Truth or dare – how serious is Russia’s missile threat to the US?
A new volley of nuclear rhetoric from Vladimir Putin looks like bombast, but there is real suspicion and resolve behind it. Tom Parfitt reports from Moscow.
President Donald Trump’s retreat at Camp David in Maryland and the Pentagon were just two of the targets.
In his state of the nation address last week, President Vladimir Putin promised that if US missiles were placed in Europe, Russia would deploy weapons that could hit not only their launch sites but also the ‘‘territories’’ from which the decision was made to fire them.
He did not name the territories he had in mind, but senior MPs were quickly wheeled out to confirm he meant the United States.
Then the threat was made explicit as Russian state television listed a series of ‘‘military command centres’’ in the eastern and western US which could be hit by the new Zircon hypersonic weapons.
Dmitry Kiselev, the presenter known as the country’s ‘‘propagandist in chief’’, told viewers that Russian submarines stationed off the American coast could fire Zircon cruise missiles which would fly at 11,000kmh and hit their targets in four and a half minutes. That would allow swift payback against the US in the event of an attack, as well as against European launch countries like Poland or Romania, said Kiselev. ‘‘Technically, we have the answer,’’ he said.
The bombast comes on the heels of the US’s recent withdrawal from the 1987 intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty, which banned missiles with a range between 500km and 5500km.
At first glance, Putin’s promise to target the US seems superfluous: the old enemies already have hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at each other. But the Russian leader’s point was that if it suffered an American missile barrage from Europe it would be able to retaliate in a similar time frame against the US itself, using the super-fast weapons it is now developing.
‘‘Putin is trying to communicate the message that you may think you can strike Russia with an intermediate-range missile from Europe but we would consider that a core strike on the territory of the Russian Federation, requiring a response directly on to your homeland,’’ said James Cameron, a research associate in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.
That idea is an echo of Cold War times, when Moscow warned Nato that it considered ‘‘theatre’’ weapons that could be fired from Europe to be an equal threat to the Soviet Union as bigger ‘‘strategic’’ nuclear missiles launched from the United States.
Neutral observers may see Putin’s suggestion of a US threat as
‘‘Putin is trying to communicate the message that you may think you can strike Russia with an intermediate-range missile from Europe but we would consider that a core strike on the territory of the Russian Federation, requiring a response directly on to your homeland.’’
James Cameron, Department of War Studies, King’s College London
a paper tiger. Washington says it has no intention of returning to the Cold War practice of basing nuclear missiles in allied states in Europe, and the very idea would provoke intense debate on the continent.
Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, dismissed Putin’s rhetoric as ‘‘bluster’’ and said it was an attempt to drive a wedge between the US and Europe. The White House insists it was forced to pull out of the INF treaty because the Kremlin has produced and tested a banned cruise missile, the 9M729.
In Moscow, analysts and military sources deny that, and argue that the Kremlin’s tough stance is a determined and serious response to aggressive US moves. While the immediate catalyst is the uncertainty left by US withdrawal from the INF treaty, they say, Putin is unsettled by American plans to develop a low-yield nuclear warhead for its Trident missiles, as well as a submarine-launched cruise missile.
Last year a new Nuclear Posture Review, commissioned by Trump, said that the US needed to respond to Moscow’s pursuit of a doctrine known as ‘‘escalate to de-escalate’’.
According to this, Russia could use a smaller, ‘‘battlefield’’ nuclear weapon like an Iskander missile in the event of a conventional conflict with Nato forces, for example, if a war broke out in one of the Baltic states. The Kremlin’s strategy would be to force the US to back down, because the White House would not risk a global war by firing a powerful long-range missile at Russia from response.
American supporters of this interpretation say Washington must develop its own low-yield weapons so that it could retaliate ‘‘on the lower level of the escalatory ladder’’ without triggering armageddon.
Andrey Baklitskiy, a nuclear security expert at the PIR Centre, a Moscow think tank, said the ‘‘escalate to de-escalate’’ theory about Russia’s thinking was a fundamental misreading – or deliberate misrepresentation – of Moscow’s intent. He argues that Putin’s frequent boasts about Russia’s growing hypersonic arsenal shows just the opposite: that the Kremlin is emphasising powerful weapons capable of beating American missile defence systems and hitting the US, rather US territory in than slower, or shorter-range, tactical arms.
Putin’s belief, Baklitskiy suggested, is that a threat of extreme escalation is a much better deterrent to full-scale nuclear war than developing lower yield weapons, even if they supposedly might end a conflict.
‘‘Russian generals and defence ministry people you talk to now say, ‘we do not believe you can have a limited nuclear exchange; once it starts all bets are off. You just shouldn’t start in the first place’.’’
The view in Moscow is that Washington is wilfully ignoring the concerns that are really on the Kremlin’s mind, and which provoke Putin’s outbursts. One is the belief that US missile defence units in Romania and Poland could be adapted for offensive use with Tomahawk missiles. Another is the perception that the US is pushing to get conventional weapons with the explosive power and range to mount an accurate pre-emptive attack on Russian missile infrastructure such as silos and command centres, which would limit the capability for a ‘‘second strike’’ in response.
‘‘The big Russian anxiety on top of that is a future US missile defence system which could mop up any surviving retaliation,’’ said Cameron. Hence Putin boasting about systems purportedly capable of circumventing such threats such as Zircon, the Poseidon underwater drone and the Kinzhal air-launched hypersonic missile.
Many of the deployments under discussion on both sides are years away.
As discontent grows in Russia over stagnating household incomes and a raised pension age, Putin has been at pains to convince voters that a boost in the nation’s arsenal will not dent social spending.
New land-based intermediaterange weapons will be adapted from sea-based Zircon and Kalibr missiles to cut costs.
Baklitskiy believes financial constraints in Moscow and Washington may inhibit escalation, for now. ‘‘But if you don’t have any legal limitations, administrations come and go, budget deficits come and go and I really don’t see overall relations getting rosy all of a sudden,’’ he said.
‘‘We are getting into a situation which is less and less stable and which can move into an arms race, even if there is not one now. We are moving in a direction that nobody wants.’’