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To the question of whether nuclear weapons exist. Nuclear weapons: is a new war threatening the world? What level of uranium enrichment is needed to build a bomb

Article last year, I think that now the situation is even worse. In principle, I suspected this for a long time, but there are serious calculations here. The article is not from the Ukrainian site, if that.

Russia's nuclear bluff for internal use

Russian rulers are not taken seriously in the West. The West is also not considering the nuclear threat to Russia, and there are very serious reasons for this. The myth of the "nuclear shield" is firmly planted only in the minds of the Russian viewer, who is misinformed by pro-Kremlin televangelists.

Nuclear charges, unlike conventional bombs and shells, cannot be stored and forgotten until they are needed. The reason is a process that is constantly going on inside nuclear charges, as a result of which the isotopic composition of the charge changes, and it quickly degrades.

The warranty period for the operation of a nuclear charge in a Russian ballistic missile is 10 years, and then the warhead must be sent to the factory, since plutonium must be changed in it. Nuclear weapons are an expensive pleasure, requiring the maintenance of an entire industry for the constant maintenance and replacement of charges. Oleksandr Kuzmuk, Ukraine's defense minister from 1996 to 2001, said in an interview that Ukraine had 1,740 nuclear weapons in stock, Kuzmuk "however, those nuclear weapons had already expired before 1997." Therefore, the adoption of a nuclear-free status by Ukraine was nothing more than a beautiful gesture.

Why "before 1997"? Because even Gorbachev stopped the production of new nuclear charges, and the last old Soviet charges had a warranty period that ended in the 90s. “Both Russia and the United States have not been producing weapons-grade uranium or weapons-grade plutonium for almost 10 years now. Somewhere since 1990, all this has been discontinued ”( IN AND. Rybachenkov, Advisor to the Department for Security and Disarmament Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation). As for the United States, the adviser "misleads the public", but the fact that under Gorbachev the production of weapons-grade uranium and weapons-grade plutonium was completely curtailed in the USSR is just true.

To avoid the temptation to make new nuclear charges for ballistic missiles, the Americans concluded a “very profitable” deal with the leadership of the Ministry of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation (for 20 years!). The Americans bought weapons-grade uranium from old Russian warheads (they promised to buy plutonium later), and in return Russian reactors producing weapons-grade plutonium were shut down. "Minatom of Russia: the main milestones in the development of the nuclear industry": "1994 - Adoption by the Government of the Russian Federation of a decision to stop the production of weapons-grade plutonium."

It is likely that much more sophisticated technologies for obtaining weapons-grade plutonium and creating nuclear charges from it have been lost, and they will have to be restored not for a year or two, but at best for 10 years. And will the Americans allow the Russian Federation to restart reactors to produce highly enriched weapons-grade plutonium? Russia has set up a unique experiment to destroy the technosphere of a modern technogenic society, under the current regime, the technosphere is melting before our eyes, society is losing technology, infrastructure, and most importantly, people capable of working not as sellers or security guards. The Russian Federation quite naturally turned from a country with nuclear weapons into a country potentially capable of possessing them, the status has changed from a real superpower to the status of a potential superpower, and this fundamentally changes Russian relations with other countries.

Therefore, the American government allocated the most powerful supercomputers to the US Department of Energy, officially announcing that for scientists to simulate degradation processes in nuclear charges, the only thing they “forgot” to tell the media was that they were going to simulate degradation processes not in American charges, but in Russian ones. The game was worth the candle and no money was spared for these purposes, the American elite wanted to know exactly when not a single Russian nuclear warhead was guaranteed to explode. Scientists gave the answer, and when the estimated time approached, American policy towards Russia began to gradually change as fundamentally as the Russian nuclear status.

In the spring of 2006, joint articles by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press (in Foreign Affairs and International Security) appeared on the possibility of a disarming strike against Russian nuclear forces. Lieber and the Press started an open discussion. In Moscow, only a tiny bunch of kneaded patriots got worried, the elite didn’t even move an ear, the American plans coincided with their plans (they weren’t going to leave her a “weapon of retaliation” after setting off from the completely devastated “this country”?).

But then the position of the Russian elite "suddenly" became more complicated. At the beginning of 2007, an article was published in the influential Washington Post newspaper, which recommended not to flirt with the Russian ruling elite anymore, since there is no real power behind it, but to put the crooks in their place. Here the roof was torn off already at Putin himself, and he rolled the "Munich speech" about a multipolar world. And in early 2008, Congress instructed Condoleezza Rice to compile a list of leading Russian corrupt officials. Who in Russia earned big money honestly? None. The last fog has lifted, and the Kremlin elite has a keen sense of the impending end.

Even during the “presidency” of Medvedev, the Russian authorities announced grandiose plans in the military sphere - “Serial construction of warships is planned, primarily nuclear submarines with cruise missiles and multi-purpose submarines. An aerospace defense system will be created.” To which Condoleezza Rice coolly replied in an interview with Reuters - "The balance of power in terms of nuclear deterrence will not change from these actions." Why would he change? What will Medvedev load onto ships and cruise missiles?

There are no suitable nuclear charges. There are only false targets on Russian missiles, there are no real targets. Building a missile defense system against Satan-type missiles is madness, you miss once, and goodbye to a dozen large cities. But against radioactive scrap metal, which today is on Russian missiles instead of warheads (most likely, it was also removed, since the old weapons-grade plutonium is very hot - hot as an iron), you can create a missile defense against it, if the missile defense misses, then nothing particularly terrible happens, although it is unpleasant then to decontaminate a hectare of its territory. The missile defense system is designed to catch radioactive scrap metal when the Russian Federation is finally disarmed.

Generals love their homeland, but money even more. Enriched uranium was sold at a price 25 times lower than its value, since it was stolen, stolen from its people, and they don’t take the market price for the stolen, but sell it for next to nothing, part of the money for the sale of warheads and sawing the Satan missiles went to the generals. The generals were assigned as batmen in tsarist Russia, they were assigned a chic pension, and in Chechnya they could play to the fullest at soldiers, drunk to smithereens, send unfired boys to slaughter, and you won’t get anything for it (at least one general was tried for the storming of Grozny?). The son of every general could also become a general; there are more generals in Russia per capita than anywhere else in the world.

Details about the state of strategic weapons were told in the Duma at closed meetings in order to hide the truth from the population. The media only discussed the state of carriers of nuclear weapons, and kept silent about the main thing, the state of the nuclear weapons themselves. Lying was beneficial to the Americans, as it allowed them to continue waving a picture of a dangerous Russian bear in front of their own electorate. The lies suited the oligarchs, as they were going to leave "this country" in the near future. And the generals are silent, because what can they say now? That they stole a nuclear shield from the people, sawed it up and sold it to the enemy?

For 30 years, the balance of nuclear deterrence was determined by treaties between the USSR and the USA; more than that, the USA does not offer to start a new treaty process, there is nothing to agree on. Putin ran urgently to legalize the border with China, and China began to publish textbooks, where almost all of Siberia and the Far East are territories taken away by Russia from China. The EU invited Russia to sign the Energy Charter, according to which the EU will produce oil and gas on the territory of the Russian Federation, transport them to itself, and the Russians are offered a reward - fico. EU officials frankly explained that Russia has three options - to lie under the EU, lie under the United States or become Chinese cheap labor, that's the whole choice. The main players are aware of what is happening and are not shy.

After Russia turned from a real superpower into a potential one, the situation around the bank accounts of the Russian elite began to heat up sharply. The UN has adopted a convention on corruption, and the West is not joking today, it is going to use it against our kleptocracy. So the West decided to repay our traitors for their betrayal. Throw throwing - is it a crime, is it immoral? Not at all.

The conversation between the Russian rulers and the West has turned into “don’t understand my yours”, both sides are talking about completely different things, Moscow to them - “You promised us!”, And those to the Russians - “So you have nothing else but a cheap bluff!” (The sending of the Russian Federation to Venezuela Tu-160 did not cause a new Caribbean crisis, as it was perceived by the "probable enemy" solely as a clownery).

Russia's richest natural resources cannot belong to a weak, deserted power. The United States decided to stop buying old weapons-grade uranium from the Russian Federation. Although it is very profitable for the Americans to buy it at a price many times lower than its market value, it is more important to land Russian generals.

Meanwhile, Russia has stopped producing weapons-grade plutonium. NTV reported, as the last reactor of this type existing in Russia was closed in Zheleznogorsk. It has been producing plutonium for the last half century. Especially for its service in the USSR, the closed city of Krasnoyarsk-26 was created, later renamed Zheleznogorsk.

The Zheleznogorsk Mining and Chemical Combine was a unique nuclear enterprise that had no analogues in the world. Its production shops were located deep underground.

But even if Russia's nuclear shield had by some miracle survived and the production of nuclear plutonium had not been curtailed, the Russian Federation would still be hopelessly behind its closest competitors in technical terms. For example, the American nuclear potential has long surpassed the Russian nuclear fake by a third. According to Gazeta.ru, the United States outnumbers Russia by a third in terms of the number of deployed long-range ballistic missiles, their launchers and nuclear warheads.

The Russian nuclear potential turned out to be below the level of the Treaty on the Reduction of Offensive Arms, which entered into force in February 2011. Experts doubt that the Russian Federation will be able to bring its potential under this ceiling over the next 10 years.

By 2015, Russia could theoretically be slammed like a fly. According to the St. Petersburg Military parity, maintaining in the required quantitative and qualitative condition the fleet of Russia's strategic nuclear triad - ICBMs, strategic submarine missile carriers and heavy bombers - in the foreseeable future will become an impossible task for the country. A number of conceptual mistakes in the development of the strategic arsenal, made in the late Soviet and post-Soviet period, led to the fact that after a certain period of time Russia risks being left with a weapon that cannot guarantee the country's security.

The mobility of strategic weapons as a panacea for their invulnerability played a bad joke on the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces. First of all, the very concept of creating ICBMs on self-propelled automobile and railway chassis was erroneous. Creating such complex weapons systems as mobile ground-based missile systems (PGRK) RT-2PM "Topol" (NATO code SS-25) and combat railway missile systems (BZHRK) RS-22 "Molodets" (SS-24), the country incurred huge additional costs to create these strategic groupings. American ICBMs of the Minuteman and MX series, similar in their combat capabilities, were placed in highly protected silo launchers, where they were in a state of immediate use in an emergency.

What will Russia be left with by 2015? As you know, the BZHRK RS-22 has already been withdrawn from the Strategic Missile Forces and destroyed. A certain number of RS-20 (R-36MUTTKh) and RS-19 (UR-100NUTTKh, NATO code SS-19) mine ICBMs are in service, but their life cycle is already running out. These missiles have not been produced for a long time, and the endless "extensions" of their presence in the Strategic Missile Forces can only cause a bitter smile. The only real combat system is Topol and Topol-M.

In 1994-2002, the number of ICBMs of this type was maintained at the level of 360 launchers. And then, of course, the collapse began. Launchers and missiles were aging, they had to be withdrawn from the combat strength of the Strategic Missile Forces. The deployment of stationary and mobile Topol-M missiles to replace them was catastrophically late. Thus, by 2006, only 252 Topol ICBM launchers remained in service from the highest number of 369 from 1993. In return, by 2006, only 42 stationary and the first three mobile Topol-Ms entered service with the Strategic Missile Forces. 117 decommissioned, 45 received. In 2007, according to Military Parity estimates, approximately 225 Soviet-made Topols remained in service, and at the beginning of 2008, according to the website www.russianforces.org, there are only 213 of them units.

According to the calculations of American experts, in the next five to seven years, the entire fleet of mobile Topols deployed in 1984-1993 should be decommissioned. And what in return? By 2015, Russia plans to adopt 120 Topol-M ICBMs, including 69 in the mobile version. Again, the Russian Federation remains in the red - more than 100 old missiles will not be replaced by anything.

Thus, approximately by 2015, the Russian Strategic Missile Forces will have approximately 76 fixed and 69 mobile Topol-Ms. In total, there will be approximately 145 of them. Note - monoblock. As for the new multiply charged type RS-24, there is no data on their deployment. It is worth noting that the planned deployment of such a number of Topol-M is based on the figures of the State Armaments Program (SAP) until 2015, which has never been fully implemented. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation cannot in any way fix the cost of certain types of weapons, including strategic ones, as a result of which the defense industry inflates their cost to sky-high heights. The Chief of the General Staff, General Yu. Baluyevsky, spoke about this in an interview with the Vesti-24 channel. And the reason for this is the fact that the Russian defense budget is a completely non-transparent item of public spending, which leads to this kind of financial somersaults.

Let's summarize. By 2015, Russia will have 145 ICBMs in service, of which almost half will be mobile. This is a completely unnecessary waste of resources. The monopolist in the development of strategic missiles, the Moscow Institute of Thermal Engineering, is still holding the Russian Federation hostage to an absolutely outdated "mobility concept". Even the Americans advise the Chinese not to follow the "Soviet" path, quite clearly understanding the futility of such a decision. And it is felt that overseas experts are not joking, but are advising business. At one time, they were smart enough to abandon the mobile MX and the Midgetmen. And the Russians persist. If you read military forums, then the rocket men themselves call the Topols “matches” for their low combat capabilities, and their mobility even gave rise to a joke: “Why are Topols mobile? “And therefore, to increase the flight range.”

As you know, the United States has adopted a program to modernize the B-2 stealth strategic bombers, as a result of which the Americans will be equipped with the latest radar with active phased array, which has fantastic capabilities for detecting small mobile ground targets, and will be able to take on board up to 80 guided bombs with a guidance system GPS. That is, in one sortie, the "invisible" will be able to destroy up to several dozen mobile targets, along the combat route of which destroyed missile launchers, radars and aircraft hangars will lie in ruins. Truly, a saying in a slightly modified form would be appropriate here - “How Mamai flew by.”

The situation with the naval component of the strategic triad is even more sad. At present, according to the same overseas site, the Russian Navy has 12 strategic nuclear missile carriers - six type 667BDRM (Delta-IV) and six type 667BDR (Delta-III). They have 162 missiles with 606 nuclear warheads. Seems like a good arsenal. But this is only at first glance. Submarines can be destroyed from air and space in an instant. By 2015, the state of the naval component of the strategic nuclear forces of Russia also raises many questions.

But what about military aviation? This is where things get really bad. Worse than in the Strategic Missile Forces, and even worse than in the SSBN. According to Western estimates, at the beginning of 2008, the Long-Range Aviation of the Russian Air Force had 78 heavy bombers, including 14 Tu-160 (Blacjack) and 64 Tu-95MS (Bear-H), which theoretically can launch 872 long-range cruise missiles into the air.

This type of Russian strategic triad is suitable only for demonstration flights over the oceans. It is absolutely unsuitable for combat response to a surprise attack. All bombers will be destroyed in the blink of an eye by the latest means of aerospace attack. When the flights of strategic bombers were resumed, the American press and even the official representative of the White House openly mocked the prehistoric appearance of the Russian Tu-95MS, considering them to be absolute "naphthalene", taken out of nowhere. Indeed, in our time, keeping a turboprop bomber in service, whose engine blades have an effective dispersion area (ESR) the size of a football field, is nonsense. Tu-95 has no chance to overcome the airspace of even a third-rate country.

As for the Tu-160, the gigantic dimensions of this aircraft turn each of its flights into some kind of launch of the American Space Shuttle. It is no coincidence that almost every aircraft of this type has its honorary name as a combat ship of the navy. A bomber weighing 275 tons takes on board 150 tons of fuel. Preparation of the aircraft for flight, refueling and suspension of weapons takes several hours, and during this process a swarm of special maintenance vehicles stand near the aircraft. Of course, at X hour, these planes will be easy targets.

What does Russia have as a result?

Sad, frankly, the conclusions for the imperial hopes.

