MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti military commentator Viktor Litovkin.) The remarks made last Thursday (December 1) at a press luncheon in the Hotel Baltschug by General of the Army Yury Baluyevsky, Chief of the General Staff of Russia's Armed Forces, are still agitating the world public.
Many are wondering what the general meant when he said that American missiles deployed in Poland might be an environmental hazard? Where did he get information about Israel's "impressive arsenal of nuclear weapons?" What is behind his words that relations between Russia and the United States are "impulsive in character?" However, as it happens, his words are not very enigmatic: he is simply crossing all the t's and dotting all the i's.
First, about the ecological threat to countries going to deploy American anti-missile missiles on their territory - reportedly to protect Europe against rogue nations, but actually to intercept Russian strategic missiles.
Anti-missile missiles by themselves pose no environmental hazard. What is dangerous is their use. The point is that they are designed to intercept MIRV'ed strategic missiles at high altitudes. This can be done only by a counter-explosion. The Pentagon and its specialists have still not discovered a way of telling real warheads from dummies ejected by a missile to disguise its actual intentions.
It may happen that the missile concerned, on its way to a target, is a decoy, but since no one knows for sure a nuclear counter-explosion is detonated all the same. Within a radius of 500 to 600 kilometers, depending on the size of the interceptor's nuclear charge, an electro-magnetic impulse will be generated and cause a total power blackout, shutting down computers, generating plants, gas works, water-pump stations, radio and television, and dispatcher's offices in airports and at railroad stations. A shock wave will destroy many buildings and structures, while radioactive fallout will contaminate the terrain for years. The Chernobyl disaster would look like a child's prank. It is about the possibility of such a development that General Baluyevsky spoke.
In regard to Israel, although no one can still produce hard evidence that Tel Aviv has nuclear bombs, experts do not doubt that Israel does have nuclear weapons and probably in large numbers. Proof of that are the country's scientific, technical and technological potential and the training of Israeli specialists in U.S. and French laboratories at Oak Ridge and Argonne.
The United States has helped Israel to build its light-water research reactor at Nahal Sorek and even supplied 50 kilograms of highly enriched uranium as fuel for the reactor. Other proofs are also available: there is testimony by an Israeli citizen Mordehai Vanunu, who was a technician at a plant that processed irradiated nuclear fuel and isolated plutonium. For his disclosure, officially described as divulging state secrets, he spent some fifteen years in an Israeli jail. What is more, Israel is refusing to join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty as a non-nuclear state, and locks out IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspectors. The U.S., unlike the way it treats other similar countries, does not resort to any sanctions against Israel. On the contrary, it supports Israel in every way, which leaves Russian citizens, and the Chief of the General Staff, a little puzzled.
"The U.S. is demanding transparency of nuclear programs of a number of countries," says General Baluyevsky. "On the other hand, it is closing its eyes to the fact that Israel has for a long time, and I emphasize this, actually has an impressive arsenal of nuclear weapons."
What are these if not double standards, asks the general. And nothing can be said against that, especially seeing the way Washington looks so demandingly and jealously at Russian-Iranian peaceful nuclear cooperation. This attitude, believes Baluyevsky, dents the generally positive tenor of relations between Washington and Moscow in the military field. But these contacts are kind of impulsive. As soon as a problem crops up, especially concerning itself, the U.S. is nervous and jittery, but the moment it leaves, Washington relaxes. The same goes for helping Russia to dispose of the Cold War legacy.
When Russia stored powder charges and fuses for chemical ammunition in its arsenals, Washington promised and actually rendered some sort of assistance in building chemical weapons destruction facilities. As soon as Moscow disposed of these fuses and toxic chemical delivery vehicles, the Nunn-Lugar program tapered off and in fact was frozen for several years. The same was the fate of a program to scrap nuclear submarines where the U.S. insisted on deactivating the sufficiently new strategic submarines and allocated appropriate resources. But then it again grew cool.
General Baluyevsky did not utter such words, but they are not needed to see that egotistical interests cannot substitute for pragmatism in relations with a strategic partner, as Russia is occasionally dubbed in the U.S. Trust is hard to win, but easy to lose. Washington will hardly benefit if this happens.
