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U.S.-Russia: Senators Take on Moscow Treaty With Powell By David Ruppe The treaty, which needs Senate approval before U.S. President George W. Bush can ratify it, is “a very important step” in improving U.S.-Russian relations, said committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.). The 1«-page agreement would require each country to reduce its deployed strategic nuclear warheads from an estimated 6,000 today to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the end of 2012, according to Powell. U.S. officials have said they will comply by reducing the number of operationally deployed strategic warheads, mostly by removing warheads from delivery vehicles. Biden expressed concern that the treaty lacks a schedule for making its reductions, has no verification provisions, does not require either side to eliminate any warheads or delivery platforms and does not prevent Russia from deploying its multiple-warhead SS-18 ICBMs. He also questioned why the treaty does not address tactical nuclear warheads. “I have some concerns … about the nature of the treaty and what it means and what it doesn’t,” he said. Ranking committee member Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) said the treaty “marks an important step toward a safer world.” He questioned, however, whether current U.S.-Russian cooperation to secure nuclear materials across Russia would be sufficient to safeguard the warheads Russia would remove from its delivery vehicles in accordance with the terms of the treaty. “I share some of the concerns and fears expressed by the critics,” he said. Lugar said the treaty “is really in jeopardy” — as are the Bush administration’s military efforts against terrorists — if money cannot be channeled into new Cooperative Threat Reduction programs designed to protect nuclear and other WMD materials. In April, the administration announced that Bush was unable to certify, as required by law, that Russia was meeting certain nonproliferation commitments, preventing the release of some CTR funds. A joint House-Senate conference is currently considering legislation to allow waiving the certification requirement. Lugar said the failure to certify is holding up several CTR activities. Strong Support Powell offered strong support for the treaty — which was negotiated by the State Department’s Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton — stressing it would maintain U.S. flexibility. “The treaty codifies each country’s commitment to make deep strategic nuclear weapons reductions in a flexible and legally binding manner,” Powell said. He said the reductions would result in the “lowest levels possible consistent with our military requirements, alliance obligations, and reflecting the new nature of our strategic relations.” In his prepared testimony, Powell acknowledged limitations to the treaty. “There are things that [the treaty] did not do,” he said. “For example, it did not specifically eliminate warheads.” He also said the treaty allows Russia to keep multiple warheads on its ICBMs — negating a provision of the now-defunct START II Treaty (see GSN, June 14) — but added that in light of the emerging U.S. relationship with Russia, the United States would not consider that a problem. U.S. officials have told their Russian counterparts, “You can MIRV your missiles. Do what you think you need,” Powell said. Further Skepticism Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) offered the most comprehensive criticism, challenging several of the administration’s fundamental explanations for what the treaty would accomplish. “It seems to be that the goal of accountability, verifiability, mutual destruction of weapons and ultimately moving to a more stable regime without the [Russian] SS-18 out there is completely neutered simply to arrive at some agreement that says we are going to have in 10 years less warheads on missiles, but not necessarily unavailable for future use,” he said. Questioning the need to retain as many warheads as the treaty would allow given the administration’s view of a new relationship with Russia, Kerry suggested the levels are unnecessarily high for addressing other likely threats such as North Korea, Iran, Iraq and possibly China. “Why can’t you go below 1,700? What is the rationale for 1,700?” he said. “This treaty leaves in place what START II would have destroyed, which is the ability of the Russians to have an SS-18 with 10 warheads on it. It was always a goal of ours to try to reduce because that is perceived as a more destabilizing weapon because of the ‘use or lose’ theory,” he said. Kerry further criticized the treaty for relying on the START I mechanism for verification, which was not designed to verify warhead numbers. Powell said U.S. officials have seven years to negotiate a verification mechanism for the new treaty. Clearer Definition Kerry also criticized repeated assertions by administration officials that the treaty would reduce the size of the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads, arguing that many of the warheads would not necessarily go away but could be stored for future use. “I’m told that in addition to the 2,200 limit in the deployed strategic nuclear warheads, if you add in the substantial number of nondeployed inactive and active reserve warheads, and the substantial number of tactical nuclear weapons, we would have numbers way in excess of the 2,200 warheads. So there is a certain fiction here in addition.” Biden expressed concern about the undismantled warheads. “My concern is it is not that we are going down to 1,700 to 2,200, but it is that we could quickly go back up to 5,700, and what that says to the rest of the world,” he said. Powell in his testimony indicated that the phrase “operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads” — the target of the reductions — was in fact very specifically defined to exclude weapons in storage or on reserve. “For the purposes of this treaty, the United States considered operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to be reentry vehicles on intercontinental nuclear missiles in their launchers, reentry vehicles on submarine-launched ballistic missiles in their launchers on board submarines and nuclear armaments loaded on heavy bombers or stored in the weapon storage areas of heavy bomber bases,” he said. Powell said that spare nuclear warheads stored at bomber bases also would not count toward the treaty targets. Officials also have said warheads assigned to submarines in overhaul also would not be counted. Some of the downloaded warheads would be stored and some destroyed, Powell said, without offering precise numbers. The administration has not said precisely how many warheads it may choose to destroy.
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