The strategic chess game

From Ronald Reagan to George Bush to Barack Obama, the US has spent more than $800 billion to develop the so-called missile defence shield, a system meant to give the US military invulnerability, allowing it in principle to deal a first and decisive nuclear blow to Russia and neutralising any Russian retaliatory response.

The idea behind the MDS is to post numerous radars in strategic locations to trace the assumed linear trajectory of an intercontinental ballistic missile in order to shoot it out of the skies at a certain intersection point with missiles or laser guns. In 2003, Russia made its move by successfully test firing and putting in production the land based Topol missile, which could change its trajectory in flight at will, thus, rendering the MDS, meant for fixed trajectory missiles, useless.

The US move came soon after, in 2004, when George W. Bush tried to make up for the Topol missile’s variable flight trajectory by embarking on a policy of positioning elements of the MDS as close as possible to the Russian mainland in order to increase the chances of intercepting the Russian missiles in the initial stages of the launch while they are still on a fixed trajectory.

Russia’s counte-move was the development, in 2005, of the Bulava submarine launched variable trajectory IBM, which, after a serious of failed launches, finally, this October 7, the missile was successfully fired from the Dmitry Donskoi submarine in the White Sea in north European Russia and hit its target in the Kura firing area on the Kamchatka peninsula on the Pacific Ocean, some 6,000 kilometres away, AFP informs.

The Bulava submarine launched IBM is an important move on Russia’s part because it puts the US in check, neutralising Mr Bush’s move and Mr Obama’s attempt to install elements of the MDS on Russia’s doorstep by giving Russia the chance to retaliate to an American first nuclear strike with missiles fired from anywhere outside the line and range of the US radar system from nuclear submarines, thus again rendering the intricate network of the MDS useless.

This explains why Mr Obama decided to abandon the system as proposed by Mr Bush. But what really persuaded Mr Obama to do away with elements of the MDS in Poland and the Czech Republic while preparations were in full swing was an incident in 2009 where two Russian nuclear submarines sailed undetected all the way to the border of US territorial waters and successfully fired two fixed trajectory Sineva missiles that hit their target 200 nautical miles away.

Russia’s move really put America in checkmate because it demonstrated it could strike back at the US with its nuclear submarines anyway if the US dared to attack it with its nuclear weapons, even with its fixed trajectory missiles, let alone with variable trajectory missiles like the Bulava, which are almost impossible to intercept.

So, the Bulava missiles are essential to keep the US away from getting funny ideas of delivering a decisive nuclear blow to Russia, thus contributing to maintain a situation of relative peace.

Of course, if the US was not spending so many billions of dollars to upgrade and maintain its nuclear arsenal, then Russia would have no need to spend money on its own nuclear arsenal, which, it must be stressed, is a fraction of what the US spends.

Who said the arms race and the Cold War are over?