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Russia Sees Nuclear Arsenal as Status Symbol
Russia believes that maintaining and upgrading its nuclear arsenal is essential to maintaining its status as a world power, Newsweek reported today (see GSN, Nov. 22, 2005). Questioned about his country’s membership in the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations, President Vladimir Putin last week responded that Russia was a major nuclear power. “We recently carried out tests on new ballistic-weapon systems, weapons which no other country in the world has,” he said. “Putin picked up on these weapons as a political slogan,” said military analyst Pavel Felgenauer. “He is promoting this warhead as proof that we can still do things, still stay in the game.” The new warhead, which maneuvers like a cruise missile on re-entry instead of following a predictable trajectory, is specifically designed to counter U.S. missile defense technology, Newsweek reported. Washington, however, “does not perceive Russia's nuclear modernization activities as threatening,” said State Department spokesman Adam Ereli. That could be partly because a new warhead alone is not enough to create an updated nuclear arsenal, according to Newsweek. Moscow’s delivery systems are rapidly aging. Only one of its six Typhoon-class nuclear submarines is serviceable, while seven more Delta-4 class submarines also are due to reach the end of their service life by the end of the decade. In 10 years, its arsenal of SS-18 and SS-19 strategic rockets will also be unusable, analysts said. Russia could have just 500 warheads in a decade, while the United States is set to maintain its arsenal of about 2,000 state-of-the-art nuclear weapons, Newsweek reported (Owen Matthews, Newsweek/MSNBC.com, Feb. 13).
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