EXPERT: STRATEGIC STABILITY DIFFERENCES WILL STALL U.S./RUSSIA ARMS CONTROL TALKS

Differences in the understanding of strategic stability from the U.S. and Russia threatens the likelihood of future arms control talks between the countries, according to Alexie Arbatov, the head of the Carnegie Endowment’s Moscow Center. In remarks yesterday at the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Conference, Arbatov said that relations between the U.S. and Russia are at its lowest point since the end of the Cold War, and he called the prospect for future arms control talks between the country “quite foggy.” Arbatov said the countries have moved away from each other in their understanding of strategic stability, with the U.S. considering ballistic missile defense as not destabilizing while Russia believes the same as far as its development of new liquid fuel heavy silo-based missiles that hold multiple warheads. Other differences exist about conventional precision-guided systems, tactical nuclear weapons, and whether other nuclear weapons states should join the talks. “We have to develop a new understanding of strategic stability so it’s adapted to new realities but is not blurred and diluted so much that it does not serve as the basis of completing negations in the future,” Arbatov said.