U.S. global missile defense may create prerequisites for massive preventive strike on adversary - Kosachyov
MOSCOW. Oct 13 (Interfax) - The deployment by Washington of its global missile-defense shield poses a threat to strategic stability in the world and may create prerequisites for a powerful preventive strike, Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the Russian Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote in a statement on his Facebook page.
"Our Defense Ministry's information about the consequences of the creation of a global missile-defense shield by the U.S. certainly does not come as a revelation. However, it confirms quite vividly and in a fact-based manner why this global missile-defense project of the U.S. poses real threats to strategic stability around the world," he said.
"The danger of these American plans is that at some stage, they might create the illusion of impunity, should, for example, a massive preventive strike be delivered. Or, and this will possibly be a new turn, it could even be tacit consent to some 'acceptable' level of their own losses for the sake of delivering a fatal strike on an adversary. And they will not even tell their own population about it. And this is what is extremely dangerous. And it is such dangers that politicians, media, and the public throughout the world need to pay attention to," Kosachyov said.
Russia "will take the necessary measures to upgrade systems able to overwhelm the missile-defense shield," he said.
"No matter what Americans say about Iran, the U.S. missile-defense system is capable of intercepting Russian ballistic missiles, thus acting as a strategic weapon, disrupting the existing parity," the Russian senator said.
Together with Mk-41 multi-mission launchers, which can be found at the U.S. missile-defense bases in Romania and Poland and can fire interceptor missiles and cruise missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry's latest information about the capabilities of the U.S.' missile-defense shield's information and reconnaissance systems only serves to confirm that changing this parity is the true goal of the U.S., he said.
"In particular, the current Nobel Peace Prize laureate is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons [ICAN], which sets the utopian goal of zero nuclear weapons, but apparently fails to focus its attention on quite concrete threats here and now. But it should, because one can never know with the current U.S. administration," Kosachyov said.