The Russian Federation has recently decreed the suspension of both Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, dating back to the 2000, and the agreement concerning the Russian-American collaboration in research reactors, signed in September 2013. Russia had already been aware for some time of non-compliance with the first agreement by the United States; it is therefore to ask why he tolerated it so long.
The hypotheses are many, but a clarifying answer to the real reasons is the exclusive prerogative of the experts. Certainly the failure to comply with the agreement does not seem to have created particular security problems for the Russians, given the bulk of their nuclear arsenal and the available reserve of radioactive material for the preparation of any new warheads.
The recent position of the Kremlin with respect to nuclear agreements, at least to some extent is to be linked to Washington's suspension of any collaboration on the Syrian crisis. In this regard it should be remembered that it is not uncommon for the US government to enter into agreements with the strategic purpose of taking time, only to reserve the right to update them unilaterally.
The Russian reaction in this circumstance appears however of great importance, since it is not only aimed at denouncing the agreements, but even at establishing conditions to be able to return to a hypothetical negotiating table (the Samnites did it with the Romans, history teaches , nda ...).
Analyze them:
a) remove all sanctions and compensate economically not only the losses suffered as a result of them but also as a result of the countermeasures adopted by the Russians;
b) cancellation of Magnitsky Act;
c) reduction of the consistent US military presence along the Russian-Western border.
In short, an ultimatum.
To find a similar situation in US history, it is necessary to go back to the 1861, when the United Kingdom presented an ultimatum to Washington for the ship accident Trent: the Americans were forced to disavow the work of the commander of the ship and to free the two southern officers taken prisoner.
Today, Putin does not ask for simple formal reparations but nothing less than a drastic change in US policy towards Russia. An apparently inadmissible request because it would entail an almost complete surrender on the main international disputes that are currently facing Moscow and Washington.
What prompted Putin to take such a peremptory position, with an even more "rough" tone than those with which the United States is used to treat its political opponents?
The reaction was followed almost immediately by projections by the spokesman of the US Secretary of State, who in reference to the war in Syria foreshadowed catastrophic scenarios for Russia: soldiers returned home in plastic bags, downed airplanes, terrorist attacks on Federation territory ... All this at the same time as the State Department statement, followed by that of the Pentagon, which did not rule out an air offensive against Syrian forces (and therefore indirectly also against the Russian contingent stationed in Syria), nor a preventive appeal to the atomic weapon against Russia itself.
Russia, not new to being pressured, continues to niche, showing no fear at all. It has indeed re-launched, preparing new air defense and missile systems on its territory, deploying batteries of strategic missiles to face any nuclear eventuality and activating an emergency exercise that involved 40 millions of Russian citizens, in order to test the validity of structures and civil protection infrastructure in the event of atomic warfare.
It is not unlikely to hypothesize that the political background behind the escalation of the State Department and the Pentagon is to be identified in the imminent decline of the Obama era and in the uncertainty that Hillary Clinton may not be the future occupant of the White House.
The Washington hawks are in turmoil. Among these are Senators John McCain and Tom Cotton, as well as the virulent General Mark Milley, whose statements have helped fuel the fire and fuel the general climate of tension. For the moment, Moscow has kept the confrontation within the limits of a dialectical exchange, albeit without renouncing firm tones.
Recapturing the specter of nuclear war, the United States has already lost this first game, because in fact they have expressed the fear that the future world may no longer be unipolar.
However, we will see what the developments will be. It is to be hoped that, with the new presidency, Washington excludes using the nuclear threat as an antidote to the end of its world hegemony.
Whatever the choice is, it must be made concrete in a short time, because the acceleration of the decline in credibility of the USA will be directly proportional to the duration of time without any initiative being taken. This could among other things influence the geostrategic positioning of many historically aligned countries of the USA.
(photo: web)
