Speaking notes A.I. Antonov Director, Security and Disarmament Department, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs NATO-Russia Council Meeting

Missile defence issues continue to preoccupy the international community. This is understandable. The way these issues are tackled will have a significant effect on strategic stability, the international climate in the world and in Europe, and the prospects for a strategic partnership between us. We face a choice. We can either have an arms build-up and new dividing lines, or we can develop multilateral, fruitful cooperation and strengthen collective security without detriment to the national interests of each state.

We support the second choice. We are in favour of a strategic partnership to create a joint security system against missile threats.

In order to prevent future missile defence systems having a destabilising effect on regional and global security, we propose that we should reach agreement on initial conditions for mutually beneficial cooperation on missile defence. We believe that the US should abandon its plan to deploy its third global MD positional area in Europe and to deploy global MD strike components in space.

Russia’s President Putin, clearly and unambiguously, put constructive proposals to the US for bilateral and multilateral cooperation on missile defence. He urged our American colleagues at least not to be in a hurry to implement their plans for a third positional area but to freeze work and negotiations on these plans until we have had time to talk.

What then are the initial results of US-Russia talks on missile defence? The high-level working group set up by decision of the US and Russian presidents has met three times. We have exchanged detailed briefings assessing missile threats, in particular from Iran, and specifying an appropriate reaction to possible developments in the strategic situation in the Middle East. As a separate topic, we also discussed whether it would be feasible and advisable to set up missile defence in Europe.

We are concerned about the fact that the American side considers that their response to certain supposed missile threats has settled the missile defence issue. Huge efforts are now being made to make everybody accept their solution as inevitable and to make it impossible to stop its future implementation. For our part, we favour a cautious attitude to missile defence. We believe in seeking a sensible balance of effort in the politico-diplomatic, international-legal and military-technical fields.

It is noteworthy that Russian and American experts possess very similar information to assess missile risks and threats. However, the forecasts they make in their assessments of the so called Iranian missile threat are very different. Our conclusion is that in the next 10-15 years, and probably for longer than that, Iran will not be able to equip its armed forces with long-range missiles. The American side, on the other hand, stressing the research work on missile technology currently underway in Iran, has concluded that in seven or eight years’ time Iran will acquire ballistic missiles able to reach America.

Our American colleagues claim that they need to prepare well in advance to counter the Iranian missile threat and for that reason they need to deploy a missile defence system in Europe immediately. We do not believe that there will be any such threat in the foreseeable future. We propose an alternative approach, namely the setting up of a multilateral structure for joint analysis of potential missile threats to cover the period up to 2020 and a collective system to monitor ballistic missile launches in the Middle East in order to assess the development of missile technology and the strategic situation in the countries in the region. This monitoring system, as we have said before, could be based on joint use of information from the Gabala radar station and from the radar station under construction in Armavir. In this context it is worth noting that technical experts from both sides have held a number of consultations which, among other things, considered the Gabala radar station. We even arranged for American experts to visit the early warning station in Azerbaijan. We organised these activities in order to demonstrate the practicality of the Russian President’s initiative which proposed using Gabala data to monitor missile programmes in every country in the Middle East and south-western Asia. The US representatives recognised that the Russian side had provided answers to practically all their questions. Incidentally, Russian military experts will be giving details of the visit to Gabala.

I should like to stress that implementing the Russian proposal would make it possible to deal with the problem of monitoring the development of missile technology in the Middle East and even further afield. At the same time, and this is a very important point, it would help to build confidence in relations between our countries and would increase predictability in international security. As for deployment of missile defence assets, that would depend on the emergence of genuine threats and on developments in the strategic situation in the region. This approach would give everyone enough time to respond militarily and technically to any threat or challenge.

We have given careful consideration to the arguments of our American colleagues and their predictions concerning the development of missile technology in Iran. They contain much of interest, though they are not without contradictions. We find it hard to accept the claims that if Iran is conducting research and development work on missile technology then this must necessarily lead to the creation of a finished “product”. Even in countries with developed scientific and industrial capabilities, including the US, that does not always happen. Moreover, international experience shows that, even when a country possesses trained scientists and engineers, technological and production capacities, the necessary testing facilities and requisite finance, it takes at least seven to ten years to create a new missile weapon system (and not simply a long-range missile as a technical device). Given that fact, what can we say about a country which is only in the initial stages of developing missile technology?

At the present time, there are no indications whatever that Iran has taken a firm decision to build missiles capable of reaching America or of threatening European security, nor are there signs that the necessary work programme exists. We might ask what military-political or military-strategic motives might lead Iran to threaten someone with missiles and, more seriously, to be willing to use them. Why would Iran want to attack Europe? What Teheran wants is to develop economic and political links with us.

As for the possibility that Iran might have such motives in relation to the North American continent, such a supposition simply doesn’t correspond to reality. The US has powerful armed forces and military capabilities. Iran could acquire – but only in the distant future – a limited number of long-range missiles of uncertain effectiveness. Consequently, armed conflict between Iran and the US would be suicidal for the Iranian leadership. I have no doubt that Teheran understands that. We take a critical view of American assessments of Iran’s present and future missile potential.

All these points taken together reinforce our strong belief that an Iranian missile threat to the US and Europe makes no sense from any point of view, whether military-political, military-strategic, scientific-technical, military-technical or industrial-economic.