The grouping of stationary and mobile Topol-M, which in 2015 will form the almost monopoly backbone of the Strategic Missile Forces, in terms of its combat capabilities will practically remain at the level of light ICBMs of the mid-70s of the last century. Insufficient throw weight of 1-1.5 tons will not allow the implementation of powerful combat equipment of these missiles, including multiply charged warheads for individual targeting. Of course, in theory it is possible to put three low-yield 200 kt nuclear warheads, but even this solution can reduce the range of an ICBM, which today barely reaches 10,000 km.

Equipping these ICBMs with some kind of hypersonic maneuvering warheads that “can overcome any missile defense system” will make the Americans think that Russia considers the United States as its main adversary. Against this background, the Chinese, with their much larger strategic programs, will appear to the Pentagon hawks as true friends of America. However, the cunning Chinese are trying to achieve this without advertising, unlike Russia, their weapons programs. The Kremlinites are trying to rattle weapons that are not even available. Silly strategy. And funny.

The ideology of deploying the marine component of the triad has been destroyed. The SSBNs, which in terms of their total geometric dimensions and displacement are practically not inferior to the American Ohio, will be equipped with small missiles with the formidable name Bulava. The insufficient range of these missiles forces them to be based in the Pacific Fleet right next to the United States.

It is no secret that a powerful multi-level missile defense system is being deployed in this region, including ship-based with Standard SM-3 anti-missiles, and not only American, but with the inclusion of Japanese and South Korean ships equipped with the AEGIS combat information and control system and vertical missile launchers . Add to this component the GBI anti-missile base in Alaska with offshore platforms of multifunctional SBX missile defense radars floating off its coast. These weapon systems can click like nuts from the first hit of a Bulava missile. And in this area, which is also teeming with anti-submarine defense systems, the Russian "Boreas" with "Maces" will go to swim. Needless to say, a "wise" decision.

There is nothing to add about strategic aviation.

As you can see, the systemic crisis of Putin's vertical put an end to our Russian Federation - the defense industry and the nuclear shield. The "nuclear sword" has turned into a fake, which can only scare Georgia or Chechen militants. However, it is not a fact that even these small nations will tremble in front of a pile of Russian scrap metal inherited by Russia from the militaristic Soviet Union.

Despite the consoling statements of the Russian military leadership, there is simply nothing to defend against the NATO forces of the Russian Federation. The date when the Americans will create a full-scale missile defense system is already known, we are talking about 2015.

The American military cruisers Lake Erie are equipped with the Aegis missile defense system, this missile defense system is capable of tracking and destroying not only intercontinental ballistic missiles, but also nuclear submarines and even orbiting satellites moving at a speed of 8 kilometers per second. This super-weapon will block the Russian imaginary and practically rusty nuclear potential by 100%.

The Aegis anti-missile system was developed on the basis of a conventional air defense system of the same name. American designers simply increased the power of the electromagnetic radiation of the radar and upgraded it for new software. And due to this, the radar system of the Aegis complex was able to track intercontinental ballistic missiles at a great distance - 320 km.

The main armament of the Aegis system is the super-powerful missile of the latest generation Standard-3, which is capable of destroying targets in outer space and at a distance of up to 500 km.

In order for the Standard-3 to be able to hit targets outside the atmosphere, the developers equipped its body with four stages or blocks with fuel liquid. The first two blocks of the rocket accelerate it within the atmosphere, the third takes the rocket into outer space, and the fourth part of the rocket is a kinetic projectile, it is he who hits the target.

American destroyers with the latest Aegis missile defense system are located not only in the Atlantic Ocean, they periodically enter the Black and Barents Seas. This means one thing - each of them can shoot down a ballistic missile of a Russian nuclear submarine right at the initial stage of the flight, even if the launch is made from Russian territorial waters. This is despite the fact that 40% of Russia's nuclear potential is based precisely on nuclear submarines.

The Aegis complex can disable Russian missiles already at the boost stage, perhaps this is the reason for the refusal of the Americans from any negotiations on missile defense. That is, the Pentagon has become confident that the United States now has such power and such potential that it is able to prevent a nuclear strike from Russia.

By 2015, NATO forces will have 400 cruisers and destroyers equipped with Aegis interceptors and Standard-3 interceptors, each of which is capable of destroying any Russian ICBM. And this despite the fact that Russia has only about 80 new intercontinental missiles left, the rest were fired back in the Soviet Union.

The age of the Satan and Topol missiles, which are on duty in the Russian missile forces, is already 30 years old. The combustible mixture with which they are stuffed during this time has lost its qualities, and the metal body of the missiles has corroded, which means that in the event of a military conflict, many of them simply will not take off. And it will be better than they take off, but due to their unpredictability, they will strike at their own territory

In an old Soviet joke, children show off who has what toys. Vanya talked about the teddy bear, Tanya boasts of a new Barbie doll, and the son of a drunk, listening to them with envy, suddenly burst into a tirade: - And I have .. Yes, my .. Yes, I’ll hang f#zd@lei on you all!

This is exactly how Putin's kneeling electorate is leading today. The nanoleader has nothing more to offer society, the President of the Russian Federation cannot explain to the Russians why he pays tribute to Kadyrov, and the terrorist attacks in the Caucasus do not subside, why his Skolkovo project failed, why the Russians screwed up with the Superjet-100 project, and many others. other Siberian Cranes and Aladdin's amphoras are not impressive for the plebs. Victory with Colorado scarves is also fizzling out and some kind of whip is required. And here, such happiness - Crimea!

P.S. If you think that this is like a propaganda article, then there is infa and fresher. In particular, the article: http://censor.net, here is an excerpt from it:

“We have forty Satan missiles with an expiring warranty period, and Topol is not serious at all,” a Moscow professor about Russia’s “nuclear shield”. There is practically no "nuclear shield of Russia" anymore. Such a terrible secret for compatriots was discovered in his report by Peter Belov, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Natural and Technosphere Safety and Risk Management of the Russian State Technological University.

Why should we worry about nuclear weapons? What makes it so important?

The nuclear arsenals now available for immediate use by the United States and Russia are capable of destroying civilization and humanity, and all the most complex forms of life on Earth. This supreme act of destruction can only be accomplished within minutes of an American or Russian president ordering hundreds of long-range ballistic missiles with thousands of nuclear warheads.

How powerful can a weapon be to destroy civilization and humanity?

Nuclear weapons are millions of times more powerful than the "conventional" explosive charges used by armies in modern warfare. The largest "conventional" bomb in today's US arsenal has an explosive yield of up to 11 tons (about 22,000 pounds) of trinitrotoluene (TNT). The smallest nuclear warhead the United States and Russia possess has 100,000 tons (or 200 billion pounds) of TNT.

The thermal or thermal energy released in a nuclear explosion is not comparable to what happens on Earth in natural conditions. When a nuclear warhead explodes, it is like the birth of a small star. The explosion creates a temperature that is similar to that at the center of the Sun, i.e. hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius.

The huge fireball that forms radiates deadly heat and light that will start fires in all directions if the explosion occurs over areas with a lot of flammable materials, such as large cities. These fires will quickly join together and form a monstrous single fire, or firestorm, covering tens, hundreds, and even thousands of square miles or kilometers of the earth's surface.

America and Russia each have many thousands of large, modern strategic nuclear warheads available for immediate launch and use. Just one medium-sized nuclear warhead detonated over a city will immediately create fires over the surface with a total area of 40 to 65 square miles (or 105 to 170 square kilometers).

Large strategic charges can create fires over much larger areas. A one megaton (1 million tons of TNT) charge would set fires in an area of 100 square miles (260 sq. km). An explosion of a 20 megaton charge can immediately start fires over an area of 2,000 square miles (5,200 sq. km).

The total energy released during a fiery hurricane and completely burning the urban surface is, in fact, a thousand times greater than the energy released initially directly from the nuclear explosion itself. In the incredibly lethal environment created by the fiery hurricane, virtually all life will be destroyed, and in the process, a huge amount of toxic and radioactive smoke and grime will be created.

In a major war between the US and Russia, thousands of strategic nuclear weapons could be detonated over cities in one hour. Many large cities will likely be hit by not one but several nukes each. All these cities will be completely destroyed.

Within an hour, a nuclear firestorm will cover hundreds of thousands of square miles (kilometers) of urban areas. Anything that can burn will be burned in the fire zones. In less than a day, up to 150 million tons of smoke from these fires will quickly rise above cloud level, into the stratosphere.

As noted on the home page, the smoke should quickly form a global smoke layer in the stratosphere that would block sunlight from reaching Earth. This would destroy the protective ozone layer and lead to deadly climate change, dropping the average global temperature at the earth's surface in a matter of days to levels well below that of the Ice Age. Daily minimum temperatures in the continental regions of the northern hemisphere would remain below freezing for years.

Such catastrophic environmental changes, along with the massive release of radioactive and industrial toxins, would lead to the collapse of terrestrial ecosystems on land and at sea, which are already under great stress. Many, if not most, complex life forms would not be able to withstand such a test.

There would be a mass extinction similar to what happened when the dinosaurs and 70 percent of other living things disappeared 65 million years ago. Humans live at the top of the food chain, and we would surely die along with other large mammals.

Even the most powerful leaders and wealthiest people with super-safe havens equipped with nuclear power plants, hospitals and years of food and water would be unlikely to survive a nuclear war in a world devoid of complex life forms. Those who can push buttons should know that in a global nuclear holocaust, there is no escape from ultimate destruction.

If nuclear explosions in cities will lead to darkness and disastrous climate change, then why didn't this happen after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by nuclear bombing at the end of World War II?

The fires in two medium-sized Japanese cities did not create the amount of smoke needed to form a global smoke layer capable of causing disastrous changes in the earth's climate. In other words, millions of tons of smoke would have to rise into the stratosphere to affect the global climate, but the burning of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not produce that much.

However, new research shows that 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons detonated in large cities in India and Pakistan could create enough smoke to cause catastrophic climate change. The yield of this number of charges is only half a percent of the combined yield of operationally deployed US and Russian nuclear weapons.

In a major nuclear war, in which American and Russian nuclear weapons are detonated, between 50 and 150 million tons of smoke would be thrown into the stratosphere. This is enough to block sunlight from the earth's surface for many years.

Why are you sure that computer studies predicting climate change in the event of a nuclear war are correct? How can you check this if a nuclear war never happened?

To conduct repeated checks, American scientists applied the latest climate model developed by NASA for space research (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Model IE, in conjunction with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). This model is capable of fully simulating the troposphere, stratosphere and mesosphere from the earth's surface up to a height of 80 km. The same methods and climate models that predicted global warming were also used to justify global cooling due to nuclear war.

While it is true that it is impossible to be accurate in assessing the results of a nuclear war unless it is actually carried out, it is nonetheless clear that this is a research method that we must avoid. However, the application of the above climate models has been very successful in describing the cooling effect of volcanic clouds. This was done both in intensive US analyzes and in international intercomparisons carried out as part of the Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Models of this type have also successfully evaluated the cooling effect of dust storms on Mars (dust blocks the sun's rays from reaching the Martian surface in the same way that smoke in our stratosphere might prevent them from illuminating the Earth).

This research is also being carried out intensively by other scientists around the world as part of a common scientific process referred to as “peer review”. All important and widely accepted scientific methods are used to ensure that such a study is verifiable, repeatable, and error-free.

In other words, studies that predict climate change due to global warming or global cooling are performed in the best and most respected tradition of the scientific method and are verified by scientists around the world. This process has provided us with most of the scientific discoveries and advances over the past few centuries. There is a strong consensus in the global scientific community that these results must be taken seriously and that they must lead to action.

If nuclear war can destroy humanity, then why do states continue to keep and modernize nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons prevent war?

Nations that retain nuclear weapons as the cornerstone of their military arsenals (US, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan) do so because they are committed to nuclear deterrence. That is, they believe that their possession of nuclear weapons will deter other countries from attacking them. Conversely, they think that if they didn't have nuclear weapons, then there would be a greater chance of attack from countries that do.

So nuclear deterrence remains a key operational strategy for the United States and Russia—and every other nuclear-weapon state.

The U.S. Department of Defense Military Dictionary states: “Deterrence is the notion that there is a credible threat of unacceptable opposition.” Today's "plausible threat" created by the operationally deployed nuclear weapons of the United States and Russia is a thousand times more powerful than all the warheads detonated by all armies in the second world war. It is clear that a "plausible threat" based on such an arsenal means the destruction of most of the people on the planet.

The same leaders who rely on nuclear deterrence also believe that there is no realistic way to eliminate nuclear weapons. The question they cannot ask themselves is, what will be the likely choice of these two alternatives of action after a while? Should we stubbornly maintain extremely dangerous nuclear arsenals as the basis of deterrence, or should we sincerely strive for a world free of nuclear weapons?

Those who see the indefinite retention of nuclear weapons as a viable and legitimate option often tend to present the idea of destroying nuclear arsenals as a "destabilizing" goal, and apparently believe that deterrence will always prevent nuclear war. However, their long-term optimism is not supported by logic or history.

Containment will only work as long as all parties remain rational and fearful of death. For many extremist groups, however, a plausible threat of retaliation is not a deterrent, no matter how strong it might be. History is full of examples of irrational leaders and decisions that led to war. Nuclear weapons, coupled with human fallibility, not only make nuclear war possible, but ultimately make it inevitable.

Suicide is not a defense.

If the ultimate goal of national security policy is to ensure the survival of the nation, then trying to achieve this goal through nuclear deterrence must be seen as a complete failure. Because deterrence sets no rational limits on the size and structure of nuclear forces, tens of thousands of nuclear weapons have been created. They continue to be on alert and patiently waiting to destroy not only our nation, but every other people on Earth.

So, the consequence of only one failure of the containment system could be the end of human history. A big nuclear war will make our planet uninhabitable. Even a conflict between India and Pakistan, in which only half a percent of the global nuclear arsenal is detonated, would lead, according to forecasts, to catastrophic disruptions to the global climate.

Leaders who decide to defend their nation with nuclear weapons must face the fact that nuclear war is suicide, not a way to save their citizens. Suicide is not a defense.

If we accept the statement that “there is no realistic path to a nuclear-free world,” then we are condemning the world's children to a truly bleak future. Instead, we need to reject the 20th century mentality that still continues to lead us to the abyss and understand that nuclear weapons are a threat to the human race.

Incredible Facts

The Vela incident, during which two nuclear explosions were recorded in the South Atlantic, can be called the most famous nuclear mystery.

This happened on September 22, 1979, and there was much talk that it could be a joint test of nuclear weapons by Israel and South Africa.

However, apart from this incident, in the world nuclear science there is no shortage of riddles and strange occurrences.

10. Death of nuclear scientists in India and Iran

Over the past 10 years, the list of dead nuclear scientists in India has expanded significantly. While the authorities ignore this fact or speak of their deaths as something inexplicable, many locals testify that the best representatives of their profession are dying, and under dubious circumstances.

Two senior engineers from India's first nuclear submarine have been found dead on railroad tracks. It is believed that they were poisoned, however, their bodies were left on the tracks to make their death look like a suicide.

But the police came to a different conclusion. They dismissed the lawsuit, citing the fact that these were "two ordinary incidents."

Another nuclear scientist was strangled in his sleep. Some of the investigators tried to "write off" the incident as a suicide, although there was a lot of evidence indicating that a murder had been committed. However, no arrests were made.

Two other scientists were burned in their own laboratory, although they were not working with combustible materials, when the fire broke out. One scientist was kidnapped by a group of armed men, but managed to escape.

Again, the authorities were quick to dismiss all incidents. A parallel can be drawn with the death of Iranian nuclear scientists, which attracted much more media attention.

Iranian scientists were killed with car bombs. Officials blame Israel, which vehemently denies any involvement. Some experts point to the United States, which also speaks of its complete non-involvement in the deaths.

Secrets of nuclear weapons

9 Mysterious Drones Over French Nuclear Power Plants

Drones of unknown origin were seen flying over 13 of France's 19 nuclear power plants in 2014. Air areas over these territories are controlled by the French Air Force, but the aircraft were so small that they initially went unnoticed.

Despite the fact that the French government said there was no threat to power plants, the authorities spent one million euros to create systems to detect and eliminate any such drones.

