Russia: We Need New Offensive Nukes to Preserve Strategic Balance

Russia needs to develop "offensive strike systems" to preserve strategic balance with the United States, without producing its own missile defense, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday.

Putin's comment, made at a press briefing in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, echoed a similar call from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week.

"If we want to retain the balance, we have to establish an exchange of information: Let the U.S. partners provide us information on [their] missile defense while we will give them information on [our] offensive weapons," Putin said.

Putin also spoke positively about ongoing negotiations between the two countries on a new nuclear arms control agreement that would replace the U.S.-Russian START treaty, which expired December 5.

The United States and Russia plan to complete it and sign it at the beginning of 2010, Russian and American leaders have said. As envisioned, the new treaty would significantly reduce nuclear arms on both sides.

"I think that we need certain rules on weapons limitation which could be equally understood, easily verifiable and transparent," Putin said. "The existence of those rules is better than their absence."

He repeated that offensive and defensive arms should be linked, because they are closely related.

"It was the balance of forces -- including missile defense, air defense and offensive weapons systems -- that preserved peace even during the Cold War," Putin said.

"Since we are not developing [our own] missile defense, there is a threat that our [U.S.] partners would feel totally secure having created an umbrella against our offensive systems," he added. "Then our partners might do whatever they want; the aggressiveness in real politics and economics would increase because of the broken balance."

Putin: And, oh, by the way, please give us all your data about your defensive weapons, too.

So, it brings us to the double stage question.

Is there a strategic balance that must be maintained with Russia? Russia is emphatically not a peer nation to the US anymore. While they ought to be treated with respect, they are not the same force in the world that the Soviet Union was. The way Putin makes his statements, you would think that Russia is our peer.

The second part of this question is if there is a balance between us, what is it that we ought to be doing to preserve it? For that matter, should we be trying to preserve it? The defensive weapons that the US has are not sufficient to stop an all out nuclear exchange. Not even close. They were never meant to be. It does take off the table the idea that a singular or small number of nukes would be usable as a first strike capability. Unless, of course, the Russians are worried that their nuclear deterrent is a strawman and in practicality completely useless.