It is this assessment which forms the basis for the alternative Russian package of proposals which we have presented in detail to our colleagues. We are often asked why we are making a fuss about ten interceptor missiles. Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent forces, we are told, have nothing to worry about. I wish to make myself clear. We are concerned not only about the currently declared potential of this base with its ten interceptors and their present specifications.

The problem is elsewhere. The potential of the base will increase, and the US does not deny it. The ability of the base to intercept ballistic missiles will be significantly increased by the development of antimissiles with greater intercept range and multiple warheads and by the development of hypersonic antimissiles. These facts refute the technological basis of the American argument that their European MD “is not directed” against Russia and that American limited-capability antimissiles are allegedly “physically incapable of going fast enough to catch” Russian ICBMs. Nobody has given us any guarantees that the capabilities of the US MD base in Europe will not be increased. Meanwhile, we know that it is technically feasible to build such antimissiles, which could use information from space-based detection, targeting and guidance systems, and the US is already working on this.

Russia and the US do not, of course, see each other as enemies or strategic threats. Their aim is to build new strategic relations with each other, relations based on the principles of mutual security, trust, openness, cooperation and predictability. These understandings are of fundamental importance. They are enshrined in the Joint Declaration by the Russian and American Presidents of 24 May 2002 on new strategic relations between the Russian Federation and the United States of America.

In this context, the US policy of creating a global system of missile defence, with the third positional area as one of its components, raises many questions. The principle of mutual security means that the actions taken by one side to strengthen its security must not endanger the other side. With regard to the US MD base in Europe, we do not think that this principle is being followed.

Global missile defence cannot be discussed without reference to strategic offensive weapons. The undeniable link between missile defence and strategic offensive weapons is axiomatic. Taken together they can become a strategic complex able to deliver a “first disarming strike”. This is particularly relevant because of the stalled talks on a new agreement to replace the START-1 Treaty, due to expire in 2009.

Setting up such a complex could upset the strategic balance of forces and act as a destabilising factor, since global missile defence could erode the system of mutual deterrence. Furthermore, we see a direct link between US plans for global missile defence and the prompt global strike concept which means the ability to strike any point on the globe within an hour of the relevant decision.

This concept, when combined with global missile defence, becomes a means of seeking to dominate the world politically and strategically. This is a rather serious factor which undermines the principles of mutual deterrence and mutual security and erodes the architecture of strategic stability. We clearly cannot ignore this factor either internationally or in bilateral relations. That is why Russia has been consistently opposed to US plans for global missile defence and its European components.

It is probably fair to say that the issue of missile defence was the main item at last week’s meeting of Russian and American foreign and defence ministers (in the so-called 2+2 format). Before the meeting there was a series of additional consultations at which our American colleagues made a counter-proposal for cooperation on “regional missile defence”. This counter-proposal was the US response to the constructive ideas which President Putin put forward in Kennebunkport as an alternative to the US plans for a third positional area in Europe.

Naturally, we shall need to study the American proposal in detail. During the consultations we asked a number of questions and received tentative answers. We agreed to continue our work.

I should like to state immediately that, to say the least, we have a few serious problems with the American proposals. The first problem is that the proposals are based on the old logic which sees Iran as an enemy. We cannot support the idea of building a holy alliance against Iran. We continue to take a different view of the threat of missile proliferation. We are again being asked to become involved in an expensive project fraught with negative political consequences in order to ward off a non-existent threat.

The second problem is the absence of a response to our proposal that all work on setting up the third positional area should be “frozen” for the duration of the US-Russia talks. We continue to believe that if our two countries are to work together effectively the other side must stop and not take unilateral steps which undermine cooperation and threaten strategic stability by sowing distrust and suspicion of the kind we associate with the Cold War.

Lastly, it is suggested that our proposed use of the Gabala and Armavir radar stations should be accepted as an addition to the third positional area. However, we have repeatedly stated that our proposed use was not an addition to the third positional area but an alternative to it. I think everyone must be well aware of our position that we shall not participate in developing missile defences which pose a threat to us.

On all these fundamental issues there is no agreement between Russia and the US. However, that does not mean that the US and Russia have stopped working together. We experts have been given the task of examining the remaining disagreements in specific detail. We are willing to look at options which counter missile threats but do not prejudice the security of either country. I trust that the US will not predetermine the outcome of the discussions on possible cooperation by pushing ahead in its talks with the Czechs and Poles on setting up the third positional area. The important thing is that we and the Americans are willing to look for solutions, but time will tell whether this willingness will lead to anything. There is an obvious conclusion from what I have said. President Putin’s proposals on the need for the pool of interested countries to work together to assess missile threats have lost none of their relevance. If the issue is the defence of Europe and America, then let’s find out where a genuine threat could come from. During the 2+2 meeting we agreed sufficiently clearly on the importance of the need for joint formulation of criteria for determining whether or not a threat exists. I hope that we shall examine this issue together. And if we succeed in devising such criteria, then, I believe, it will be clear that there is no need for the third positional area in its planned form.

I should like to stress once again that implementing the Russian proposals would allow us to be sure that missile threats, if and when they arise, will be neutralised. At the same time, our version does not create new dividing lines either in Europe or in the world at large. On the contrary, our proposals aim to encourage equal and respectful cooperation. This will take account of the interests of each country, which will build a new quality of relations with each other in the field of international security.