Speaking yesterday at the virtual Fort Ross Dialogue international forum, organized by Chevron, and the Russian firms Sovcomflot and Transneft, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov addressed the issue of nuclear weapons, expressing the hope that the United States “will stop `sharing’ nuclear weapons with its allies, and stop deploying nuclear weapons in countries that don’t possess such weapons,” RT quoted him as saying. Continuing this practice, he warned, not only leads to destabilization, but also creates “new risks.” He also attacked the notion that “limited nuclear war” is an acceptable option. “No one survives a nuclear war,” he said.
The Deputy Foreign Minister particularly pointed to U.S. moves to deploy so-called “low-yield” warheads. These may be less powerful he said, but, as some international organizations have warned, this might become a justification for their use in “less extreme” circumstances. Thus, Ryabkov said, “this lowers the threshold, and we are seeing the return of the concept of limited nuclear war. U.S. military doctrine revealed itself 50 years ago, when it believed that it could be acceptable to use nuclear weapons as part of a conventional war.” But, he cautioned, TASS reported, “a nuclear war cannot be won…. Russia is ready to cooperate in reversing this state of affairs.”
At the same conference, former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, a longtime advocate of nuclear arms control, reported that were Joe Biden to become President, one of his first steps could be to extend the New START treaty, which expires next Feb. 5, 2021. Were he an adviser to Biden, he said, he would initiate “a fail-safe review looking at all of our warning systems, command and control systems, all the nuclear systems.” There are many things the U.S. and Russia should be doing “with our sustained dialogue, diplomacy around nuclear weapons and arms control discussions … and cyber dangers,” Nunn underscored. “We need understandings and red lines right now,” he said, explaining that this mainly concerns warning systems as well as command and control, according to TASS.
