New Russian ICBM against US missile shield

New Russian ICBM against US missile shield

This week, 50 years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first man to go into space. While media from all over the world have been reminding the importance of such a historical event, little attention has been paid to statements released by the former chief of staff of Russia’s Strategic Missile Force, Colonel-General Viktor Yesin. As reported by Itar-Tass, Yesin, who is currently an adviser to the commander of the Strategic Missile Force, said Russia in 2018 will have a new heavy silo-based liquid propellant megaton-class ICBM that will replace the RS-20 missile Voyevoda. The new rocket, unlike its well-known predecessor, will have increased survivability thanks to heavily fortified protection of the launcher and other measures of passive and active defense.

As explained by the Russian officer, the adoption of this complex of measures will enhance the survivability of Russia’s new heavy silo-based missiles and will force a potential adversary to spend significantly more of its nuclear warheads and precision weapons capable of putting them out of order. As a result, “the enemy will be forced to attack each silo not with two warheads, as is expected now, but at least with two to three times more units and other means. But even this will not guarantee the destruction of our entire group of heavy missiles. Part of them will be still able to fly in the enemy’s direction and deal a retaliatory strike,” stated Yesin.

The words of the Russian officer show clearly how Russia is concerned over the rise of US nuclear primacy and the development of a European missile shield conceived as a means to intercept any residual retaliation after a successful first-strike attack against Russia carried out by NATO nuclear forces. Among other things, according to some WikiLeaks releases, the US has not only been planning to deploy a missile shield against Russia in Europe, but had also been negotiating with countries along Russia’s borders, such as Japan and India, to jointly build missile defences that would also target Russia. 

As reported by the Komsomolskaya Pravda, a popular Russian daily published from Moscow, the United States has indeed been trying to convince Delhi to get involved into its plans to build a global missile defence system threatening Russia and China. The tactical and technical requirements of the new heavy ICBM conceived as a reply to these strategic plans must be approved by the Russian Defense Ministry before the end of the year. “The conceptual design of a new ICBM is already defined. Experience shows that development work on a new missile lasts 6-8 years. Thus, we can expect that after the testing the new heavy liquid propellant rocket will enter duty by the end of 2018,” said Yesin.

As for the technical aspects of the rocket, the Russian officer said that “the missile will be a product of deep modernization of the Voyevoda missile, it will have a smaller mass, but alongside that it will carry all the necessary means of breaking the existing and any prospective missile defense, including the full set of heavy and other false warheads and decoys for ensuring the delivery of real warheads to targets. The combat equipment will be roughly the same - megaton-class MIRVs with individually guided warheads.”
 

POPOVKIN AND PUTIN DURING A VISIT TO THE “VORONEZH” RADAR

STATION IN THE LENINGRAD REGION ON AUGUST 11, 2007

As confirmed by First Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Popovkin, “the development and production of such missiles is included in the state program for armaments till 2020 in combination with the proper financing of the development of strategic nuclear forces.” In fact, the new START treaty between Russia and the United States that has taken effect do not impose any restrictions on the parties in developing new delivery vehicles or their combat equipment, as it merely requires staying within the quantitative limits on the delivery vehicles and warheads. 

As a consequence, far from chasing away the risk of an arms race, the new agreement may actually be the means by which the United Stated and Russia will have the possibility of investing in new and more sophisticated weapons by cutting maintenance costs of obsolete weapons. Like two boxers embraced in the ring, the US and Russia seem just to be taking a shot in the arm in view of a new clash for strategic dominance.
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The real aim of US missile shield

Last Tuesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov expressed his worries about the failure of NATO and the United States to provide firm assurances that the planned European antimissile system would not bet aimed at undermining the Russian nuclear deterrent. As reported by Interfax, Ryabkov explained that “the main point at issue is the guarantees that the US-NATO missile defense system does not target Russian nuclear forces.” 

Some of the reasons underlying Russia’s concern over US missile shield were indicated by an analysis appeared in Foreign Affairs in the spring of 2006. In an article titled “The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy,” military experts Keir Lieber and Daryl Press noted that, as a consequence of the deterioration of Russian nuclear weaponry after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the relatively primitive character of China’s nuclear weapons, US military planners now believe that they could launch and win a nuclear war against both powers, by using a portion of the US nuclear arsenal to destroy all of their nuclear weapons, with enough US nuclear weapons left over to force Russia and China to surrender. 

In this ambitious plan, conceived by the Pentagon to realize the Bush administration’s neo-mperial project, the US nuclear missile shield might have played a significant role. In fact, as explained by Lieber and Press, “the sort of missile defenses that the United States might plausibly deploy would be valuable primarily in an offensive context, not a defensive one -- as an adjunct to a U.S. first-strike capability, not as a standalone shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left with a tiny surviving arsenal -- if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest or inefficient missile-defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes, because the devastated enemy would have so few warheads and decoys left.”

Once made clear which was the aim behind the missile defense system pursued by the Bush administration, one question arises: is Barack Obama following the same path of his predecessor in the White House? Although it is still difficult to know to what extent US geo-strategists are still refining their weapons in view of a preventive nuclear war against Russia and perhaps China, there is another reason why Washington is pushing for a missile defence shield theoretically integrated with but de facto separated from a Russian one: the need for keeping NATO alive in a Europe which is rapidly falling into Russia’s arms as a consequence of its increasing dependence on natural gas. 

As slow progress in the Western-backed Nabucco pipeline makes both the Nord Stream and the South Stream pipelines better ways to supply gas to Europe, ties between Russia on the one side and Germany, Italy and France on the other side, become always stronger, with the risk of destroying the Atlantic alliance from within. And without a strong US military presence on the continent, nothing could impede the creation of a powerful continental bloc between Germany and Russia, which has been one of the major concerns of the Anglo-Saxon geopolitical school, from Mackinder to Brzezinski.

To avoid the recreation of a new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (expression that has already been used in Poland with reference to the Nord Stream pipeline deal), Washington has only one option: to build a missile defense shield in those countries whose elites are traditionally anti-Russian, inducing Moscow to take retaliatory action against Europe. In this way a divided Europe, although dependent on Russia for its energy supply, would be nevertheless forced to continue relying on NATO and the US for its defense.

Far from being just a means to face new threats from aspiring nuclear powers, Obama’s missile defense plan therefore aims to defend US interests in Europe from its old nuclear rival: Russia. After all, the very existence of Russia as a unified geopolitical subject stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean is a potential threat to US global interests, making Eurasia a stumbling block to the implementation of Anglo-American domination of the world. The great war of continents is still not concluded.