1 Introduction

Let me start with several remarks about the general political context of the nuclear weapons debate in Russia and single out several factors that are shaping this debate.

First, the end of bipolarity had a paradoxical impact on the nuclear arms control. On the one hand, having removed the threat of a global conflict it opened the way to big arms control treaties, first and foremost START I. On the other hand, it marginalized the very process of arms control.

Second, the end of East–West confrontation brought to power a new generation of politicians and military experts who either do not know the history of arms control or do not consider it important. Unlike their predecessors who lived through several serious international crises, first and foremost the Cuban missile crisis, the new Russian political elite is quite ignorant about the past and has an easy going-attitude to arms control.

Third, the last but not least, after the collapse of the USSR the new Russian leadership became obsessed with the loss of the great power status. It is nuclear weapons and Russia’s permanent seat in the UN SC that are viewed as the main attributes of the great nuclear power status equal to the US.

The combination of these factors—marginalization, disregard and status problem created a particular or rather unfavorable climate for arms control, the crisis of which is now recognized at the highest state level of the leading powers of the world.

2 The Main Russian Schools of Thought

Against the background of the crisis, three schools of thought have formed in Russia. Two of them represent diametrically opposed approaches. One of them is “idealistic”, the second opposite school can be called “revisionist” and in the midst there is a third school of thought which can be defined as a school of strategic realism. The main debate is going not between two extremes—idealists and revisionists but between revisionists and strategic realists because the main idea of idealists—to end the nuclear threat in one fell swoop—nowadays looks utopian in the world where hard power is coming back to the international security agenda. Unfrortunately, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (JNW) approved in 2017 by the UN General Assembly remains a beautiful strategic dream.

The opposite “revisionist school is not homogeneous and includes experts with very different, if not opposite, ideological views. Russian nationalists and pro-US liberals found common ground in the belief that nuclear multipolarity and the latest weapon systems have abolished the old principles of arms control. The underlying motives of liberal revisionists have been based on fear that differences between Russia and the West on arms control are an obstacle to good relations between them. They propose to abandon old practices and principles that include parity, quantitative levels and sublevels, weapons counting and verification methods. They want to put all this in the scrap along with the arms control treaties. In exchange, they propose a multilateral dialogue (primarily between Russia, the United States and China) on new vague principles of strategic stability, military transparency and predictability. Their goal is not to proclaim arms limitation, but to strengthen mutual deterrence and prevent any conflicts of great powers. Although there are differences and nuances within the revisionist school its majority is quite responsive to the dominant moods and leanings of the high rank Russian officials. Therefore they build their arguments around these prevailing sentiments.

1. Their main argument is that nuclear weapons are still needed because they saved the humanity from the threat of the III world war and even played kind of civilizing role for political elites of the leading countries, having inspired them to focus their actions on prevention of a nuclear war.

Strategic realists, their main opponents, say that although it is impossible neither to accept, nor to dismiss this argument, it is well known that nuclear weapons were created and used in 1945 not for deterrence and political containment but for total destruction of an adversary in case of a new war.

The idea of the nuclear weapons deterring role as a means of political containment was accepted by the US and NATO only in the 60 s and by the USSR in the 70 s. They remind that the most dangerous crisis between the West and the East—the Caribbean crisis of 1962—was initiated by the deployment of nuclear missiles in the UK in 1958 and in Italy and Turkey in 1961. And the paradox is that the crisis, which in the eyes of the opponents of the nuclear disarmament was resolved due to the very existence of the nuclear weapons, in fact was provoked by the existence of nuclear weapons.

The strategic relists also say that if nuclear deterrence has worked in the bipolar world there is no guarantee that it will continue to work in the future. With the removal of the fear of escalation of any nuclear weapon use to a global catastrophe, all nuclear weapon states became much more arrogant, irresponsible and “easygoing” in contemplating initiation of actual combat employment of nuclear weapons to perform various military missions, including selective use of nuclear weapons. In any case without strategic arms control negotiations the international situation won’t be safer in the multipolar world.

The current Ukraine crisis is the most telling evidence to this assumption. The Russian special operation in Ukraine has acquired a nuclear dimension before President Putin’s decision to elevate the nuclear alert of the Russian strategic forces. The statement of the NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg about NATO’s intention to withdraw tactical nuclear weapons from Germany and redeploy them in Poland had a negative impact on Russia. Many in Russia think that it was one of the motives for Russia’s special operation, although other doubt this assumption and say that it was just a pretext. But if political ground is prepared, then the pretext becomes a real motive.

