Kremlin International News Broadcast March 21, 2002
PRESIDENT BUSH'S NUCLEAR STRATEGY
PRESS CONFERENCE WITH RUSSIAN EXPERTS VLADIMIR DVORKIN, ALEXANDER ZHGUTOV, SERGEI OZNOBISHCHEV AND MIKHAIL POGORELY
Moderator: Our guests today are the War and Peace Journalism Center. The topic of the press conference is "Modern Nuclear Strategy of the United States as Interpreted by the Bush Administration". I am glad to introduce our guests: Vladimir Dvorkin, a senior PIR Center adviser and head of research with the Strategic Nuclear Forces Center at the Academy of Military Science, a retired major general; Sergei Oznobishchev, Director of the Strategic Assessments Institute, deputy chairman of the Russia-US Association; and Mikhail Pogorely, Director of the War and Peace Journalism Center who will chair this press conference. I give you the floor, Mikhail Mikhailovich.
Pogorely: Thank you. I would like to thank the Press Development Institute for the hospitality. You invariably offer us a brilliant opportunity to communicate with our colleagues and journalists. With your permission I will make a few brief introductory remarks before we allow our experts to answer all your questions. I'll go straight to the heart of the matter. Even as he was making his bid for power George Bush Jr. repeated made pronouncements on the problems of strategic stability, the problems connected with strategic weapons, both offensive and defensive. Naturally, when he came to power and when the administration was hitting its stride and came to make practical decisions the US administration's policy in the nuclear field began to evolve. For Russia and the rest of the world this problem is not just of academic interest because it is connected directly with the security of our country, with the economic wellbeing of our people because our country has to somehow react to the policy pursued by Washington.
How was Bush's policy reflected in documents? One must say that American policy is quite systematic. For example, if the congress tells the US administration to prepare a report on the state of the armed forces this work is followed through.
I am sorry, but we have been joined by another member of our panel today.
On the basis of a large-scale review of the military strategy of the United States called "Quadrennial Defense Review" other documents saw the light of day. They include a document that reviews nuclear strategy. It is a less general question but it is more relevant to our own interests. It is one thing to discuss how the armed forces are structured and how the wellbeing of American servicemen improves and where new barracks are built and what types of conventional weapons they procure; and it's another question to review how the Strategic Nuclear Forces are developing because this has a direct relevance to the security of our country.
The document prepared by the Pentagon on the directions of the Congress on the basis of the review is called "Nuclear Posture Review". It was already cited by President Bush during his meeting with President Putin in Crawford. By that time President Bush said, I have signed the new document. But anyway, it was introduced at the Congress on December 31, on New Year's eve. Naturally, American Congressmen were not reading documents over the New Year holiday. So, the first reaction became known only on January 7-8. It appeared first on the web site of the national council for the protection of natural resources.
It passed largely unnoticed until the following day when it was reprinted by The Los Angeles Times. Of course, it is a big newspaper. The document itself is classified. But unclassified extracts that were published attracted selective interests on the part of journalists. Naturally, most of the reactions were critical. It seems to me that judging from what has been published the document contains some positive elements and elements that invite criticism.
Sometimes, however, it seems to me that people criticize the document without bothering to properly understand the document. This is not surprising because so far only excerpts and summaries of the document have been published. By the way, I have printed out for you excerpts from the document posted on globalsecurity.org. John Pike web site. Those of you who are interested in the problems of strategic stability will know that John Pike has worked with the American scientists federation for a number of years where he was studying nuclear missile problems. He now has his own project going. Of course, it contains only excerpts, but they are in quotation marks. As distinct from renderings in the press, what is inside quotation marks are direct quotations from the document.
As distinct from other newspaper publications, there is practically one other official source of information on the new American strategy. We have distributed the printouts. It is a transcript of the interview by the assistant to the US Defense Secretary for International Policy and Security, Mr. Crouch. He made this presentation on January 9 at the Pentagon. In principle, our bulletin No. 3 has a list of sources, including the speech at the hearings at the Senate of the former strategic command chief. There are electronic addresses and one can easily access these materials. But they are also available in printed form like other materials devoted to this topic. And I would like to end my general introduction in order to allow more time for questions.
Just one more sentence. The document cites various numbers, scenarios of the development of strategic offensive and defensive systems, non-strategic systems and infrastructure. That is, all the issues covered in the document and the assessments are included. It is a large material and I could speak about it for hours. I won't go into detail but if you are interested in some details, you can put questions to our panelists.
