Spies & Politics, Espionage, Terrorism
A taut, fast-paced, geopolitical techno-thriller set in the dying days of the Soviet Union. The Moldavia Gambit will appeal to lovers of complex espionage, terrorism and political thrillers by authors like Tom Clancy, Daniel Silva and Mark Greaney.
Inspired by actual events and filled with authentic technical detail, the gripping tale races between Moscow, Moldavia, Paris, Washington, the skies over Eastern Europe, and geostationary orbit 22,000 miles above the Earth.
With the impending implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, more than thirty-three thousand nuclear weapons remained stored on Soviet soil, aboard warships of the Red Fleet, or in the armories of the republics around Russia’s western and southern perimeter. Nearly 10,000 were strategic arms: warheads deployed on land-based and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, or nuclear bombs and air-launched cruise missiles carried by the Bears, Backfires, and Blackjacks of the strategic bomber forces. Most of the remainder were tactical nuclear weapons, generally employed on intermediate and short-range ballistic missiles or aboard dual-capable fighter-bomber aircraft.
The Soviet stockpile also included several hundred small, short-range nuclear devices ranging from nuclear mines and artillery rounds with yields of less than one kiloton to suitcase-size portable charges with yields of ten kilotons or more, comparable to the weapon that had devastated Hiroshima 46 years earlier.
In the summer of 1991, the Soviet Union faced widespread political and ethnic unrest. In the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, cries for greater autonomy were mainly peaceful. But in the Muslim republics to the south and elsewhere across the fragmenting empire, calls for secession were often complicated by the violent demands of fractious ethnic minorities.
The Russian majority of the Soviet population viewed the rapid decline of their extended motherland with a combination of fear and resentment. Dispersed throughout the calcified Soviet political and military leadership were fervent nationalists who shared this sentiment – and believed they had the means to do something about it. On August 19th 1991, the world awoke to news of a short-lived coup against the Soviet leadership, an attempted putsch that ended quickly when its leaders apparently failed to win the support of key apparatchiks in the military and security services.
In Washington, D.C., and throughout NATO Europe, the reaction to events in the Soviet Union was one of wary skepticism. While Soviet military and political leaders pointed to the abortive coup as evidence that the Soviet nuclear arsenal remained fully secure, NATO military observers remained concerned that local insurgents might somehow gain access to the nuclear genie – and with good reason.
Less than a year before, Western intelligence sources reported that the Kremlin no longer had faith in its ability to maintain control over the nuclear arms stored in its unstable republics and had begun a gradual withdrawal of the weapons to safer areas of the Rodina. On June 22nd 1990, The Wall Street Journal carried a front-page story highlighting the emerging threat. Under the sub-caption “Fear of Theft or Civil War Prompts Military Action on Short-Range Arsenal,” the article noted that:
“Rising levels of crime, thefts of conventional weapons from military bases, attacks on military units, and personnel problems within the military have accelerated the effort [to secure Soviet nuclear stockpiles]. It appears to focus, at least in part, on bringing tactical nuclear weapons such as short-range missiles, nuclear artillery, and bombs into the [politically stable] Russian Republic [and out of the more volatile western and southern republics]...
“[A major] concern involves the theft of one or more nuclear weapons that could occur if an isolated Soviet storage site were overrun by rebel forces. This became more than a speculative possibility in late January [1990] when the Kremlin suddenly dispatched elite Russian airborne units to stop fighting between armed Azerbaijani and Armenian groups around the Caspian Sea city of Baku...”
The highly publicized withdrawal of nuclear weapons had, in fact, begun two years before at the direction of the General Secretary, both to reassure the West that the Soviet Union intended a safe and orderly transition to a new political order and to forestall any real security risks among the unstable republics around its perimeter.
Within a year, however, a rift had developed within the Kremlin as some argued that by limiting its range of nuclear options, the Soviet Union risked encouraging aggression from Chinese and Western opportunists. Knowing that further reforms would be impossible without the continued support of the KGB and the military, the General Secretary acquiesced. Through the winter of 1990, some of the inventory was quietly returned to more secure bases along the Soviet perimeter, including one in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic…
About the Author
Brad Meslin has spent more than 35 years working at the intersection of the aerospace and defense industry, private equity and national security.
Meslin founded and manages a leading advisory firm that performs diligence on aerospace, defense and government services contractors active in the defense, space, aviation and intelligence sectors in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere. Advising on hundreds of transactions over more than three decades, Meslin has gained a deep understanding of the national security programs and missions these companies support, and the capabilities and systems they help to develop and operate.
Dr. Meslin earned a Master’s degree in law and diplomacy and a Ph.D. from The Fletcher School at Tufts University, with a focus on international security.
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