Reinventing Russia

[Catherine Rubeo]

TheNuclear Policy Program aims to reduce the risk of nuclear war. Our experts diagnose acute risks stemming from technical and geopolitical developments, generate pragmatic solutions, and use our global network to advance risk-reduction policies. Our work covers deterrence, disarmament, arms control, nonproliferation, and nuclear energy.

Meanwhile, the United States broke the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and the situation in North Korea remains moribund. Libya, which negotiated away its nascent nuclear program, was rewarded by having its leader impaled in a drainage ditch in the Sahara Desert. India and Pakistan, the two nuclear opponents who have recently come close to colliding, have not even attempted to negotiate limits on their growing arsenals.

The old arms control system cannot be rebuilt, but it can be reinvented to meet the tests of a fundamentally new era. Beyond the logic of deterrence and the goal of reducing the probability of escalatory warfare, arms control should be guided by the imperative to limit the physical damage that could occur if deterrence fails. No two antagonists should wield weapons whose number and explosive power could not only destroy their own nations but also cast innocent bystander societies into catastrophe.

If China can be constructively engaged, these three larger nuclear powers would have a basis for urging India and Pakistan to begin negotiations around their own most destabilizing weapons, particularly if India perceives less of a threat from China. At that point, states armed with nuclear weapons could reassure those without them that they are trying seriously to fulfill commitments to end nuclear arms racing and pursue in good faith further nuclear disarmament. Preventing future proliferation depends on this.

Generating political will in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing is the first challenge in reinventing arms control. Then comes an even harder step: devising equations to value diverse, often asymmetric weapons systems. Balancing like-for-like long-range ballistic missiles was akin to comparing American Peterbilt trucks to Russian KAMAZ trucks. Now, strategists and negotiators need to balance dump trucks against Ferraris, Teslas against boats, and satellites against planes.

Innovative thinking and diplomacy will be necessary to figure out how the United States, Russia, and China (perhaps followed by India and Pakistan) can develop a mutually acceptable formula for balancing and limiting these multifaceted weapons and related tools of attack, including cyber weapons. Before any of these antagonists can negotiate with each other, they must first break down the bureaucratic and conceptual silos within their own militaries and civilian agencies to develop new models for stabilizing arms competitions.

One alternative is to simply prohibit the possession and use of nuclear weapons, as the 122 countries that adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017 set out to do. But the treaty does not explain how major security threats would be adequately addressed without nuclear weapons or how disarmament would be defined, verified, and enforced. In any case, none of the nine nuclear-armed states have signed it.

Because the United States and Russia have by far the largest arsenals, they must take the lead in reorienting the arms control conversation. A relatively easy way to start would be to update and expand studies by scientists in both countries during the 1980s to assess the probability that a nuclear war between them would produce a nuclear winter.

The dramatic improvements in computing power, atmospheric modeling, and climatic data in recent decades warrant an array of new studies, which would examine scenarios involving current and lower numbers of weapons, explosive power, and various types and locations of targets. If the United States and Russia were to lead by example in conducting such studies and inviting international scientific debate of declassified versions, other governments and international civil society organizations should be expected to urge China, India, and Pakistan to follow suit. The results could give all states a metric beyond deterrence theory for judging how much nuclear weaponry is enough and how much is too much.

No, I said, because no one would believe he actually wrote it while running the country. Instead, it was then I proposed that three prominent journalists interview him with no conditions, and PublicAffairs would publish it as a form of self-portrait. Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov were recruited. I never met them, but found their biographies on the internet this week. It would be interesting to talk to them now.

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolded, I went back to a book PublicAffairs published in May 2000 called First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin, just after he succeeded Boris Yeltsin as the leader of post-Communist Russia.

At my suggestion, three Russian journalists arranged to conduct twenty-four hours of open-ended interviews with Putin \u2013 this at a time when real questions could be asked. The transcripts became the book, along with a remarkable trove of personal photographs that were all credited \u201CCourtesy of Vladimir Putin.\u201D Those here have been copied from the book. One of the best is this one with Toska the family\u2019s pet poodle at their dacha.

I wondered whether anyone would discover the book as a means of understanding the Vladimir Putin who has just eradicated the world\u2019s belief that a brutal territorial war would not be a factor in the twenty-first century as it has been in the past. Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post\u2019s excellent nonfiction book critic did just such an appraisal this weekend, drawing on First Person and other Putin writing. It is a invaluable addition to the news flow.

My approach to the book is different. Yes, there are hints to be found of what he thought two decades ago that have new resonance in the light of current events. For instance, Putin said that the Kremlin\u2019s devastation of the breakaway province of Chechnya was essential to prevent other parts of the former Soviet Union from seeking political independence from Russia. His discussion of NATO reflected a deep sense that Russia was being demeaned, as perceived losers usually are. The book is still available to buy. There is even an ebook version.

The most striking parts for me are the photographs, like this one with his parents, and the vivid description of Putin by his wife, Lyudmila; his daughters, Masha and Katya; his friend Sergei Roldugin, a musician who calls him \u201CVovka\u201D; and his early colleagues in the KGB, where Putin was employed before going into politics. He came from an ordinary Russian family and pursued what he considered a patriotic career, with some prospect of adventure. Judo was his determined athletic activity.

\u201CSometimes,\u201D said Roldugin, who stayed friendly with him after he joined the KGB, \u201CVovka and I would go to the Philharmonic after work. He would ask me about the proper way to listen to a symphony. If you ask him about Shostakovich\u2019s Fifth Symphony, he can tell you a lot because he loved it terribly when he first heard it and I explained it to him. And then Katya and Masha took up music. I\u2019m the one to blame for that.\u201D

Putin\u2019s wife, Lyudmila, was a stewardess. The interviews with her reflect a measure of warmth as she watched her husband rise in the KGB ranks while she ran what seems like a conventional household.

She describes how she and Putin met, \u201CMy girlfriend and I flew to Leningrad for three days. She was also a stewardess on our crew, and she invited me to the Lensoviet theater to a performance. . . . She had been invited by a boy but was afraid to go by herself, so she invited me along. When the boy heard that she was inviting me, he brought Volodya.\u201D (Another diminutive of Vladimir.)

\u201COne night we were sitting at his house,\u201D Lyudmila remembered, \u201Cand he began, \u2018You know what kind of person I am by now.\u2019 . . . It sounded to me like we were breaking up. But then he said, \u2018Well, then, if that\u2019s the way it is, I love you and propose that we get married.\u2019 . . . Three months later we were married. We had our wedding on a floating restaurant, a little boat tied up at the riverbank.\u201D

Putin divorced her in 2014 and took up with younger women including, it was reported, a star ice skater.\u201CLyuda,\u201D as he called her during their marriage, and his daughters are thought to be beneficiaries of the billions Putin has profited from being Russia\u2019s president.

At the millennium, on December 31, 1999, Boris Yeltsin, exhausted from the decade he had spent reinventing Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, resigned as president and named Vladimir Putin, then his prime minister, as \u201Cacting president.\u201D Putin was elected to the position a few months later.

At the time I was finishing work on Yeltsin\u2019s book Midnight Diaries and was visiting him at his dacha outside Moscow. Also present was his literary agent, Andrew Nurnberg, and his close adviser Valentin Yumashev, effectively Yeltsin\u2019s chief of staff. Why did you choose Putin? I asked. Because, Yeltsin said, he was the only one of the would-be successors who was not a lackey. That is as close an explanation of what happened as we are likely to get. There was certainly no process described. Yeltsin said that he considered Putin tough enough to handle a country that, incredibly, had gone through a largely bloodless revolution but was still reeling from the upheaval.

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