Why Russia Fears America's Missile Defenses

Why Russia Fears America's Missile Defenses


In recent weeks, Russia has conducted a number of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests with experimental payloads that are designed to penetrate advanced missile defenses. The idea is to ensure that Russian nuclear weapons can reach their targets even in the event that their targets are protected by a missile shield—even if such a defense system does not currently exist.

The Soviet Union and later Russia has been leery of missile defense systems even before President Ronald Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in 1983. Both American and Soviet nuclear weapons experts have considered missile defense systems to be highly destabilizing since the 1960s when such systems were first envisioned. Most nuclear weapons experts in both the United States and Russia still hold to this view even though President George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in December 2001.

Under the theory of nuclear deterrence, a national anti-ballistic missile defense system such as the one envisioned by Reagan—coupled with a massive counterforce nuclear strike—could neutralize an adversary’s retaliatory second strike capability.

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“The development of an ABM system could allow one side to launch a first strike and then prevent the other from retaliating by shooting down incoming missiles,” reads a U.S. State Department history of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Treaty I/II.

Indeed, such a missile shield could potentially invite an adversary to launch a preemptive strike or risking being disarmed. Then Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was one of the first to articulate the basic problem with anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defenses—it threatened the secure second strike capability needed to have stable mutual nuclear deterrence. McNamara’s ideas eventually led to what became the now-defunct Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, which was ultimately signed under the subsequent Nixon Administration.