Nuke fears as Putin talks up his arsenal
Nato is to review its preparedness for a nuclear standoff with Russia in response to Vladimir Putin’s threats to upgrade his arsenal.
In a return to Cold War strategies, defence ministers are due to hold an additional meeting of the Nato Nuclear Planning Group to review what they know about the Kremlin’s nuclear policies.
Western planners are concerned they are not clear on the seriousness of Putin’s increasingly aggressive threats to deploy nuclear weapons.
The meeting comes at a time when the British Government is under pressure to keep defence spending over the Nato threshold of 2 per cent of GDP. However, the Ministry of Defence last year changed the way it reports its spending, in a move that allows it to count money including soldiers’ rent towards the target.
Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, denied that Britain was ‘‘padding out our numbers’’. He also voiced his concern yesterday that Nato did not fully understand Russia’s nuclear rhetoric.
Throughout the Cold War Nato and the Warsaw Pact countries employed thousands of analysts to study the policies behind each other’s nuclear arsenals, but this work ceased after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Now, officials fear they may be in the dark as to where nuclear weapons sit in Russia’s order of battle, or how Putin would ‘‘signal’’ their imminent use. They are concerned that the loss of the vocabulary of nuclear dialogue risks innocent actions by Nato being misinterpreted by the Kremlin. Fallon said: ‘‘Russia’s nuclear messaging is not helpful and it is important that we better understand its implications for the alliance.’’
Nato yesterday announced the creation of a 40,000-strong rapid-response force to defend Europe’s border with Russia.
Putin last week said Russia would this year put 40 new nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles into service, a move that Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary-general, described as ‘‘dangerous sabre-rattling’’. Russian state television’s programmes are filled with calls by pundits to launch a strike on the United States.
The Nuclear Planning Group was set up in 1967 to determine how missiles should be distributed among Nato members, but in recent years its diminished role earned it the nickname ‘‘Nato Plays Golf’’.
A Nato official said: ‘‘Russian leadership is rhetorically lowering the threshold when it comes to nuclear weapons and this should not be done.’’