Dvorkin: Perhaps to preempt some of the questions I might make a few remarks. The main aspects of the new American nuclear policy can be reduced to five points.
First, deep cuts of strategic offensive weapons down to announced levels which will now be regarded as "operationally deployed". Second, the storage of armaments. This is motivated by the perceived American need to have a reserve against contingencies and secondly, it is cheaper to store weapons than to destroy them. Thirdly, the broadening of the range of conditions under which nuclear weapons may be used. The Americans have withdrawn guarantees of non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries. Fourth, emphasis on the development of nuclear mini-charges that can penetrate into the ground to a depth of tens of meters, including hard rock and can penetrate engineering fortifications in order to hit centers, storehouses and other facilities buried under ground.
And fifth and last: which is the structural transformations of the nuclear triad, its certain enlargement and strengthening by inclusion within it of the ABM defense and the strategic non-nuclear arms. This is, generally speaking, the main stream road of the development of the armed forces of all civilized states except Russia.
The Americans have long been following this road of integration. For a long time already they have had the space command which is part of the land-based forces, the ICBMs but we, having created this structure in 1997, have destroyed it in 2001. But it is a different matter.
These are the main characteristics which are external and formal. Of course, each of these characteristics requires its own characterization. It is because to know something does not necessarily mean being aware of the causes. Thank you.
Oznobishchev: I will add the following. The roots of all this that we see now and in this connection I have found yet another document which gives the brief summary of everything that the Americans have done by now -- and it is signed by Defense Secretary Mr. Rumsfeld. The roots of all this include the election campaign of the Republicans and the speech uttered by Bush on May 1, his "turning-point" speech last year when he said that we must move away from the model of deterrence, which was proper of the time of the Cold War, we cease to regard Russia as a potential adversary although as the publications in the Los Angeles Times indicate, the components of the single operational plan that have come to the surface indicate that the facilities continue to be targeted. The idea is that the targeting has always been the case. When it was the Soviet Union, more facilities were targeted on, now the number of facilities targeted is less.
So, if we have normal relations then with God's help no facilities must be targeted. But whether or not will the military agree to this, on the part of the two countries. I would not take it upon myself to say this now because they are trying to peer forward and they are forming their speculations on the basis of analyzing the worst options of the development of events.
Nevertheless we perceive there to be a huge incongruity between the declared partnership and the daily military practice. And I would stress that in the years 1990s it was this factor that was present, so we have already been declared partners -- we have already been there under Gorbachev, it was a shorter period, a more pink period but we embraced each other and Gorbachev in Reykjavik persuaded Reagan to agree to a nuclear free world. It did happen and there are well documented facts which I learnt about quite recently but then Reagan's advisers, the bureaucrats, pulled him away from this idea. Although there he agreed, he didn't sign anything there in blood, but he agreed.
And now we see attempts to transform the vision of Bush and his entourage into the real documents. How serious is it? It is quite serious, yes, but this can change with the advent of another administration. And it will depend on how the struggle is waged against terrorism. If Democrats come, they can do everything their own way. Certain trends still persist. One of such trends is probably the development of the ABM defense and it is a switch over from the deterrence model or the model of strategic stability, based on the threat of destruction of the other side, based on the means of nuclear attack -- over to combining this with ABM defense or with strategic defense means.
Bush spoke about this back in May. But here there are two points. The first point is that a warning must be issued. If we are partners, we must warn nor simply a partner but a man with whom you are going to be friends and with whom you intend to build something. But pouring such buckets of cold water, without notifying us, is of course a hard test, including for the Russian democracy, because in our actions within our partnership with the West -- in my opinion not of simply a citizen because being a civilian I welcome all this but also of an analyst -- I can see that our executive authority as represented by the President has seriously divorced itself from the opinions and the positions of the Russian elite, of decision-makers, the political and the academic communities -- this community is not very big in Moscow -- but it is quite influential in the sense that people sit in the ministries, they wear uniforms, so even disabused by the disappointments of the 1990s they are forced to be cautious.
Quite a number of people, who claim to be democrats, are now holding quite different positions because they have been taught a stark lesson when they advocated partnership with the West, unlimited partnership but as a result this spilled itself out into an unlimited expansion of NATO, into actions in Kosovo and into all and sundry surprises, one of which was the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, or rather the US announcement about such withdrawal.
