As you remember, the precondition for the effectiveness of the regime is
a relative transparency in the intentions and capabilities of the participating states.
During the Cold War era,
the two nuclear superpowers had so many nuclear warheads in their arsenals that
the conventional weapons could hardly play
a negative role in undermining the strategic stability.
However, in the 21 century,
the rapid technological change created new challenges to
the nuclear arms control regime that exists on the bilateral level.
The United States are actively developing
the capabilities for precision guided munitions.
The development of the technology of precision guided munitions
significantly enhance the offensive capability of conventional weapons,
and this undermines the strategic stability,
and is perceived by Russia as
a significant threat to bilateral nuclear arms control regime.
The question that is being actively discussed in Russian expert and political circles,
is how significant the development of precision guided munitions technology
can undermine the strategic stability.
This system that is already available in
the United States is by now the most advanced conventional weapons technology.
The US military strategists highly value the capacity of this new advanced technology,
and predict that this technology could be used not only for conventional deterrence,
but for solving the tasks in different types of conventional forces operations.
I should highlight here,
that the long range precision guided
weapon systems are very
threatening and challenging to the strategic stability because potentially,
they can be used for
an initial counter force strike to undermine the retaliation potential of Russia.
Today, the debate concerns itself regarding the influence of the
U.S. conventional Prompt Global Strike program on the strategic stability.
This program supposes the development of
new technologies like hypersonic X-51 systems,
and the use of such traditional technologies as ICBMs and SLBMs.
Such uncertainty regarding the U.S. plans on
conventional Prompt Global Strike program was
perceived by Russian experts as a potential challenge.
In order to support strategic stability,
Russia raised this question during the negotiations
about the regulation of offensive nuclear strategic armaments,
but that has only partially solved the problem.
As you remember, in the new 2010 START Treaty,
non-nuclear ICBMs and SLBMs were recognized as non deployed,
and were included among the restrictions.
However, the deployment of
high precision weapons that were perceived by Russia as most challenging,
were not restricted by any bilateral arrangement.
In July 2013, Dmitry Ragozin stated that under existing U.S. estimates,
the US high precision weapons can destroy
80 or 90 percent of Russia's nuclear potential.
The studies that based these estimates are still unclear,
and there is no evidence that such estimates were made by US experts.
Nevertheless, Ragozin's claim had a symbolic meaning,
it showed that the Russian officials were seriously concerned about
the destabilizing potential of American precision guided weaponry.
This case shows how the lack of transparency regarding the intentions,
plans and capabilities of
the participating states challenge the compliance with the restrictions.
For quite a long period of time there was
a clear distinction between the conventional armaments and the nuclear armaments.
For a quite long period of time,
Russia and the United States negotiated the regulation of
nuclear strategic forces separately from the issue of limiting conventional forces.
However, the rapid technological change made it
impossible to keep those two issues separated.
In the contemporary environment,
it is almost impossible to negotiate the future measures of limiting
strategic nuclear forces separate from the issue of
regulating the development of conventional forces technology.
This understanding has already found its reflection in the official Russian position.
Russian military doctrine of the version 2014 declares that the function
of strategic deterrence may be insured by nuclear or non nuclear means.