Russia Issues Nuclear Warning to Eastern Europe, U.S.

Two top Russian officials have warned that a nuclear war could begin if the United States continues its plan to deploy missile defense systems in Eastern Europe (see GSN, Feb. 13).

The United States has outlined plans to deploy 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a tracking radar in the Czech Republic.  Leaders in those nations are currently discussing whether to allow the U.S. facilities.

Russian leaders have protested the plan, saying that the interceptors could be used against Russian missiles, even though U.S. officials have said the defenses would be intended to defeat Iranian missiles.

“I think everybody understands that with a growing Iranian missile threat, which is quite pronounced, that there need to be ways to deal with that problem,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday.   The 10 interceptors would not “diminish Russia’s deterrent of thousands of warheads,” she added.

Using unusually aggressive language, Russian President Vladimir Putin last week protested U.S. foreign policy, including the planned European missile defense deployments.  Putin said the move would lead to “an inevitable arms race” (see GSN, Feb. 13).

Using more inflammatory rhetoric, two top Russian officials warned that deploying the interceptors could lead to nuclear war.

“If the governments of Poland, the Czech Republic and other countries make this decision, … the strategic missile forces will be able to have those facilities as targets,” said Strategic Rocket Forces commander Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov (Thom Shanker, New York Times I, Feb. 22).

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov added on.

“Since protection from the first strike would be guaranteed, as American strategists apparently expect, another temptation arises to be the first to launch a strike, aware that a chance has emerged to go unpunished,” he said in an interview published yesterday (Vladimir Isachenkov, Associated Press/London Guardian, Feb. 21).

Polish and Czech leaders said tough Russian talk could backfire.

“It is clearly an attempt to intimidate,” said Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

“The Czechs will now think the shield is even more necessary,” said Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.

“We have quite an experience with Russians,” Schwarzenberg added.  “You have to make clear to them you won’t succumb to blackmail.  Once you give in to blackmail, there’s no going back.”

Other European officials also criticized the Russian statements.

“The days of talk of targeting NATO territory or vice versa are long past us,” said NATO spokesman James Appathurai.  “This kind of extreme language is out of date” (Andrew Kramer, New York Times II, Feb. 21).

Also this week, Solovtsov reinforced another Russian general’s threat to withdraw from the bilateral Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty in response to the U.S. missile defense plans.

Chief of the Russian General Staff Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky said last week that Russia was too limited by the treaty, under which the United States and the Soviet Union, followed by Russia, destroyed an entire class of medium-range nuclear weapons (see GSN, Feb. 16).

“If a political decision is taken to quit the treaty, the Strategic Missile Forces are ready to carry out this task,” Solovtsov said Monday.

“It is not difficult for us to restart production of the medium- and short-range missiles because we have preserved all technologies,” he added.  “It could be done quickly if the need arises” (RIA Novosti, Feb. 19).

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