Now let's talk about some terms describing different types of nuclear weapons.
What is strategic and tactical nuclear weapon?
The term strategic nuclear weapons and tactical nuclear weapons,
demonstrate the role which these type of nuclear weapon can play in potential conflict.
If the weapon can decisively influence the outcome of armed conflict or war,
this is called strategic.
If a certain weapon can play just a role on
the battlefield and help some country to win a battle,
not the whole war, this is tactical weapon.
All these two terms are applied to nuclear weapons too.
It is important to remember that
the same types of weapons can play both strategic and tactical role,
and can be regarded national strategies as strategic or tactical weapons.
Depending on the different factors,
such as geopolitical environment,
combat capabilities, arsenals of the opposing party etc.
Some states possessing nuclear weapons use
another scale to determine what role their nuclear weapons will play.
They use terms strategic or sub strategic weapons.
In certain circumstances even the small short range weapon systems
could play a significant role and decisively influence the course of the conflict.
So in such a case,
these weapons systems cannot be called tactical.
Therefore, various countries regard the same types of
nuclear weapons as tactical or strategic depending on their nuclear doctrine.
When the Soviet Union and the United States began to
negotiate their first nuclear arms control agreements,
they needed kind of a background to start from.
So they needed to develop a common terminology to
understand what types of weapon will be limited or restricted by certain agreement,
and what types of weapons will not be covered by this agreement.
So this terminology was the essential part of these negotiations,
because this terminology determined exactly what will
be limited and what will not be limited.
Also it American and
later Ruso American nuclear arms control agreements
address just certain type of nuclear weapons.
There is no single agreement which covers all arsenals of both countries.
Each bilateral agreement address specific type of a weapon.
So, classification is a crucial part of each agreement
and common classification was a serious problem during the negotiations.
So as you know, strategic nuclear forces are the
most important for any nuclear weapons state.
This is why first arms control agreements
developed by Soviet Union and the United States,
firstly concentrated on limitation of strategic nuclear forces.
But first let's understand what did they mean by strategic nuclear weapons.
There were no universal classification.
So they elaborated the bilateral classification which was not universal at that time.
Many experts find this classification quite contradictory.
Originally, the range or the distance a certain weapon can
fly was taken as a main criteria for classification.
And in this scale,
the range of strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles was set as 5,500 kilometers.
That was the range of a ballistic missile which is
deployed on the territory of one state and can reach the territory of the other state.
Therefore, ground launch ballistic missiles with a range of 5,500
kilometers and more were attributed to the class of strategic nuclear forces.
For the ballistic or cruise missiles based on submarines or planes,
the distance was set as 600 kilometers.
And let's now examine what does it mean,
and see some examples of the distances and ranges.
For example, the distance between Moscow and Washington DC is 7,772 kilometers,
and the distance between Beijing and San Francisco is 9,500 kilometers.
The rest of the nuclear weapons were regarded as non-strategic or tactical.
However, this classification is not universal as you know.
There is another group of nuclear weapons,
ground based ballistic or cruise missiles with a range
between 1,000 and 5,500 kilometers,
were regarded as intermediate range nuclear weapons.
In some cases, this type of weapon can play a strategic role.
In some cases they can play a tactical role.
But officially, they are regarded as neither strategic nor tactical.
This classification was developed in the framework of
bilateral Soviet's American arms control negotiations and remain relevant to this day.
Of course, the scale might be useful
for other multilateral or bilateral arms control agreements.
But, the application of the scale requires significant adaptation,
and consideration of regional strategic environment and
capabilities of the states involved into negotiations and agreement development.
Anastasia A. MalyginaAssistant Professor
Andrey Y. PavlovProfessor
