Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

possible concert with sympathetic Kremlin sources,
allows the Medvedev-Putin tandem to have it both
ways. Official channels trumpet the “reset” in U.S.-
Russian relations, while supposedly independent
hawkish commentators fan the flames of public opinion
in defining the United States and NATO as major
enemies of Russia. 54 Nor were doubts about New
START and further progress in nuclear arms control
confined to skeptical Russians. During hearings before
the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in
May 2010, various Senators expressed doubts about
New START, including the possibility that it would
limit future American missile defense options. 55
The first section of this chapter argued that there
was a direct connection in policy and strategy between
the bilateral U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reductions and
the problem of multilateral nonproliferation management.
If so, could the lower of the two illustrations
for the U.S.-Russian force limitations, a maximum of
1,000 deployed warheads for each side, serve as a basis
for organizing a constrained nonproliferation system
among the existing nuclear weapons states? Let
us assume that, in this constrained nuclear proliferation
system, Iran is prevented from deploying nuclear
weapons and North Korean nuclear proliferation is
rolled back by diplomatic agreement. The remaining
nuclear weapons states (the United States, Russia, UK,
France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel) agree to a
tiered structure that provides for a maximum of 1,000
deployed weapons for the United States and for Russia;
a maximum of 500 each for Britain, France, and
China; and a maximum of 300 for India, Israel, and
Pakistan. Notional forces are assigned to each of these
powers in Figure 9-5, and the numbers of second strike
retaliating warheads provided by each force are estimated
in Figure 9-6. These numbers are obviously not
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