Will the nuclear taboo be broken for the first time in 77 years, or will the balance of nuclear deterrence be maintained? The real risk involves the tactical weapons, and although the likelihood of use is low, there are fears that the Putin’s calculation of profits and losses will lead him to escalate the campaign.

2. The second argument of nationalist revisionists against arms control is that nuclear proliferation is not guided by the lack of disarmament but rather by other incentives. They argue that the future of NPT lays not only in the responsibility of the nuclear weapons states and that nuclear disarmament of the NWS, will not lead a determined proliferation candidate to stop its nuclear programs. Iran’s or North Korea’s intentions are guided not by the lack of disarmament but by their regional strategic considerations or considerations of prestige or those of regime survival.

Strategic realists underline that reliance on nuclear weapons is the soft spot in non-proliferation approach of any NWS and it is used as a pretext by proliferation candidates to get nuclear weapons. They insist that a more thorough analysis shows that the link between nuclear disarmament and non proliferation did exist and does exist.

First, nuclear disarmament creates a favorable international context for non-proliferation. One cannot ignore the fact that around 40 new countries, joined NPT (including two of the declared nuclear powers, France and China) at the same time as intensive nuclear disarmament talks and real reductions in stockpiles of nuclear weapons were taking place from 1987 to 1998. (During this period, the INF Treaty, START I, START II, the START III framework agreement, and the CTBT were signed, and the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia took parallel, unilateral initiatives to reduce tactical nuclear weapons. There was also significant progress in non-nuclear but related areas, including the conclusions of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and the Chemical Weapons Convention. The NPT was indefinitely extended in 1995, and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) Additional Protocol was drafted in 1997. Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Iraq abandoned their nuclear weapons programs. Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan that had nuclear weapons on their territories as a result of the USSR break-up joined NPT as non-nuclear states.)Footnote 1

Second, the deadlock in nuclear disarmament talks only serves to fuel mutual mistrust which directly affects NWS cooperation on non-proliferation, in particular sanctions against proliferation candidates.

Third, the link between nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation in some areas is even more direct and obvious. If the US had not withdrawn from ABM Treaty and not blocked CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) and FMCT (Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty), North Korea and potentially Iran would have had not just one barrier to overcome but three—NPT, CTBT and FMCT in trying to go nuclear.

So the link between nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation exists though it is not automatic. Fulfilling disarmament obligations along with the Article VI of NPT is not in itself a guarantee against nuclear proliferation which would require other measures. However non-fulfillment of obligations contained in Article VI practically guarantees nuclear proliferation.

3. The third argument of the revisionists’ school is that after the new START, the so called Prague treaty, further reductions of the Russia nuclear arsenal will have a destabilizing impact. They will increase Russia’s conventional inferiority, undermine its military reform, reinforce the BMD importance and encourage small nuclear states to expand their nuclear arsenals.

Strategic realists argue that the aggregated destructive potential of the world nuclear arsenals after the planned reductions will be about 2000 MT (80% of which is related to Russia and the US arsenals), which 60 000 times as large as the destructive power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. So, even after the planned reductions there will be a long way to the rational minimal ceilings of the existing nuclear arsenals. Certainly, it is unrealistic to reach these rational ceilings without other measures: resolving the problem of BMD, joint management of the problem of the US long-range conventional precision-guided systems, tactical nuclear weapons, inclusion of third nuclear weapons states in the process of nuclear disarmament, the reinstatement of CFE regime and other measures.

4. The fourth argument of the Russian revisionists stems from their previous assumptions and boils down to the conclusion that it is impossible to stop nuclear proliferation. Therefore, we should accept nuclear proliferation as a reality, and therefore Russia and the US should learn how to live with other nuclear states and coordinate their policies. Of all arguments against nuclear disarmament this statement is the most dangerous and irresponsible. In the time of bipolarity it took USSR and US two decades of balancing on the edge of nuclear disaster and surviving several serious crises to achieve the stable mutual nuclear deterrence on the solid legal basis. It would be naïve to think that the future nuclear proliferation will be developing along the same pattern. With all criticism, in many senses the USSR and USA were much more reliable and responsible than the majority of states that are striving now for nuclear weapons. Their nuclear forces will be more primitive and vulnerable than those of NWS which means that these counties will be much more prone to first use of nuclear forces. Aside from this most of the states that would like to go nuclear are unstable political regimes, prone to extremism and adventurism. This state of affairs increases the probability of nuclear terrorism that cannot be prevented by any BMD system.

