The new briefing by Alexei Arbatov, member of Carnegie Moscow Center’s Research Council and chair of its Nonproliferation Program, examines the missile defense problems between Russia and the U.S. and potential for future cooperation following the cancellation of the Bush administration’s plans to deploy a European BMD system. The new Democratic administration’s decision to revise these plans has helped to defuse the crisis, but Arbatov argues it will take political will in both countries to take full advantage of the emerging opportunities.
Arbatov analyzes the issue’s history on both sides through the examples of the five missile defense crises that have taken place to date. While the previous American administration’s ballistic missile defense (BMD) plans may have had only a minor impact on Russia’s nuclear deterrent, Russia could not simply ignore plans to deploy components of a missile defense system in Europe, both because the U.S. program was provocative towards Russia and because it could have been “open-ended.” The Obama administration’s decision to abandon these plans was positively received in Russia, which had earlier proposed joint use of the Gabala Radar with the United States and NATO. This was the first offer to cooperate with the United States and NATO on a vital military security issue in the post-Soviet space, where “previously, any Western military presence aroused great opposition in Moscow.”
Other potential steps in Russian-American cooperation could be to upgrade the missile-launch data exchange center in Moscow to receive and process real-time data from the Gabala radar. Arbatov proposes that the two countries work towards an agreement where future deployment of interceptor missiles in Europe and the surrounding seas would be commensurate with the actual threat posed by Iranian missiles, as well as a special joint commission of American and Russian experts to assess Iran’s activities.
“The history of all existing security agreements between the United States and Russia is above all a chronicle of how common sense has triumphed over ignorance and uncompromising forces in both Moscow and in Washington,” writes Arbatov.