U.S. Intelligence Services Promote START

U.S. intelligence agencies have urged the Bush administration to pursue an extension to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, a U.S.-Russian nuclear weapons pact that is set to expire in 2009, McClatchy news service reported today (see GSN, May 23).

The treaty currently allows U.S. inspectors to verify the deployment of Russian strategic warheads, a job that satellites have had less time to do because they are used to assist U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush administration policy-makers, however, have expressed an interest in allowing the treaty to lapse and to allow less rigorous arms control measures to replace those of the Cold War, McClatchy reported.

“We both (Moscow and Washington) want to understand the general trends and directions of each other's forces,” said one senior administration official.  “But we don't need to know everything all the time.”

Concerned about losing information about Russian nuclear threats, U.S. intelligence agencies delivered a report to Congress last week, according to one expert.

Other experts warned that allowing START to expire, compounded with rising tensions over U.S. missile defense plans (see GSN, June 15) and other disagreements, could lead to a renewed nuclear arms race.

“The biggest loser will be everybody, because that would undermine every kind of accountability on both sides,” said Pavel Podvig, a nuclear specialist at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation (Jonathan Landay, McClatchy/Miami Herald, June 19).

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