Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

A positive element in all the conflicts and debates
over a possible missile defense system, which has not
attracted sufficient attention, is that Russia is actually
prepared to contribute to the defense of Europe and
potentially of the United States from Iran as long as
it is accepted as a full partner. This could finally and
unequivocally put Moscow into the Western camp
with regard to Iran and end the Russian attempts to
straddle the fence when it comes to Russian-Iranian
relations. Interestingly, the military and the defense
industry seem to favor that solution and, for a change,
the Foreign Ministry takes a more conservative approach.
In the end, there is probably no prospect of a final
solution to the issue of missile defense. In all likelihood,
controversy and conflict will continue in the
foreseeable future. The parties will continue to muddle
through, 1 year after another with ups and downs and
perhaps with some partial, small-scale agreements on
various aspects of the issue.
LONG-RANGE CONVENTIONAL CAPABILITY
Russian opposition to the emerging U.S. Global
Strike is well-known. Multiple concerns voiced by
Russian officials and uniformed military fall into three
categories.
First, high-precision conventional weapons could
be used in a disarming first strike against the Russian
nuclear arsenal. This was a major concern in the 1990s,
but its urgency has been gradually declining. Among
the military, there is still concern about the ability of
high-precision conventional weapons to destroy soft
targets, particularly road-mobile ICBMs, but even that
is not considered a high-priority threat, at least not at
239