Arms Control Today published an interview with STRATCOM Commander General James E. Cartwright, in which he defends (among other things) the plan to deploy conventional warheads on Trident submarines alongside with nuclear ones.
The extent to which Cartwright is divorced from reality is quite astounding. Asked about the (quite negative) reaction that Russia had to the "conventional Trident" plan, Cartwright said that he is not concerned - it's just Russia worrying about "other countries" overreacting. That's an interesting way to read Putin's words. Unfortunately, it's totally wrong.
Moreover, Cartwright went on with his musings:
Maybe transparency and the Joint Data Exchange Center and some of these things are actually starting to work. I hope so.Oh, how interesting. JDEC is starting to work? I'd guess that for this to happen JDEC at least would have to be open. Which it is not - as the Arms Control Today correctly points out, the Joint Data Exchange Center has been on hold, languishing in bureaucratic limbo, ever since the United States and Russia agreed to establish it in 1998.
I'm not a big fan of the JDEC idea. A center like that, which allows launch notifications almost in real time, may create more opportunities for misunderstanding than exist today. It is a crutch that cannot and should not replace focused transparency and confidence-building efforts. But whatever the merits of JDEC, it is really disturbing to see a STRATCOM commander who believes that JDEC or "some of these things" would bail us out and doesn't realize that these "things" do not exist.
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hey, Pavel
This doesn't have to do much with the topic, but I hope that you know about russian military policy and can answer it anyway. I have heard from some US forums that the Russians had a plan to nuke virtually every country in the event of a nuclear war with the US and that's why they had deployed almost all of their weapons on the 80's and 90's. Since your book also covers history the current and future status of the Russian nuclear ploicy and forces, I wanted to ask you, now that Russia deploys only less than 3500 strategic warheads, do they still plan to target non'onvolved nations? and was targetting others ever part of russian policy?
I would seriously doubt that a plan like this ever existed.
Well, the source mentioned that the russians had a plan of limiting noninvolved countries to a limited attack. Their rationale was supposedly that in a nuclear war, those nontargetted would become a superpower at the expense of those who were. Therefore, they were reputed to have targetted everybody so all countries would start to recover from a levelled playing field. I believe it was supposed to be called (spreading the pain). In any case, with their deployed arsenals,an estimate that as of early 2006, Russia has approximately 5,830 operational nuclear warheads in its active arsenal, counting nonstrategic weapons
http://www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=ma06norris
could they target noninvolved to level the playing field countries like Australia, south america and africa besides their real threats such as the US, europe, china, india, pakistan, israel and the countries of the borders?
It seems that if such plan had ever existed, their number of operational weapons indicates they no longer plan to nuke other countries.
The ACT interview you referenced is quite enlightening. For someone whose area of responsibility covers the globe, Gen Cartwright has shown a total dearth of understanding on a myriad of issues. He is so fixated on the Conventional Trident Missile that he oblivious to possible and catastrophic consequences. To think that the general doesn't understand that that Putin's remarks are absolutely aimed at the US and not at third countries is unbelievable. He also says that, "...the Russians for all intents and purposes have complied with the Moscow Treaty." The data on your page indicates that the Russians have the capability to field ~3,000 warheads. Isn't the Moscow Treaty limit 1,700-2,200? Perhaps he knows something I don't but his comments in the interview show that's unlikely.
To James: Technically, both sides are in compliance with the Moscow Treaty - the only requirement is to have 1700-2200 warheads on December 31, 1012. There are no intermediate targets or anything like that. In fact, the treaty does not require the numbers to stay at the 2200 level after 2012 - they can go up.