Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

inferiority vis-à-vis U.S. and Chinese threats) and to
air and air defense in order to forestall a Kosovo-like
aerial campaign. 167
At the conventional level, apart from ongoing
reinforcement or resupply of the forces with what is
hoped to be more advanced conventional weapons
and improved training and quality of the manpower
(a very dubious assumption given the inability and refusal
to build a truly professional Army), reform also
entails experiments in new force structures and rapid
reaction forces. While conventional forces in the Far
East will have no choice but to fight at the end of a
precarious supply line in an austere theater, Moscow
is trying to develop a functioning mechanism of rapid
response and airlift (the idea of the swing fleet also
plays here) from Russia’s North or interior to threatened
sectors of the theater. This program of airlift and
rapid air mobility also applies to nuclear forces. 168
Second, Russia is building an integrated, mobile,
and all arms (if not combined arms) force, consisting
of land, air, and sea forces capable of dealing with
failing state scenarios, insurgencies, terrorism, scenarios
involving large-scale criminal activities, and
ultimately conventional attack. Third, if, however, the
scale of the threat overwhelms or is too large for the
conventional forces, doctrine evidently continues to
point to the use of nuclear weapons (probably tactical
or what Moscow calls non-strategic nuclear weapons
[NSNW]) in a first-strike or possibly even preventive
mode as stated by Baluyevsky on January 20, 2008: 169
We do not intend to attack anyone, but we consider
it necessary for all our partners in the world community
to clearly understand . . . that to defend the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies,
military forces will be used, including preventively,
including with the use of nuclear weapons. 170
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