As the United States erects a missile-defense system in Central Europe, Russian politicians have begun to protest that this location represents an attack on them. They sometimes hint that it may be sufficiently threatening to derail the current talks aimed at negotiating a new strategic arms-limitation treaty. At least up to the present, the U.S. answer has been that missile defense is directed against the developing Iranian threat to Europe. The argument is that no ally is likely to support the United States in a crisis if its own country is held hostage by Iranian missiles.
As it becomes less and less likely that the Iranian nuclear industry will be destroyed before Iran manages to create a nuclear-armed strategic-missile force, this argument gains momentum. However, it is difficult to define the capabilities of a given defensive system. For example, simply placing a radar closer to the threat can enormously increase the effectiveness of a missile. That might also apply to a satellite warning system used to trigger an anti-missile weapon on the surface. The U.S. government must therefore face the possibility that almost any missile defense it erects can ultimately be used against Russian missiles. How important is that likely to be? Should the United States feel obliged to leave the Russians free to fire nuclear missiles against any place they choose, including U.S. territory?
A Potemkin Economy
Much depends on how we evaluate Russian capacity to build strategic weapons. In the end, arms limitations are usually accepted on the theory that without them a country would spend large sums to buy more weapons without gaining any advantage. The connection between economics and arms control was demonstrated in the 1960s and early 1970s, when for the first time the United States had the ability to create a meaningful national missile-defense system. At that time skeptics argued that for every dollar an attacker spent on decoys the United States would have to spend three, or five, or even ten. That translated into potential U.S. bankruptcy if the Soviet economy was about the same size as the American, or if the Soviets had a similar amount to spend on their ballistic missiles. Few considered this caveat, and it was assumed that the Soviet economy was at least half as large as that of the United States. It was also thought that although the visible (civilian) Soviet economy was grossly inefficient, the military economy was radically different, and at least matched that of the United States. So the Soviets really could build a lot even with a smaller economy.
It later turned out that neither assumption was even mildly realistic. The best current guess is that the Soviet economy was about a sixth the size of America’s late in the Cold War. Actual calculation is difficult, both because the Soviet system could not be measured in Western ways, and because Soviet managers lied blatantly to gain personal advantages, such as bonuses (even the Soviets were not sure of what they produced).
As for efficiency, in the late 1970s U.S. intelligence became aware that nothing in the Soviet Union was much more efficient than anything else; the calculated Soviet defense burden suddenly doubled. There were also serious miscalculations of a more detailed kind. After the Cold War it became clear that the Soviets had been utterly unable to mass-produce computers. For example, they were reduced to buying Western digital calculators so that they could remove their components to produce ICBM multiple-warhead guidance packages. Those decoys might well not have been so easy to produce.
In the 1960s, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara decided that the missile-defense system then being discussed was unaffordable, particularly since he needed the available defense money to pay for the war in Vietnam. He rationalized abandoning missile defense on the grounds that it was destabilizing. The United States and the Soviet Union could destroy each other. If either tried to set up a serious defense, the other might take that as evidence that it was planning to strike first, in the hope that any counter-blow would fail. This was naive on its face; no one would bet his country on the performance of a largely untested national-defense system.
It took enormous efforts to convince the Soviets that this kind of reasoning was anything but insane. Eventually they seem to have welcomed it because they had much more belief in the proposed U.S. system than in their own, and they and the United States signed the ABM Treaty in 1972. It was enshrined in popular memory as a great Cold War success. Most Americans accepted the elimination of all defense and turned a blind eye to the fact that (as the treaty allowed) the Soviets erected a missile defense of the only key target in their country (as far as their leaders were concerned), Moscow.
