Russia threatens to rethink its nuclear strategy

NATO to Quiz Ivanov Over Army Warning
{sorry no link, article from Eurasia-Geopolitics listserv}

By Paul Ames
The Associated Press COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado -- Provoked NATO
officials want an explanation from Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov of
Russia's threat to rethink its nuclear strategy because of the
Western alliance's "offensive military doctrine."

Thursday's final day of talks by NATO defense ministers in this Rocky
Mountain city also was to review plans to expand the alliance's
peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan and consider a European Union
offer to take over peacekeeping in Bosnia.

Ivanov was to join his NATO counterparts a week after the document
released by his ministry cast a shadow over much-improved relations
between Russia and its Cold War rival.

Released before a Moscow meeting among Ivanov, President Vladimir
Putin and senior military officers, the document noted that NATO had
failed to remove "anti-Russian components" from its military plans
and political statements.

"If NATO is preserved as a military alliance with its existing
offensive military doctrine, this will demand a radical
reconstruction of Russian military planning ... including changes in
Russian nuclear strategy," the Defense Ministry said.
<snip>

EDITED TO ADD BELOW TEXT:

Thursday, Oct. 9, 2003. Page 9 The Moscow Times
Ivanov's Defense Manifesto

By Pavel Felgenhauer

<snip>
The document is legally not a "doctrine" at all. The Constitution
states that an official military doctrine has to be signed into law
by the president. Russia has such a doctrine, signed by Putin in
2000, and it has not been overruled.

Sergei Karaganov, president of the Council on Foreign and Defense
Policy said that Ivanov's text "is not a doctrine, but a collection
of ideas from the Defense Ministry on this and that -- a mix of
rhetoric, of new ideas and old ones."

So what was all the show really for? Ivanov indicated that Russia
might use nuclear weapons to "preventively" attack its neighbors "to
stop acts of aggression." This aggressive rhetoric alarmed diplomats
from small neutral nations, but a high-ranking U.S. diplomat
dismissed Ivanov's "doctrine" as a "PR document for internal use
during Putin's presidential re-election campaign."
<snip>