However, no one knows who launched these drones. Officials thought they had cracked the case when they arrested three people preparing to launch a drone near a train station in central France. But they had a simple, cheap version of the aircraft.

However, these people now face imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros.

The drones discovered were believed to be worth at least several thousand euros each, and they could not be caught even with the help of a coordinated effort.

An army of helicopters was sent after one of the drones, however, the device was smart enough to escape them.

The drones and their creators have raised concerns about the vulnerability of France's nuclear facilities. Some point to Greenpeace who have used drones in their work before and who openly express their views on France's nuclear program.

However, the organization is only one of several suspects, as there is currently no direct evidence to support any of the theories.

8. What is a bank of fog?

When the US Navy decided to refurbish its W76 warheads, which are a significant part of its nuclear arsenal, they faced a major challenge.

After opening the warheads, they discovered a secret material code-named "piles of fog" that needed to be replaced.

However, no one knew how to do it.

The fog bank was created in the 1970s and 1980s, and there were very few details about the actual process. Everyone who was involved in this has not worked in this area for a long time. As a result, attempts to create new material $23 million went to no avail.

But after that, another 69 million was spent to restart the production process of the fog bank. Everything ended successfully.

While a bank of fog is big enough in the navy to warrant $92 million in taxpayer dollars invested in the process, no one but the project's contributors knows exactly what it is.

Experts suspect that it's a kind of airgel, which functions as a link in the warhead, helping parts of the device to contact each other and transfer energy to each other.

However, whatever the fog bank is, it is a reminder that even the most important part of any technology can become a victim of time.

7 Karen Silkwood Mystery

In 1974, 28-year-old Karen Silkwood was a laboratory assistant at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant. It was believed that the plant had problems with quality control as well as safety procedures, and she was elected by the trade union committee to address the US Atomic Energy Commission with a status report.

With a folder of documents clarifying the issues, Silkwood was on her way to a meeting with a New York Times reporter on November 13. However, before reaching the meeting point, she turned off the road and crashed into a concrete wall. The woman died, and the documents were never found.

As a result of the investigation, the police found alcohol and sedatives in her blood, which led them to conclude that Karen fell asleep at the wheel.

However, a private detective investigating the case found dents in the back of her car and suggested that she might have been forced to swerve off the road.

An autopsy of the girl's body showed that her body suffered from serious radiation poisoning. A search of Karen's apartment showed that in her kitchen, bathroom and even on a sandwich in the refrigerator accumulated a huge amount of plutonium.

The plant's lawyers suggested that the girl was emotionally unstable and dependent on sedatives, as a result of which she was poisoned.

However, regardless of whether Karen was a lunatic who poisoned herself or was killed by informants, the factory closed a year after the woman's death, because the main company that bought fuel rods from him began to complain about the poor quality of the products and simply stopped buying them.

The Silkwood case was also closed.

6. Nuclear alert in 1969

In 1969, the Nixon administration secretly put US nuclear forces on high alert without explanation. The reason was so highly classified that even the Chief of the Joint Staff Committee didn't know about anything.

Even today, no one can really explain why the administration then took such a potentially destabilizing step.

Declassified documents point to a connection to the Vietnam War, implying that the administration decided to "flex its muscles" to demonstrate their willingness to take any measures necessary to end the war.

This is consistent with Nixon's "madman theory" which suggests that the president had a rather dubious approach to foreign relations.

According to the theory, Nixon ruled in such a way as to look like a madman from the side so that the hostile communist countries of the bloc did not provoke it for fear of a nuclear response. The nuclear alarm looked like Nixon was preparing to attack North Vietnam in order to convince Moscow to enter into negotiations with Hanoi.

According to others, the alarm was created in order to deter a Soviet nuclear strike on China during disputes over the Sino-Soviet border. Documents show that Soviet leaders were indeed considering a preemptive strike against Chinese nuclear facilities at the time.

Since even the military leaders of the highest echelon did not shine then, Henry Kissinger (Henry Kissinger) is one of the few survivors who knows what happened. However, even he does not give any clear answers in his memoirs.

Henry Kissinger

However, regardless of the true cause of this anxiety, it appears to have had little effect on foreign relations.

Mysteries of radioactive materials

5. Did spies steal American uranium?

Before and during the Cold War, the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) was active at the nuclear facility in Apollo, Pennsylvania. The facility was closed in 1983.

But in the mid-1990s, there was a radiation leak in the neighborhood. The owners of NUMEC are still paying millions in compensation to local residents who have filed a lawsuit in connection with the development in them amid the leak of various types of cancer.

But even while the facility was running, NUMEC owned another potentially damaging case. Each nuclear facility, due to seepage, writes off a certain amount of material for natural loss.

However, NUMEC's records showed hundreds of kilograms missing. Some experts have suggested that this is to blame leakage through vents. Others say the leak was only on paper and is the result of poor accounting.

Meanwhile, several experts and intelligence officials have a different theory. They believe that uranium was stolen by Mossad spies. In the 1960s, Israel conducted covert operations around the world to secure nuclear materials.

The creator of NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro, was in active contact with the Israeli intelligence bureau. Several times he even visited the center incognito.

The AEC, which is responsible for monitoring and controlling the supply of uranium and plutonium from private factories, stifled any investigation involving Israel in the bud because they did not want to wash dirty linen in public.

Later, the CIA director launched his own investigation because environmental samples near one of the Israeli reactors showed a rare type of uranium that could only come from NUMEC.

A CIA investigation revealed that Shapiro was in contact with one of Israel's top spies, as well as many other important people in the intelligence community. Former employees have claimed to have seen containers that were likely filled with nuclear material at the NUMEC facility's loading dock.

There were also documents showing that the material was being sent to Israel.

When the NUMEC facility was finally decommissioned, 90 kg of missing uranium was found, but a study soon after showed that between 1957 and 1968 269 kilograms of uranium disappeared.

Over the next 9 years another 76 kilograms disappeared, despite the fact that the amount of uranium processed has increased. This is far more than any reasonable limits on natural attrition.

Eventually, the investigation fizzled out, leaving behind only speculation as to what had happened.

4. Polonius killed Yasser Arafat?

In 2006, Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium-210, which made this "combat" substance famous. The substance was easily detected in the body of a man.

This radioactive material was also at the center of a possible assassination two years before Litvinenko's death.

Alexander Litvinenko

When Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died in France in 2004, his personal doctor was extremely unhappy the refusal of French doctors to diagnose the disease that led to his death.

The official statement says that Arafat died from a "mysterious blood disease." His wife wished to carry out the burial without an autopsy. However, Arafat's death happened shortly after a sharp deterioration in health, therefore, many Palestinians suspect poisoning.

In 2012, Al Jazeera investigates the possibility of poisoning. Swiss tests found traces of polonium-210 on his personal belongings, but experts stressed that the symptoms that accompanied Yasser during the last days and hours of his life do not correspond to those that occur with polonium poisoning.

After the discovery of polonium in such large quantities, the Palestinians accused Israel of being involved in the case. Israel, in turn, claims that polonium was deliberately planted, since its half-life is 138 days, so after so many years after Yasser's death, he simply cannot be present in such quantities on his clothes.

Despite everything, the body was exhumed.

Independent studies were carried out in different countries. After the remains were tested by Russian scientists, they decided that the polonium poisoning theory was unfounded.

Swiss scientists, however, found high levels of polonium on Arafat's pelvic bones and ribs. They argued that the skull and limb bones that were analyzed in Moscow were not suitable material for analysis because the highest levels of material were not concentrated in these parts of the body.

Some of the samples were sent to the French laboratory, whose specialists also ruled out the possibility of poisoning.

Thus, many contradictory conclusions have accumulated, there is no clear answer, and no one understands whether Arafat died of natural causes, or whether he was poisoned with polonium after all.

Nuclear world: secrets

3. The secret of the container in Genoa

Millions of identical cargo containers regularly pass through the port of Genoa. Many of them are filled with scrap metal because the need for cheap sources has created a huge international business.

With so many containers traveling all over the world, it's no problem to ship anything anywhere, ranging from drugs to illegal immigrants.

However, one of these containers in particular caused the port a huge amount of trouble.

All containers are checked for the presence of radiation, but the installed scanners still ignore the detected low levels, because many household items are somewhat radioactive.

While the presence of such scanners facilitates merchant shipping, overlooking items with a low degree of radioactivity is dangerous because items such as a nuclear bomb, for example, also emit a low level of radiation.

In 2010, however, one shipping container emitted such high levels of radiation that scanners could not even show its value: the arrow went off scale.

The shipping address for this container was calculated as Bermuda-based shipping company Textainer. When asked about the toxicity of the cargo, the company said the container had been leased to a Mediterranean Shipping Company.

After that, he went to Saudi Arabia under the supervision of Sun Metal Casting, a scrap metal dealer in the Arab emirate of Ajman. The authorities of Genoa simply stated the fact of the highest radioactivity of the contents emanating from cobalt - 60, however, apparently, no one wanted to do anything about it.

Genoa tried to send the container back to Saudi Arabia and then to the United Arab Emirates, but both countries refused to accept it. Since he was never sent, he stayed in the port for about a year, which eventually caused protests and strikes by port workers.

In the end, it was decided that the port and the Italian government would dispose of it, dividing the cost of $ 700,000 between two.

When cobalt was found, it was a small cylinder, probably used in any medical device or apparatus that sterilizes food. However, the origin of the cobalt, as well as how it ended up in the container, will forever remain a mystery.

Mysteries of nuclear tests

2. Nazi atomic bomb

The world would be very different if the Nazis had succeeded in building the atomic bomb. It took the US 125,000 people and $30 billion to build its first two nuclear weapons.

The Germans had at their disposal only a small part of the budget available to the United States, but German physicists were among the best in the world. Since the dissolution of the Nazi nuclear weapons project, one question has remained unanswered: why did the Nazis never succeed in this field?

There is a theory that the head of the atomic project, Werner Heisenberg, deliberately sabotaged the project because he knew where nuclear weapons could ultimately lead. It is believed that the people working on the project were reluctant to do their job for the same reason.

The theory is interesting, but, oddly enough, it has very few adherents. In the letter, Heisenberg says that he wants to state his unwillingness to complete the bomb in a meeting with his mentor Niels Bohr.

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Alexander Radchuk

Radchuk Alexander Vasilievich - Candidate of Technical Sciences, Professor of the Academy of Military Sciences, Advisor to the Chief of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces.

Today there are about 40 states in the world that have the technical capabilities to produce nuclear weapons. And if in the twentieth century. the possession of WMD was the privilege of strong states, then in the XXI century. there is a reverse trend. This weapon attracts weak states, which hope to use it to compensate for their military-technological backwardness. Therefore, it is only natural that, although the role of nuclear deterrence in relations between the great powers is declining, none of them will ever give up their nuclear status.

And how I would like to be accepted

into this game! I even agree to be a Pawn,

if only they took me ... Although, of course, more

I would love to be the Queen!

Lewis Carroll. Alice in the Wonderland

After in August 2009 Russian President D.A. Medvedev sent a message to V.A. Yushchenko on a wide range of problems in Russian-Ukrainian relations and suspended the visit of the Russian ambassador to Kyiv until the election of a new president of Ukraine, the Ukrainian nationalist organizations of Crimea appealed to official Kiev, proposing to urgently assemble 15-20 nuclear warheads from improvised materials and put them on tactical missiles and thus give Moscow an answer to its diplomatic demarche. This seemingly anecdotal incident clearly showed how firmly and deeply nuclear weapons have penetrated our lives.

In the life of not only politicians and the military, but also ordinary people who consider it quite natural to use nuclear threats to resolve any issues. Indeed, almost two generations live in a world in which there is the most destructive weapon in the history of mankind, capable of destroying not only cities and armies, but the entire planet. In a world in which two interconnected processes have been developing in parallel for six decades - the strategic offensive arms race and nuclear disarmament.

Nuclear weapons today

Today, the issue of possession of nuclear weapons (NW) is inevitably considered by each state with bell towers national interests. After all, in conditions when the world economy is clearly faltering, often it is military force that becomes a factor that determines the international status of a state. At the same time, the subjective nature of modern politics, in which the personal qualities of some leaders begin to prevail not only over political expediency, but even over common sense, really makes us think about the expediency of achieving nuclear zero.

Window of opportunity for nuclear disarmament, for many years many politicians and scientists have been trying to open as widely as possible. And recently joined the battle heavy artillery.

In early 2007, George Schultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn stated in their article "A World Without Nuclear Weapons" that today nuclear weapons pose a great danger and that it is necessary to move towards a firm, universally agreed rejection of them, and in the future, even altogether. the exclusion of the threat to the world emanating from it, since with the end of the Cold War the Soviet-American doctrine of mutual deterrence became a thing of the past. This statement unexpectedly found itself in the center of attention of all progressive world community which showed great interest in the idea of nuclear disarmament. It would seem that today, in the midst of the global economic crisis, the issues of economics and finance, the determination of ways for mutually beneficial economic cooperation, the need to create new reserve currencies and other economic problems, the solution of which can be directed by the efforts of many countries, should be at the center of public discussion, both in Russia and beyond. However, even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the UN General Assembly in September 2008 with a proposal to create an independent committee to monitor the disarmament of nuclear powers.

On the eve of the visit of United States President Barack Obama to Moscow, a group of prominent politicians and military personnel from around the world, united under the initiative Global Zero, presented a plan for the phased complete elimination of nuclear weapons on the planet by 2030. It includes four stages:

· Russia and the US agree to reduce their arsenals to 1,000 nuclear warheads each.

· By 2021, Moscow and Washington are lowering the threshold to 500 units. All other nuclear powers (China, Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel) agree to freeze and subsequently reduce their arsenals of strategic weapons.

· From 2019 to 2023 – the conclusion of a "global zero agreement", with a schedule for a phased verifiable reduction of all nuclear arsenals down to a minimum.

· From 2024 to 2030 – the process should be finally completed, and the verification system will continue to work.

And already on April 5, 2009, the US President delivered a speech in Prague on the problems of reducing nuclear potentials and said: “The Cold War has sunk into the past, but thousands of Cold War weapons remain. History took a strange turn. The threat of a global nuclear war has decreased, but the risk of a nuclear attack has increased. As the only nuclear power to have used nuclear weapons, the United States must act morally. We cannot succeed alone, but we can lead the fight to succeed. And so, today I state with all clarity and conviction America's commitment to achieving peace and security without nuclear weapons."

He also said that nuclear non-proliferation should be made mandatory for all, and suggested that a summit be held in 2010 at which a new international law or rule should be adopted that would ban all nuclear testing and even the production of fissile materials.

On June 12, 2009, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon delivered a message on the occasion of the start of preparations for the International Day of Peace. In it, he announced the launch of a campaign called "We must get rid of weapons of mass destruction." He appealed to governments and people around the world with a request to focus their attention on resolving issues of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. It was noted that, without vigorous action, humanity would continue to be threatened by the existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Finally, the visit of US President Barack Obama to Moscow in early July 2009 gave a new impetus to the process of further reduction and limitation of Russian and US strategic offensive arms. As a result of the visit, a document entitled "Joint Understanding on Further Reductions and Limitations of Strategic Offensive Arms" was signed, which determined the general parameters of a new "legally binding agreement" that should replace the START Treaty (START expiring in December 2009) one). It is stated that the new treaty will have to be in force for the next 10 years and will determine the maximum levels of strategic offensive arms of the parties as follows: for strategic launchers - 500-1100 units and for related warheads - 1500-1675 units.

Let's assume that the new START treaty has come into effect and that these reduction levels will be reached in 10 years. What's next? New decade-long negotiations followed by microscopic cuts? Expanding the circle of negotiators? Extending restrictions on non-strategic nuclear weapons? Or a sudden turn in the plot and either the development of fundamentally new agreements, or a complete rejection of them?

