Major General Dvorkin (retired) is a chief researcher at the Center for International Security at the Institute of Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International Relations.
He was formerly a distinguished military fellow in the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Nonproliferation Program. He is also chairman of the International Luxembourg Forum’s Organizing Committee. He was granted the title of distinguished scholar of Russian science and technology in 1993.
Dvorkin previously served as the director of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Fourth Central Research Institute, where he began working as a junior researcher in 1962. Previous to that, he took part in testing the Soviet Union’s first nuclear missile-carrying submarines and the first launches of ballistic missiles from under water as a test engineer at the Central State Naval Test Ground. He holds a PhD in technical sciences.
Dvorkin was one of the main authors of program documents on Russia’s strategic nuclear forces and strategic missile forces. Over many years he was involved as an expert in preparing the SALT II, INF, START I, and START II treaties, during which time he helped shape the Soviet Union’s and Russia’s positions at strategic offensive arms control talks.
Russia’s concerns that U.S. missile defense and hypersonic missiles threaten its nuclear arsenal are overstated, but the deterioration of arms control treaties has profound negative implications.
The risk of an inadvertent nuclear war is rising because of the entanglement of non-nuclear weapons with nuclear weapons and their command-and-control capabilities.
The Reykjavik summit from thirty years ago shows what can be done when two leaders, whose states are supposedly implacable enemies, take responsibility and act to enhance the world’s strategic stability and safety.
The most advantageous option for Russia and the United States is to sign another START agreement on more cuts in nuclear weapons. However, if that is not possible, it makes sense for the two sides to extend the current treaty signed in 2010.
Against a backdrop of Russian, Chinese, and U.S. strides in science and technology, trilateral consultations could help address potential threats from new weapons.
The current nuclear hysteria resides first and foremost in the minds of Russian and U.S. government officials. Fears of a nonnuclear, armed confrontation between Russia, on the one hand, and the United States and NATO, on the other, are also unfounded.
The Carnegie Moscow Center organized a conference to discuss the experience of Russian-American alliance during the Second World War, as well as the experience of cooperation and rivalry after the end of the Cold War.
The tensions in Russian-Western relations will not lead to a direct collision between Russia and NATO. The current surge of mutual psychosis has no relation to the military security.
The Ukrainian crisis has threatened the stability of relations between Russia and the West, making it all the more critical for Russia and the United States to talk, to relieve the pressures to “use or lose” nuclear forces during a crisis and minimize the risk of a mistaken launch.
It would be advisable for the presidents of Russia and the United States to make joint decisions to abandon the concept of launch-on-warning strikes based on the information provided by early-warning systems as well as refrain from conducting the respective exercises of the countries’ strategic nuclear forces.