Nevertheless, the intention is good. Like in the past Reagan demonstrated good intentions, it was just that he was mislead a little when scientists were letting him down in terms of assessing the possibilities and the real possibility and real effectiveness of ABM defense which at that time was referred to as the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative). Now we have the same thing. They are letting him down, they are engaging in deception, and behind this is a certain part of the military and political complex but Bush is somewhat prevented by the past to see the present and it seems to him that with the help of the ABM defense he will resolve many things.
In reality, however, the solutions must be found through political and diplomatic means, and primarily solutions must be sought on the basis of the formula that was laid down, I hope it was laid down in Ljubljana, mainly a joint assessment of the existing threats and challenges and a joint search for ways to overcome them. You know, this is very important and we have to develop mechanisms precisely for this purpose. If we begin assessing jointly the existing threats, it is clear that it is terrorism, it is clear that it is non-proliferation and other priority things.
In this case we shall be able to find an appropriate place even for the ABM systems of defense but we will build them into our joint understanding of what threatens us and in what volumes are we supposed and we can deploy an ABM defense system, will it be national, or the theater system -- this is already a question of secondary importance. But there must be the mechanism of partnership and there must be joint solutions found to problems.
So far, I fail, regrettably, to see these things happening. There are dreams which are contained in Mr. Rumsfeld's presentation about the new technologies, about the fact that the ABM defense is capable of lowering the levels of threats and challenges to the North American states -- these are absolute dreams in my opinion. Here they use the term "credible deterrent" which means something weighty or it means reliable containment or realistic deterrence.
Here lies the mistake. You know, all these papers are the fruit of the efforts of bureaucrats like was in the Soviet times when they strove to justify and provide arguments to the authorities of today in order to justify their actions.
This is what is happening today. I am relying on realistic examples. Today in the United States there is no place for these in their decision-making process. Already at the first stage, when they expressed their independent opinion, now the talking is done only by those who can fit in with these arguments. Here there is a philosophical and a factual mistake in that no deterrence, no nuclear deterrence of terrorist regimes will work. And this is an established fact.
But how to get out of this situation? It is through common actions of harmonizing the positions... to prevent terrorism. The prevention will be accomplished not by establishing democracy in Afghanistan. But it will not be that bad. But other countries may follow suit in which, without any grounds whatsoever or on some minor grounds, they will create democratic or other societies. This is what worries us all today.
Pogorely: If you don't mind I'd like to say a few words before we move on to questions and answers. I want just to mention the issues that have evoked the most controversial reaction from our overseas colleagues in the US, as well as in European and Asian countries. It's the countries that are mentioned in the US documents as possible primary targets for the use of nuclear weapons. Of course nuclear weapons can be used against any enemy, but some have been clearly named.
There are seven of them. And the documents specified the conditions under which nuclear weapons can be used against them. Not all of these countries are parties to, but some are, the Non-Proliferation Treaty. So theoretically they are protected by international law. However, the Pentagon has set forth the conditions under which it could theoretically use nuclear weapons, say, against Libya, Syria, North Korea, Iran, Iraq as countries which, in the Pentagon's view, give shelter to terrorists, facilitate the operations of terrorist organizations, and are developing or, as a minimum, seeking to obtain weapons of nuclear destruction, not necessarily nuclear ones, it may be a chemical or bacteriological weapon.
China stands separately in this list. China is not an unfriendly state, but in principle it shows the desire to have modern technologies and in principle its arsenal could pose a threat to the US. Of course, because of these arguments, Russia is also among these targets. Although official documents say that the US does not consider Russia as a small version of the USSR, that it is not hostile toward Russia, however -- usually things that go after however kill everything written before.
So in principle, nuclear weapons may be used against Russia as well because Russia is the only country in the world who has sufficient potential if not to destroy then at least cause extremely serious damage to the US. As this document says -- there is even a quote there, and if some of you are interested, we could give you the exact quote -- considering the unpredictability of the development of the political situation in Russia, who will come to power there, what aspirations the politicians will have in the years to come, given all this, Russia remains to be on the list of potential targets for the use of US nuclear weapons.
And one other thing it is also mentioned quite often. Vladimir Dvorkin has already spoken of the ammunition the Americans are storing, not destroying weapons removed from service as Moscow insists, but storing them. The document gives different figures. For example, the ratio today is 8,000 nuclear weapons that the Americans consider to be in active status. Of them, about 5,000 are operationally deployed and can be used within minutes or hours after receiving an appropriate order, and about 3,000 are in active reserve. In other words, bombs can be taken out of its storage, installed on a plane, or a warhead can be installed on a cruise missile and used.