To some extent, the interview of US Vice President John Biden, published on July 25, 2009, reveals the American vision of the prospects for bilateral nuclear disarmament. The Wall Street Journal, in which he stated that the growing economic difficulties will force Moscow to come to terms with the loss of its former geopolitical role, which will entail a weakening of Russian influence in the post-Soviet space and a significant reduction in Russia's nuclear potential. In his opinion, it was precisely the inability of the Russian side to maintain its nuclear potential that became its main motive for resuming negotiations on its reduction with President Barack Obama. At the same time, Mr. Biden made it clear that the United States should play the role of a senior partner for a "weakening Russia."

Simultaneously, Georgetown University professor Edward Ifft, the last US representative in the ABM treaty negotiations, proposes the following next steps in the US-Russian arms reduction process:

· Reduce the parties' nuclear weapons to around 1,000 deployed strategic warheads. “There is nothing special about the figure of 1,000 warheads. It's just that 1000 is a nice round number." (A strong argument!) At the same time, the deterrence system will continue to function unchanged, the triad of nuclear forces and the existing verification system will be preserved.

· With deeper cuts, “quantitative changes will translate into qualitative changes” and “the concept of deterrence, including extended deterrence, may need to be reconsidered.” At the same time, "deterrence is a fundamental aspect of international security and the need for it will remain even if all nuclear weapons are eliminated." However, “as the role of nuclear weapons decreases, the deterrence system will become increasingly dependent on conventional weapons. … Conventional forces will play an integrated role in the deterrence system.”

The last thesis fully fits into the ideology new strategic triad USA. And everything would be fine, but, apparently, Russia does not fit into it, since it is invited to “be more understanding about the replacement of a small number of nuclear warheads with non-nuclear warheads”, and also “to begin resolving the issue associated with an extensive arsenal of tactical and pre-strategic nuclear warheads." True, Edward Ifft does not express any ideas about how conventional weapons, in which the United States has an overwhelming superiority, will be reduced and limited.

What is the reason for such heightened attention to the issues of nuclear disarmament today? With traditional fears about the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States, which could, as during the Cold War, lead to a nuclear conflict between them with catastrophic consequences for the whole world? Or with the same traditional views on strategic offensive weapons as the locomotive of Russian-American relations, which should pull out the solution of other issues of bilateral dialogue? Or maybe it is the hope that new solutions will somehow influence others as de jure, so de facto nuclear powers? Or simply the inability to take a fresh look at the situation and realistically assess the role and place of nuclear weapons in the modern world in general and in Russian-American relations in particular?

It is unlikely that all these questions can be answered unambiguously.

All the programs for the transition to a nuclear-free world, all the proposed steps in this direction, the list of specific measures to be taken, look rather scholastic so far. And this happens because they do not solve the core of the problem. And the bottom line is that in today's world, however regrettable it may sound, only nuclear weapons, which are the ultimate embodiment of military power, serve as a reliable guarantor of the security of any state.

Indeed, today, in the period of global civilizational changes, there is no answer to the main question, without which it hardly makes sense to talk about the prospects for nuclear disarmament: what is nuclear weapons now and in the future - just the most formidable embodiment of the military power of the outgoing era or a prototype and the basis of the weapons of the future century? Have military methods of resolving interstate conflicts exhausted themselves, and if not, will nuclear weapons, and hence nuclear deterrence, still be an effective way to resolve conflicts and protect national interests? Will the forceful deterrence of opponents and competitors leave the arsenal of foreign policy means?

There is no talk about the real, not fictional, role and place of nuclear weapons in the 21st century. On the importance of military force. On effective international security mechanisms. About whether there is at least one more status attribute of a state in the world, like nuclear weapons? And why do so many countries seek to possess it? Why did it turn out that the list of official (according to the NPT) nuclear powers coincides with the list of permanent members of the UN Security Council? And in general, what is the role and place of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence in the modern world?

Views of members of the nuclear club

In views on the role and place of nuclear weapons in the modern world and in the future, there is a wide range of opinions that lie between two diametrically opposed points of view: from the need to completely exclude nuclear weapons from the arsenal of means of armed struggle to the expediency of its transformation from political weapons in battlefield weapon.

Representatives of the first point of view (for example, academician E.A. Fedosov) believe that in modern conditions a nuclear war does not allow achieving the political goals for which a military conflict is unleashed. It is believed that the nuclear paradigm of the 20th century is gradually being abandoned. and a change in the entire policy of armed struggle in the 21st century. An alternative to nuclear weapons is modern high-tech systems with precision weapons capable of completely replacing nuclear weapons as a deterrent in the foreseeable future.

The opinion about the possibility of solving specific combat missions by using nuclear weapons in the course of hostilities is based on the fact that, despite the fact (though, perhaps precisely because) that the threat of a large-scale nuclear war has almost disappeared, the political and psychological barrier that made the use of nuclear weapons weakened. practically unacceptable. This allows us to recognize the admissibility, and in some cases, the expediency of its limited application. Therefore, reliance on nuclear weapons, as well as the planned steps to modernize it, is not just a whim or machinations individual figures. It is a response to real, or at least clearly perceived, threats. This thesis is confirmed by the positive decision taken in 2003 by the US Senate on the George W. Bush administration's request for appropriations for the development of a new type of nuclear weapons - low-yield warheads designed to destroy highly protected targets at great depths.

In addition, funds were requested to reduce the time it took for the nuclear test site in Nevada to be ready for testing.

And in the United States, not everyone shares the opinion about the need for further nuclear disarmament and the exclusion of nuclear deterrence from the arsenal of means of ensuring the security of the state. Thus, the former US permanent representative to the UN, John Bolton, considers Barack Obama's position erroneous, according to which the reduction of the US nuclear potential will make the world safer and remove the desire of a number of countries to create nuclear weapons: “Obama's policy is dangerous for the US and its allies who are under their control. nuclear umbrella. While Obama thinks that a drastic reduction in US nuclear weapons will reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation, in fact, the outcome of such actions will be just the opposite. Former US Secretary of Defense James Schlessinger believes that abandoning nuclear weapons is not at all worth it, since this is not in the interests of the United States and the rest of the world:

“The US nuclear umbrella has played and continues to play a significant role in non-proliferation. Without it, some of our allies, and perhaps a significant number of our allies, would feel the need to develop their own nuclear weapons. ... If, by miracle, we could eliminate nuclear weapons, we would have a certain number of countries with the ability to start a war or claiming to have such a possibility for the purpose of intimidation.

According to him, nuclear weapons are used by the US every day to deter potential adversaries and to provide guarantees to allies in Asia and Europe:

“If we only defended the North American continent, we could do it with far fewer weapons than we have today. We will need a strong deterrent for at least a few decades, and in my judgment, more or less indefinitely.

Strategic offensive weapons, due to the enormous destructive power of nuclear weapons, the intercontinental range of action and the long-term global consequences of their use, are designed to fulfill the tasks of strategic deterrence (primarily at the global level) determined by the military-political leadership of the state both in wartime and in peacetime , in the interests of ensuring the implementation of a policy of deterring potential aggression. At the same time, nuclear weapons become strategic not only in the purely military sense, as solving the strategic tasks of the war as a whole, but also in a more general sense - in the sense of higher(or big) strategies (A.E. Vandam, Edgard James Kingston-McClory, Basil Henry Liddell Garth, V.Ya. Novitsky).

From this point of view, military strategy is only a part of the general or supreme strategy of the state, which not only determines the place and role of military strategy in the long-term historical activity of the state, covering and linking the peaceful and military periods of the country's life, but also represents the coordination and direction of all resources. countries or groups of countries to achieve the political goal of the war - a goal determined by state policy.

Since, as back in 1913, the Russian military thinker V.Ya. Novitsky, “the task of the highest strategy is to ensure the independent existence and further development of the state, in accordance with its political, economic, historical and cultural interests,” the emergence of nuclear weapons made it possible to almost guarantee the solution of this problem. At the same time, if military strategy is limited to consideration of issues related to war, then higher strategy deals with issues related not only to war, but also to the subsequent peace. It must not only combine various means of warfare, but also ensure that they are used in such a way as to avoid damage to the future world - its security and prosperity. The goal of the highest strategy: in peacetime - to avoid war or to protect national interests without resorting to military action; during the war - to determine the purpose of the war, plans and methods of its conduct. Thus, nuclear weapons are strategic precisely from the point of view of higher strategy.

It should be recognized that for more than six decades there has been no new world war, no matter how the opponents of nuclear deterrence refute this thesis. World wars are unleashed by the superpowers, they are also prevented by them. At the same time, nuclear deterrence, albeit in a rather specific form, still works today. The most illustrative example is North Korea and Iran, for which the presence of nuclear programs, which only provide the potential possibility of creating nuclear weapons, is a fully functional tool for ensuring their security. North Korea's nuclear tests and Iran's missile tests are forcing many countries to change their tone when talking to them. After all, according to many authoritative experts, if Saddam Hussein had had OMU, the United States would hardly have started a war against Iraq. And there were no nuclear weapons in Yugoslavia.

Is it not for this reason that more and more problems arise in the process of implementing the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), primarily from the point of view of the so-called negative guarantees for ensuring the security of non-nuclear states by nuclear powers - i.e. guarantees against pressure or blackmail from countries possessing nuclear weapons?

In accordance with the NPT, only states that produced and tested nuclear weapons before January 1, 1967 are recognized as nuclear powers. Such countries are the USA, Russia, Great Britain, France, China.

At the same time, according to SIPRI, as of January 2007, in addition to the nuclear fives, at least four other states possess nuclear weapons. These are: India - about 50 nuclear warheads, Pakistan - about 60, Israel - about 100, North Korea - about 6 nuclear warheads.

All those countries that can create nuclear weapons and do not fall into one or another system of guaranteed security (DPRK, Iran), as we see, do not refuse to create it. And today, according to various estimates, there are from 20 to 45 countries capable of creating nuclear weapons.

The United States of America is the first state in the world to become the owner of nuclear weapons. At the same time, they were not only the first to conduct nuclear tests in July 1945, but the first (and the only ones!) To use it for military purposes - having destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of the same year.

The speed with which nuclear weapons were created is amazing! Just over six years passed from the moment Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi informed the US government about the possible impact of atomic research on warfare (March 1939) to the first nuclear explosion at the Alamogordo test site in New Mexico (July 16, 1945). ) . And all this in the conditions of the Second World War.

For more than six decades, US nuclear doctrines have changed many times. In January 2002, the US Congress was presented with a report on the state of nuclear weapons, which outlined the main provisions of the American nuclear strategy and outlined the directions for the development and transformation of US nuclear forces in the next 5-10 years. Threat-based Cold War approaches have been replaced by capability-based approaches in American strategic force planning, allowing for a credible deterrent at the low end of US and allied nuclear arsenals in the coming decades.

The report noted that the nuclear potential of the United States has unique properties, plays a crucial role in the defense system of the United States, its allies and friends, allows solving important strategic and political tasks, provides military capabilities to deter a wide range of threats, including WMD and large-scale conventional armed forces. (Sun). Nuclear forces are the main means of carrying out an effective deterrence strategy against a wide range of potential adversaries in a wide variety of unforeseen situations.

The possibilities of delivering nuclear strikes of various scale, coverage and direction will be supplemented by other military means. Therefore, a new combination of nuclear, non-nuclear and defensive forces is needed to repel the wide variety of adversaries and unexpected threats that the United States may face in the coming decades. Therefore, the Pentagon has established a new strategic triad, including:

offensive strike systems (nuclear and non-nuclear);

defensive (active and passive);

· Updated defensive infrastructure to provide new capabilities to counter emerging threats.

In doing so, the first component of the triad, offensive, should surpass the Cold War triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and long-range nuclear bombers. Defense systems that prevent and reduce the effectiveness of limited strikes, combined with the ability of the United States to strike back, can prevent an attack and create new opportunities for crisis management, improve the position of the United States in a regional confrontation, and provide guarantees against the defeat of traditional deterrents. The updated nuclear infrastructure should allow the US to get rid of unnecessary weapons and reduce the risk of technical problems.

By 2012, the operationally deployed US nuclear forces will have to include 1,700-2,100 strategic missile warheads, 14 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) Trident(with two combat-ready missiles out of 14 at any given time), 500 ICBMs Minuteman, 76 bombers B-52H and 21 bombers IN 2. They will enforce America's deterrence policy, target enemy targets, including political leadership and military power, and hinder the achievement of its military goals. Target types include control and military installations, especially WMD, military command installations, and other centers of control and infrastructure. Thus, some quantitative reduction in the US nuclear arsenal, which at the same time fits into the framework of the Moscow Treaty on the reduction of strategic offensive potentials of 2002, should be fully compensated by an increase in its quality and the emergence of new elements of the strategic triad.

Thanks to its vast superiority over all other countries in conventional weapons in general and in precision weapons in particular, the United States can achieve most military objectives without the use of nuclear weapons and with high efficiency, low own losses and without a global environmental catastrophe. In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a new structure of the US armed forces and methods of their combat use, systems of reconnaissance, communications and control are being worked out. For almost the past 20 years, the US Armed Forces have been in constant readiness for war and have been developing their military potential.

At the same time, strategic offensive forces have become burdensome for them today, since they are quite expensive to operate, and at the same time they cannot be used in a conventional war. Thus, in modern economic terms, nuclear weapons are becoming non-core asset modern wars of the fifth, sixth and subsequent generations. And non-core assets should be disposed of. And not just throw away, but, preferably, sell competitors as much as possible.

It should also not be forgotten that US nuclear forces are integrated into the overall structure of NATO nuclear forces. That is, they are formally capable of acting according to a single plan with the nuclear forces of their allies in the Alliance - Great Britain and France.

In September 2003, the press reported that the US Armed Forces were developing a new type of nuclear weapon based on hafnium and possessing tremendous destructive power. When it is detonated, radiation occurs, which, like a neutron bomb, destroys all life in the area of the explosion. Such nukes make it possible to create miniature projectiles and then drop them from an aircraft, fire from tanks or, and even from ordinary hand grenade launchers. Although the 1994 Fourth-Spratt Act prohibits the military from developing nuclear weapons with a yield of less than five kilotons of TNT, the Pentagon says that because hafnium detonates without nuclear fission, it is not subject to either this law or other international treaties that limit the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons, and hafnium shells are closer to conventional weapons than to nuclear ones. However, they contradict the US government's definition of a nuclear weapon, which includes any weapon that, by releasing radiation or radioactivity, can kill or seriously injure a significant number of people.

The implementation of this program actually transfers nuclear weapons from a purely deterrent, political means to a means of waging war along with conventional weapons. This is confirmed both by the programs for the production of new types of low-yield nuclear weapons in the United States and by reports that appeared in the American press in 2003 before the start of the war in Iraq about the readiness of the Americans to use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy weapons of mass destruction.

In 2005, the United States revised the doctrine of the use of nuclear weapons, according to which the president can now order a preemptive nuclear strike against an adversary who is ready to use WMD. The United States now allows preemptive strikes against states or terrorist groups, in particular to destroy stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

According to the Brookings Institution (USA) for the second half of the twentieth century. The United States has invested in nuclear project approximately 5.5 trillion dollars. At the same time, no more than 7% of the funds (about 400 billion dollars) were spent on the production of nuclear weapons proper. All other costs fall on delivery vehicles and infrastructure, including equipment for nuclear weapons base areas not only in the United States, but also in various regions of the globe.

Therefore, the destruction of only nuclear weapons will only lead to the fact that the remaining 93% of the potential for nuclear war will urgently require the replacement of nuclear weapons with some other ones. Whether such a replacement is conventional or not will be determined by economics, technological capabilities, and political expediency. Isn't this where the idea of equipping American ICBMs with conventional warheads stems from? After all, any attempts to raise the issue of contractual limitation of precisely infrastructural parameters are met with hostility by the American military-political leadership.

Today, the Obama administration is preparing a new review of US nuclear policy. Although its key provisions are not yet known, there is no reason to believe that the fundamental principles of the United States nuclear strategy will undergo a significant and, most importantly, fundamental adjustment and the United States will abandon the doctrine of nuclear deterrence, despite Obama's statement that the gradual destruction of all nuclear weapons is one one of the chief aims of his administration.

