually tore it down.)

During the U.S.-Soviet negotiations on the ABM treaty, a third of the CIA Soviet Foreign Policy Branch, which I led at the time, was involved in various supporting roles. I was in Moscow on May 26, 1972 for the treaty signing by President Richard Nixon and Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. I recall not being able to suppress an audible sigh of relief. MAD, I believed, would surely be preferable to the highly precarious strategic situation that preceded it. It was.

Cornerstone of Stability

In his speech on March 1, President Putin included an accurate tutorial on what happened after three decades, noting that Moscow was "categorically against" the U.S. decision in 2002 to withdraw from the ABM treaty. He described the treaty as "the cornerstone of the international security system."

Putin explained that under the treaty, "the parties had the right to deploy ballistic missile defense systems in only one of its regions. Russia deployed these systems around Moscow, and the U.S. around its Grand Forks land-based ICBM base [in North Dakota]." (He did not mention the aborted attempt to deploy a second installation at Krasnoyarsk.)

The Russian President explained: "The ABM treaty not only created an atmosphere of trust, but also prevented either party from recklessly using nuclear weapons ... because the limited number of ballistic missile defense systems made the potential aggressor vulnerable to a response strike."

Putin was saying, in effect, that no matter how bad -- even mad -- the MAD concept may seem, it played a huge stabilizing role. He added that the U.S. rejected all Russian proposals toward constructive dialogue on the post-ABM treaty situation, and grossly underestimated Russia's ability to respond. The Russian President then gave chapter and verse, cum video clips, on an array of new Russian weaponry which, he claimed, rendered missile defense systems "useless." The show-and-tell segment of Putin's speech has been widely reported.

New York Times Skeptical

David Sanger, the New York Times' go-to guy on key issues, who is among the best in the trade on reporting as "flat facts" things like WMD in Iraq and "Russian meddling," wrote the lede on Putin's speech in Friday's NY Times together with Neil MacFarquhar. The meme this time is not flat fact, but skepticism: "Do these weapons really exist? Or is Putin bluffing?"

In support of their skepticism, Sanger and MacFarquhar blithely report that "analysts writing on Facebook and elsewhere leaned toward the bluff theory." So, QED!

And echoing former National Intelligence Director James Clapper's insight that Russians are "typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever," Sanger and MacFarquhar remind NYT readers that "deception lies at the heart of current Russian military doctrine."

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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for 27 years, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). His (more...)
 
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