The possibilities for using of low-yield nuclear weapons of less than 5 kilotonhas sharply increased: there are 14 pretexts of using all kind of nuclear weapons in the current U.S. NPR versus two cases in the contemporary Russian nuclear doctrine. Such doctrine does not have any instructions to use tactical nuclear weapons or ‘low-yield NW’; in does not have any paragraph on ‘escalation of de-escalation” or vice versa. Current Russia’s nuclear doctrine is rooted on “conditional defensive nuclear deterrence” while the new U.S. one can be labelled as “unconditional offensive nuclear deterrence”. That is a striking difference between them.
Conventional arms race may be characterized by a huge accumulation of conventional arms in the form of stockpiling forward-based assets and conducting a large-scale military drills. In recent years the number of such exercises conducted by NATO have increased two-fold. Many NATO-led initially conventionally military exercises at the end of them are transformed into nuclear-borne drills. Half of them have anti-Russian feature. There will be more NATO forward-deployed troops in the Eastern and Southern Europe. The high-caliber heavy weapons deployments of the transatlantic alliance moving closer to Russia’s doorstep cause concern in Moscow.
The Baltic Air Policing Operation has been uninterruptedly conducted by NATO aircraft, including dual capable fighter-bombers of three Western nuclear powers in the Baltic airspace, since 2004. One more factor: the number of reconnaissance flights of NATO aircraft near Russian borders has increased 10 times – actually, there are such 15-20 reconnaissance aircraft per each week approaching Russian territory from all directions.
The confrontational situation that has emerged during last several years has even worsened due to the continuation of the Cold War that from 2014 has acquired a new image – the Colder War or the Cold War 2.0 – that has five striking differences with the first one.
The world community is witnessing not a new arms race, but rather new three-dimensional arms races: the nuclear one (it started last century), the newly-born missile defense arms race (it started in 2002 after the demise of the ABM Treaty) and the initial beginning of the outer space arms race (it commenced in 2008 when many nations refused to accept the PAROS Treaty).
Therefore, military confrontation in Europe can start under any pretext – be it a deliberate provocation or unintentional action. But any potential conflict here – either backed by conventional, nuclear and BMDS capabilities – can evolve into severe armed conflict between NATO and Russia that will be very difficult to contain. No doubt, it will bring a devastating effect to this densely-populated continent.
No comments:
Post a Comment