They plan to gradually change their status from active reserve to passive reserve, etc. What does this all mean? Our colleagues, journalists from the Boston Globe have made some calculations and come up with the following figures. As of now, 10,656 nuclear weapons are available to the US armed forces, both strategic and what they call non-strategic, that is tactical, including operationally deployed and in active reserve. After all cuts, removal from service, the disarmament of strategic missiles, etc., the armed forces will have 10,590 weapons by the year 2006. In other words, only 66 weapons will be really cut in four years. So one can easily understand the logic of those who oppose such cuts and who call for mutual verifiable cuts guaranteed by documents. I think I will stop here. Now you can ask your questions.
Please identify yourself.
Q: ITAR-TASS, Yurkin. I would like to put a question to General Dvorkin. But before I do that I'd like to cite the report you mentioned in order to prove my point that we remain if not an enemy but at least a threat to the US. The report says in particular that the threat of a nuclear strike with the participation of Russia is not expected although it's possible. According to the Defense Minister, Russia's nuclear forces and programs still cause concern. And finally, it says that if relations with Russia worsen even more, which means that they are not really good now, the US will have to review the level and status of its nuclear forces. And here is my question to Vladimir Zinovyevich. What can Russia do to protect itself? But please don't tell us that it's going to be the Topol-M or some asymmetrical response.
Dvorkin: No matter what we say about what must be done in order to ensure Russia's security, nuclear deterrence remains the main fundamental means of ensuring the security of all nuclear powers, and we can't avoid this. We will be doomed to nuclear deterrence for many years if not decades.
Since Russia's potential is quite big -- territory, patient population and subsoil resources represent a potential that can be used. But right now there is only one factor -- strategic nuclear forces and the nuclear deterrence potential. So this potential must be preserved no matter how the military and political situation develops and to act under these circumstances the same way the US does since its main axiomatic thesis is that the situation is unpredictable: Russia can be a partner and an ally but it may as well become an enemy. The same is true of China.
This is why I consider all US actions not as anti-Russian but as strongly pro-American. Of course these actions are not pleasant to many countries in any sphere, including in the economic one. It's not a gift for Russia either, such a policy I mean, but this is what objectively exists and which cannot be avoided. Therefore, Russia must first of all correct the program of the development of its strategic nuclear potential and keep it as long as it may be necessary because this is quite possible economically, given all global chances in the US nuclear strategy.
Q: Strana.Ru. How would you assess the results of the negotiations held by the Russian Defense Minister in the US and the fact that Donald Rumsfeld assured him, and the Russian minister is said to believe him, that this plan of seven countries is no more than a theoretical task?
Dvorkin: This is not a theoretical task but quite practical one. Actually this is a usual routine practice of all staffs. If there are weapons, there must be plans of using it by all means. The Americans had it and will have it. I think that we, too, should preserve all that. And there is an interesting point. You remember that General Kvashnin declared that we have no plans to introduce our troops in Afghanistan.
I think by that statement he discredited the General Staff because any general staff should have plans against any contingency and it is up to the top military and political leadership to choose the plan that best corresponds to a certain situation. But a plan does not mean the targeting of weapons because a weapon can be stored, but there must be plans for using it if the military agencies are performing their proper duties.
Oznobishchev: In connection with the visit just held I wanted to stress the following. Ivanov said that he got assurances that there will be an agreement by the time of the May summit. But in my view and that view is shared by a number of experts, this is not the case when we need an agreement at any cost. We have always been fond of timing things for certain anniversaries. The approach to launching Yuri Gagarin into space and to signing agreements is about the same. But this is a totally different matter. If a bad agreement is signed Washington or any other capital -- diplomats -- put a mark and report that Russia has gone on record as being pleased. For example, the Founding Act of 1997 is flawed. But they put a tick to indicate that Russia is content and NATO can carry on its policy of expansion.
It's the same here. It is better to work toward an agreement that suits us and to say at the summit that, unfortunately, we have not yet come to an agreement, that we still have differences although we agree on the goals. If we adopt this approach, it will keep those who are working out decisions on their tiptoes. These decisions will be under constant political control, which is necessary. It is necessary to have political control contrary to what was taking place in the 1990s when agreements were worked out. For example, the agreement on conventional forces, the second edition.
Nobody needs it here in Russia, the parliamentary deputies don't want to look at it because it deals with reductions of paper tanks, tanks that have never rolled off the assembly line in the countries that are supposed to have them.
