Gonzaga Debate Institute 2011 Mercury Scholars International Brain Drain da

Russia – Space Leadership

Stephen P and David A, April 1997, INSS Occasional Paper 12

Regional Series USAF Institute for National Security Studies “Russia’s Crumbling Tactical Nuclear Weapons Complex: An Opportunity for Arms Control” http://www.usafa.edu/df/inss/OCP/ocp12.pdf 7/6/11 BLG)

To compensate for Russia’s current conventional weakness, Russian strategists have explicitly sought to “extend the threshold for escalation downward,”28 thereby increasing the likelihood of tactical nuclear release in the face of hostilities. Thus there are two distinct concepts at work: (1) the procedure of pre-delegating the launch codes; and (2) the operational doctrine of lowering the nuclear threshold. These trends are corroborated by interviews with Russian officials familiar with nuclear weapons strategies. Dr. Nikolai Sokov, an expert on the Soviet delegation to START I as well as other US-Soviet summit meetings, affirms that with such a doctrine in place, one “cannot rule out that a local commander could individually take the authority to launch a weapon.” 29 The assumption that the Russian weapons control system is more stable during peace-time is also suspect. Due to the lack of technical safeguards, especially on air-delivered weapons (cruise missiles and gravity bombs), individual attempts to acquire these weapons even during times of peace are possible. Moreover, the lack of adequate locking mechanisms on these weapons would then make them deliverable, with a full nuclear yield, even without launch authorization.

Russia - Now Key

(Anatoly Zak, June 28 2010, BBC News Science & Enironment “Difficult Rebirth for Russian Space Science” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10414237 7/6/11 BLG)

(Vladmir Isachenkov, April 12, 2011 The Washington Times “Medvedev: Space will remain a key Russian priority” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/12/medvedev-space-will-remain-a-key-russian-priority/?page=all#pagebreak 7/6/11 BLG)

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia must preserve its pre-eminence in space, President Dmitry Medvedev declared Tuesday on the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The statement followed warnings by another cosmonaut that Russia risks losing its edge in space research by relying solely on Soviet-era achievements and doing little to develop new space technologies. Gagarin’s 108-minute mission on April 12, 1961, remains a source of great national pride, and Russia marked the day with fanfare resembling Soviet-era celebrations. Schools had special lessons dedicated to Gagarin, billboards carried his smiling face and national television channels broadcast a flow of movies and documentaries about the flight. “We were the first to fly to space and have had a great number of achievements, and we mustn’t lose our advantage,” Medvedev said during a visit to Mission Control outside Moscow. On Monday, Svetlana Savitskaya, who flew space missions in 1982 and 1984 and became the first woman to make a spacewalk, harshly criticized the Kremlin for paying little attention to space research after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. “There’s nothing new to be proud of in the last 20 years,” said Savitskaya, a member of Russian parliament from the Communist Party. Russia has used the Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, whose designs date back to the 1960s, to send an increasing number of crew and cargo to the International Space Station. Russia’s importance will grow even more after the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis closes out the U.S. program this summer, leaving the Russian spacecraft as the only link to the station. But Savitskaya and some other cosmonauts have warned that Russia has done little to build a replacement to the Soyuz and could quickly fall behind America after it builds a new-generation spaceship.