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U.S.-Russia: Powell Says U.S. Plans to Reduce Arsenal to 4,600 Warheads By David Ruppe Such a level would mean the United States intends to keep at least 2,400 warheads in reserve above the deployed warhead numbers agreed to in May by U.S. and Russian Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin when they signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (see GSN, July 9). That agreement, also called the Moscow Treaty, would require each party to remove all but 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads from operational service by December 31, 2012. Powell defined “operationally deployed” warheads to mean re-entry vehicles on ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles plus weapons loaded on bombers or kept in storage facilities at bomber bases. U.S. officials have not said exactly how many strategic nuclear warheads the United States currently has deployed and in reserve. In what is considered the most authoritative nongovernmental estimate, the Natural Resources Defense Council puts the number at 6,480 plus 342 spare warheads. It is not clear when the new level would be achieved and if the number quoted by Powell includes spares or warheads assigned to submarines in overhaul. The treaty, which requires Senate approval before ratification, would not require dismantlement or destruction of any warheads or delivery vehicles. Administration officials have said many of the downloaded warheads would be kept in reserve either as spares or as a hedge against some uncertain threat that may materialize. Russian officials have not said whether they plan to destroy any of their offloaded weapons. Until yesterday, administration officials had given no indication of how many warheads they plan to keep in the arsenal. “The total number that I believe you will hear from Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld, both deployed and in reserve, is somewhere around 4,600,” said Powell, during a question and answer period of a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Powell said he was offering the estimate “in a very tentative way, because I think Don Rumsfeld should really give you that definitively.” Rumsfeld is expected to testify about the treaty July 17. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Don Sewell said today the Pentagon could not confirm the number, as a final decision involving discussions with the State Department has not yet been made. “I’ve already spoken to the forces policy folks … no definitive number that can be released yet,” he said. Powell’s announcement received brief praise from Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.), who chairs the committee. “You’ve just told me something I find very encouraging,” he said. “Well, good. When Secretary Rumsfeld does that, that means if we stick to that, we are clearly going to destroy at least a thousand of these warheads, you know, up to 1,200, and maybe more,” Biden said. Explaining the New Levels During the hearing, several senators including Biden criticized the Moscow Treaty for, among other things, not requiring destruction of any Russian or U.S. warheads and for not requiring that more warheads be taken out of operational service. Citing Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and China, Senator Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) said he could not imagine what kind of threat from any of those countries would require the United States to keep 1,700 operationally deployed warheads. “Only by dismantling and destroying these devastating weapons can we truly achieve the goal of meaningful nuclear arms reduction,” he said. Powell explained the administration’s rationale for selecting the 1,700 to 2,200 level. “In this period of change, with new partnerships but with still a great number of unknowns out there … the Defense Department made a judgment that we could safely, in their view, go down to a range of 1,7(00) to 2,200,” he said. Powell said analysts determined that the United States would be safe with that number of operationally deployed forces no matter how Russia configured its weapons. “If they had said, ‘Okay, you’re going from 1,700 to 2,200; we’re going to stay at 6,000, the START I level, or the START II level,’ President Bush would have said, ‘Fine. I’m safe with 1,700 to 2,200. So do what you think you have to do,’” he said. Prior to Powell’s announcement, Biden questioned the need to maintain a reserve of thousands of warheads. “My concern is it’s not that we’re going to 1,700 or 2,200, but we’ve maintained the capacity to go back to 5,700 to 6,200, and what the rest of the world reads from that and what everybody else thinks their requirements are.” New Thinking on MIRVs Senators also criticized the new treaty for not eliminating ICBMs with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles. The unratified START II Treaty, which was abandoned by the administration in favor of the Moscow Treaty, had required elimination of MIRVs. “Multiple-warhead ICBMs are a cheap way to maximize Russian forces, but they are vulnerable because an attack there can destroy those warheads with only one or two of its own. Russia, therefore, is likely to keep those missiles on hair trigger,” said Biden. He said U.S. officials told the Russians, “We see you as a partner. So you can do whatever you think you have to do for your security. You can MIRV your missiles. You can keep more. You can go lower. Do what you think you need.” “If the Russians want to keep all of them on land-based ICBM’s and they want to MIRV them, fine” Powell said. That appeared to represent a change in thinking for Powell. During former President George H. W. Bush’s administration, the view on MIRVs was different. That administration negotiated and signed START II, the highlight of which was the agreement to eliminate multiple-warhead ICBMs such as the Russian SS-18 and U.S. MX missiles. “Elimination of heavy ICBMs and the effective elimination of all other multiple-warhead ICBMs will put an end to the most dangerous weapons of the Cold War,” Bush wrote Jan. 12, 1993, in a letter submitting the treaty to the Senate for its approval. In a July 1993 hearing defending the treaty, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Powell called multiple-warhead ICBMs “the most destabilizing weapons in our inventories.”
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