The Security Index Occasional Paper Series Came Out With The New Report “Russia’s Nonproliferation Policy And Global Strategic Stability” By Sergey Ryabkov

MOSCOW, DECEMBER 16, 2021. PIR PRESS. The Security Index Occasional Paper Series came out with the new report “Russia’s nonproliferation policy and global strategic stability” by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Ryabkov.

In his paper provided exclusively for PIR Center, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov expresses Russia’s position on topical issues of global security and notes the most important obstacles to disarmament and nonproliferation. The author touches upon Russia-U.S. relations in the strategic stability domain and highlights the most pressing challenges to the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Despite enormous difficulties and challenges in this field, H.E. Ryabkov expresses cautious optimism about the future, hoping for pragmatism and willingness to seek balanced and mutually acceptable solutions to the problems of nuclear nonproliferation and global security to prevail at the NPT Review Conference and during the Russia-U.S. strategic stability dialogue.

Key findings:

• Although Russian-U.S. relations are overshadowed by the disintegration of the arms control architecture, mostly due to the destructive course of the previous U.S. Administration, the understanding reached by Presidents Biden and Putin at the Geneva summit opened a window of opportunity for constructive interaction of two major stewards of nuclear arsenals.
• The long-awaited steps agreed upon by the U.S. and Russian leaders are the following: New START extension, Joint Statement that nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought, and launch of Strategic Stability Dialogue, which is to serve as insurance of predictability, prevent arms race, build up arms control, and reduce risks of armed conflicts.
• The underlying idea of the Strategic Stability Dialogue is to jointly develop a “new strategic equation” between the U.S. and Russia, which would embrace the entire spectrum of arms possessed by the states, including offensive weapons and defensive systems.
• Among major challenges to the nonproliferation regime, Russia highlights the creation of weapons of mass destruction free zone in the Middle East, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty not entering into force, a possible arms race in outer space, Iranian and North Korean crises, and the risk of politicization of IAEA safeguards system.

Read the paper