In April 2009, the Federation of American Scientists, which includes 68 Nobel laureates, published a report entitled "From Confrontation to Minimal Containment" .

The report concludes that the most relevant in modern conditions is minimal restraint, which is ensured by the fact that the United States has only a few hundred nuclear warheads. They also call on Russia to do the same. And conventional weapons can also be used for military operations. In addition, in the XXI century. for effective nuclear deterrence, the US can choose new targets for its nuclear-tipped missiles. Since it is inhumane to choose densely populated cities as targets, only important infrastructure facilities of potential adversaries, which the report refers to not only Russia, but also China, North Korea, Iran and Syria, should be targeted. However, the authors of the report cite Russia as an example, having identified a list of 12 targets on its territory that are sufficient for effective deterrence. The list includes three oil refineries (Omsk, Angarsk and Kirishsky); six major metallurgical enterprises (Magnitogorsk, Nizhny Tagil and Cherepovets metallurgical plants, Norilsk Nickel, Bratsk and Novokuznetsk aluminum plants); three power plants (Berezovskaya, Sredneuralskaya and Surgutskaya GRES). However, even in this case, if these facilities are destroyed, Russia will not only be unable to wage war, since its economy will be paralyzed, but a million Russians will inevitably die.

This is quite consistent with the opinion of one of the ideological architects of United States policy in recent decades, former national security adviser to the President of the United States Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wrote that “in the coming years, one of the main tasks of the American political leadership in the field of security will remain maintaining the stability of mutual nuclear deterrence of the US and Russia".

Russia (USSR)

Work on mastering nuclear energy began in the USSR a little later than in the USA - on February 11, 1943, when "... in order to discover ways to master the energy of uranium fission and to study the possibility of military use of uranium energy" Laboratory No. 2 of the Academy of Sciences was created THE USSR. And just like in the USA, 6 years later - on August 29, 1949 - the first Soviet nuclear bomb was successfully detonated at the Semipalatinsk test site. The US nuclear monopoly ended after just four years. Thus, the plan of the Committee of the Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces (Pincher plan) to conduct a nuclear war against the USSR was actually disavowed.

In 1960-1970. in the USSR, it was believed that any armed conflict between nuclear powers in the context of confrontation between two socio-political systems and the presence of NATO and the Warsaw Pact (in fact, in a bipolar world) would inevitably lead to a large-scale world war involving most countries of the world and, as a result, to exchange of massive nuclear strikes, the application of which will be the main, determining method of waging war. Given this point of view, in the development of nuclear weapons systems in the Soviet Union, the main emphasis was placed on ensuring the ability to carry out massive anti-value strikes against the objects of the enemy’s military and economic potential in any, even the most difficult conditions, and inflict catastrophic (absolutely unacceptable) damage on him, in which the state ceases to function as an organized system and to provide the minimum necessary conditions for the life of the population. With this approach, it was also believed that containment of the global threat would make it possible to contain smaller regional threats, since the possibility of guaranteed destruction of the most militarily strong enemy (the United States) would ensure the destruction of all other, weaker, potential aggressors. At the same time, since the Soviet Union, which possessed powerful general-purpose forces, was able to deter and fend off any regional military threats even without the use of nuclear weapons, the issue of using strategic nuclear forces (SNF) in a regional conflict was not translated into a practical plane, but in fact the only purpose of strategic nuclear forces was to deter adversaries from unleashing a global nuclear war.

As for Russia, in the "National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation until 2020" and the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation notes that “... in modern conditions, the Russian Federation proceeds from the need to have a nuclear potential capable of guaranteeing the infliction of the specified damage to any aggressor (state or coalition of states) in any conditions. At the same time, the nuclear weapons that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are equipped with are considered by the Russian Federation as a factor in deterring aggression, ensuring the military security of the Russian Federation and its allies, and maintaining international stability and peace.

The said Strategy also states that "the development of the world follows the path of globalization of all spheres of international life, which is characterized by high dynamism and interdependence of events." At the same time: “Probable recurrences of unilateral military approaches in international relations, contradictions between the main participants in world politics, the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their falling into the hands of terrorists, as well as the improvement of forms of illegal activity in cybernetic and biological areas, in the field of high technologies. ... The risk of an increase in the number of States possessing nuclear weapons will increase. The possibilities of maintaining global and regional stability will be significantly narrowed if elements of the global missile defense system of the United States of America are deployed in Europe.”

In the field of ensuring international security, Russia "will remain committed to the use of political, legal, foreign economic, military and other instruments to protect state sovereignty and national interests." The key task will remain "the implementation of strategic deterrence in the interests of ensuring the country's military security." At the same time, one of the ways to ensure strategic stability in the world is "consistent progress towards a world free of nuclear weapons and the creation of equal security conditions for all." Russia "attaches particular importance to the achievement of new full-format bilateral agreements on the further reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms."

Today, in fact, only nuclear umbrella can provide Russia with the opportunity to quietly conduct and successfully complete the process of internal reform of both the state as a whole and the Armed Forces in particular. In addition, nuclear weapons ensure the high status of our country in the international ranking tables, reinforces the legitimacy of its membership in the UN Security Council, and also allows you to determine rules of the game in the nuclear field. Consequently, it is the status of a nuclear power that largely determines the role and place of Russia as one of the leading countries in the world community. Thus, the presence of Russia's nuclear forces maintains its military power at the level necessary to deter a potential aggressor pursuing the most decisive goals from a large-scale attack, including with the use of nuclear weapons. This makes it possible to ensure the protection of the state with a much smaller amount of appropriations for defense, which is extremely important in the current economic situation in Russia. Therefore, nuclear deterrence remains a key element in ensuring its national security.

Great Britain

Great Britain is the third nuclear power in the world, which conducted its first nuclear tests on October 3, 1952. Work on the British atomic project began in 1940. Scientists not only from England, but also from the United States, Canada and France, including within the framework of the Manhattan project. The creation of the atomic bomb took 12 years and cost £150 million. Art.

The United Kingdom, giving priority to political, diplomatic and economic means in achieving national goals, in its military doctrine clearly defines its desire to resolve contradictions in the world with positions of power and keep the principles nuclear deterrence while maintaining the leading role of strategic nuclear deterrence at the global level. At the same time, it can be stated that the views of the British leadership on the role of nuclear weapons and the conditions for its use practically do not diverge from the American position.

The British military-political leadership strictly adheres to the main provisions of the coalition strategy - the “NATO New Strategic Concept”, adopted in April 1999. It stated: “Despite the reduction of strategic nuclear forces, the non-targeting of missiles and the fact that Russia is no longer considered a threat, NATO continues to rely on nuclear weapons as a defense against an uncertain future, a guarantee of the security of the countries of the alliance and a deterrent to countries seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. Strategic weapons remain the cornerstone of a deterrence strategy, and non-strategic nuclear and conventional weapons are an additional component of deterrence.”

This document practically retains the main provisions of the previous strategic concept nuclear deterrence- the foundation of the former coalition strategy flexible response.

According to the executive director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), on February 23, 2006, the UK took part in the so-called subcritical testing of nuclear weapons in the US in the Nevada desert as part of the US nuclear arsenal management program, which ensures the safety and reliability of US nuclear weapons. He also mentioned an investment of about $1.7 billion in a nuclear center in Aldermaston, England, designed to secure the existing arsenal of nuclear missiles. Trident. However, the director of BASIC pointed out that additional subsidies could mean that new types of nuclear warheads are being developed.

At the end of 2006, British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that before his departure he intended to launch a mechanism for replacing and modernizing the state nuclear arsenal. Missile systems trident, stationed on four class nuclear submarines vanguard, until 2025 should be completely updated. This program will require about 25 billion pounds. Art. (46 billion dollars). The British authorities intended to reduce their nuclear arsenals by 20%. The exact number of British nuclear warheads still on alert will be significantly reduced to less than 160.

At the same time, in February 2009, British Foreign Secretary David Mileyband called on the world's leading countries to start negotiations on nuclear disarmament. He expressed the hope that the US, China, France, Britain and Russia could find ways to "possibly eliminate nuclear arsenals." In addition, David Miliband spoke in favor of pursuing a tougher policy in the field of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, in particular, in relation to Iran, and also called on the leaders of the leading nuclear powers to hold a meeting on the issue of nuclear disarmament.

France

France is the fourth country that became the owner of nuclear weapons and conducted nuclear tests on February 13, 1960 in the Sahara desert using American equipment. Almost 15 years have passed since the creation of the French Commissariat for Atomic Energy (October 1945) until the first nuclear explosion.

The White Paper on Defense Issues, published in 1994, stated that the French military doctrine was based on the strategy intimidation and restraint, based on the provision on the mandatory presence in the country's armed forces of strategic nuclear forces and tactical nuclear weapons, which was considered as a means of "last warning" of a potential enemy about France's readiness to strike with strategic nuclear weapons. The essence of this strategy was to "prevent any potential aggressor from encroaching on the vital interests of France by creating the threat to which he would then be exposed." And then it was said that "we are talking about inflicting damage to the aggressor, equal in scale, at least, to the benefit that he is counting on." Potential owners of nuclear weapons "capable of resorting to its use against France" began to be considered as possible adversaries against whose targets nuclear weapons could be used. At the same time, the French were going to focus on miniature nuclear weapons, which can be used in delivering preventive targeted strikes against targets such as the presidential bunker or an underground nuclear plant, minimizing civilian casualties.

Actively rethink France started tasks of nuclear weapons after the re-election of Jacques Chirac in 2002. The French doctrine of strategic nuclear deterrence, which also fits into NATO's coalition nuclear strategy, provides that French warheads are no longer directed only at countries possessing nuclear weapons. Now any country (nuclear or non-nuclear) that threatens the national security or strategic interests of France can be subjected to a strike by strategic forces.

Previously, the plan for strategic nuclear deterrence provided for the use of weapons of mass destruction only as a last resort - as a retaliatory strike. Moreover, the civilian population of a hostile power could become the object of destruction of the French atomic bombs. Now the French, apparently, reserve the right not only to retaliate against the country from which the terrorist threat emanates. Paris is also ready for preventive bombing (and targeted) of WMD production sites and terrorist bases. In addition, from now on, the French doctrine of nuclear deterrence is also oriented against China.

France in modern conditions considers nuclear forces not only as a tool to deter the enemy, whose nuclear potential is superior to the French one, but also as a means of intimidating potential WMD possessors who are capable of resorting to its use against France. Assessing the prospects for the development of the military-strategic situation in the world in the next 10-15 years, the French leadership invariably believes that in the foreseeable future the national independence of the state will be associated with the possession of nuclear weapons, although the conditions may change significantly and, in addition to nuclear deterrence, the development and development of improving the potential of conventional weapons.

In October 2003, President Jacques Chirac declared that "under the new doctrine, France's nuclear weapons will become an active threat to her enemies." In fact, France, while reserving the right to a nuclear strike in response to the use of WMD, began to allow the possibility of delivering nuclear strikes against military-political control facilities, economic facilities, WMD production sites of countries that pose (or even can only pose) a threat use of WMD. In this, France follows the American strategic model in terms of the admissibility of the preventive use of nuclear weapons against states possessing or even only suspected of possessing WMD. Such an unprecedented decline nuclear threshold has not yet been observed in any nuclear state.

The opinion of a prominent French specialist in the field of military strategy and geopolitics, General Pierre Gallois, is also interesting. He believes that the more countries that possess nuclear weapons, the stronger world peace. Therefore, in no case should Russia destroy nuclear and strategic weapons, but should preserve and build them up. This is the guarantee of its national security. At the same time, only a powerful system of national security of major Asian powers based on nuclear weapons can stop American hegemony in Asia and the Far East.

China

People's Republic of China closes the list de jure nuclear states.

From the early years of the formation of the PRC, the military-political leadership of China proceeded from the fact that the country should have an armed forces with modern weapons, including nuclear weapons. The first nuclear program of China, adopted in 1951, had a purely peaceful orientation, but already in the mid-1950s. it was supplemented with a secret section with an eye to the creation of its own nuclear weapons and its carriers. The decision to produce the atomic bomb was made by Mao Zedong on January 15, 1955, in response to American threats to use nuclear weapons against China. The first Chinese atomic bomb was tested 13 years later - October 16, 1964

In accordance with national traditions, the Chinese leadership, having taken a course towards the creation of nuclear weapons, at the same time, in their official views on nuclear policy, in every possible way belittled the role of nuclear weapons. At the same time, the conviction of the military-political leadership of China in the need to possess nuclear weapons was not only not questioned, but even strengthened.

Immediately after testing the first nuclear device on October 16, 1964, China announced that it was the first to renounce the use of nuclear weapons. China has taken the path of predominant production of thermonuclear munitions and the creation of ground-based ballistic missiles and aerial bombs. Currently, the PRC has both strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons. China's strategic nuclear forces include strategic missile forces (SRV), strategic aviation (SA) and a nuclear missile fleet. As of January 1, 2007, the total number of delivery vehicles for strategic nuclear weapons was 244 units.

China's nuclear policy is aimed at ensuring the implementation of the national development strategy. The main objectives of China's current nuclear strategy can be formulated as follows:

maintaining the status of a great power;

· prevention of any form of influence of other nuclear powers on the policy and economy of China through nuclear deterrence;

· maintaining superiority over China's rival countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

The role of nuclear weapons in the structure of national security is expressed mainly in the concept limited retaliatory nuclear strike, providing for the construction of nuclear deterrence forces limited in terms of combat strength, capable of forcing it to abandon the use of nuclear weapons against China by creating a threat of inflicting significant damage on a potential enemy. This concept does not imply the achievement of nuclear parity with respect to the US and Russia. Thus, we can say that the Chinese nuclear doctrine has become differential: at the strategic level, it continues to rely on minimal restraint, and at the regional level is based on limited containment.

India

India is the sixth country that received nuclear weapons in 1974 and spent 26 years on it.

The strategic concepts of India in modern conditions are based on the implementation of a reliable minimum nuclear deterrence and the capacity for adequate retaliation if deterrence proves ineffective. In January 2003, the Government of India announced the creation of a strategic nuclear command, which is designed to streamline and formalize the procedure for making decisions on India's use of nuclear weapons. At the same time, a new nuclear doctrine was approved, the provisions of which can be summarized as follows:

· India intends to create and develop the minimum reasonable deterrence capability;

· India proclaims the principle of no first use of nuclear weapons - it can only be used as a response to a nuclear attack on the territory of the country or Indian armed forces anywhere;

· a retaliatory nuclear strike, which can only be inflicted with the sanction of the civilian political leadership of the country, will be massive, with the expectation of causing irreparable damage;

· Nuclear weapons cannot be used against a non-nuclear state;

· In the event of a large-scale military attack on India or the Indian Armed Forces anywhere with the use of chemical or biological weapons, India reserves the right to respond with a nuclear strike.

The President of India, Abdul Kalam, speaking at a meeting with students of Moscow State University in Moscow on May 23, 2005, said: “Many countries have large stocks of nuclear weapons, primarily Russia and the United States. They must move towards the complete abandonment of nuclear weapons, then the small countries will also destroy their nuclear stocks. At the same time, he stressed that India's nuclear doctrine presupposes the principle of complete disarmament and the renunciation of the first use of nuclear weapons. And in February 2009, Mayankote Kelat Narayanan, National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister of India, speaking at the 45th Munich Security Conference, said that India has always been against nuclear weapons and continues to support nuclear disarmament, “being the only state which is ready to negotiate the complete destruction of nuclear arsenals.

However, on July 26, 2009, the first Indian nuclear submarine was launched. Arihant (Slayer of enemies), which heralds significant changes in the global balance of strategic forces. According to preliminary information, Arihant will be armed with 12 ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads at a distance of up to 700 km. Over time, the boat can be equipped with missiles with a range of up to 3.5 thousand km.

