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U.S.-Russia I: Joint Missile Defense Would Build Confidence, Experts Say By Mike Nartker “Only joint work on such systems, however complicated and costly they may be, can persuade Russia and the United States that such anti-missile systems are not aimed against each other,” said Yuri Fyodorov, deputy director of the PIR Center for Policy Studies in Russia. Sharing Components, Information U.S.-Russian cooperation could come in the form of use of Russian-made components in a U.S. missile defense system, said Alexander Pikayev of the Research Council of the Moscow Carnegie Center. If Russia sells missile defense equipment to the United States, that would make the Russian military dependent on U.S. markets, and in turn cause Russian military policy to change from looking at the United States as an adversary, he said. The United States has looked at using Russian technology, such as the S-300 system, as components in a U.S. system, said Rose Gottemoeller, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (see GSN, March 7). “The best guarantee against the breakout of a war between the two countries is the production of one and the same weapon system,” Pikayev said. “If the two countries built a tank, a joint tank, it is obvious that they are simply incapable of fighting each other because you cannot divide the tank into two.” Another way the two countries should cooperate is through the exchange of information, Fyodorov said. The United States and Russia should share information on ballistic missile launches, including information gathered through early-warning systems, he said. Information sharing could be accomplished either through formal agreements or mutual understandings, Fyodorov said. Benefits Past comments by Bush administration officials, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have shown a willingness on the part of the United States to engage Russia in cooperating on a missile defense program, Gottemoeller said (see related GSN story, today). “The first reason for engaging in this cooperation is to build Russian confidence about the limited nature of the missile defense system that the Bush administration is planning to build,” Gottemoeller said. U.S.-Russian cooperation on missile defense could also help improve overall relations between the two countries and bring them closer together, Pikayev said. Such cooperation could move the two countries away from mutual deterrence and toward a more stable partnership, and even to an alliance, he said. In the wake of the U.S. announcement to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, joint technical cooperation could do more to alleviate concerns than any arms control agreement signed at the May U.S.-Russian summit, Pikayev said. “So if we cast aside arms control, if we depart from arms control and arrive at cooperation in the field of weapons development, we will thereby make a gigantic leap towards building a true alliance between our countries,” he said. Importance of Treaties Technical cooperation, however, cannot provide the same level of assurance as arms control agreements, such as the ABM Treaty, said Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Once the ABM Treaty ends in mid-June, when both the United States and Russia are expected to withdraw, the only constraints on missile defense will be technical and financial, Wolfsthal said. “Fortunately for people interested in stability, these systems are still very expensive and are totally unproven,” Wolfsthal said. “So there is some existing transparency and confidence that the Russian Federation can take by observing what, in my opinion, will be a series of expensive failures of U.S. missile defense technology” (Federal News Service transcript, April 16).
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