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U.S.-Russia: Rumsfeld Lowers Bar for Moscow Treaty Withdrawal By David Ruppe Under the pact, also called the Moscow Treaty, the United States plans to have fewer than 2,200 operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads by the end of 2012. The treaty must be approved by both the U.S. Senate and Russian Duma, and so far has received firm, but often qualified, bipartisan Senate support (see GSN, May 24). “Our decision to proceed with reductions as deep as the ones outlined in the Moscow Treaty is premised on decisions to invest in a number of other critical areas, programs that are funded and recommended in our 2003 budget,” Rumsfeld said in his opening statement to the committee. He said funds would be needed for fiscal year 2003 investments, including: * improving intelligence collection, analysis, processing and dissemination to protect the U.S. homeland; * refocusing and revitalizing missile defense research and testing programs and capabilities to detect and respond to biological attack; * accelerating development of unmanned aerial vehicles with new combat capabilities and producing fast, precision conventional strike capabilities; * converting four Trident nuclear submarines into stealthy strike submarines that can carry cruise missiles and special operations forces in denied areas; * leveraging information technology to seamlessly connect U.S. forces in the air, at sea and on the ground; * protecting the U.S. information network, and * improving the survivability of U.S. space systems and developing a space infrastructure that assures persistent surveillance and access. “Investments in these and many other transformational capabilities in the 2003 budget should allow the U.S. over time to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons and enact the deep nuclear reductions contained in the treaty,” he said. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Richard Myers said additional requests for such investments also would be seen in the fiscal 2004 budget. Asked by Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) to clarify whether the United States would comply with the treaty if it were unable to deploy a missile defense system, Rumsfeld said that is an open question. “That’s a good question, and it’s a question that’s probably not knowable until as we move along,” he said, adding that the proposed treaty changes are part of a plan to increase reliance on developing conventional weapons, command and control and missile defense capabilities for strategic purposes. In earlier testimony, Rumsfeld and other officials had cited only a radical change in the international strategic environment such as the emergence of a peer competitor on the scale of the Soviet Union as a rationale for withdrawing from the treaty and returning the warheads from storage to their delivery platforms (see GSN, July 18). “Political Blackmail” John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, an organization that lobbies for arms control and reduced military spending, called Rumsfeld’s message “political blackmail” for effectively saying, “better fund these or you won’t get your reductions.” He argued Rumsfeld’s statements are at odds with the reasoning offered by other administration officials promoting the treaty. It “contradicts the whole pitch for the nuclear reductions, that we don’t even need a treaty since the 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads is all we need to defend ourselves,” Isaacs said. Addressing the possibility of a contradiction, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Commander Don Sewell simply said, “In defense of the country, we need more than just those [warheads]. That’s only one aspect of it.” Winslow Wheeler, a former senior defense analyst on the Senate Budget Committee, criticized the committee for not questioning Rumsfeld further on the statements. It’s “absolutely typical of Senate Armed Services Committee oversight that they are not even paying attention to what’s being said,” he said. “It’s not even clear that the Democrats know there’s a gauntlet on the floor. That’s congressional oversight for you.” A Loosely Binding Treaty Yesterday, committee members again raised several concerns about the treaty, including its lack of a requirement to destroy any nuclear warheads or delivery vehicles, the absence of verification or monitoring provisions, the lack of a timetable for implementing treaty reductions and the unusually short withdrawal notification provision. Levin also noted, and Rumsfeld confirmed, that the treaty provides no precise definition of what exactly would be reduced and does not use the phrase “operationally deployed.” “As I recall, the negotiations did not insert in the treaty any precise definition. We have indicated what we consider it to be, and there’s no question but that … the Russians will be using something roughly approximating that.” While the treaty requires no warhead elimination, Pentagon officials have said they expect to destroy some of the downloaded warheads in the future. Secretary of State Colin Powell this month said the total number of U.S. warheads might be cut to 4,600, a figure which Rumsfeld dismissed at a later hearing. Rumsfeld said at the hearing yesterday that the Pentagon is not planning on settling on a figure for exactly how many warheads it will keep and how many it will destroy. “It’s not something that we’ll decide. It will not be a fixed number. It’s very likely it will be a number that over the 10-years of the treaty will change,” he said, citing a need to resolve questions about stockpile safety and reliability. Extending START Not Appropriate Rumsfeld said the treaty needs no verification measures because “neither side should have an interest in evading the terms of the treaty, since it codifies unilaterally announced reductions and give[s] both sides broad flexibility in implementing those reductions.” Rumsfeld also said he does not believe it is necessary for the START I verification mechanism, which expires in 2009, to be extended to help verify the Moscow Treaty. “From my standpoint, it doesn’t seem to me that it would be necessarily appropriate. I think that times are changing and there may very well be various ways to achieve the kinds of transparency that would be appropriate between our two countries.” Symbolic of New Relationship At the hearing, additional key senators expressed support for the treaty, making it appear certain that the Senate will approve it. Levin said the treaty is more important for its symbolism of better relations with Russia than for anything else. “The importance of this treaty is not so much what it does or doesn’t do, but rather the possibilities that it may hold out for the future. It is one step in a continual process of improving the U.S.-Russia relationship and improving U.S. security,” he said. Isaacs believes Democrats, while skeptical about the treaty, simply do not want to appear anything but bipartisan on most foreign affairs and defense issues. The way many see it, the treaty “doesn’t accomplish much, doesn’t do much damage and is not a big political issue, so Congress will let it slide through,” he said. Unresolved Issues Levin said there were several U.S.-Russian arms control issues that remain unresolved and said he hoped the treaty would lead to future agreements in those areas. “Can this treaty provide an opportunity for the United States to make real reductions in nuclear weapons — not just the number of weapons deployed, but the total number of nuclear weapons?” he said. “Can this treaty provide an opportunity for the United States to rethink its nuclear weapons employment policy so that nuclear weapons are seen as weapons of last resort? Can this treaty provide an opportunity to establish new multilateral approaches to dealing with and reducing weapons of mass destruction?” U.S. officials have earlier said they do not expect to negotiate any further formal arms control agreements with Russia (see GSN, May 16). Further Republican Endorsements Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) also raised several concerns, but said, “I certainly commend you on the direction it’s going, and I think it’s a great breakthrough — what you have negotiated.” The ranking member of the committee, Senator John Warner (R-Va.), praised the treaty as “the right agreement at the right time.” He called the scale of the treaty’s requirements “the most dramatic in strategic weapons history and in the history of arms control agreements.” Nelson and Levin both urged U.S. officials to negotiate an arrangement to destroy downloaded warheads, to reduce the risk that the warheads or their components might be stolen. “The Russians apparently wanted to destroy weapons, not store them. We’re the ones who decided that they should be stored, not destroyed, as I understand the discussions,” said Levin. Nelson concluded that eliminating the Russian warheads “is of enormous concern to a number of the members of this body.”
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