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More Cooperation Between Russia and West Could Reduce Nuclear Threats, Experts Say By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — Increased Russian-Western military cooperation in the world’s hot spots would ease resolution of disputes involving nuclear nonproliferation, two prominent experts said here today (see GSN, Jan. 12). Moscow and NATO should step up general military cooperation and personnel exchanges to move beyond an outdated agenda defined by arms control, focusing instead on common threats, said RAND Corp. Senior Adviser Robert Hunter and Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies Director Sergei Rogov. “Russia-NATO relations cannot be any more based on arms-control agreements,” Rogov told reporters at the National Press Club. “Many premises of the Cold War arms-control agenda are irrelevant today.” Although preventing a new arms race remains important, Rogov said, “We can concentrate on a positive agenda, and that’s why we give so much emphasis in [a recent report edited by Hunter and Rogov] on Russian-NATO military cooperation.” Hunter, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said such cooperation could improve U.S.-Russian understanding on Iranian nuclear development and other areas of disagreement. The Russian-Western “21st-century agenda,” he said, is one that “begins with weapons of mass destruction and terrorism” but must also include cooperation in areas such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel and the Palestinian territories. The United States should also take greater pains to avoid the appearance of seeking to contain Russia, Hunter said. Rogov agreed that to “get rid of the legacy of mutual suspicion,” Washington should seek to cooperate with Russia on threats emanating from Central Asia and the Middle East, rather than unilaterally deploying military resources near Russian soil. U.S. deployment of ships in the Black Sea or missile interceptors in Eastern Europe, Rogov said, could be “misinterpreted” as being intended to counter Russia — “It would be very difficult for us to interpret it in a different way.” Instead, he said, the United States should cooperate with Russia and draw on existing Russian resources — early warning systems and ballistic missile defenses, for example — to address threats in the region that affect both powers. Rogov said he and some colleagues are working on a report funded by the Nuclear Threat Initiative in which they discuss new multilateral approaches to reducing the nuclear threat. He said Russia and the United States must leave behind the doctrine of mutually assured destruction and seek more often to involve the world’s other nuclear powers in arms-control initiatives. “France, the United Kingdom, China — they are not limited” by even the “watered-down” U.S.-Russian arms-control regime, Rogov said. He added that nuclear weapon states outside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, such as India and Pakistan, must also be brought on board. Rogov also advocated NATO-Russian and U.S.-Russian cooperation on planning for counterproliferation actions, citing the possibility that a radical Islamic group could take over a country that possesses weapons of mass destruction. “This is, in my view, the task for counterproliferation,” he said. “This is something that requires action.” [EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.]
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