Russia Moves Tactical Nukes Closer to NATO

[Purveyor]

While the U.S. and Russia have been publicly crowing about their awesome new friendship for the past two years, Moscow’s been moving small, ground-based nuclear weapons closer to the borders of Washington’s easternmost NATO allies. What’s a little heightened nuclear tension between buddies, right?

As recently as this spring, the Russians have moved their tactical nukes to sites close to their Western frontiers, alarming the Baltic and Eastern European members of NATO, the Wall Street Journal reports. Russia’s longstanding position is that it won’t pull its tactical nuclear weapons behind the Ural Mountains until the U.S. gets its own small nukes out of Europe. True totals of Russian tactical nuclear weapons is a tightly-held secret, but the Federation of American Scientists estimated last year that Moscow has nearly 5,400 of them, with about 2,000 deployed.

The Russian nuke movement isn’t expressly forbidden by prior nuclear treaties; and the Journal notes that it “appeared to coincide” with the arrival of NATO missile defense systems near Russia’s European borders. At the NATO summit in Lisbon this month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev endorsed building a joint NATO-Russia missile defense system over the next ten years — a big NATO priority — but warned that if “universal” missile defense couldn’t be fielded, a “new round of arms race will start.” So it’s tense, but it’s not necessarily time to dig out that old Sting song out of the record crates.

But it also appears to solve a minor mystery in the Senate, where Republican opposition to a U.S.-Russia treaty on much larger nuclear weapons might end up dooming the accord. In September, James Risch, a Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued that a secret U.S. intelligence report on Russian nukes convinced him to put the treaty on hold. “You haven’t seen the stuff that I’ve seen,” Risch said. The Journal suggests Risch referred to the tactical-nuke movement.

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http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/russia-moves-small-nukes-closer-to-europe-gulp/