Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

cused Khramchikhin of “playing with soldiers” when
the real pieces were in clear view in “secret little boxes,”
a thinly veiled reference to nuclear weapons as
the weapon of immediate resort in the absence of conventional
defense capabilities. Rehashing “massive retaliation”
for the 21st century, the authors found their
way out by pointing to Russia as a key supplier of critical
raw materials to the world and therefore an economic
guarantee that no one would want to disrupt a
good thing. Khramchikhin did not depict China as an
aggressor. What he pointed to was Russia’s relative
geopolitical isolation in a region, where he sees rising
tensions. Kazennov and Kumachev’s final words were
that a “master pattern maker” could cover any threadbare
parts of the geopolitical fabric with material (in
this case nuclear weapons and energy exports) from
another area to secure Russia’s national security well
into the future.
These developments may fundamentally shift the
geostrategic context of President Obama’s global zero
initiative on nuclear weapons. For the last 2 decades,
Russia’s nuclear arsenal in Asia was first seen internationally
as a problem of management and control
as it declined in size and operational readiness. Operationally,
even in its reduced capacity, it was for
Russia the only military option open in case of attack
in a region effectively denuded of conventional military
power. China’s relative military inferiority made
that prospect remote. Both Moscow and Beijing could
look to strategic partnership without the prospect of
an emerging military threat. Chinese military modernization
has in the last year changed that perception
in Moscow. Now, with the emergence of a potential
conventional threat from its former strategic partner,
Russia is in the process of evaluating whether its re-
495