The Security Index Occasional Paper Series Came Out With The New Report «Elements Of The Strategic Equation: How To Build Arms Control In A New Era»

MOSCOW, DECEMBER 27, 2021. PIR PRESS. The Security Index Occasional Paper Series came out with the new report «Elements of the Strategic Equation: How to Build Arms Control in a New Era».

This research paper comes out a few days after the publication by Russia of draft treaties with the United States and NATO countries on “security guarantees”. The paper contains the results of the round table of PIR Center within the framework of the 13th Russian International Studies Association (RISA) Convention in 2021, where experts discussed elements of the “strategic equation” that would allow creating a new mutually acceptable system of arms control against the background of technological progress, the increasing confrontation of large states and the general crisis of the global architecture of international security. Thus, this paper presents abstracts from the speeches of PIR Center Director Vladimir Orlov, the head of the Division for military and strategic problems of the Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control of the Russian MFA Alexander Trofimov, Chief Research Associate at Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) Vladimir Dvorkin, PIR Center consultant Andrey Baklitskiy, PIR Center Junior Research Fellow Sergey Semenov, Senior Research Fellow at Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies, RAS, Oleg Krivolapov and Associate Professor of the Department of International and National Security of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian MFA Andrey Malov.

Key findings: 

• The Russian proposals on “security guarantees” create a new platform for developing a “strategic equation” that can become the basis for long-term stability and predictability in Russian-American relations.
• The current model of strategic offensive arms control provides predictability and a real picture of the state of affairs in the group of strategic nuclear forces of the likely enemy. The real offset of warheads, the innovation of the New START, is a guarantee of that.
• In order to lay the groundwork for new arms control, it is necessary to formulate and develop a new strategic equation that would take into account all significant factors affecting strategic stability: all offensive and defensive weapons capable of solving strategic tasks.
• The American approach to the arms control problem traditionally depends on which of the two leading parties is in power. But the weapons programs launched under Trump have not yet been canceled – for the Americans, this is an additional pressure lever on Russia and they do not intend to abandon it.
• The administration of Joe Biden, in the current budget conditions, relies on the most important of innovative advanced developments: a new strategic interceptor, space-based sensors, protection against hypersonic weapons.
• The space arms race has not yet begun, but there are signals that individual states are creating a political, economic, scientific and technical foundation for the implementation of plans to deploy shock weapons systems in space.
• The essence of military dominance in space is simple – if someone places weapons in space ahead of others, masters practically working forms and methods of their use, he will gain control over outer space, and not only over it.

Read (in Russian)