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Part 1 of 2 Parts
When I was a kid during the Cold War, we regularly held drills where we would crawl under our desks in case of nuclear attack. I had nightmares about seeing my world dissolve into a radioactive wasteland. I was relieved when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, assuming that the nuclear nightmare was over. However, as the years went by, the Russians who inherited the Soviet nuclear weapons, became more and more belligerent.
Russia has been threatening nuclear war for decades. They have flown their nuclear bombers over other countries without warning, sailed their nuclear ships through coastal waters of other countries without notice, and continually bragged about “super weapons” that could not be stopped by antimissile systems. Some analysts say that we are as close to World War III as we have ever been. My childhood monster is back, or it never left.
Last Monday, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Russia may be forced to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Eastern Europe as a response to NATO who they believe are getting ready to move their own nuclear missiles into Easter Europe.
Ryabkov said that Russia would be forced to take such action if the Western nations refused to join Russia in a moratorium on intermediate range nuclear forces in Europe. Such a moratorium is part of a series of security guarantees that Russa is seeking as the cost of defusing the current crisis over Ukraine where Russia is massing troops and hardware on the Russian-Ukraine border.
Ryabkov told a Russian news agency that lack of international progress towards a political and diplomatic solution would cause Russia to respond militarily. He said, “That is, it will be a confrontation, this will be the next round.” This is a reference to a possible deployment of nuclear missiles by Russia in Eastern Europe.
Intermediate-range nuclear weapons are those with a range between three hundred and thirty-four hundred miles. They were banned in Europe under a 1987 treaty between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan. This was hailed at the time as a major relaxing of Cold War tensions. By 1991, the two sides had destroyed about twenty-seven hundred missiles.
Washington withdrew from the pact in 2019 after complaining for years that Russia was violating the treaty. This concerned Russian’s development of a ground-launched cruise missile that Russia referred to as the 9M729 and NATO called the “Screwdriver.” If NATO is correct that Russia has already deployed this system in the European part of the country, west of the Ural Mountain, then the threat issued by Ryabkov is an empty one. This analysis comes from Gerhard Mangott who is an expert on Russian Foreign Policy and arms control at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
On the other hand, if the Russian denial of deployment is true, he said, then Russia’s warning is “the final signal to NATO that it should enter into talks with Russia about a freeze-freeze agreement.” He has also said that “If NATO sticks to its current position to not negotiate any deal, then we will certainly see Russia deploy the Screwdriver missile at its western border.
Please read Part 2 next