"We have entered the list of selected states capable of building nuclear submarines," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at the ceremony. A few days before, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Indian Foreign Minister Somanahally Mallaya Krishna signed a joint statement on the further development of bilateral strategic partnership. Reaffirming that "India and the United States share a vision for a world free of nuclear weapons," Hillary Clinton and Somanahally Mallaya Krishna "agreed to move forward in the Conference on Disarmament towards a non-discriminatory, internationally and effectively verifiable fissile material cut-off treaty."

Thus, US-Indian cooperation in the nuclear field is actively developing, despite the fact that India has not signed the NPT. In addition, India and the United States began consultations on the implementation of the US-Indian agreement on partnership in the field of civil nuclear energy, signed in March 2006. The document provides for the separation of Indian civil and military nuclear programs with the transfer of peaceful developments and 35 civilian nuclear facilities of the country under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In return, the United States pledged to provide India with reactor technology and nuclear fuel for its civilian programs.

Pakistan

Starting its nuclear program in 1965, Pakistan launched its first nuclear test a third of a century later, on May 28, 1998.

Pakistan does not have a nuclear doctrine in the form of an official document, however, in practice, the Pakistani leadership adheres to the following key principles:

· Minimal credible nuclear deterrence centered on India;

the principle of massive retribution;

· the policy of using nuclear weapons first;

· equivalent targeting of nuclear weapons;

· decentralized structure of nuclear command and control (control).

Pakistan's nuclear policy can also be judged from the statements and interviews of officials, including the country's president, and senior Pakistani military officials. Based, unlike India, on the principle of using nuclear weapons first, Islamabad formulated four main factors under which Pakistan will use nuclear weapons against India:

· India's conventional or nuclear attack on Pakistan and its capture of most of the territory of Pakistan (spatial threshold);

· India's destruction of most of Pakistan's ground or air forces (military threshold);

· infliction of significant economic damage by India to Pakistan or economic blockade arranged by India to Pakistan (economic strangulation);

· Implementation by India of political destabilization or major sabotage within the country (internal destabilization).

According to Pakistan's official position, the main function of its nuclear arsenal is to prevent India from taking over the country in any way. The second objective of Pakistan's nuclear policy is to deter India's superiority in attacking the Pakistani military with conventional weapons.

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in a statement in December 2002 that war with India had been avoided because of his constant warnings that if Indian forces crossed the internationally recognized border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir or Pakistani Punjab, then Pakistan will not confine itself in its response to the conduct of hostilities using conventional weapons. Despite the fact that a new Indo-Pakistani war was only narrowly avoided in 2002, in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 Indo-Pakistani détente, Pakistani military planners appear to have become even more confident in their ability to manage the risks of strategic deterrence. . Thus, a bilateral Indo-Pakistani model of regional nuclear deterrence was actually formed, protecting these countries from direct military conflicts. Therefore, Pakistan is likely to continue its policy of using a flexible and vague nuclear doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons.

Thus, at present, all the official nuclear powers, although they maintain a trend towards some quantitative reduction in their nuclear arsenals, are not going to completely abandon nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.

Nuclear-free world: utopia or reality?

The first attempts to exclude nuclear weapons from the list of means of armed struggle were made almost immediately after its appearance. In January 1946, the UN Atomic Energy Commission was established, whose competence included the preparation of proposals "with regard to the exclusion from national armaments of atomic weapons and all other major types of weapons suitable for mass destruction" . On March 19, 1946, the Soviet government, already at the second meeting of the UN Commission, submitted a draft Convention on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which includes provisions on "prohibition of the production and use of nuclear weapons" and "destruction within three months of all stocks of finished and unfinished products of atomic weapons."

However, these efforts were not crowned with success, and the UN Atomic Energy Commission ceased its work after the first nuclear explosion in the USSR on August 29, 1949. the draft international Convention on the Prohibition of Atomic, Hydrogen and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction, while Britain and France jointly submitted a memorandum providing for "the complete prohibition of nuclear weapons and their withdrawal from armaments." In 1955, the USSR came up with a revised disarmament program that provided for the conclusion of an International Convention on the Reduction of Arms and the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The culmination of Soviet initiatives was N.S. Khrushchev’s speech on September 18, 1959 at the XVI session of the UN General Assembly with proposals for the general and complete disarmament of all states, which proposed to carry out three successive stages of disarmament in four years:

· Significant reduction of conventional aircraft and armaments under international control.

· Liquidation of the remaining armed forces and military bases in foreign territories.

· Destruction of all types of nuclear and missile weapons, completing measures for general and complete disarmament.

The formal basis for today's talk of a nuclear-free world is Article VI of the NPT (opened for signature in 1968 and entered into force on March 5, 1970), which states: “Each Party to this Treaty undertakes, in good faith, to negotiate effective measures on the cessation of the nuclear arms race in the near future and on nuclear disarmament, as well as on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

But since the matter never came to general and complete disarmament, and the USSR began to rapidly catch up with the United States in terms of its nuclear potential, for almost four decades the process of nuclear disarmament and the reduction of strategic offensive arms became in fact the concern of only two countries - the United States and Russia (the Soviet Union ). A series of bilateral agreements, as it were, accustomed the whole world to the fact that these two countries answer for nuclear disarmament. This process began on May 26, 1972 with the first Soviet-American Interim Agreement between the USSR and the USA on certain measures in the field of limitation of strategic offensive arms (SALT-1 Treaty), concluded by L.I. Brezhnev and Richard Nixon in Moscow at the same time as the ABM Treaty. Then there was the Treaty between the USSR and the USA on the limitation of strategic offensive arms (SALT-2 Treaty) in 1979, classical The START-1 Treaty in 1991 and the Moscow Treaty on the Reduction of Strategic Offensive Potentials of 2002. In general, over this period, the strategic nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States have decreased by almost five times.

Russia and the United States have stopped the nuclear arms race, are constantly negotiating nuclear disarmament, and have developed rules for mutual control. At the same time, there has long been an opinion in society that it is precisely breakthroughs on this issue determine not only the prospects for Russian-American relations as a whole, but also the prospects for the further course of the nuclear disarmament process.

Other de jure The nuclear powers that are parties to the NPT have not yet expressed any desire to legally limit their nuclear arsenals. At the same time, for example, China stated in 1995 that "those powers whose nuclear and conventional weapons are superior to all. have a special responsibility for arms control and disarmament." At the same time, the idea of a nuclear-free world, which first originated in the minds of the most advanced intellectual and political leaders in the middle of the 20th century, is gradually growing into the present century as well.

Back in February 1983, A.D. Sakharov wrote in an open letter to Sidney Drell: “Nuclear war can arise from conventional war, and conventional war, as is known, arises from politics. ... A nuclear war cannot be won. It is necessary to systematically - albeit cautiously - strive for complete nuclear disarmament on the basis of a strategic balance of conventional weapons. As long as nuclear weapons exist in the world, a strategic balance of nuclear forces is needed in which neither side can decide on a limited or regional nuclear war. Genuine security is possible only on the basis of stabilizing international relations, abandoning the policy of expansion, strengthening international confidence, openness and pluralization of socialist societies, respect for human rights throughout the world, rapprochement - convergence - of the socialist and capitalist systems, worldwide coordinated work to solve global problems.

It follows from this thesis, which is absolutely fair even today (with the exception of the world socialist system that does not exist today), that complete nuclear disarmament is possible only if the policy of expansion and the strategic balance of conventional weapons are abandoned. But are these requirements being met today? At the same time, it should be noted that the thesis of general and complete disarmament has somehow slowly disappeared from the disarmament and non-proliferation discourse.

Almost all modern Western models of complete nuclear disarmament are based, as a rule, on the ideas expressed by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. :

· Understanding that national security should not depend on nuclear weapons.

· Awareness of the need to move from a system of arms limitation to nuclear disarmament.

· A look at the missile defense system as the key to the elimination of nuclear weapons.

· The actual rejection of the doctrine of a protracted nuclear war that existed in the 1970s.

Ideas are good. Let's say they come true. However, the methods and, consequently, the consequences of such an implementation may be different. They depend on the goals that the disarming parties actually set for themselves. At the same time, the implementation of these ideas is impossible without answering a number of questions. On what international mechanisms should national security depend? But today they practically do not work or work quite selectively. And the most reliable tool still remains military force.

What are the real capabilities of the missile defense system? After all, it can work against delivery vehicles not only for nuclear, but also conventional weapons, and is also a completely effective means of combating space missiles, providing, among other things, undoubted commercial advantages to the owner of such a system. And in modern society, whoever owns the cosmos will own the world.

What will the rejection of a protracted nuclear war lead to? To abolition of wars in general or to a limited nuclear war, to lightning-fast disarming nuclear strikes supported by high-precision conventional weapons and under umbrella PRO? And all this in a single information and control space provided by space satellite systems?

The fact that such consequences of nuclear disarmament are quite real is evidenced by the situation in the modern world, in which there is hardly a day without wars and armed conflicts. Today, the main threats to peace are associated with conventional, conventional weapons. It is with their use that wars are waged in the modern world, and their rut ka, their rapid build-up is changing the regional and global balances of power.

What is the aim of the proposals for complete nuclear disarmament? Is there really a real process of abandoning nuclear weapons in principle, or is it just a kind of attempt to unleash instead nuclear arms race nuclear disarmament race niya? And then what could be the goals and results of such a race and who benefits from it?

After all, countries that possess both nuclear weapons and a full nuclear fuel cycle should disarm. Moreover, apart from moral incentives, such disarmament is not supported by anything. And countries that do not possess them should abandon the creation of nuclear weapons and the production of nuclear materials. At the same time, attempts are made - sometimes successful, sometimes not so much - such a refusal to provide financial incentives. Although we have only two examples of an explicit rejection of nuclear weapons, and at the same time without explicit external material incentives: Sweden (in 1968) and South Africa (in 1991). But they happened for purely internal reasons.

When the idea nuclear zero, that arose more than half a century ago, almost simultaneously with the creation of nuclear weapons, began to take on a real embodiment? Only at the moment when it was replaced by a new effective high-precision weapon capable of solving the problems of regional conflicts. Of course, footage CNN, where smart a precision-guided non-nuclear cruise missile flying through the window of a dictator's bunker is far more humane than the photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed by the atomic bomb. Although, in essence, the transition from nuclear sledgehammer to conventional scalpel doesn't make much sense. Thus, the goals and objectives are the same, only the ways to achieve them are different.

But it is precisely the fact that a state that has made such a transition in the sphere of military force instruments, but in many respects retains the old approaches in the field of goal-setting, proposes to accelerate the movement towards a nuclear-free world, makes us think about the true goals and possible results of the proposed nuclear disarmament. And from this point of view, today's intensification of talk about complete nuclear disarmament looks quite unambiguous. After all, as US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote in his article in the magazine foreign affairs in early 2009, "the goal of our strategy is ... to maintain the current superiority in traditional and strategic weapons and technologies over the armed forces of other countries" .

Today, the world is on the verge of a new era in which the only military superpower will enjoy guaranteed impunity, i.e. the possibility of a disarming strike (with acceptable environmental consequences) against any potential adversary, including the Russian Federation. So far, there is no need to talk about such a possibility (precisely as a guaranteed one), but the chances of a hypothetical retaliatory strike being successful are systematically and prudently reduced to minimal values. Including through international legal mechanisms. Therefore , Barack Obama 's nuclear disarmament initiative actually makes it possible to bring this global military hegemony to a qualitatively new level .

In order to understand whether a transition to complete and universal nuclear disarmament is possible at all, it is necessary to have a clear idea of where it is going, in what ways the world that exists today will develop. And what are the ways to ensure its safety.

Scenarios of the 21st century

The dynamics of world processes is determined by the current situation and is inextricably linked with how political decision makers perceive military force, what role and place they assign to nuclear weapons in achieving the goals of state development. And such a perception depends on many factors: the geopolitical situation, the ratio of the military power of states, economic and scientific and technical capabilities, and, last but not least, the personalities of the leaders themselves.

Today, as a result of the collapse of first the bipolar and then the unipolar world, a situation has developed in which every pawn on chessboard geopolitics wants to be queened. Especially those who have tasted the sweetness of participating in big game. Especially if it was big nuclear game, only one application for participation in which immediately brings the player to the circle of the elite. After all, an instant transition from the category outcast into the category of an equal partner in the nuclear dialogue not only flatters the pride of a political leader and elevates any nation in its own eyes and in the eyes of the world community, but can also bring real economic benefits.

For a long time, futuristic predictions were the work of science fiction writers and astrologers. Despite the fact that some forecasts came true with a fairly high accuracy, it is impossible to base strategic planning on them, since direct extrapolation of existing trends in the long term inevitably leads to significant errors. History has given us many examples of the negative consequences of such scholastic forecasts.

Each modern state, and even more so the world community as a whole, is a complex system described by an infinite number of parameters and having an infinite number of degrees of freedom. However, in such a very popular and rapidly developing science as synergetics, it is quite rigorously proved that there is a finite set order parameters, determining the behavior of such objects over large time intervals. At the same time, the so-called slow And fast variables, and one can almost always give poor prognosis, those. answer the question of what will not happen in this system.

When predicting the future, many problems arise, without which it is impossible to give a scientifically based forecast. One of these problems is the so-called planner paradox. Its essence lies in the fact that the decision that is the best for a perspective of 5-7 years may lead to far from the best consequences in 10-20 years and even be disastrous in 40-60 years. The depth and content of any forecasts are determined by their time horizon: short-term - up to 1 year, medium-term - up to 5 years, long-term - up to 10 years, promising - tens of years. In military-political forecasting, a 10-15-year period is usually considered, during which specific strategies for the activity of the state and its individual organizational structures should be implemented. This is due to the fact that only for this period is it possible to accurately assess the resource base necessary to achieve the strategic goal, as well as to extrapolate trends, both already manifested and only emerging by the beginning of the forecast period. At the same time, the electoral cycles traditional for the developed countries of the world also fit into the specified time frames, which makes it possible to speak with confidence about the political and ideological views and preferences of those who will actually make strategic decisions. And since decisions in the nuclear sphere are historical in the truest sense of the word, the forecast horizon is extremely important and should be at least half a century.

It must also be taken into account that decisions made in short, historically insignificant periods of time - days, weeks, months, have a huge impact both on the life of an individual and on the life of entire peoples and states. At the same time, such decisions can be made in conditions of lack of time, incomplete information, psychological stress, including by incompetent or random people. However, history is a continuous irreversible process, and many questions cannot be postpone until tomorrow. Another fundamental problem is the impossibility of a full-scale experiment to verify the correctness of the decisions made, as well as the lack of adequate mathematical models and complete information for conducting a computer experiment.

Therefore, no matter how paradoxical it may sound, it is hardly advisable to rely too heavily on formal methods of forward forecasting in the nuclear sphere. In such forecasts, the reflexive component is too strong, subjective interests and preferences are too frankly manifested. At the same time, forecasts are necessary in order to be included in one way or another in specific programs for the development of the state, in political and military strategies and doctrines. Thus, it remains to focus on purely politological verbal forecasts. Although, of course, they are often subject to political conjuncture and wishful thinking.

What picture emerges when looking from today to the 21st century? What models of the future do we have? What is the role and place of Russia in this future? Oddly enough, despite all the talk about the need for complete nuclear disarmament, about the search for new effective mechanisms for ensuring international security, almost all forecasts predict wars and conflicts for mankind, including nuclear ones.

Launched in 1997, the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century claims that US leadership on the world stage will benefit both the United States and the rest of the world, and that “such leadership requires military might, diplomatic acumen and moral obligations." When diplomacy and sanctions can no longer handle the situation, the US must be ready for military action. The increase in military spending and the development of military technology are the direct responsibility of the United States after the end of the Cold War. The project calls for the creation of a "special, global U.S. military" that would be capable of "fighting and decisively winning in several major theaters of war at the same time" and also "perform policemen Security Responsibilities in Key Regions” . About how members of the movement who held leading positions in the George W. Bush Doctrines Paul Wolfowitz), implemented his provisions, is well known.

