Stealth Threat

There really are times when people who should be intelligent and reasonable become so suspicious of one another that intelligence and reasonableness forfeit to belligerent threats on the basis of pre-empting foul behaviour from one's perceived competitor-adversary. We appear to have been edging closer and closer to a return to the Cold War era. The dissolution of the Soviet Union, hugely regretted by Russia, cheered by its released satellites, and celebrated by the West, left Russia naked of self-respect.

Under the careful direction of President Vladimir Putin that nakedness has been garbed in the splendour of renewed pride. An economic uptick in energy resources now permits Moscow to renew itself, to reinvent the past. And Russia has a new strongman. The Kremlin liked the balance that once existed between Moscow and Washington, it was MAD, a condition that kept both countries on the tenterhooks of insecurity and defence, carefully avoiding offence.

The more things change the more they reflect what had gone before. Modern societies now produce most of their technical advances through research focusing primarily on advanced weapons of war. And Russia is acknowledging that the dire fear of nuclear weapons has been supplanted by the destructive power of new, highly-advanced conventional weaponry of which one must remark there is nothing particularly conventional, and much that is fearsome indeed in their potential.

The weapons that North Korea and Iran have edged toward; nuclear warheads and powerful ballistic missiles, while presenting as a frightening threat to safety, security and defence, are now to be seen as fearful old technology; difficult to master to be sure, and frightful to contemplate in the hands of despotic psychopaths, but challenged in part by weapons that have the capacity to inflict almost as much damage and instill equal fear.

Certainly Russia views American-NATO missile defence silos in the geography that once belonged to the USSR as an insult, an unforgivable assault upon Russian sensibilities and pride. Such insults must be countered. Russia is unnerved by the newly rolled-out news of American plans to modify existing nuclear-armed missiles to partner with conventional warheads and the design of new missiles capable of travelling at hypersonic speeds with frightening accuracy.

Comforting to the West, no doubt, fury-inducing to Moscow. And so, the delivery of a number of new messages from Russia where the Kremlin has announced its intention of developing new weapons types of huge effectiveness. Lithuania and Poland have nervously expressed their concern relating to the deployment of Russian state-of-the-art missiles in Kaliningrad, a western enclave bordering NATO countries.

Deterrents, of course, against the implausible potential of two forces clashing monumentally with catastrophic consequences. Not bad enough, evidently, that the world has to concern itself about the antics of rogue states angling to achieve power for themselves by acquiring forbidden weapons which others fear their demented minds could foresee the use of. Now the prospect of two great world powers enticing one another to one-upsmanship in a juvenile demonstration of stupidity emerges.

 FILE - In this Friday, Aug. 4, 2006 file photo a decommissioned Russian train-mounted RT-23 intercontinental strategic missile, background, is on a display at a railway museum at former Warsaw Railway Station in St. Petersburg, Russia. The Russian military said Wednesday Dec. 18, 2013 it is developing a new intercontinental ballistic missile mounted on a railway car to replace a Soviet-era design that was scrapped in 2005. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky, File)

 

Col. Gen. Sergei Karakayev, chief of Russia's military Strategic Missile Forces remarked that new weapons are on the verge of production. A new-old weapon, as it were. The railway missiles designed in the Soviet era but which were readily detectable because of their bulk and size were mothballed. But new versions are being redesigned to be lighter, capable of being carried by an ordinary refrigerator rail car.

"No matter how they tried to hide it any expert would figure out that it wasn't a regular train". said Col. Gen. Karakayev, of the old Soviet-era train-mounted missiles. Of the newer design, he said in the most positive of tones: "It could easily be put in a conventional refrigerator car ... which can travel on any route", a matter of understandable-under-the-circumstances, pride.

Russian President Vladimir Putin described the "prompt global strike" program being carried out in the U.S. as a measure meant to tilt the strategic balance between the two rivals in favour of the United States. And, he vowed, it would never happen, because he planned to counter the effort. The development of the new rail-based missile constituted part of the Russian response.

As was the announcement that Russia will henceforth heed the new change to its constitution with the military doctrine permitting it to use nuclear weapons to counter a perceived impending nuclear attack on its soil or that of an ally, or failing that, a large-scale conventional attack that Russia would judge to have the potential of threatening its existence.

For every action there is an reaction. This is Russia's counter-response to American military enterprise reflecting a nation that has undergone quite the sea-change. From a Republican, war-mongering president who got along very well with Vladimir Putin, and George W. Bush said as much when he looked into Mr. Putin's eyes and declared him to be someone he could do business with. To the current state of affairs.

It appears to be the Democratic, socialist-minded President Obama whom the Nobel Committee honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize, who finds fault with the look in President Putin's eye, though to be perfectly fair the missile defence system long pre-dated President Obama. That's the problem with misunderstandings, they can be irreparable.

And potentially very, very dangerous.