The easygoing proposal of the opponents to nuclear disarmament that NWS should reconcile themselves with the idea that Iran will go nuclear anyway is a recipe for disaster. It sends wrong messages both to Iran and Israel. The latter, who lives for decades under the threat of being erased from the surface, will never accept a nuclear Iran, which means only thing—a new military conflict.

5. The last argument of the hard-nosed revisionists is based on the recognition that given Russia’s geopolitical vulnerability, slow economic modernization, corruption, lack of soft power, it would be a national suicide to destroy or even to diminish further its nuclear potential.

Their opponents would say that the role of nuclear weapons as a guarantor of Russia’s security and its great power status is strongly exaggerated by the critics of nuclear disarmament. One should not forget that the USSR collapsed although its nuclear arsenal was 7 times bigger than that of Russia. Moreover that was exactly the reason of the USSR collapse. In the situation of détente under Gorbachev leadership it was impossible to justify the huge waste of financial and other resources for the East–West military competition. And the USSR rapidly began to crumble, despite having an army of four million men and a military arsenal that included more than 30,000 nuclear warheads, more than 2,000 strategic missiles, 60,000 tanks and almost 200 nuclear submarines (more than the rest of the world put together). Russia should not repeat this mistake and it is painful to think that nuclear weapons are the only possibility for Russia to remain a great power on the international arena.

3 Concluding Remarks

Summing up, it is possible to conclude that hard-nosed “revisionists” are the most dangerous school of our political thinking. The perniciousness of their philosophy lies in the fact that political elites are inspired with the idea that the arms control crisis is natural and not so detrimental, and the international community can live without treaties. They reject difficult and exhausting negotiations involving acute conflicts of interests outside and within the country and call for a bold “renovation” of the archaic practice.

However, upon closer examination their ideological arguments collapse like a house of cards. Being masters of superficial knowledge, the “revisionists” do not understand that the ceilings of the START treaties being only upper limits never imposed on the parties arithmetic equality of nuclear forces, but for decades they served as a guarantee of strategic predictability and removed incentives for the first strike and stable deterrence. This guarantee was confirmed by verification and transparency measures. Such strict regimes cannot be replaced by general and vague strategic discussions, which in recent years have been demonstrated in the framework of the “nuclear five”, as well as between Russia and the United States and between the United States and China.

However attractive the idea of multilateral nuclear disarmament may look, it is most easily perceived by politicians who are not specialists in tghis field and the ty cannot intelligibly explain why, up to and including START-3, Russia and the United States could conduct a bilateral arms control process, but cannot continue it now. If we take into account all the nuclear weapons available to nine nuclear-weapon states, then Russia and the United States individually have several times more such weapons than the rest of the seven combined. Uncertainty exists only with respect to China, and the reference to Chinese medium-range missiles serves as one of two reasons for the United States to withdraw from the INF Treaty.

If China agrees to negotiations, it’s easy to predict its appetite: for eliminating its superiority in medium-range ground-based missiles, China will most certainly raise the issue of equality with Russia and the US in sea-based cruise missiles, as well as in strategic weapons (i.e. about lowering the START-3 ceiling seven times to Chinese level).

It is clear that the existing treaties are far from ideal and not self-sufficient. The development of military equipment, as before, poses new challenges: the limitation of strategic non-nuclear weapons, cybernetic, space, hypersonic and autonomous systems, etc. Against the background of an uncontrolled arms race, new technologies will have a more destabilizing effect. However, within the framework of vague discussion these most complicated problems cannot be solved outside concrete negotiations in deeply thought-out formats. Otherwise, the chaos of the world order and military technologies will be aggravated by the chaos of the legal system of disarmament and disorder.

The last but not least. The dangerous nexus between science and politics. imposes a special responsibility on scientists. When a scientist says or writes that a nuclear explosion may be less detrimental to environment than Karakatau volcano eruption, he or she sends a clear message to political leadership.