This history has current implications. If the Russians can suddenly begin turning out large numbers of strategic missiles, then it may matter that they abandon the strategic arms limitation process. That may not quite be the case. Russian commentators have crowed that the current proposed treaty will not entail any cuts in their forces. The reason is simple: They are already weaker than the proposed treaty level (U.S. forces are stronger). Nor is there much prospect for growth. Again and again the Russians have announced that one or another aging missile system is having its life extended. Russian writers have revealed that the three new strategic submarines (Borey class) are actually Akula-class (NATO designation) attack submarines laid down in the early 1990s and then suspended. Their hulls have been modified with new missile sections and, presumably, some new internal equipment. That helps explain why the first of these submarines, the Dmitri Donskoi, was largely an assembly of parts of earlier designs. The sheer age of much that has gone into these submarines suggests that they are likely to encounter serious service problems.
Militaries are Expensive
The Russians certainly advertise a massive defense industry sufficient to equip forces of Soviet-era size, but it is unlikely that they have managed to resurrect anything like the enormous Soviet defense industry, which could support mass armies and air forces and a large fleet. Instead it seems more and more that the Russians are relying heavily on their nuclear forces as a means of exerting national power abroad. That is a policy of weakness or poverty, not of strength, because nuclear weapons offer great firepower at a relatively low cost, both in terms of cash and numbers (though not quality) of people. Moreover, because no one can be sure whether existing equipment (and warheads) still work, it is possible to exert power with aging systems of dubious reliability—but costing very little to maintain, at least in appearance.
The collapse of the Soviet Union left its Russian core with a much smaller population. Demographics was already a serious problem in the Soviet Union, as the Russian population was declining. Poverty, which had been accelerating in Soviet times, worsened for many because much of the national wealth was more concentrated after the end of the Soviet Union than before. The result has been a higher death rate (average lifespan in Russia has been falling fairly dramatically). However, the Russians have felt compelled to maintain a large army, not least because they fear that Islamic revival across their Central Asian borders (which they call the “near abroad”) can spread and cause remaining Russian territory to dissolve. Modern mass armies are expensive, because the ratio of equipment to manpower is high (that is why modern armies have so fewer formations, such as divisions, than their predecessors).
The primary problem for the Russians is that their current economy is essentially Western, in the sense that it is based on prices. There is no longer a way (via the old Communist Party) for favored people to receive desired things without paying much for them. The favored people now must be paid directly, and the vast sums they receive are not available to buy other things, such as shiny jet fighters or tanks or corvettes. In the past, the Soviet state could order the airplanes, ships, or tanks, negotiating their prices (in more or less meaningless rubles). Those producing the weapons had to show a paper profit (in Soviet terms, the difference between input and output), so they simply increased the prices of the civilian goods they made. That made up for the artificially low prices of the weapons.
Now the producer has to pay those building the weapons and those supplying the materials and power. In doing so it has to compete with other parts of the Russian economy; the more skilled the workers and the more exotic the other inputs, the higher the price of the finished product. Moreover, a good deal of money is extracted from the economy to pay for political loyalty, e.g. to the oligarchs supporting President Vladimir Putin. This widespread graft limits what the Russians can spend on rearmament. To make matters worse, fiascos such as the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya have demonstrated that a draftee army is probably unacceptable, and the Russians are increasingly relying on volunteers (“contract” personnel). That raises the cost of the mass army they feel is needed, and that cost in turn reduces the resources available to build weapons.
China may make Russia’s future bleaker. The Russian economy floats almost entirely on the income generated by selling the resources of Siberia, such as oil. The land involved was seized from the Chinese Empire over two centuries, legitimized by what the Chinese call the unequal (coerced) treaties. In recent years many Chinese have moved into Siberia. Russians are surely beginning to wonder when the Chinese will seek to revisit the terms of those treaties, particularly if Chinese wealth creates a military machine more than capable of taking on the Russians.
Now the threat posed by any sort of ballistic-missile defense erected outside Russia becomes obvious. It is a threat against what the Russians would like to use to cow the breakaway parts of their former empire, because they are unlikely able to rebuild the non-nuclear part of their old military machine. It also becomes obvious why the new NATO member states of Central Europe, such as Poland, are interested in missile defense; it may be the primary means of facing down some future Russian threat. No one in that part of the world is likely to imagine that the Russians have given up their historic ambitions to control it.