"No one has listened to us, you listen to us now," said Russian President Vladimir Putin as he announced launching of the Avangard hypersonic missile, which was in lab for quite some time but tested only on Wednesday. The missile can fly 27 times faster than the speed of sound and deliver both nuclear and conventional payloads. When approaching target it is capable of high-speed evasive manoeuvres in flight making it 'absolutely invulnerable for any missile system'. It strikes "like a meteorite, like a fireball", says an excited Putin, who is committed to developing six new nuclear and advanced weapons, including the unlimited-range Avangard missile. Given its un-indictable approach to the target it tends to render obsolete all the present-day anti- missile defence systems, a potency likely to trigger yet another arms race between the United States and Russia. Of late, Washington and Moscow are once again engaged in belligerent posturing, that is triggered by tensions following allegations of Moscow's meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. But it is unlikely that Russian move to upgrade its weaponry, particularly its reportedly acquired capability to nuke American cities, far and wide, will unleash a new Cold War. The world today is no more bipolar; there have emerged new power centres and widely professed universal disrespect for leaderships who like to brandish military muscle as essential component of their foreign policies. If the Avangard weapon system has guaranteed Russia's security for "decades to come", only time will tell. History says, howsoever powerful and target-punching a new weapon system was at the time of its introduction it did provoke, invariably, production of an equal, if not even more destructive, counter-system. So, if the Avangard system launch is real and is as penetrating as claimed, and not a propagandist act, then the United States would take no time to match it by putting on ground, or in space, effective interdiction weaponry. And, rest of the world would think of digging deep in earth to escape the apocalypse.

President Putin's flourish to have a strategic weapon that renders any missile system useless generates an eerie sense of déjà vu - such a claim was made earlier too, and none but by the then US President, Ronald Reagan. To defend itself against aerial invasion by the enemy has been a lingering security concern of the US. During the early years of Cold War, it created the North American Air Defense Command to defend the Continental US, Canada and Alaska against bomber attacks. Since then the Command mission has broadened to include warning of missile attacks and space surveillance. A few years later, this Command was turned into North American Aerospace Defense Command, with mission to prevent ballistic missile attack mainly by furnishing reliable warning of an atmospheric attack. But President Reagan decided to go a step further. On March 23, 1983, he proposed creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also called Star Wars. It envisaged space-based anti-missile system having laser battle stations geared to release killer beams to snuff out the enemy missiles if seen to be getting ready for launch. Then, the American worry was that the Soviet ICBMs would take only 11 minutes to hit New York and other population centres on the East Coast; and that was too short a span to detect an incoming missile and to secure presidential ascent to launch a counter-attack. Hitting the enemy ICBMs in their silos was the objective of the Star Wars. And, for that the US said it would take the nuclear war to the space. But, as reality unfolded, President Reagan wanted only to bankrupt Moscow by provoking it to join the expensive and economically unaffordable Star Wars. But Moscow did not bite the bait, and thus Reagan's Star Wars saw no action. If there is now another spell of the Star Wars, there is no indication. But Moscow's decision to go for six new weapon systems does suggest that even when the world may not experience another Cold War its peace and tranquillity would still be hostage to a ever-lurking threat of a nuclear apocalypse.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2018