Does this scenario sound familiar? A young, inexperienced president is elected to office with a slim electoral majority and faces grave doubts about his abilities from leaders both at home and abroad. A Russian leader, concerned with the United States' expanding power, decides to test the new president's resolve by making a surprise transfer of nuclear weapons. This was the series of events that led to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Nikita Khruschev, the Soviet premier at the time, decided to give Cuban dictator Fidel Castro nuclear missiles because he thought the newly elected president, John F. Kennedy, was diplomatically incompetent. Russian missiles and weak leadership brought our country to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. And yet, a frighteningly similar chain of events has just taken place in Eastern Europe.
For the first time since the break up of the Soviet Union, Russian tactical nuclear weapons (short-range, nuclear-tipped armaments) were deployed in Kaliningrad, Russia's westernmost territory on the Baltic Sea. Kaliningrad, which borders Poland (a member of NATO since 1999) to the north, is still a part of Russia despite the fact that the countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus separate it from the Russian mainland. The redeployment, which began in June, was first reported by a U.S. military intelligence bulletin. Although Russia has denied the existence of any nuclear weapons, the Times of London confirmed that senior U.S. officials indicated that nuclear weapons had been moved. The exact type of nuclear weapons that were moved is still unknown, but the military report speculated that the warheads were going to be used in conjunction with new short-range Russian missiles. With a range of only about 180 miles, the missiles in Kaliningrad are too far east to threaten western-European countries like Germany or Austria, but could easily be employed against neighboring eastern-European countries such as Poland, Lithuania or Latvia.
During the campaign, President-elect George W. Bush hinted that he would support the eventual inclusion of Baltic States, like Lithuania and Latvia, into NATO. Therefore, the decision by Russia's President Vladmir Putin to re-deploy the nuclear weapons could be seen as an attempt to threaten Bush against such an expansion of NATO. The real question is how the President-elect and his so-called foreign policy "all-stars" like Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld will react to Putin's new aggressiveness. In a November 1999 speech, Bush stated that "Russia does have interests with its newly independent neighbors. But those interests must be expressed in commerce and diplomacy -- not coercion and domination." One could certainly interpret this type of buildup of nuclear weapons as a type of not-so-subtle coercion.
Perhaps a more aggressive Russia was an inevitable product of Bush's defense proposals. Putin sees Bush's proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) system as a major threat to Russia's nuclear deterrent. Bush and his advisors claim the still-theoretical NMD system would only be used to defend against surprise attacks from terrorists or rogue nations like Iran or North Korea. But Russians believe the system would protect the U.S. from anything short of a massive nuclear attack, and would force the Russians to increase their nuclear stockpiles at a time when the country is teetering on the edge of economic chaos.
Putin's actions may however be a bit premature considering the fact that a working missile defense system has been under consideration since the Johnson administration, yet has never been perfected technologically. Apparently, Bush did such a good job of convincing people that the fictitious missile defense system could work, he even spooked the Russians. If an overly aggressive Russia does turn out to be Bush's first major foreign policy crisis, he would be wise to take a brief history refresher course. Back in 1962, Kennedy chose to pursue a non-violent naval blockade in response to the Soviet missile presence in Cuba, rather than the more offensive responses suggested by most of his advisors. Although Bush might see himself as another Reagan, this situation calls for Kennedy-like tactics. Let's just hope Bush can cool things down in Eastern Europe before we revert to what things were like in 1981, or God forbid, 1962.
