The Nuclear Education of Vladimir Putin

In his speech to the Russian Federal Assembly last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would stop allowing onsite U.S. inspections of its nuclear arsenal. These inspections are required by the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), a bilateral accord between the United States and Russia placing limitations on the total number of nuclear warheads and delivery devices each side may have. To verify compliance, the treaty relies in part on the assessments of visiting delegations from each country to the other’s military facilities to count warheads, bombs, and missiles.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, these inspections were paused. Since late 2022, the United States had been requesting that they resume, but Russia had demurred, never providing an official response. In February, the United States charged Russia with noncompliance of the treaty for failing to resume inspections and failing to reschedule a meeting of the treaty’s implementation body. Putin finally responded, in the form of last month’s speech. There, he deemed it “theater of the absurd” to have inspection teams representing the U.S. government visit Russia’s nuclear defense facilities in light of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine (which Putin continued to blame on the West’s provocation).

Some have wondered whether Putin’s latest move is a sign of further troubles ahead for the treaty. Russia has withdrawn from, ceased implementation of, or violated numerous arms control treaties in recent years; this track record of arms control erosion might support the idea that New START is simply the last domino to fall. By thwarting verification, some analysts even fear that Putin may be trying to nudge the United States to withdraw from New START entirely. But his motivations for spurning inspections may be more complicated.

Certainly, Putin is not ignorant of the security benefits of arms control. In fact, time and again, he has demonstrated a deep understanding of the U.S.-Russian nuclear relationship, and he seems to comprehend well that the U.S. and Russia both benefit from New START. But he seems to think that the political benefit of mucking around with arms control treaties far outweighs their strategic benefit. For Putin, the politicization of arms control is useful for striking the United States where it hurts and scoring points domestically.

Strategic stability calls for a configuration such that neither side has the incentive to strike first, and that neither one’s nuclear forces can entirely overwhelm the other’s. This is what allows both sides to deter the other from attacking—mutually assured destruction. This concept has served as the guiding light for nuclear arms control for decades, and there is sufficient evidence to support the idea that, when he’s not using arms control to send a political message, Putin truly understands these foundational concepts.

Dating back to the earliest of days in his first presidency, in March 2000, Putin delivered a speech to Russian nuclear scientists calling for strengthening the stability of the Russian nuclear arsenal and expressing support for the strategic arms reduction process. Recalling prior arms control treaty negotiations START II and START III, Putin also noted that he sought this stability in order to “make our world safer and reduce the excess of weapons.” Finally, he made clear his desire to continue to hold talks on placing further limitations on strategic offensive weapons. In this, Putin demonstrated his understanding of potential nuclear risks and the importance of arms control in reducing them.

Two months later, Putin and then-U.S. President Bill Clinton held an arms control summit where U.S. aspirations for more comprehensive missile defenses thwarted progress. Averse to this on strategic grounds and wary that any such system was a political or scientific reality for the United States, Putin walked away from a potential agreement. In balking with the concern that U.S. preferences for a “never-ending” missile defense system would render Russian offensive weapons ineffective and afford a first strike advantage to the United States, Putin demonstrated knowledge of and commitment to foundational concepts of strategic stability from limited defenses: If one side cannot hold the other at risk of nuclear attack, there can be no mutually assured destruction, and the side with greater defenses is no longer equally deterrable.

Additionally, Putin still very much wanted strategic arms reductions because he was concerned that then-current Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles would be out of service in ten years’ time. Either the ICBMs would need to be replaced or the U.S. arsenal reduced to retain parity (that is, equal numbers of weapons on both sides—the balance that supports strategic stability).

Four months later, in September 2000, Putin and Clinton met again to discuss several issues, arms control among them. This encounter proved more successful, with the signing of a document committing their respective countries to “improving strategic security of nuclear weapons” through information sharing. Early warning information on missile and space launches would be shared at a newly created joint U.S.-Russian data exchange center in Moscow. Additionally, the two leaders discussed potential START III negotiations, and Clinton made clear that accommodations for additional U.S. missile defenses would be a prerequisite for those talks. He also indicated that plans for less comprehensive defenses were underway, which was a response to Putin’s demand.

Just as then-Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev had objected to the Reagan administration’s plans to build out comprehensive missile defenses in space (Reagan’s pet Star Wars project), Putin had previously objected to the George H.W. Bush administration’s plans for comprehensive U.S. missile defenses on the grounds that such defenses would render the Russian deterrent—a vital component of maintaining strategic stability—obsolete.

In a speech at the United Nations the same week he met with Clinton, Putin announced that the time had come for the world to “halt discussion of space-based defense systems” and proposed a summit on the topic for the following year.

Putin threatened to add multiple warheads to his single-warhead missiles if the United States abandoned the ABM Treaty, something that would overwhelm U.S. defenses. In doing so, he again demonstrated his commitment to strategic stability and his understanding of the need to maintain an equivalent ability to hold the U.S. at risk (in this case, a mechanism to overwhelm U.S. defenses). Ultimately, he did not follow through on his threats. The crisis was averted.

As recently as 2021, Putin demonstrated his commitment to arms control as a means of ensuring strategic stability when he and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed to a 5-year extension of New START beyond its original 10-year lifespan. The joint statement from the two leaders noted that “the United States and Russia have demonstrated that, even in periods of tension, they are able to make progress on our shared goals of ensuring predictability in the strategic sphere, reducing the risk of armed conflicts and the threat of nuclear war.” Then in September 2022, on the margins of the 10th Review Conference for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Putin and Biden committed to negotiations for a successor treaty to New START.

Knowing the stock Putin put in the concept when relations with the United States were better, it is possible that Putin believes there is enduring strategic value in arms control treaties. But it’s more likely, at this point, that he perceives the political value of using New START to other ends as higher.

While the United States has held fast to the idea that bilateral arms control exists in a protected space, immune from political vicissitudes, Putin does not share this idea. Today, he is using New START politically—to irritate, annoy, or otherwise upset the United States, and to curry favor domestically. In doing so, he has turned New START into a prop in his propaganda machine. While he fully comprehends strategic stability and the potential risks of fully withdrawing from New START, Putin will continue to play an arms control game with rules all his own. And the United States will have to adapt.