I think that in 1990 they cut between 50,000 and 70,000 such units. This is the difference. We should give up the policy of reporting back successes in favor of practical deeds. This is very important.
And so the problem of anti-missile defense remains. Because the agreement that is to be signed in May, though I would rather it were signed in September and not in May, and better still by November -- in time for the November 7 holidays -- it should include some limitations in the field of anti-missile defense. As General Dvorkin has said quite rightly, we remain within the traditional nuclear deterrence structure. The best proof of that is that our strategic arsenals are targeted on each other. Our arsenals are targeted at each other and our targets have been chosen. This is a normal course of events. We should reduce the number of targets, retarget the missiles and so on.
But the targeting example shows that we are in the traditional paradigm of nuclear deterrence and no amount of talk about adopting a different structure makes sense. We should move into a different system of coordinates in every area. We should trust each other like the United States and France trust each other, an example that American diplomats like to cite. But before that happens a lot of other things should happen and we should work together for a long time. This is not the case today. That is why these transitional limitations and transitional periods are needed. The military revolution proposed by President Bush is terribly dangerous. We know from our own bitter experience what revolutions lead to. The memory has probably faded a little bit.
Q: How do you see the talks between Russian and American experts that have just started in Geneva in the wake of Sergei Ivanov's visit to Washington?
Oznobishchev: I am all for it. Any meetings. If these are negotiations, sometimes they are referred to as consultations, but this time around these are negotiations because they will work out some kind of framework agreement, the bare bones of an agreement. It is hard to produce a serious and detailed agreement in so short a time.
One can only welcome these talks. But I resent a race against the clock. I am fully in agreement with what Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko used to say, everything should be weighed on the scales of the October revolution.
Dvorkin: They are just working on the text of the document. Geneva is the traditional venue for such work.
Oznobishchev: And there is also Vienna.
Dvorkin: But in Vienna they usually discuss conventional weapons. They are hammering out a document. What will be the result of this work? Clearly it will be a small document but the big question mark is to what extent it will take into account the Russian conditions of irreversibility and verifiability.
Q: First question. Probably for Sergei Oznobishchev. What do you think about the actions of the US in the course of the anti-terrorist campaign, I mean Central Asia and Afghanistan, Uzbekistan? And what do you think about developments in Georgia because the US is known in the past to have stayed wherever it came. And about the latest statements to the effect that Georgia is ready to speed up its accession to NATO. What actions has Russia taken and what actions should it take in the future?
Oznobishchev: First, in my opinion, and this is borne out by some leaks that have been made, these actions of the US, I mean in Central Asia, have been agreed in some way. We were notified. Now we have entered an interesting period in our relations which is more like secret diplomacy in contrast to the open diplomacy which we sought in the 1990s.
I still can't tell whether this is good or bad. Probably good. As Bush said in Ljubljana: "I looked the man in the eye and I believed the man." This is fine.
I have been disappointed many times in my life and I regretted bitterly that I had ever looked in the eye of some people.
So, first, there was an agreement, there was notification. It did not happen just like that. Because you see that our reaction has been muted. The Duma, as always made some noises,but those were the same people who always raise hue and cry. There is no serious reaction on the part of the Establishment party. So, there had been a prior agreement.
Afghanistan is a different story. In the struggle against terrorism, we share the same ideas, at least this has been the case since September 11. And there again, I don't know about other people, but many people who think critically have this feeling that person with the beard shown on television must not have necessarily been behind their destruction, the September 11 drama. Do you see the point? Because any normal terrorist organization, if it only can be normal, pursues certain political goals such as the removal of authorities or separation or something else. And it tries to achieve these goals through terrorist acts.
Three people may be killed or five, but any organization understands that if it organizes an explosion like this, there will be thousands of casualties and it will simply pass a death sentence on itself. Then in response to this act this organization and around it will be pulverized, as the Americans tried to do. So doubts remain. There are still doubts because there is no direct proof.
Next. They began the search for bin Laden, but it's most likely that he was not there. One comes to bust a criminal and destroys his neighbor's apartment into the bargain because he might have been hiding and doing something there. So they established a democratic regime, as they and we all think, in Afghanistan into the bargain. But who knows that all this will lead to? It may lead to a new fight, and I pray to God and I wish them all health that this does not happen, the same kind of fight that happened there after 1979 and before 1979. But before 1979 it was more or less calm, while after that we upset the balance. This is as part as Afghanistan is concerned.
