MOSCOW — Russian Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov warned Thursday that American development of new types of nuclear weapons, armed actions that bypass the U.N. Security Council and anti-Russian attitudes inside NATO could force his nation to adopt tougher defense measures.
With the North Atlantic Treaty Organization due to expand into seven former communist states next week, including three Baltic countries that were part of the Soviet Union, Ivanov stressed Moscow's desire to see the Western alliance leave behind its Cold War roots.
"Russia keeps a close watch on NATO's ongoing transformation and hopes for complete removal of direct and indirect anti-Russian elements from the military plans and political declarations of its member states," he said in an article published Thursday in Russia in Global Affairs magazine.
"However, if NATO remains a military alliance with an offensive military doctrine, Russia will have to adequately revise its military planning and principles regarding the development of its armed forces, including its nuclear forces."
In a comment targeting the Bush administration's talk of developing a new generation of low-yield battlefield nuclear arms, Ivanov declared that "it is necessary to take special account of the possible reemergence of nuclear weapons as a real military instrument. This is an extremely dangerous tendency that is undermining global and regional stability."
Analysts said the article in the Russian-language magazine, whose content is monitored by foreign specialists, reflected thinking expressed in this nation's revised military doctrine for the 21st century that was drawn up last fall.
Although its publication now may have been timed to mark Moscow's unhappiness with NATO's pending expansion to 26 members from the current 19, the article was a wide-ranging review of defense issues and did not carry a generally hostile tone.
"When Ivanov talks about the reemergence of nuclear weapons as a real military instrument, he first and foremost means that our American partners have begun to particularize their nuclear doctrine toward lowering the threshold for the actual use of nuclear weapons," said Sergei Karaganov, chairman of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, an independent Moscow think tank.