In December 2003, the materials of a study on the development trends of the modern world - "Global Trends 2020" were presented to the public on the website of the US National Intelligence Council. The main thesis was the continuation of the US global dominance in the near future, although it is possible that China's influence will increase while Europe's strategic importance in matters of world security will decrease. Key decisions on the use of military force by the United States and its allies, as before, will be made individually, without regard to the world community. Although by 2020 a return to military and ideological confrontation between Russia and the West is no longer possible, its relations with the outside world will be ambivalent and contradictory. Russia will remain the main power of Eurasia. Some form of federation is possible, even an alliance with Belarus. The main problem for the Russian leadership will be the problem of reconciling a regional economy with global political ambitions be a great power. In political and economic terms, by 2020 Russia will represent something similar to what is already observed now, and its economy will remain average by world standards. The core element of Russian military planning will remain the possibility of using strategic nuclear forces, the storage sites of which by that time may be protected by the joint efforts of Russia and the United States, which will not allow maintaining Russia's status as great power. Russia's foreign policy will increasingly be carried out in line with that of the US and the EU.

Another analytical study "Strategic Paradigms 2025: US Security Planning for a New Era" by the Washington-based Institute for International Policy Analysis (IAMP) states that the future of Russia directly affects the future of the European Union and the fate of the NATO bloc. However, the future of Russia itself is much less predictable than the future of any other state or region. According to the IAMP forecast, three options for the future of Russia can be imagined:

· An authoritarian Russia will pursue a confrontational and extremely active policy near its own borders, in Europe and Central Asia. The Russian economy will operate inefficiently, foreign investment will be extremely limited. The real power in the country will belong to the security forces. The basis of the security strategy will be reliance on nuclear forces.

· A democratic Russia with a market economy will be an active and full-fledged partner of the West. Russia will take an active part in the process of globalization, will cooperate with NATO and jointly conduct peacekeeping operations. Its national security policy will depend to a minimum extent on the concept of external threats.

· Compromise middle option. Russia will remain a very complex and inconsistent partner in the field of international relations. Russia will accept the first stage of NATO expansion, but will vehemently protest further expansion of the bloc. The concept of national security will rely to a small extent on the nuclear arsenal. Russia will play an active role in countering the actions of the West, but its capabilities in such a confrontation will be seriously limited.

In the spring of 2009, NATO presented to the public an extensive report-strategy on scenarios for the development of the future political situation in the world - “Multiple Futures Project. Navigating Towards 2030". In it, NATO positions itself as the only military alliance responsible for containing conflicts on the planet. It is noted that the alliance's priority is to contain the nuclear arms race. But at the same time, there is talk of a possible nuclear attack on major European cities and major European transport hubs. At the same time, it is noted that a single nuclear strike will not be enough to cause significant damage to Europe. An alliance country subjected to a nuclear attack will certainly strike back, and will also resort to Article V of the Washington Treaty, since it will not have enough power of its armed forces to retaliate. Therefore, the strategy states that the alliance must have a sufficient number of conventional and nuclear weapons to be able to respond to unexpected attacks.

The Spanish political scientist and economist Josep Colomer believes that since the Westphalian model nation-states is not universal, the main elements of the world politics of the future will be two types of potentially viable territorial and political communities: large empires (America, China, Europe, Russia and Japan) and small nations (several hundred) living in their orbits. At the same time, V.T. Tretyakov believes that "the survival and further prosperity of the Euro-Atlantic (Christian) civilization is possible only with the transition from constant competition and even confrontation (up to military) between these entities to their sincere and equal alliance." As a result of such an alliance, the All-European Union (or the Union of the European Union - the European Union and the Russian Union) should be created, the United States should leave Europe as a political and military force and conclude a tripartite military-political defensive treaty with the All-European Union, “assuming the absolute internal political sovereignty of each of participants." At the same time, history gave us no more than 15-20 years to create such an alliance.

The preservation of the modern system of international relations with the prevalence of state actors is not the only possible scenario for the development of events in the new century.

According to researcher Alex Battler, the emerging “multipolar structure of international relations with many centers of power is the most unstable system. This is a world of chaos, the struggle of all against all. It leads to an increase in regional conflicts, including military ones. From the point of view of international stability, this is the worst version of the structure of the international system. He notes that the multipolar world will historically quickly turn into a bipolar one with two centers of power (presumably the United States and China), and then into a unipolar one - "a single world economy will arise on Earth." States as world actors will not completely leave the world stage, but their classical significance by the end of the XXI century. will lose. A world government will be formed.

The results of the first summit in the framework of the economic and strategic dialogue between the United States and China testify to the fact that this is not just one of the alternative options for the future image of the world. At the opening of the forum, US President Barack Obama declared US-China relations "defining for the 21st century" and invited Beijing to start cooperation on a global scale and coordinate the actions of the two countries in matters of economy, security, foreign policy and energy. “US-China relations will define the 21st century. This is a responsibility that we have to bear together,” declared Barack Obama. He also announced his readiness to strengthen cooperation between the armies of the two countries, establish data exchange and coordinate foreign policy in various regions of the world, for example, in Africa. At the same time, the US will not try to spread its values to China.

And after all, what is interesting is that the United States and China, which possess strategic nuclear weapons, did not announce a renunciation of the policy of nuclear deterrence in mutual relations and did not sign the corresponding agreements. However, it turned out that nuclear deterrence does not interfere with either strategic partnership or economic cooperation, when both sides are interested in them. Today, out of more than $2 trillion of its international reserves, China holds $801.5 billion in US Treasury bonds and another $700 billion in other American securities. Indeed, the thesis turned out to be true: "If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem, and if you owe $100 million, then that's the bank's problem."

The most unfavorable scenario for the development of the military-political situation in the XXI century. is the continuation and possible strengthening of today's negative tendencies of the forceful solution of contradictions and conflicts. As such a scenario, one can consider the one that in the summer of 2009 was read by the whole world. It is published in a new book by George Friedman, a popular American political commentator and company founder Stratfor, engaged in exploration using only open sources. The author, without claiming to be 100% accurate in his forecast, and at the same time urging not to perceive it as too fantastic, looked a whole century ahead and painted a rather rosy picture of American hegemony in the coming century, based on the dominance of the United States by force, remaining the only world pole of power that controls direct Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

According to George Friedman, by 2020 Russia will become a major regional player whose main task will be to restore power and influence in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. This may lead to a confrontation with Germany, so Russia will devote significant forces to increase its military potential, and also try to restore a system of internal buffers (similar to that which existed under the Soviet Union in the form of union republics), then will begin to seek to increase the number of buffer states and will move beyond the boundaries of the former USSR. At the same time, Moscow will make efforts to stop the formation of coalitions at its borders, entering into a global confrontation with America in various parts of the world, which will peak by 2020. However, overstrained in this confrontation, at the beginning of the third decade of the XXI century. Russia will collapse, just as the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union collapsed.

After the collapse of Russia, Turkey, the new leader of the Islamic world, uniting Islamic countries in a coalition, will turn into the most influential regional power and will be able to pursue an expansionist policy not only in the Caucasus, and then on the Arabian Peninsula, but also in the Balkans. It will compete with Egypt and Iran. The Islamic world, unable to unite, will accept Turkish dominance. However, an even more faithful ally of America will be a coalition of Eastern European states led by Poland. The main goal of such an alliance will be to advance to the east. The occupation of St. Petersburg by the Estonians, Kiev by the Hungarians, and Minsk by the Poles will become quite real. By the beginning of the 2040s. the contradictions between the United States, on the one hand, and the union of Turkey and Japan, on the other, will gradually intensify. China and Japan will increasingly oppose US dominance in the Asia-Pacific region, the countries of Eastern Europe will continue to struggle for spheres of influence, the European Union will begin to experience difficulties due to the involvement of a large number of countries with different levels of economic development and an increase in the number of different ethno-confessional communities, Mexico will contribute to the blurring of the borders between the states of North America. The presence of these problem areas will undoubtedly lead to conflicts.

A world war will begin in the middle of the 21st century. after the conflict between Poles and Turks over the Balkans. The goal of the United States will be to prevent the development of the regional leaders of Eurasia and their unification into a single hegemonic state. Japan will seek to consolidate its dominance in the Pacific Northwest, Turkey - to stabilize its region. At the same time, the war will be unprecedented in terms of methods of warfare. Accuracy will be the determining factor in winning war in the 21st century. A special stake will be placed on unmanned supersonic combat aircraft supported by rocket weapons from space. The war will take on a protracted character, but the acceleration of the pace of arms production in the United States will allow them to achieve serious successes and win by mid-2052. The position of the United States as the world's leading power will be further strengthened. Losses as a result of the war will be relatively small - a few tens of thousands of people. At the same time, China will be in the most advantageous position, which will strengthen its positions in Central Asia.

After the war comes golden decade for the United States, which will continue the militarization of space. Poland will begin to strengthen its positions in Europe, and Belarus will enter its composition. The other allies form a new confederation ruled from Warsaw. However, in the 2080s the development of Mexico will gradually lead to the weakening of the United States, resulting in areas in the United States that are completely populated by Mexicans. The growth of the Mexican economy will spur Mexican nationalism, which, in turn, will lead to the escalation of Mexican-American contradictions. There will be a full-scale rivalry between the US and Mexico for leadership in North America. This rivalry will be resolved in the 22nd century.

Almost all of the above scenarios do not promise a quiet life for humanity in the coming decades. And some predict us not only regional, including nuclear, conflicts, but even a new world war. This means that the military-political leadership of the great powers, as well as the leaders of the most ambitious states, will most likely retain the need for military force, and therefore nuclear weapons as its most striking embodiment, for at least decades.

Road map nuclear disarmament

Such a vision of the future strengthens the confidence that nuclear weapons in the coming century will most likely not disappear from the arsenal of political and military means and will be present and taken into account in relations between nuclear powers and the rest of the world for an indefinitely long time. Although the struggle of the world community for nuclear non-proliferation is intensifying, for many countries the possession of nuclear weapons will become a vital condition for their own survival.

Nuclear weapons play a crucial role not only in times of war, but also in times of peace. It represents the clearest example of an attempt to monopolize military power. The very process of its creation was classified in all countries. So an attempt was made to monopolize nuclear knowledge. But, as we know, it failed. After the first nuclear test and the use of nuclear weapons by the United States against Japan, they had the illusion of the possibility of a monopoly use of this force. (By the way, the creation of a global missile defense system is also, in essence, a continuation of such an illusion.) Then, after the failure of this attempt, efforts were made to monopolize power over nuclear weapons, resulting in the NPT - as a variant of monopoly fives countries on nuclear weapons. But this attempt was also unsuccessful. Nuclear weapons are spreading across the planet - first in the form of nuclear knowledge, then in material form, and then in legal form. Today, the monopoly of both knowledge and power in the global world is impossible. And if it is impossible in economics and geopolitics, who would agree with it in the nuclear sphere? In the language of economists, the appearance of nuclear weapons instantly and radically changed the geopolitical competitive environment, giving its owner a monopoly on absolute military force. It was this situation that forced the geopolitical competitors of the United States to do everything to eliminate this monopoly.

According to a number of estimates, today there are 30-40 states in the world that have the technical and industrial capabilities for the production of nuclear weapons, have nuclear forces or develop peaceful and military nuclear programs. According to official IAEA data, 70 states have "significant nuclear activities", i.e. have power and/or research reactors and are therefore theoretically in a position to develop a military nuclear program. Among them: five officially recognized nuclear states in accordance with the NPT - the USA, Russia, Great Britain, France and China; two unrecognized as such, but conducted nuclear tests (India and Pakistan); states in respect of which there is an opinion that they already possess nuclear weapons (such as Israel, North Korea); a number of countries that already had nuclear weapons or could produce them in a short time or were striving to seize them in one way or another - South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Australia and others.

If in the twentieth century the possession of nuclear weapons was the privilege of strong, military-technologically developed states, then in the 21st century. there is a reverse trend. This weapon attracts relatively weak states, which hope to use it to compensate for their military-technological backwardness. And since the quantity and quality of nuclear weapons in such states cannot lead to mutual destruction in a military conflict between them, the parties face a dilemma: to resort to nuclear weapons first or lose them.

Therefore, it is quite natural that, although the role of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence in relations between the great powers is declining, none of today's de jure nuclear powers in such circumstances will never renounce their nuclear status. After all, this is required not only by the desire to maintain a high place in the world ranking tables, but also an elementary sense of healthy national self-preservation. As long as military force exists, it exists primarily to intimidate potential adversaries. Thus, the report "Nuclear Weapons in the Modern World and Russia's Security", issued in 2001 by the working group of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, notes that the nuclear powers are doomed to mutual deterrence in the essence of their strategic relations. Containment may come to the fore in times of crisis or recede behind the scenes of current politics in an atmosphere of improved relations, but it remains an objective reality and is always invisibly present. At the same time, containment allows for a wide range of models for both equal and unequal positions of the sides. In addition, deterrence is still seen in the sense of a guarantee against the other party's withdrawal from the treaty regime and the resumption of the offensive and defensive nuclear arms race, and it is this aspect of deterrence that has become increasingly important after the end of the Cold War and for the foreseeable future.

In order for there to be no relations of mutual nuclear deterrence between nuclear powers, a number of conditions must be met:

powers are military-political allies;

they are out of reach of each other's nuclear carriers;

· their nuclear weapons are clearly directed against a third party;

· One of them has overwhelming nuclear superiority and disarmament strike potential against the other.

And, finally, nuclear deterrence in its traditional model can be abolished when one of the parties creates effective systems of anti-missile defense and protection against other types of nuclear launchers. And since today the strategic interaction between Russia and the United States does not satisfy any of these conditions, the system of their mutual nuclear deterrence, according to the authors of this report, remains.

At the same time, an analysis of the conceptual documents of the leading nuclear powers, speeches by officials and specialists, and a number of concrete steps in the field of strategic weapons allow us to conclude that the attitude towards nuclear weapons, and, consequently, towards nuclear deterrence as a tool for ensuring strategic stability and national security in modern conditions is undergoing a certain transformation. The key problem in developing adequate approaches to determining possible directions for the evolution of the role of the nuclear factor in relations between traditional nuclear powers is to determine the role of nuclear deterrence in a multipolar world. The events of recent years have shown that in the current geopolitical situation, nuclear weapons are not capable of playing the role of a deterrent, let alone countering the new threats to security and stability that may arise in a multipolar world, since most of them lie below the level that justifies the rationality of a nuclear war. At the same time, a system of crisis stability based on nuclear weapons creates a situation that is comfortable for all participants in the global nuclear balance of power, when none of the parties is interested in a momentary violation of this balance or in any other action that creates incentives for the escalation of armed confrontation with conventional forces.

Thus, today we can only talk about those necessary conditions that must be created just to ensure the fundamental possibility of achieving nuclear zero. After all, the existing system of rules of conduct in the nuclear sphere was designed in a completely different - bipolar - world. And it was created by countries and people who set as their real goal not a nuclear-free world, but their own nuclear monopoly.

Since the question of the complete destruction of nuclear weapons is not on the real agenda of not only modern, but, apparently, future political leaders, it is necessary to develop new rules and conditions for a safe life in the nuclear age. Such conditions can be achieved through the following necessary steps.

Firstly, determination of those international institutions to which the mission of nuclear disarmament can be entrusted. With the expansion of the bilateral format of negotiations, an appropriate international body is required to coordinate the process of interaction between the participating countries. With all the numerous claims against the UN, only this organization is capable of such work in our complex world.

Russia and the US have already passed their part of the road to nuclear disarmament. And they not only passed, but formed a kind of road map this process. Therefore, the success of the process of further nuclear disarmament depends on when other nuclear states take this road and what road map they will enjoy. This road map should be the first page of a thick, detailed atlas of the new face of a nuclear-free world. And one of the pitfalls on the way to the creation of an international institution for nuclear disarmament is the difficulty of reaching consensus, which is necessary precisely because without it we will remain where we are today.

Secondly, formation of an official list of countries - members of the new nuclear club with amnesty newly declared nuclear powers, i.e. legalization of all existing nuclear weapons.

