Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

tive entourages. Such trends are dangerous in and of
themselves and even more so where nuclear weapons
and Russia’s most crucial foreign policy relationships
are involved.
Second, administration officials have stated that
Medvedev told them in private what Putin said in
public and that the two were in very close policy coordination
and lockstep. 125 Yet the public record, and
not just the issue of building more nuclear weapons,
clearly belies such contentions underscoring a wide
range of disagreements between Medvedev and Putin
on a broad range of both domestic and foreign policy
issues. 126 While debates over policy and the subsequent
pressure on policymakers are the normal state
of politics everywhere, the sheer scope of issues in
which such discordance is manifest in Russian politics
clearly points to ongoing tensions within Russia.
What this means for the treaty is that it depends for
its survival and endurance on the domestic balance
of power in Russia because the Russian military and
Putin are already publicly on record indicating that
the U.S. missile defense program as it is represents
exactly the kind of threat that Makarov and so many
before him have invoked as justification for leaving
the treaty. Indeed, one could argue as well that the
Republican and conservative opposition in the U.S.
represent an analogous case of the fragility of the reset
policy and the limits to it.
Furthermore, these facts of Russian domestic political
life contravene that Obama administration’s
argument that Russia’s statement is essentially for
domestic posturing and that every treaty contains a
withdrawal clause (as did the Anti-Ballistic Missile
(ABM) Treaty when the United States withdrew from
it). Every treaty does contain a withdrawal clause, but
332