Tactical Devices Still Present Major Threat

The U.S.-Russian strategic arms deal signed Friday in Moscow has won praise around the globe, yet the agreement says nothing about a class of atomic weapons that experts believe poses the greatest threat: the smaller devices called tactical nuclear weapons.

Thousands of these arms are scattered throughout Russia, in the form of missile warheads, artillery shells, aircraft bombs and land mines. Because of the security weaknesses of Russia’s decaying military infrastructure, these explosives are more likely to fall into the hands of terrorists or “rogue” states than those of any other country, say Western government officials and independent experts.

U.S. officials acknowledge that such tactical weapons pose a proliferation danger, and they discussed safeguards with Russian leaders in the talks that led to the treaty signed Friday. But analysts say the Americans were reluctant to push too hard, for fear of endangering the agreement to reduce by two-thirds the number of nuclear warheads deployed by the two nations.

Critics maintain this was a mistake, considering that the Sept. 11 attacks drove home the message that terrorists and rogue regimes might pose a greater risk than a long-range strike by a former Cold War adversary.

“In the post-9/11 world, these are the [weapons] that pose the greatest threat,” said Alistair Millar, of the Fourth Freedom Forum, an arms control group in Washington. “That’s a pretty severe omission.”

Some prominent centrist and conservative figures have joined liberal arms-control advocates in arguing that the United States should be pushing for greater controls on tactical weapons.

Former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), former Clinton administration Defense Secretary William J. Perry and retired Air Force Gen. Eugene E. Habiger, former commander of U.S. strategic nuclear forces, argued this week that top priority should be given to an accurate accounting of both countries’ tactical nuclear arsenals.

“These are the nuclear weapons most attractive to terrorists--even more attractive to them than [radioactive bomb-making] material, and much more portable than strategic warheads,” the three wrote in an opinion page article in the Washington Post.

Tactical nuclear weapons are generally defined as those designed for use against military targets on the battlefield. Strategic nuclear weapons are larger long-range weapons that are designed for use against cities or strategic nuclear missile forces.

Alexei G. Arbatov, a ranking member of Russia’s Duma, or lower house of parliament, has been quoted as saying that Russia has about 3,800 tactical nuclear weapons. But many Western estimates range as high as 18,000.

The U.S. has about 1,670 such devices, according to Millar, including 180 bombs stored in seven Western European countries.

Tactical weapons are generally compact enough to be carried by one or two persons, said Millar. They are usually relatively small in destructive power--equivalent to less than 100 tons of TNT--but they can also pack as much force as 1 million tons or more of TNT. Some are 60 times as powerful as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II.

Experts say these weapons pose more of a danger because they are designed to be set off by front-line troops and do not have the elaborate safeguards employed with strategic missiles and bombs. Also, they are deployed in front-line areas near cities, rather than on remote bases or missile fields.

Russian officials have insisted that their inventory is safe and in good hands. But some officials have acknowledged the risks.

Col. Gen. Yevgeny P. Maslin, a Russian defense official in charge of nuclear munitions, told Special Warfare magazine in 1996 that theft of nuclear weapons from Russian facilities was “impossible.” But he acknowledged that the weapons were at risk when being transported and that he was concerned that they could be stolen by fired nuclear-industry specialists, “social malcontents, embittered individuals.”

So far, no weapons are publicly known to have been stolen. But there have been unconfirmed reports of Russian tactical weapons being offered for sale, Millar said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency reported the recent case of two Lithuanian arms brokers who offered to sell Russian tactical nuclear weapons to undercover U.S. agents, he said.

One of the greatest sources of Western concern about the tactical arsenal has been an unnerving absence of information on what has occurred since Russia began downsizing its arsenal and withdrawing tactical weapons from former Soviet republics.

After President George Bush, the current American leader’s father, made unilateral cuts in the U.S. tactical force, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin promised in 1992 to sharply slash the tactical force. But since then, there have been only vague statements about that downsizing.

One obstacle to any reduction in the Russian arsenal is the suggestion from Bush administration officials that the Pentagon might need to develop a new class of small “bunker-buster” nuclear weapons to destroy deeply buried enemy command posts and weapons storage facilities. U.S. officials have publicly denied that they have decided to build such new weapons, but several officials are known to privately favor such an effort.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials have openly expressed their concerns about Russia’s tactical inventory.

Yet the tactical force has become even more important to Russian defense in recent years.

Russia no longer has enough money to maintain the robust conventional forces it would like. And many in the country feel threatened by the continuing expansion of NATO, which is expected this year to add seven members, including Baltic states and others on Russia’s western flank.

“They see this as their nuclear equalizer,” said Thomas Z. Collina of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The Clinton administration had hoped to make progress on the subject. In 1997 in Helsinki, Finland, President Clinton got Yeltsin to agree to further discussions. But the American leader made no further headway, and the Bush administration has so far made it a second-tier issue.

John R. Bolton, undersecretary of State for arms control, said in March that U.S. officials had raised the tactical weapons control issue “periodically over the last year, and I’m sure we’ll continue to discuss it with them.”

But he said the administration’s first priority with the Russians was the ballistic missile treaty, the second was the offensive strategic arsenal and the third was other proliferation issues.

“The issue of tactical nuclear weapons is still out there,” he said in an interview with Arms Control Today magazine.