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Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his much-anticipated address on February 21 and while most of the points he made were well-known and expected, one particular announcement sent shockwaves across the political West. Namely, Putin stated that Russia is suspending its participation in the New START nuclear arms control treaty with the United States. This was quite an unpleasant surprise for both Washington DC and Brussels, as they expected Moscow to stay compliant with a treaty they have so blatantly been violating for nearly a year now.
Due to Western sanctions against Russia, the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) has been effectively put on hold last year, as Moscow had no way of confirming any of US claims about the state of America’s strategic arsenal. Russia’s requests to inspect US/NATO facilities (an integral part of the deal) were denied. The Eurasian giant had no choice but to simply suspend the treaty, as it became a mere formality. And given the series of recent admissions by various Western leaders that nearly all treaties with Russia were there to “just buy time”, Moscow has every reason to doubt every single word uttered by any US/EU/NATO official.
“Russia did its best to solve the problem in Ukraine peacefully, but the statements of Western leaders turned out to be fraudulent and untrue,” Putin (quite accurately) described the behavior of Western political elites during his speech.
New START was the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between Russia and the United States. It was signed by then-presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama in 2011, creating a legal framework for both superpowers to limit the deployment of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and strategic bombers/missile carriers. As previously mentioned, it also included regular mutual inspections, conducted routinely until Washington DC and its NATO vassals chose to unilaterally discontinue this legally binding practice.
The first START treaty was signed in 1991 between the Soviet Union and the United States. At the time, there were as many as 60,000 nuclear warheads worldwide. START I required both sides to have no more than 6,000 active warheads deployed on up to 1,600 missiles and strategic bombers/missile carriers. By 1994, the number of thermonuclear warheads went down by approximately a third. In 2010, Obama and Medvedev brokered the now-defunct New START, which further limited the number of deployed warheads and missiles to 1,550 and 700, respectively. Just days before it was set to expire on February 5, 2021, Russia and the US decided to extend it for another five years.
However, despite Russia’s best efforts to maintain the agreement, incessant US noncompliance with existing treaties and crawling aggression in Eastern Europe left Moscow with no other option. American attacks on Russian-built strategic energy infrastructure were also one of the reasons for Russia’s reaction, but perhaps the worst US violation were multiple strikes that targeted Russian strategic airbases back in December. And while the Kiev regime pulled the trigger, the recent admissions that Washington DC controls the Neo-Nazi junta’s targeting clearly implies that the US ordered the attacks. This was obviously the last straw for Moscow, since the strikes could have undermined Russia’s strategic security. All of the aforementioned factors inevitably led to the New START’s demise.
And yet, the new strategic situation certainly doesn’t put Russia at any sort of disadvantage. On the contrary, it is the US that stands to lose the most from this. Russia enjoys a comfortable strategic advantage over the belligerent thalassocracy, as its ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) are incomparably more modern, larger and longer-ranged. For instance, Moscow’s land-based missiles can carry up to seven times more MIRV (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles) warheads than the hopelessly outdated US “Minuteman 3” ICBMs, which can carry no more than 3 warheads per missile. This has also made it possible for Russia to deploy fewer missiles than the US while having more warheads, as its ICBMs have a much larger payload capacity.
In addition, the percentage of new equipment in the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) currently stands at a staggering 91%. For comparison, the aforementioned US “Minuteman 3” ICBMs were deployed more than half a century ago, while its most up-to-date missile, the “Trident 2” SLBM (submarine-launched ballistic missile) is more than 30 years old. And although still dangerous nonetheless, US strategic weapons are effectively reaching the end of their service life, while their respective replacements are nowhere near complete, let alone ready for deployment. Meanwhile, Russia has not only been able to maintain and deeply modernize its Soviet-era strategic forces, but it has now almost completely replaced older systems.
“No one should be under the illusion that global strategic parity can be violated,” Vladimir Putin stated during his Tuesday address.
This statement correctly describes the current state of the global strategic power balance. However, for the US to keep the said balance, it will need to invest hundreds of billions of dollars, while simultaneously competing with several global and regional powers with operational ICBMs and SLBMs, a strategic nightmare wise leadership would have certainly tried to avoid.
In addition, what President Putin described as “global strategic parity” could be better described as the prevention of the truly unprovoked and brutal US aggression against the world, as the only way to make America think twice before starting yet another war is the targeted country’s ability to destroy it in minutes. Unfortunately, the world simply has no other way of containing the war criminals in Washington DC.
Many American security experts and even government institutions came to the conclusion that keeping the New START treaty with Russia was in the best interest of the US. In 2020, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that America would need to invest $439 billion to modernize its strategic arsenal, as well as another $28 billion annually just to maintain it. This only refers to US weapons aimed at Russia. However, despite ludicrous American claims that China has more land-based ICBMs than the US, Beijing is in the process of expanding its strategic forces, primarily due to US aggression in East Asia. In addition, North Korea is also upgrading its strategic arsenal, which has now surpassed US ABM (anti-ballistic missile) capabilities.
Another major problem for the US is Russia’s greater uranium enrichment capacity, with various estimates putting it anywhere between 43% and 51% of the world’s total. This means that Moscow could greatly outproduce the US in terms of new nuclear warheads, while also putting additional pressure on its nuclear energy production, causing dramatic price spikes.
All things considered, Washington DC had a simple choice, but as per usual, it chose confrontation. Now, it will suffer the consequences of its belligerence toward Russia, China, North Korea and, in the long run, even Iran, which could also acquire thermonuclear weapons to offset the possibility of a US attack. On the other hand, the American people should ask their warmongering government why the vast majority of the world’s strategic arsenal is now aimed at them.
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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Featured image is from InfoBrics
