Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

they built for?” 55 He did not mention any of the caveats
associated with official Russian nuclear use doctrine.
A few days later Colonel-General Nikolay Solovtsov,
Commander of the Strategic Missile Troops,
made nuclear threats against Poland and the Czech
Republic if they were to allow U.S. missile deployment.
56 Despite U.S. protests against such inflammatory
tactics, then-Commander of the RF General Staff
Army General Yurii Baluyevskii in April 2007 once
again threatened to target U.S. missile defense facilities
in Europe: “If we see that these facilities pose a
threat to Russia, these targets will be included in the
lists of our planners—strategic, nuclear, or others. The
latter is a technicality.” 57
The Putin government’s decision to put nuclear
weapons and arms control in the center of its military
and foreign policy agenda was apparently taken with
several important goals in mind. Firstly, by associating
arms control failures with the weakness of Russia’s
global power and statue, Moscow was creating
justifications for intensified efforts at internal militarization
in general and modernization of the Russian
strategic forces in particular.
Secondly, by playing the arms control “card,”
Vladimir Putin was subtly distancing himself from
the preceding Boris Yeltsin administration, which was
associated in the Russian mind with many troubles of
their country in the 1990s. Thirdly, emphasis on nuclear-related
issues was Vladimir Putin’s way of signaling
to the United States and other nuclear powers that
Moscow would not sit idle while others augment their
own capabilities. 58 In a way, the Russians were offering
a choice between a new race in advanced weapon
systems and return to binding restraints and limitations
in developing and introducing these systems. 59
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