To OUTLAW 09 RE: Cross-Threading and BMD
Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
You are getting way off the Syrian thread...just one response....
And which one of us is responsible for that?
We all know the stunt that Russia is pulling in Syria.
Does it do the Syria thread any good to make it a cross-thread discussion on US politics, Putin’s foreign policy and Russia’s other small wars?
RE: NATO BMD/EPAA
Clark Murdock and others disagree with you that Russia had no cause to be alarmed at BMD in Central Europe. While the system as designed was not a threat to Russia at the time, it could be upgraded to pose a threat if the political decision was made by NATO and/or the United States. Russia continues to wargame nuclear warfare, and has concluded that Russia would have roughly half the survivable retaliatory warheads that the United States would have: approximately 100. Although US BMD systems would have no meaningful impact on a Russian first strike, they could whittle down a Russian second strike, reducing the retaliatory strike from 100 warheads to say 85 or less.
The United States no longer wargames in the same manner because they are more focused on the probability of Russia taking a political decision to launch a first strike, whereas Russia focuses on capability over will. There is a logic to the Russian approach, given that the US was in the position after 1992, to launch a conventional counterforce strike on Russia (stealth bombers, PGMs), which the latter had little ability to defend against. Moreover, the Bush administration had various officials who wanted to resurrect SDI.
You are absolutely correct that Russia wants no threats to the tactical nuclear weapons on is borders. However, Russia relies on tactical nuclear weapons because it has poor conventional precision-strike capabilities.
In addition, you must acknowledge that the breakdown in cooperation on BMD was not entirely one-sided, and that Poland and the Czech Republic were curious locations for the system, if the threat was from Iran. After all, was Iran not more likely to target the GCC members, Israel, and US bases in Diego Garcia, Turkey, Cyprus, Djibouti, etc., rather than Central Europe?
If NATO BMD was intended to counter Russian SRBMs such as the Iskander, then Russia’s opposition and suspicion would be understandable, no (the focus on Iran would be a lie)?
Overall, I think that the Kremlin still suffers from the same misconceptions about American intentions that it did during the early 1980s (e.g. Operation RYAN, Able Archer, etc.). If the US government believes that North Korea's crude bombs make it too much of a porcupine, why would it possibly think that destroying Russia would be worth losing over 1/3 of its population? It is insane, and I don't believe that the Pentagon has a magic number of acceptable losses that it is driving for, say 75 million is OK but 80 million is not...
We must distinguish between Russia’s more legitimate concerns, and Russia’s desire to freely menace Western Europe with nuclear weapons, which is illegitimate.
Anyhow, back to Syria, I hope...