there Russia announced on Monday August 8th that it would not allow inspections of its nuclear arsenal set up by the start contract on nuclear weapons control due to travel restrictions imposed by the United States and its allies. The inspection conditions proposed by Washington “created unilateral advantages for the United States and effectively deprived the Russian Federation of the right to conduct inspections on American territory,” he said Moscow Foreign Ministry in a note stating that the flights of Russian inspection groups cannot reach US territory, adding that Moscow is nevertheless fully committed to complying with all provisions of the treaty. Indeed, the United States and its allies, including Britain and the European Union, have done so closed their airspace on Russian planes as part of sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s decision to attack Ukraine in February.
This decision was later made by Russia as well, albeit in a slightly different way: Rosaviatsia, Russia’s federal civil aviation agency, had said on February 28 that flights from restricted countries – 36 including Canada, the US and the EU – could still land in Russia due to exceptional circumstances, but subject to obtaining a special permit from the aviation authority or the Foreign Office. The decision to suspend the inspections does not violate the contract Boot – or reboot – as this is only a temporary measure. The ministry noted that the suspension will be lifted “after the resolution of the outstanding issues related to the resumption of inspection activity.” The New Start, enacted in 2011 between the United States and Russia, limits the maximum number of nuclear warheads of both countries to 1550 along with that of launch vehicles (ICBMs, Bomber and Slbm – Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile) to 700.
The contract has been extended for five years in 2021, depending on the possibility, but a profound revision is required in view of the entry into service of new delivery systems represented by the Hgv (Hypersonic Glide Vehicle) hypersonic warheads and, in particular, from the end of the year contract information via Intermediate Nuclear Forces, which paved the way for the return of medium-range cruise missiles and ballistic vehicles such as the Russian 9M729 (or SSC-8) cruise missile. The Start contract provides for regular inspections between the two parties to check compliance and in 2020 these were suspended due to the pandemic but as of May 2022 they appeared not to have resumed. The President of the United States Joe Biden He said Monday his government was ready to “quickly” negotiate a new deal to replace the “New Start,” which we’ve seen will expire in 2026 if Moscow shows its willingness to start work on nuclear arms control to resume.
But Russia’s mission to the United Nations said Washington has withdrawn from separate talks with Moscow over strategic stability in the conflict in Ukraine, also cutting off lines of communication on nuclear arsenals. The next day, the Kremlin said that the time to negotiate a replacement for the nuclear arms deal had expired, threatening global security. However, Moscow does not seem to have any real intention of “giving Washington a helping hand”: on August 3rd Alexei Drobinin, director of the Department of Planning and Foreign Policy at the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in a key article published on the website of International Affairs magazine, the official organ of Russian diplomacy, that the era of cooperation between Russia and the United States has definitely dawned is over. “Regardless of the duration and outcome of the military special operation, it can already be said that the 30-year era of cooperation with the West – generally constructive, although not without problems – is irrevocably over,” the diplomat said in an article with the Heading firmly “Lessons in History and the Picture of the Future: Reflections on Russian Foreign Policy”. According to Drobinin, the Russian Federation now has the opportunity to finally shake off illusions and move beyond the “paradigm” of friendly relations “which was reproduced from time to time by Western colleagues after 1992”.
“Russia has entered an acute phase of confrontation with an aggressive alliance of enemy countries led by the United States. The aim of the enemy is to inflict a strategic defeat on our country and eliminate it as a geopolitical competitor,” the diplomat stressed. However, Drobinin reiterates that “constructive cooperation with all neighbors, including those of the Euro-Atlantic region, certainly corresponds to Russian interests. This goal must be pursued. But not at the expense of unilateral concessions, especially to those who openly state that Russia is the main threat.
However, the suspension of controls is a bad sign that proves it uncompromising climate Relations between the two nuclear superpowers: the inspectors’ trips could still be carried out with carriers from third countries, but pragmatism gives way to ideology in this case. With this decision, Moscow has sent a very strong political signal to Washington, revealing all its intolerance towards the West and at the same time creating considerable diplomatic leverage that will allow it to obtain other concessions. The era of Pragmatic competition between Russia and the United States, which generally ends between 2013 and 2014, is it dead for good? It appears that this is the case, and the war in Ukraine was just the classic straw that broke the camel’s back. The process that defined Drobinin’s harsh words began some time ago, marked by the politics of mutual opposition and the return of the deterrence doctrine that has resurfaced in both Russia and NATO. If we exclude the interlude of possible cooperation during the Trump administration, now with Biden, relations between the Kremlin and the White House have evolved into a clash reminiscent with some dynamism of the most difficult times of the Cold War.
In Moscow the “protivostoyanie zapadu“Contrast with the West, has prevailed over the desire not to isolate now that we look at China and other potential world partners, and the naught on inspections. Home is just the last piece of this mosaic. An extremely dangerous piece, however, because it could be prodromal at the end of the treaty, just like the others inherited from the Cold War (Cfe, Inf, Open Skies). We’ve said that for a long time the era of “post-contracts” has begunalso conditioned by the rise of China as a global military power, and thereby creates an international context of uncertainty that takes us back in time, but if before the war in Ukraine it was still possible that there was some will to unite, now and until conflict will continue, this hypothesis is very far away.