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Russia, US at Odds on Some "Principled" Points: General
Colonel General Valery Manilov, first deputy chief of the Russian general staff, on Monday said Russia and the U.S. had a number of "principled non-coinciding positions" in the military field, first of which is the issue of the national missile defense (NMD) system.
"The deployment of the NMD, by our assessments, could totally destroy the strategic stability system existing in the world," the general told the press, adding that the NMD system in fact scraps the 1972 Anti-Missile Defense (ABM) Treaty, the core of strategic stability.
Manilov recalled that in the 1960s and 1970s, Moscow and Washington explored the possibility of developing missile defense systems.
"Then, a number of significant shortcomings of creating such a system were revealed, namely, its huge cost, extraordinary complexity, and the lack of a 100 percent guarantee against possible missile strikes," the general said.
In addition, Manilov stressed that "the very fact of building such a system would inevitably lead to an arms race since the parity between strategic offensive and defense arms would be upset. "
Manilov said only by working out jointly coordinated decisions is it possible to parry existing and future threats, including " possible ballistic missile strikes by states with unstable regimes. "
He proposed that Russia "along with colleagues from the U.S. and Europe" should work out methods of warding off such threats, " above all by political, diplomatic, and other non-military means."
If these measures still fail to ensure security, then, Manilov believes, other steps could be tried, including in the military field.
"But this by no means suggests that in this situation the ABM treaty would have to be broken. Other systems exist, among them is non-strategic anti-missile defense system, which could be implemented with the preservation of the 1972 ABM Treaty," the general said.
Manilov made the remarks on the eve of a Mid-June Russian-U.S. summit, during which a top priority will be given to the issue of strategic security.
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