Nation voices concern over new US nuclear weapon

MOSCOW (AP):

A senior Russian diplomat raised concern yesterday about the United States deploying a new submarine-launched nuclear weapon, saying the move signalled Washington’s belief that it could wage a limited nuclear conflict.

The Pentagon’s top policy official told The Associated Press this week that a a nuclear warhead of reduced destructive power had been fitted onto a Trident II intercontinental ballistic missiles carried by nuclear submarines.

John Rood, the undersecretary of defence for policy, said the deployment of the so-called low-yield warheads lowers the risk of nuclear war by helping dissuade Russia from initiating a limited nuclear conflict.

Moscow has rejected US allegations that Russia was considering such a conflict. The Russian government has long criticised the Pentagon’s plans to develop low-yield nuclear weapons, arguing that a limited nuclear conflict would inevitably escalate into a full-blown nuclear war.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday that the new missile’s deployment is an indication that the United States views a low-intensity nuclear conflict as a feasible option. He described the US move as “very alarming”.

“It’s a reflection of the fact that the US lowers the nuclear threshold and considers it possible to wage a limited nuclear war and win such a war,” Ryabkov said in remarks carried by Russian news agencies.

He accused Washington of stonewalling on Moscow’s 2018 proposal to reaffirm a joint statement by US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 that said “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”.

Ryabkov said the US was at risk of what he described as a “drift in the dangerous direction, a slide towards planning absolutely unacceptable catastrophic scenarios”.

Last year, Russia and the US both withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The US said it pulled out because of Russian violations; the Kremlin denied breaching the treaty’s terms.

The Kremlin has said that Washington also appears reluctant to extend the new START treaty, the last remaining arms-control deal between Russia and the US, which expires in 2021.