2008 Putin-Bush Talks Shed Light on Escalating Superpower Nuclear War Danger Today

Dec. 31—In the set of U.S. government documents released Dec. 23 as part of a FOIA request by the non-governmental National Security Archive group of journalists and scholars, the one containing an unredacted transcript or “MEMCON” (notes and recollections of National Security Council policy staff who attended the meeting) of an April 6, 2008 conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and then U.S. President George W. Bush, along with their respective teams, sheds light on the critical issue of ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems and the danger of a nuclear war between the superpowers.

In their conversation President Putin raised Russia’s grave concerns about the new American BMD systems being built in the Czech Republic and Poland, and other forward-based nuclear capabilities on Russia’s doorstep. President Bush expressed clear awareness of the problem:

“President Putin: A missile launch from a submarine in Northern Europe will only take six minutes to reach Moscow.

“President Bush: I understand.

“President Putin: And we have established a set of response measures—there’s nothing good about it. Within a few minutes our entire nuclear response capability will be in the sky.

“President Bush: I know. … I understand your concerns about sending the wrong messages. I don’t want to put someone in quick response moments where the whole system is to react. That creates the possibility for mistakes. I agree with you on that.”

President Bush then expressed concern about the policies of the next U.S. administration, to be decided in the upcoming November 2008 elections between Barack Obama (or then Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), who was still seeking the Democratic nomination), and neo-con Sen. John McCain (R-AZ):

“I’m worried about the next ones who will come to power. We need to work something out while we have an open relationship. So, the next ones don’t overreact. That’s why this agreement is very important…. I don’t want Russia to become a campaign issue. The relationship is too important.”

President Bush then took up the issue of missile defense, alluding to the Kennebunkport conversations between Putin and Bush nine months earlier, July 1-2, 2007, in which the U.S. had proposed joint ballistic missile defense system development between the two countries, to overcome the risks of one side gaining the upper hand over the other. This proposal was an echo of the famous March 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) proposal by President Ronald Reagan, inspired by American statesman Lyndon LaRouche, to replace the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction with a new security architecture.

“President Bush: On missile defense, I think the thing that will intrigue people is transparency and confidence-building measures and the idea of exploring a regional missile defense system where Russia will benefit like everyone else.”

Bush attempted to reassure Putin by arguing:

“I think once the government becomes convinced the system isn’t aimed at you, Russia will see a regional system can deal with some nut in the Middle East who might get a missile with a nuclear weapon. You’ll see the system cannot possibly intercept more than one or two missiles. You have a lot more than that. Anyway, that’s what confidence is all about.”

Russia’s concern, however, was not only that the BMD systems planned for construction in the Czech Republic (later shifted to Romania) and Poland could be used to stop a Russian counterstrike, but that that those same systems could be surreptitiously converted into offensive systems capable of initiating a first, attempted decapitation strike against Russia, as some in the United States were openly advocating (and still are today). Putin stated in the 2008 meeting with Bush what he has repeated on many occasions since then:

“President Putin: The [Russian] military has come to me now; they tell me the following: ‘There was the balance and the threat of Mutual Assured Destruction. Now the Americans are going to build a missile defense umbrella and have the feeling that they are invincible.’ What should we do? Either create the same umbrella or our own strike systems to neutralize their defenses. Creating a missile defense system is quite expensive. It’s simpler and cheaper to create a new strike system which would overwhelm your defenses. And they’re already coming to me with proposals that strike me as very barbaric. When I read them, I’m horrified. And not building a platform for our cooperation on this front, we’re forced with this type of arms race.”

Although Bush repeatedly emphasized in that conversation that “it’s important for our people to see we’re working through an agreement based on transparency and true confidence building measures,” and that “there needs to be a path forward for better relations with Russia,” subsequent events—including going ahead with the forward deployment of U.S./NATO BMD systems; the continuing eastward expansion of NATO; and the build-up of NATO capabilities within Ukraine after the 2014 coup d’état in Kiev; and the abandonment of any semblance of a cooperative approach of the sort embodied in the Reagan-LaRouche SDI policy—confirmed Putin’s worst fears. As a result, the very real danger of nuclear confrontation continues to lurk in the shadows.