Sergei Ivanov, Russia's minister of defense, published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, proudly presenting achievements in strategic forces development of the last year - the mobile Topol-M missile (of course, "unmatched by world rivals") Bulava and so on.
What's interesting is that none of these systems, impressive as they may be, would really help Russia in dealing with the threats that Ivanov himself identified in the beginning of his piece:
Chief among [the threats] is interference in Russia's internal affairs by foreign states -- either directly or through structures that they support -- and the attempts of some countries, coalitions and extremist terrorist organizations to develop or gain access to weapons of mass destruction. We must also be prepared for the possibility of a violent assault on the constitutional order of some post-Soviet states and the border instability that might ensue from that. Arms and drugs trafficking and other kinds of cross-border criminal activity must be closely watched.
The book
Comments
The part
[...] We must also be prepared for the possibility of a violent assault on the constitutional order of some post-Soviet states [...]
is quite interesting in the respect of deterrence credibility, as noted in the Arbatov et al paper. It is quite dangerous, as they put it, to threaten nuclear retaliation for attacks on CST states, as this might jeopardize the concept of nuclear deterrence as a whole (if there really is a coherent concept).
I.e., which part are new high-speed maneuvarble MIRVs to play when one of the CST Central Asian states were to be invaded (or otherwise attacked).
"Chief among [the threats] is interference in Russia's internal affairs by foreign states -- either directly or through structures that they support -- and the attempts of some countries, coalitions and extremist terrorist organizations to develop or gain access to weapons of mass destruction."
To take care of the mentioned threat as stated by Ivanov , Russia need to have strong anti-proliferation measures and an equally strong FSB , You can only take care of Terrorist and WMD problems by having check and balances and having a good intelligence network or rather a Proactive ones so things are prevented as far as possible before they occur.
But if the situation demands for punitive action , then you need to have Standoff weapons like Kh-555 and KH-101 .