Russia Is Ready To Immediately Extend New START Treaty, Putin Affirms

Dec. 6, 2019 (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin said: “Russia is ready to extend the New START Treaty without delay, as soon as possible, before the end of this year without any preconditions. I say that formally to ensure that there is no double or triple interpretation of our stance.” He made his remarks in Sochi, on Dec. 5, during the last of two days of meetings with the leadership of the Defense Ministry and other departments, as well as defense industry enterprises. “All our proposals regarding the extension the New START Treaty are on the table. We have so far received no response from our partners,” he said.

After outlining the previous day’s discussions, and the current day’s agenda, including that “Successful research and development in the aforementioned high-tech areas are of crucial importance for the development of civilian sector, for increasing thecompetitiveness of the national science, and creating advanced industries and infrastructure for the digital economy,” and “to discuss measures to counter potential threats stemming from the United States’ withdrawal from the INF Treaty,” the Russian President stressed:

“To reiterate, Russia is not interested in launching an arms race or deploying missiles in environments where no missiles are currently deployed. As you may be aware, we announced a unilateral moratorium on deploying such [intermediate- and shorter-range] missiles and invited our colleagues in Europe and the United States to join in. So far, only the President of the French Republic, Mr. Macron, has responded. There is no response from our other partners. This forces us to take measures to counter these threats.”

The day before Putin announced willingness to extend New START, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood was telling reporters why the Pentagon wants low-yield nuclear warheads on some of its submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Rood said the need for the new low-yield weapons came from intelligence reports of Russian emphasis on use of nuclear weapons early on in a conflict, “and the mistaken belief that they have the ability to use a low-yield nuclear weapon earlier in the conflict in a way to deter response.” His reference was to the alleged Russian “escalate-to-de-escalate” doctrine.

“We saw the need of aggressive action to restore deterrence, which had gotten weaker than we would like with these supplemental capabilities” that would show “we had a variety of capabilities that were more survivable than the existing low-yield weapons” that our aircraft delivered. “We see this as very stabilizing” and in no way supporting the concept of early use of low-yield nuclear weapons, Rood said, countering the warnings from arms-control advocates.

Russian officials and a number of experts on nuclear weapons policy have repeatedly refuted that Russia has an “escalate to de-escalate” policy in its military doctrine over the past two or more years, but the notion lives on in Pentagon documents which provide the basis for U.S. nuclear doctrine and force structure.