NATO’s failure to build a joint European missile shield with Moscow may force Russia to deploy new offensive weapons and trigger a new arms race, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in a stern warning on Tuesday, reflecting the deeply rooted Kremlin distrust of Western intentions.
Some experts downplayed the threat, saying Russia lacks money and technologies to mount a military buildup.
NATO leaders have approved a plan for a missile defense in Europe at a summit in Lisbon earlier last month and invited Russia to join.
Experts from both sides will analyze the issue and report to defense ministers in July.
“In the next 10 years, the following alternatives await us — either we reach agreement on missile defense and create a full joint cooperation mechanism, or, if we don’t reach a constructive agreement, a new phase of the arms race will begin,” Medvedev said in his annual address to both houses of parliament that burst into loud applause. “And we will have to make a decision on deploying new means of attack. It’s quite obvious that such a scenario would be extremely grave.”
Medvedev, who attended the Russia-NATO summit in Lisbon, was receptive of NATO’s proposal but didn’t make a definitive commitment. He warned then that Russia might decide against joining the US-led effort if it doesn’t feel it is being treated equally as a partner.
Medvedev’s aide Arkady Dvorkovich told reporters that the president views that scenario as “undoubtedly negative.”
“We will have to do everything to come to an agreement,” he said.
Russia was strongly critical of the previous US administration’s plan to deploy missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic and hailed US President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap it. However, Moscow has remained concerned about the revamped US missile defense plans, seeing them as potentially dangerous to its security.
The New START nuclear arms reduction pacts that Obama and Medvedev signed in April doesn’t prevent the US from building new missile defense systems, but Russia has stated it could withdraw from the treaty if it feels threatened by such a system in the future.
In Moscow, some experts viewed Medvedev’s warning about the possibility of a new arms race with skepticism, saying that it could be part of muscle-flexing aimed at speeding up talks with the West and emphasizing that Moscow can’t afford a Cold War-style arms race anyway.
“This is sheer nonsense,” said Alexander Konovalov, director of the Moscow-based Institute for Strategic Assessment, an independent think tank. “Russia won’t have the finances, technologies and industrial assets for any arms race.”
Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent Moscow-based military analyst, said that despite the Kremlin’s recent efforts to modernize military arsenals, Russia’s current scientific and financial capabilities are far weaker than the Soviet military machine, adding that “a real buildup is impossible.”
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