President Ronald Reagan liked to say, “trust but verify” in a world that bristled with nuclear weapons.
With the world still facing the same issue, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov suggested Monday that Al Capone, as he recalled, said it better: “It is much better to persuade someone with a pistol and a pleasant smile than without a pistol.”
With this flourish of Russian grit, Ivanov expressed Moscow’s resolve to oppose America’s missile defense plans on a day when President Bush was on the telephone to President Vladimir Putin.
Bush was seeking to buttress their personal relationship as the two men prepare for an autumn of summitry and high drama over whether the United States would withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Kremlin officials were characteristically vague about the conversation, saying only that the two leaders expressed “their satisfaction with the development” of relations. Their conversation took place against a backdrop of frustration in Moscow with the Bush administration’s unwillingness to describe in any detail what its missile defense plans entail and the timetable for carrying them out.
Though Bush and Putin have declared that the U.S. and Russia are no longer enemies, military leaders in both countries have said they were taking steps that reflect a decline in trust.
Surveillance flights begin
On Sunday, the United States and Canada announced they would send fighter jets and surveillance aircraft to monitor routine Russian military exercises in the Arctic region and the North Pacific.
“This is an issue where we’re not expecting any threat from the Russians,” said Capt. Ed Thomas, a spokesman for the U.S. air defense command. “But in our mission to ensure the sovereignty of the U.S. and Canadian airspace, complacency is something that we can’t afford.”
In Moscow, the commander of the Russian air force, Gen. Anatoly Kornukov, said that one way Russia might respond to a U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty would be to build up its force of strategic long-range bombers.
“The long-range strategic aviation of Russia,” he said, is one means of nuclear weapons delivery “that missile defense fails to detect.” Other experts have pointed out that other delivery methods that could not be detected include low-flying cruise missiles, shipping containers and even suitcases.
Rewriting Cold War doctrines
Senior U.S. Defense Department official Douglas Feith arrived in Moscow on Monday for another round of consultations on Bush’s expressed goal of rewriting Cold War strategic doctrines.
But the Russian defense minister signaled Moscow’s rejection of any proposal that would undermine the treaty and its basic strategic bargain struck 29 years ago — that deterrence against nuclear attack is best achieved by each side maintaining an adequate number of offensive nuclear weapons. The treaty banned the concept of a national missile defense, though it allows a single site, such as a capital or a missile field, to be defended.
During a visit to the Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, Ivanov said it would be possible to amend the ABM Treaty, but not in a manner that would allow the U.S. to develop missile defenses to protect the entire country and thereby undermine the basic concept of the treaty.
It is “theoretically” possible to amend the accord, he said, “but what does `theoretically’ mean? It means it must be clearly understood what kind of missile defense the United States is planning and what kind of technical possibilities are envisaged in the air, on the sea, on the ground and in space.
“We have failed to get an American answer to these questions,” he said, “along with the questions on the reduction of strategic offensive weapons.”
