Also for our Barents safety

The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-1) expired last Saturday, but still work on overtime pending Obama and Medvedev to find an agreeable text to its successor. START-1 called for both USA and Russia to limit their strategic nuclear arsenals to 6,000 warheads.

The treaty has resulted in a considerably disarmament here in the Barents Region. In 1990, the Soviet Union had the world’s largest fleet of strategic nuclear powered submarines. Some 2/3 of the submarines where based between the border to Norway and the city of Murmansk. Today, mainly as a result of the START-1 treaty, the number of strategic nuclear warheads deployed in the region is considerable reduced.

In 1993, the START-II treaty was signed by U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. The treaty, supposed to reduce the number of warheads further down and to ban missiles with multiple warheads, has never entered into force. Mainly because the Russian Duma in the second half of the 90ties didn’t wanted to ratify the deal, due to the NATO-war in Kosovo and the expansion of NATO into eastern Europe. When the Duma finally ratified the START-II treaty in 2000 it was made on the condition to preserve the older 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. In 2002, U.S. withdrew from the ABM treaty arguing the need for a national missile defence system (NMD).

Russia fiercely opposed the plans, supposed to include an early warning radar in the Czech Republic and missile interceptors in Poland.

For us in BarentsObserver, covering Russia’s international security relations, it is no doubt that the U.S. missile defence system plans in Eastern Europe has been used as the main excuse by Moscow to reintroduce some of the language elements from the Cold War.

Being an excuse or not, the needs for renewed European, U.S., Russian constructive security talks are overdue. Therefore, we adduce that Barack Obama’s announcement to scrap the missile defence plans in Europe, alone is enough to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize he will accept in Oslo on Thursday.

“Therefore, we adduce that Barack Obama’s announcement to scrap the missile defence plans in Europe, alone is enough to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize he will accept in Oslo on Thursday.”

After the ceremony in Oslo, Obama’s task is to work on the renewed strategic arms treaty together with Russian President Medvedev. We hope the text to the treaty will be ready within days after Air Force One takes off from the Norwegian capital. Nuclear disarmament is of course primarily a global security matter. Thereupon it is a renewed chance to build partnership with Moscow instead of mutual suspiciousness. Finally, it is a nice move seen from us here in the editorial office of the BarentsObserver, located only some few tens of kilometres from the nearest deployed submarine based strategic nuclear warheads.

We are occasionally reminded about the safety aspect of our near neighbouring intercontinental missiles. Just one day before Barack Obama arrives in Oslo, a strange light was visible in the horizon for people in the northern part of the Barents Region. Some thought it was a UFO, but it was yet another Bulava missile that went crazy shortly after launch from a submarine in the White Sea near Arkhangelsk as reported by BarentsObserver.

The Bulava intercontinental submarine based missile is maybe the part of the Russian nuclear missile forces currently with most prestige and of considerable importance for Kreml’s attempts to tell the international society that Russia is a global force that should be listened to.

From the regional point of view, we will of course also put forward a hope that the coming arms reduction treaties should include tactical nuclear weapons as well. Especially now, since the Russian navy says they might start sailing with tactical nukes again in the waters outside the coastline of us living in the Barents Region, as reported by BarentsObserver earlier this year.

Accidents with submarines armed with tactical nuclear weapons have happend before. One of the subs, the Komsomolets, is still on the seabed with its two nuclear torpedoes after it sank in the Norwegian Ocean south of the Bear Island on April 7th, 1989.

A nuclear weapons free Barents Region was first time suggested as a vision by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev when he gave his Murmansk speech in October 1987. At his speech in Prague in April this year President Obama presented his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.

The visions of Gorbachev and Obama will not be reality tomorrow. Not the day after tomorrow either. But, the vision itself is a step in the right direction. Let’s keep to it.

Thomas Nilsen
Editor - BarentsObserver.com