Strategic arms talks between Russia and the United States should take into account the nuclear potential not only of the United States, but also of their allies represented by France and Great Britain, that is, NATO's combined strike potential.

This was stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“After all, at one time we went to put them out of the brackets, bearing in mind both detente, and the fact that NATO declared itself almost a demilitarized organization, they said that it was most likely a political organization, and not military bloc.

Well, where is he not a military man?

We see what is happening.

Therefore, we are simply forced to return to the discussion of this topic from the center of the field, ”he explained.

And formally, the Americans have nothing to object to here.

The Russian president is absolutely right when he speaks of NATO as a single military bloc.

If earlier anyone else could say that the North Atlantic Alliance is not militarily a single entity, that all calls for rallying against Russia are just a rhetorical device aimed at maintaining the unity of the alliance in the face of diverging national interests of the participating countries, now all those conversations stopped.

Almost all NATO countries have united in a proxy war with the Russian Federation.

All of them supply weapons to Ukraine, support it financially and morally, and some of the ministers and heads of state even say that the bloc is at war with Russia.

In other words, in a year since the beginning of the special military operation, the Americans managed to turn NATO from an instrument of US political control over European processes into a military structure with a rigid vertical control system.

This means that the Russian Federation has every right to consider the entire military potential of NATO indirectly American.

Moreover, both the conventional potential and the nuclear one.

This means that it should by no means be excluded from arms reduction treaties.

After all, if they are now left aside, if they are not included in the agreement, then a situation may arise when the American nuclear arsenal will be developed under the guise of the same English.

Or French.

In addition, the idea itself to take into account the nuclear potential of third countries in Russian-American negotiations on the limitation of strategic arms was not Russian, but American.

It was Donald Trump who demanded that China be included in the negotiation format.

And not because China is an ally of Russia.

Not because Russia and China are in a single military alliance against the United States - there was no such alliance and there is not.

And certainly not because part of the Russian nuclear potential can be disguised as Chinese (Russian-Chinese nuclear cooperation has not reached such a level and is unlikely to ever reach).

And simply so that there is no situation when two nuclear powers limit their potentials, while other states have every right to build up their nuclear warheads to the level they need.

Yes, the number of warheads in Great Britain and France is incomparably less than in the United States and Russia.

However, if we are talking about the reduction of strategic arms as some kind of global (and not purely Russian-American) process, then all nuclear powers should participate in it.

There must be a certain ceiling for everyone, and coordinated inspections must be carried out in everyone.

And now the question is, will Western countries agree to such Russian conditions?

Most likely no.

They will say that Moscow is trying to cover up the problem, that Moscow is trying to disrupt the negotiations, that Moscow is not interested in world peace.

Let them talk, because it doesn’t matter now - at the moment there is no talk of resuming negotiations as such.

Negotiations (especially on issues of strategic stability) are impossible in the absence of trust between the parties.

And those parts of the existing agreements that functioned with grief in half were sacrificed for the sake of winning the proxy war in Ukraine.

Thus, the Americans refused to link the further negotiation process on START (in particular, the resolution of contradictions around inspections) with the Ukrainian issue.

Russia suspended its participation in START not only because, in the context of the conflict in Ukraine, it did not want to let American inspectors into its strategic facilities, but also because it decided to demonstrate readiness for nuclear escalation, to show the West that its more active participation in the Ukrainian conflict is fraught not only with "Russian concerns", but also in fact with the "Caribbean crisis".

The crisis, which

And only when this package solution is reached, it will be possible to have some talk about continuing nuclear negotiations.

Negotiations, of course, on the new conditions of a multipolar world.

Conditions, some of which Vladimir Putin has just announced.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.