Georgia's admission to NATO. Let them speed up, but there are also certain criteria there. And this is also a very sensitive issue to us too. Everything that surrounds us, this near abroad and the Baltics, we are very sensitive to all this. And this must be seriously discussed of course by our president who must say that this will undermine partnership. This will give arguments to those in our country who oppose partnership, and they are in the majority, they make up the overwhelming majority, they outnumber the supporters of partnership, this will give them reason to speak and use arguments. Georgia in NATO, the Baltics in NATO, etc.
And then the General Staff will get other plans, different plans that have been shelved and are collecting dust and turning yellow, but they do exist, as we know, and one of these plans that was mentioned some time ago called for the creation of a 300,000-strong corps in Byelorussia. I am sure there will be some military response and there will be a much greater stimulus for taking these measures. But to us it will be a conflict with a step away from partnership with the West which I think must be the main policy for Russia, without however, interfering with other partnerships with India, China and other countries whom some may not like as much.
Q: A question to Vladimir Zinovyevich. You mentioned five main parameters of the US nuclear strategy... (inaudible)... Not to be the first to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.
Don't you think that this may undermine very intensive efforts to convince the disadvantaged countries, because they do not have nuclear weapons, to (inaudible)... as India, Pakistan, Iran?
Dvorkin: I think this is a serious stimulus for threshold countries that may obtain nuclear weapons to do that as soon as possible. This US decision is connected with the emphasis on nuclear mini-charges that go deeply into the ground and all this together -- I mean these two factors jointly -- lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. Given regional instability and unpredictable escalation of regional conflicts, the use of nuclear weapons becomes more possible and this constitutes a clear threat to the non-proliferation regime and to the efforts to prevent the escalation of conflicts.
Q: In other words we are moving toward a nuclear war?
Dvorkin: I would say that the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons has been lowered considerably. And all this is consistent with the US policy. Indeed, why one would need such mini-charges -- by the way work on them has been going on for decades and not only in the US. The reason is to minimize the ensuing damage such as radioactive fallout. Such mini-charges effectively destroy not only storage places or caves where terrorists may hide, but also rocket silos and highly protected command posts. And we must most certainly respond to this appropriately.
Pogorely: According to the assessments made by the Pentagon there are about 10,000 such valuable under-ground facilities that may theoretically become a target for -- these are command posts, communications centers, storage places. Out of these 10,000 scattered around the world, they think that 1,400 are most valuable. This is exactly as many as Vladimir Zinovyevich said. These are rocket silos, command posts in countries not like Lesotho but other countries which have more serious military capabilities. Apparently this work is directed against these 1,400 highly-protected and highly-valuable targets.
Zhgutov: As for nuclear mini-charges, they go back a long way and their history has a legal aspect. In 1994, the US Congress prohibited all work to create nuclear mini-charges of less than 5 kilotons. They adopted the Elizabeth First (sp.) amendment. It was done by the Democrats who tried as best they could to restrict work on these nuclear mini-charges.
Two years ago the Republicans motioned a proposal to overrule this amendment and lift the restrictions. The year before last, certain appropriations were made and as the press wrote, this work was financed for about six months and then a report was supposed to be made on the results of this work.
Apparently the same will be done during the upcoming debates on the defense budget for 2003 as there is still the desire to overcome this amendment. Plus the Nuclear Posture Review contains provisions directly concerning the development of and work on these charges because a task has been set to prepare the US testing range in Nevada for nuclear testing within one year compared to the previous periods when this required two years. But specialists say that this may be done even in six months, that nuclear testing may begun in six months.
I am just trying to say these low-yield mini-charges must not necessarily be less than 5 kilotons, it may be more than 5 kilotons or so. For the US armed forces to adopt these mini-charges, a series of tests must be conducted. And this series of tests is indirectly...
Dvorkin: By the way, this is closely connected with the US refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in one package.
Zhgutov: I think it even says that the CTBT must not be signed.
Pogorely: There is one peculiarity I would like to mention. Work on low-yield nuclear charges and therefore the possibility of resuming nuclear testing needed by the US to create interceptors for nuclear weapons to be deployed in outer space. Again this is clearly prohibited by international agreements, but such a loophole or even a door, once it is open, one can -- why are such precedents dangerous? Because one can use this door to go further and further, especially since the Bush administration has vividly shown its attitude toward international agreement by what it has done to the ABM Treaty.
If there are no more questions, I'd like to thank you for your attention and tell you that there are some handouts on the table if you have not obtained them yet.
Thank you very much.
END
