Quip of the week:
“Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” — line by Chico Marx in “Duck Soup”
Two former Soviet experts who played key roles in Cold War arms control negotiations, Aleksandr’ G. Savel’yev and Nikolay N. Detinov, wrote an important book giving outsiders insight into the Kremlin’s decision making. The English language version of their book, The Big Five, was published in 1995. Their account of decision making regarding the construction of the Krasnoyask radar is telling and could provide clues into Moscow’s subsequent decision to deploy new ground-launched cruise missiles with range capabilities prohibited by the INF Treaty. This maneuver led to the INF Treaty’s demise.
Russian officials maintain that (a) the missiles in question do not have range capabilities prohibited by the Treaty, despite apparent flight testing to the contrary; and (b) this was a “technical” rather than a substantive matter. The Obama administration didn’t buy these arguments. Neither did the Trump administration, which announced its intention to withdraw from the Treaty in February, after which Moscow followed suit.
Here’s some background on the Krasnoyarsk radar:
The ABM Treaty permitted both countries to construct a ring of radars designed for early warning of ballistic missile attack on national peripheries oriented outward. This, along with their operational frequencies and their design, were important ways to distinguish early warning radars from battle management radars that would be employed to direct intercepts against incoming warheads.
Whatever their intended purpose or location, these large installations could be quickly destroyed in wartime. (Battle management radars for sure; early warning radars could be left intact to assess limited rather than massive attacks.) Nevertheless, the ABM Treaty’s distinctions were designed to relieve worst-case assumptions. By codifying the placement of early warning radars on the periphery and strictly limiting battle management radars in the interior, the superpowers were demonstrating to each other that they accepted national vulnerability – a necessary condition for eventual deep cuts in strategic offenses.
The Kremlin, however, faced a dilemma. Building an early warning radar on its periphery oriented outward to cover attack corridors to the northeast would be extremely difficult. Weather conditions for construction at a treaty-permitted site, like Noril’sk, would be brutal and besides, there was no infrastructure to support construction there. A site inland, near Krasnoyarsk was far preferable, and a cover story – that the radar was for space tracking, not early warning – was not entirely false and could be used as a public rationale. As Savel’yev and Detinov wrote, after much internal debate and study,
“The balance was tipped decisively by [Minister of Defense] Dmitri Ustinov and the General Staff… The economic rationale proved the determining factor in making this choice. No one, of course, could have imagined at the time that the Krasnoyarsk option would later lead to such serious political complications.”
“The serious political complications” came soon enough, as the Krasnoyarsk radar became the unarguable centerpiece of the Reagan administration’s long list of Soviet arms control treaty violations. Hardliners were up in arms, viewing Kransnoyarsk as evidence of the Kremlin’s pursuit of nuclear war fighting capabilities. Powerful supporters of arms control weighed in, dismissing the Kremlin’s cover story. Paul Warnke testified on Capitol Hill on at least two occasions that the Krasnoyarsk radar was a treaty violation. McGeorge Bundy, George Kennan, Robert McNamara and Gerard Smith called out the Kremlin in print.
For all practical purposes, rectifying the violation meant tearing the radar down. Once Gorbachev, who wanted and needed a treaty reducing strategic forces, reconciled himself to this remedy, an important obstacle to a treaty signing ceremony was removed. Gorbachev initially proposed that the radar be operated by international staff to clarify that it was not a battle management radar. Then, at a meeting with Secretary of State James Baker at Jackson Hole in September 1989, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze spilled the beans and threw in the towel. He told Baker that the Kasnoyarsk facility was an early warning radar built for convenience and cost-savings, and that it would be dismantled.
How does this story relate to Russian ground-launched cruise missiles deployed in violation of the INF Treaty? My assessment is speculative, but here goes:
The Soviet General Staff was deeply unhappy with the INF Treaty and with Gorbachev’s negotiating style. For particulars in the English language, see The Big Five and Anatoly Dobrynin’s memoirs, In Confidence. Dobrynin writes,
“Gorbachev increasingly improvised and without consulting our experts would agree to sudden compromises which were often regarded by our military as one-sided concessions to the Americans.”
Giving up INF-range missiles in Asia added salt to the wounds. Again, here’s Dobrynin:
“In Asia the SS-20s were part of our strategic defenses against China as well as the American bases in Japan and the Indian Ocean, so this certainly represented a major concession.”
The Russian General Staff felt the same way as the Soviet General Staff. My guess is that they wanted to retrieve Gorbachev’s “concessions,” and Vladimir Putin agreed. The cover story that the new missiles had insufficient range to violate the INF Treaty and that this was a negotiable “technical” problem, fell as flat as the Krasnoyarsk radar cover story.
Since Donald Trump was easily persuaded to initiate withdrawal from the Treaty, blame could be spread around. And the Russian General Staff and the Pentagon could pursue military capabilities that Gorbachev and Reagan took away from them.
That’s my analysis, and I’m sticking to it until new information arises to change my mind.