This step will allow, on the one hand, to bring the already created nuclear weapons out of the shadows, on the other hand, to satisfy the ambitions of its owners to a certain extent, giving them nuclear status and putting it in a certain legal framework and under strict control. After all nuclear status imposes quite specific requirements on the owner of nuclear weapons and his policy.

Thirdly, final closing(by date or list - it doesn't matter!) a list of nuclear powers with the definition of a new effective system of tough sanctions for its violation.

Such a step will most likely require some revision of the NPT or even its replacement by a new treaty more adequate to today's realities. This requirement will make it possible to get rid of the recurrences of bloc thinking, which were largely inherent in the disarmament agreements of the 1960s and 1970s. The need for this measure is confirmed by the obvious slipping recent NPT Review Conferences.

Fourth, fixing the achieved levels of nuclear weapons on a multilateral basis and thus their legalization. Definition of measures of transparency and methods of verification of nuclear arsenals. Coordination of nuclear strategies and programs.

This will ensure the possibility of involving all nuclear countries in the dialogue and create the preconditions, at least, for maintaining the nuclear danger at the same level. Coordination of behavioral strategies will make it possible to increase the predictability of the policy of nuclear countries and will make it possible to reduce the risk of a spontaneous nuclear conflict to a minimum.

Fifth, creation of a new international security system and reformatting non-proliferation regime.

This will require the formation of a new understanding of not only modern, but also a promising system whips And gingerbread, able to operate effectively for many decades to come. At the same time, it should be taken into account that the appetites of the nuclear players are growing, and gingerbread are all more expensive.

At sixth, formation of a new system of safeguards and conditions for the development of peaceful nuclear programs in any country of the world without dividing them into good And bad without axes of evil And rogue countries.

It is in line with this step that the Russian proposal to create an international nuclear fuel storage facility lies.

Seventh, permission for legal nuclear powers to conduct periodic (every 10-15 years) nuclear tests to test the reliability of nuclear arsenals and maintain the qualifications of nuclear specialists. These tests must meet all the requirements of radiation and environmental safety and, perhaps, be supervised by the IAEA or some other international organization.

This proposal, of course, may seem the most radical and least acceptable. But without it, it will be impossible to talk about a correct understanding of the state of affairs in the sphere of nuclear weapons, as well as to competently control the nonproliferation regime. Only tests allow us to confidently and safely produce, operate, store and dispose of nuclear weapons.

It will take at least 15-20 years to go through all these steps. At the same time, it should be noted that these measures must be implemented in full and in full. Removing any of them will lead to failure, since all the causes contributing to the current situation will not be eliminated.

The success of these steps will determine the possibility of achieving sufficient conditions for nuclear disarmament - the voluntary renunciation of nuclear weapons by all states and the use of military force in international relations. However, apparently, as the great Russian poet N.A. Nekrasov, "neither me nor you will have to live in this beautiful time."

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While political scientists are discussing the future of the post-federal space, the last redoubt of the Eurasian empire, Mr. Putin's subjects are cherishing the hope that the collapse of Russia will never happen, this simply cannot happen. Iron logic. And, as an argument, a “nuclear shield” ominously sat down in their subconscious. It can be said that the "nuclear argument" is the last bastion of psychological stability and confidence in the existence of a powerful (albeit reeling from its knees) state - the patron and protector of the orphans and the poor.

And God forbid you destroy the Soviet nuclear myth! The Eurasianists will instantly turn into boys from G. Daneliya's movie "Kin-dza-dza!", who have lost their tsaks. In the psychology of the natives, the last hope of capturing the Chatlan planet Plyuk will die. All points of stability and hope for the future, everything that one could (was) be proud of will turn into nothing.

In order not to inflict spiritual trauma on the ideological builders of developed Eurasianism, I advise them not to read further!

According to the site"Internet vs. TV Screen" Russian rulers in the "decaying" West are not taken seriously.

The warranty period for the operation of a nuclear charge in a Russian ballistic missile is 10 years, and then the warhead must be sent to the factory, since plutonium must be changed in it. Nuclear weapons are an expensive pleasure, requiring the maintenance of an entire industry for the constant maintenance and replacement of charges. Oleksandr Kuzmuk, Ukraine's defense minister from 1996 to 2001, said in an interview that Ukraine had 1,740 nuclear weapons in stock, Kuzmuk "however, those nuclear weapons expired before 1997." Therefore, the adoption of a nuclear-free status by Ukraine was nothing more than a beautiful gesture ( http://www.proua.com/digest/2008/08/18/121502.html)

Why "before 1997"? Because even Gorbachev stopped the production of new nuclear charges, and the last old Soviet charges had a warranty period that ended in the 90s. "Both Russia and the United States have not been producing weapons-grade uranium or weapons-grade plutonium for more than 10 years. Somewhere since 1990, all this has been stopped" (V.I. Rybachenkov, Advisor to the Department for Security and Disarmament of the Russian Foreign Ministry, http://www.armscontrol.ru/course/lectures/rybachenkov1.htm ). As for the United States, the adviser "misleads the public", but the fact that under Gorbachev the production of weapons-grade uranium and weapons-grade plutonium was completely curtailed in the USSR is just true.

In order not to be tempted to make new nuclear charges for ballistic missiles, the Americans concluded a "very profitable" deal with the leadership of the RF Ministry of Atomic Energy (for 20 years!). The Americans bought weapons-grade uranium from old Russian warheads (they promised to buy plutonium later), and in return Russian reactors producing weapons-grade plutonium were shut down. "Minatom of Russia: the main milestones in the development of the nuclear industry": "1994 - Adoption by the Government of the Russian Federation of a decision to stop the production of weapons-grade plutonium". ( http://www.minatom.ru/News/Main/viewPrintVersion?id=1360&idChannel=343 )

In Russia, not only has the service life of old Soviet nuclear charges for missile warheads expired "before 1997", but there is no plutonium to make new ones. They cannot be made from old Soviet plutonium, because, like plutonium in warheads, its isotopic composition has irreversibly changed. And in order to obtain new weapons-grade plutonium and manufacture new nuclear charges for missiles, it takes not just time - there are no specialists, the equipment is not in working condition. In Russia, even the technology for manufacturing barrels for tank guns has been lost; after the first few shots, the flight of the next shells from a new Russian tank is hardly predictable. The reasons are the same - the specialists have grown old or dispersed from non-working industries, and the equipment is either dilapidated, or taken away, handed over to scrap metal. It is likely that much more sophisticated technologies for producing weapons-grade plutonium and creating nuclear charges from it have long been lost, and they will have to be restored not for a year or two, but at best for 10 years. And will the Americans allow the Russian Federation to restart reactors to produce highly enriched weapons-grade plutonium? Russia has set up a unique experiment in the destruction of the technosphere of a modern technogenic society, under the current regime, the technosphere is melting right before our eyes, society is losing technology, infrastructure, and most importantly, people who are not able to work as sellers. The Russian Federation quite naturally turned from a country with nuclear weapons into a country potentially capable of possessing them, the status has changed from a real superpower to the status of a potential superpower, and this fundamentally changes Russian relations with other countries.

Why were they on ceremony with the Russian Federation until recently, and not slammed in the late 90s? After the expiration of the warranty period, nuclear charges are capable of exploding for some time. Even though these will not be explosions of the power they were previously designed for, but if several blocks in New York are demolished and hundreds of thousands of people die, then the American government will have to explain. Therefore, the American government allocated the most powerful supercomputers to the US Department of Energy, officially announcing that for scientists to simulate the processes of degradation in nuclear charges, the only thing they "forgot" to tell the media was that they were going to simulate degradation processes not in American charges, but in Russian ones. The game was worth the candle and no money was spared for these purposes, the American elite wanted to know for sure - when not a single Russian nuclear warhead was guaranteed to explode. Scientists gave the answer, and when the estimated time approached, American policy towards Erefia changed as fundamentally as the Russian nuclear status. The Kremlin rulers were simply sent to three letters.

In the spring of 2006, joint articles by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press (in "Foreign Affairs" and in "International Security") appeared on the possibility of a disarming strike against Russian nuclear forces. Lieber and the Press started an open discussion - in a democratic country, everything must be discussed beforehand (although decisions are made by other people and even before discussion). In Moscow, only a tiny bunch of kneaded patriots felt unkind and got worried, the elite didn’t even move an ear, the American plans coincided with their plans (were they not going to leave her a “weapon of retaliation” after setting off from the completely devastated “this country”? Of course not). But then the position of the Russian elite "suddenly" became more complicated. At the beginning of 2007, an article was published in the influential Washington Post newspaper, which recommended not to flirt with the Russian ruling elite anymore, since there is no real power behind it, but to put the crooks in their place. Here the roof was torn off already at Putin himself, and he rolled the "Munich speech" about a multipolar world. And in early 2008, Congress instructed Condoleezza Rice to compile a list of leading Russian corrupt officials. Who has earned a lot of money honestly in Russia? None. The last fog has lifted, and the Kremlin elite has a keen sense of the impending end.

President Medvedev, in his post, announced grandiose plans in the military sphere - "Serial construction of warships is planned, primarily nuclear submarines with cruise missiles and multipurpose submarines. An aerospace defense system will be created." To which Condoleezza Rice coolly replied in an interview with Reuters - "The balance of power in terms of nuclear deterrence will not change from these actions." Why would he change? What will Medvedev load onto ships and cruise missiles? There are no suitable nuclear charges. There are only false targets on Russian missiles, there are no real targets. Building a missile defense system against missiles like "Satan" is insane, you miss once, and goodbye to a dozen large cities. But against radioactive scrap metal, which today is on Russian missiles instead of warheads (most likely, it was also removed, since the old weapons-grade plutonium is very hot - hot as an iron), you can create a missile defense against it, if the missile defense misses, then nothing particularly terrible happens, although it is unpleasant then to decontaminate a hectare of its territory. The missile defense system is designed to catch radioactive scrap metal when the Russian Federation is finally disarmed. The elite does not like missile defense, not because it is around Russia, but because the elite is not allowed out of Russia, it has been turned into a hostage of its own games.

But what about the Russian generals? They fell into mysticism. As once upon the collapse of the Third Reich, and today, with the expected imminent end of the Energy Superpower, the military has the same faith in a secret superweapon, this is the agony of the ability to think soberly. The generals started talking about some warheads maneuvering in space (from a technical point of view - complete nonsense), about hypersonic super-high-altitude cruise missiles, about installations that send short super-powerful electromagnetic pulses. Generals love their homeland, but money even more. Enriched uranium was sold at a price 25 times lower than its value, since it was stolen, stolen from its people, and they don’t take the market price for the stolen, but sell it for next to nothing, part of the money for the sale of warheads and sawing the Satan missiles went to the generals. The generals were assigned as batmen in tsarist Russia, they were assigned a chic pension, and in Chechnya they could play to the fullest at soldiers, drunk to smithereens, send unfired boys to slaughter, and you won’t get anything for it (at least one general was tried for the storming of Grozny?). The son of every general could also become a general; there are more generals in Russia per capita than anywhere else in the world.

Details about the state of strategic weapons were told in the Duma at closed meetings in order to hide the truth from the population. The media only discussed the state of carriers of nuclear weapons, and kept silent about the main thing, the state of the nuclear weapons themselves. Lying was beneficial to the Americans, as it allowed them to continue waving a picture of a dangerous Russian bear in front of their own electorate. The lies suited the oligarchs, since they were going to leave "this country" in the near future. And the generals are silent, because what can they say now? That they stole a nuclear shield from the people, sawed it up and sold it to the enemy?

For 30 years, the balance of nuclear deterrence was determined by treaties between the USSR and the USA; more than that, the USA does not offer to start a new treaty process, there is nothing to agree on. Putin ran urgently to legalize the border with China, and China began to publish textbooks, where almost all of Siberia and the Far East are territories taken away by Russia from China. The EU offered Russia to sign the Energy Charter, according to which the EU will extract oil and gas on the territory of the Russian Federation, transport them to itself, and the Russians are offered a reward - fico. EU officials frankly explained that Russia has three options - to lie under the EU, lie under the US or become Chinese cheap labor, that's the whole choice. The main players are aware of what is happening and are not shy.

The conversation between the Russian rulers and the West turned into "don't understand my," both sides are talking about completely different things, Moscow to them - "You promised us!", And those to the Russians - "So you have nothing else but a cheap bluff!" (The sending of the Russian Federation to Venezuela Tu-160 did not cause a new Caribbean crisis, as it was perceived by the "probable adversary" solely as a clownery).

******
Meanwhile, Russia has stopped the production of weapons-grade plutonium . NTV reported how the last reactor of this type existing in Russia was closed in Zheleznogorsk. It has been producing plutonium for the last half century. Especially for its service in the USSR, the closed city of Krasnoyarsk-26 was created, later renamed Zheleznogorsk.

The Zheleznogorsk Mining and Chemical Combine was a unique nuclear enterprise that had no analogues in the world. Its production shops were located deep underground.

******
But even if the nuclear shield of Russia by some miracle had survived and the production of nuclear plutonium had not been curtailed, in technical terms, the Russian Federation was still hopelessly behind its closest competitors. For instance,American nuclear potential has long surpassed the Russian nuclear fake by a third . According to Gazeta.ru The United States outnumbers Russia by a third in the number of deployed long-range ballistic missiles, their launchers and nuclear warheads.

******
Already by 2015 Russia could theoretically be slammed like a fly . According to the St. Petersburg Military parity , maintaining in the required quantitative and qualitative condition the fleet of Russia's strategic nuclear triad - ICBMs, strategic submarine missile carriers and heavy bombers - in the foreseeable future will become an impossible task for the country. A number of conceptual mistakes in the development of the strategic arsenal, made in the late Soviet and post-Soviet period, led to the fact that after a certain period of time Russia risks being left with a weapon that cannot guarantee the country's security.

Thus, by about 2015, the Russian Strategic Missile Forces will have approximately 76 fixed and 69 mobile Topol-Ms. In total, there will be approximately 145 of them. Note - monoblock. As for the new multiply charged type RS-24, there is no data on their deployment. It is worth noting that the planned deployment of such a number of Topol-M is based on the figures of the State Armaments Program (SAP) until 2015, which has never been fully implemented. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation cannot in any way fix the cost of certain types of weapons, including strategic ones, as a result of which the defense industry inflates their cost to sky-high heights. Recently, the Chief of the General Staff, General Yu. Baluyevsky, spoke about this in an interview with the Vesti-24 channel. And the reason for this is the fact that the defense budget of the Russian Federation is a completely non-transparent item of state spending, which leads to this kind of financial somersaults.

What does Russia have at the exit?

Sad, frankly, the conclusions for the imperial hopes.

The ideology of deploying the marine component of the triad has been destroyed. SSBNs, which are practically as good as the American Ohio in terms of their geometric dimensions and displacement, will be equipped with small missiles with the formidable name Bulava. The insufficient range of these missiles forces them to be based in the Pacific Fleet right next to the United States. It is no secret that a powerful multi-level missile defense system is being deployed in this region, including ship-based with Standard SM-3 anti-missiles, and not only American, but with the inclusion of Japanese and South Korean ships equipped with the AEGIS combat information and control system and vertical missile launchers . Add to this component the GBI anti-missile base in Alaska with offshore platforms of multifunctional SBX missile defense radars floating off its coast. These weapon systems can click like nuts from the first hit of a Bulava missile. And in this area, which is also teeming with anti-submarine defense systems, the Russian "Boreas" with "Maces" will go to swim. Needless to say, a "wise" decision.

There is nothing to add about strategic aviation.

What to do? The eternal Russian question. It's too late to drink Borjomi when the liver has decomposed. It's time to stop saber-rattling weapons that don't exist.

As you can see, the systemic crisis of Putin's vertical put an end to our Russian Federation - the defense industry and the nuclear shield. The "nuclear sword" has turned into a fake, which can only scare Georgia or Chechen militants. However, it is not a fact that even these small but proud peoples will tremble in front of a pile of Russian scrap metal inherited by Russia from the militaristic Soviet Union.

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