Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

plans. Concern about future capability was further
enhanced by the insistence of the White House that
the plan was open-ended and refusal to set any limits,
whether formally or informally. The open-ended
nature of the proposed system further strengthened
Russian belief that the “true” plans were much more
ominous than those announced publicly.
Only relatively rarely did Russians clearly distinguish
between immediate American plans and possible
future expansion. Speaking in February 2007,
Chief of the Air Force Vladimir Mikhailov said that he
regarded “very calmly” the planned missile defenses
in Eastern Europe. 61 Former Chief of Staff of Strategic
Rocket Forces Viktor Yesin opined that the main
threat of missile defense came from “undefined architecture.”
“Will there be 10 interceptors or a thousand?
It’s 10 now, but no one can guarantee there will not
be more.” He anticipated that eventually the United
States would also deploy missile defense assets in Japan,
Great Britain, or Norway. 62 Deputy Chief of the
Main Directorate of International Cooperation at the
Ministry of Defense Yevgenii Buzhinskii said that current
small-scale deployment plans were but elements
of a broader vision—a global network of missile defense
around Russia’s borders. 63
This leads to the second and perhaps the most important
feature of the conflict over missile defense—it
has been about the lack of predictability. In the absence
of reasonably clear-cut, definitive long-term plans,
Russian thinking has been unavoidably informed by
worst-case scenarios. The most important lesson that
could be drawn from the conflicts of the last decade
over missile defense is simple, but perhaps difficult
to implement—the need for predictability. U.S. efforts
to maintain transparency through provision
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