Russia starts new cold war over missile defence*

Kremlin accuses US of deception on east European interceptor bases

Luke Harding in Moscow
Wednesday April 11, 2007
The Guardian

Russia is preparing its own military response to the US's controversial
plans to build a new missile defence system in eastern Europe, according
to Kremlin officials, in a move likely to increase fears of a cold
war-style arms race.

The Kremlin is considering active counter-measures in response to
Washington's decision to base interceptor missiles and radar
installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, a move Russia says will
change "the world's strategic stability".

The Kremlin has not publicly spelt out its plans. But defence experts
said its response is likely to include upgrading its nuclear missile
arsenal so that it is harder to shoot down, putting more missiles on
mobile launchers, and moving its fleet of nuclear submarines to the
north pole, where they are virtually undetectable.

Russia could also bring the new US silos within the range of its
Iskander missiles launched potentially from the nearby Russian enclave
of Kaliningrad, they add.

In an interview with the Guardian, the Kremlin's chief spokesman, Dmitry
Peskov, said Moscow felt betrayed by the Pentagon's move. "We were
extremely concerned and disappointed. We were never informed in advance
about these plans. It brings tremendous change to the strategic balance
in Europe, and to the world's strategic stability."

He added: "We feel ourselves deceived. Potentially we will have to
create alternatives to this but with low cost and higher efficiency."
Any response would be within "existing technologies", he said. As well
as military counter-measures, Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, also
wanted "dialogue" and "negotiations", he added.

The Bush administration says the bases are designed to shoot down rogue
missiles fired by Iran or North Korea. Its proposed system would be
helpless against Russia's vast nuclear arsenal, it says.

But this claim has been greeted with widespread incredulity, not just in
Russia but also among some of the US's nervous Nato allies. They include
Germany, where the Social Democrat leader, Kurt Beck, warned last month
that the US and Russia were on the brink of another arms race "on
European soil".

Defence experts say there is little doubt that the real target of the
shield is Russia. "The geography of the deployment doesn't give any
doubt the main targets are Russian and Chinese nuclear forces," General
Vladimir Belous, Russia's leading expert on anti-ballistic weaponry,
told the Guardian. "The US bases represent a real threat to our
strategic nuclear forces."

The threat of a new arms race comes at a time when relations between
Russia and the US are at their worst for a decade. In February Mr Putin
accused the Bush administration during a speech in Munich of seeking a
"world of one master, one sovereign". On Friday Russia's duma, or lower
house or parliament, warned that the US's plans could ignite a second
cold war. "Such decisions, which are useless in terms of preventing
potential or imaginary threats from countries of the middle and
far-east, are already bringing about a new split in Europe and
unleashing another arms race," the declaration - passed unanimously by
Russian MPs - said.

The same day Russia ruled out cooperating with the US over the shield.
"Despite certain signals received in recent days from the US side ... I
see no political foundation for it," said Sergei Ryabkov, a foreign
ministry spokesman. Moscow now had little choice but to take the bases
"into account in our strategic planning", he said.

Analysts said there was a common feeling in Russia that the US had
reneged on an agreement after the collapse of the Soviet Union to
abandon cold war politics. "Cold war thinking has prevailed, especially
on the western side," Yevgeny Myasnikov, a senior research scientist at
Moscow's Centre for Arms Control, told the Guardian. "Russia has been
deeply disappointed by what has happened after 1991. Nato started to
expand, and the US started to think it had won the cold war. We had
hoped for a partnership. But it didn't happen."