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U.S.-Russia: Officials Praise Nuclear Reductions Treaty For Requiring No Cuts By David Ruppe During the past month of hearings preceding a Senate vote on the pact, also called the Moscow Treaty, proponents have lauded the agreement for requiring that all except 1,700 to 2,200 “operationally deployed warheads” to be removed from delivery platforms — bombers, missiles and submarines — by Dec. 31, 2012 (see GSN, May 24). Both critics and proponents of the treaty, however, have said the treaty is equally if not more important for what it does not do — require the destruction of any warheads or their delivery platforms. Treaty supporters have championed the “flexibility” U.S. forces would retain to deal with unanticipated challenges of the future. Critics charge it creates an illusion of arms control at best, while not improving Russian arsenal security, not restricting or regulating strategic holdings, and possibly encouraging Russian strategic forces to remain on hair-trigger alert. Senior Pentagon officials, meanwhile, have acknowledged that U.S. avoidance of platform cuts under the new treaty is made possible by a unique interpretation U.S. officials place on key language in the atypically short and unspecific treaty text. Flexibility, Preserved Capabilities Praised While the previous strategic arms reduction treaties, START I and II, also did not require warheads to be destroyed, the Moscow Treaty has parted from its predecessors by not requiring destruction of any delivery platforms either. Treaty proponent Senator John Warner (R-Va.) praised this treaty feature at a July 25 hearing, noting that the United States and Russia would be free to deploy their warheads in a manner “consistent with each nation’s security requirements and to adapt to changes in the international security environment” (see GSN, July 26). The treaty “does not define warhead counting rules, require destruction of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles or launchers, or include limits or sublimits on strategic nuclear delivery vehicles or launchers,” he said. The focus of the treaty on downloading warheads from their platforms, rather than on platform destruction, lets each country retain and field all of its current nuclear weapons holdings up until the deadline day, and to begin returning them to the field the day after, officials have said. “The treaty is certainly somewhat unusual. Its central obligation is that both nations will reduce their operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 some 10 years from now, apparently just for one day at that moment, when the treaty then expires,” said Senate Armed Forces Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) at a July 9 hearing. It furthermore enables the United States to reassign nuclear-capable strategic delivery platforms such as the B-2 and B-52 bombers and Trident submarines to conventional missions, without having them counted toward treaty limits, officials have said. “As you know, under the Moscow Treaty the United States has the option of storing those warheads not operationally deployed,” said head of U.S. Strategic Command Adm. James Ellis in prepared testimony last Thursday. “From a military perspective, it is essential that we retain the capability to respond to emerging threats or weapon safety and reliability issues.” The treaty “allows me the flexibility to take the dual-use platforms, these strategic platforms that have such important tactical applications, and transform them in support of the nation’s security needs in a broader way,” Ellis said. Critical Backlash The retention of warheads and delivery systems, however, has provoked concern from arms control-minded legislators and independent experts. “My concern is not that we’re going to 1,700 or 2,200, but [that] 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 everyone else thinks their requirements are,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.) at a July 9 hearing (see GSN, July 9). The theory supporting previous strategic arms control treaties, Biden said, “was if you took an American missile out of a silo, took the warhead off of it and crushed the canisters, you could not rapidly reload that on to anything that was out there.” “Here, we have a situation where you take the warhead off, the launcher stays in place … and you have the launcher here and you have the warhead here. And the theory is, at least, you could rapidly marry them up again and use them,” Biden said. Christopher Paine, a senior analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in July 23 testimony argued the treaty’s structure encourages no reduction to the Russian strategic arsenal. “It’s a stunningly bad tradeoff,” he said. “The Moscow Treaty imposes no limitation whatsoever on the current or future size of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and warhead stockpiles.” Requiring no cuts, it “does nothing to move Russia or the United States down the road toward deep verified nuclear force reductions, verified warhead elimination, and eventual nuclear disarmament,” said Paine. Many treaty supporters, including Biden, have said while the treaty accomplishes little, it is nevertheless worthwhile because it takes U.S.-Russian relations a step in the right direction. Critics, including Biden, on the other hand, have pointed to one particularly negative consequence — Russian officials have indicated Russia may choose to retain its existing multiple-warhead ICBMs or modify single-warhead systems to carry multiple warheads, in an effort to counteract U.S. capabilities. Bush administration officials have said they are no longer concerned about Russian multiple-warhead nuclear weapons, which were historically considered to be Russia’s most destabilizing strategic technology throughout the Cold War because they tend to be kept closest to hair-trigger alert (see GSN, July 10). Implementation Plans The Bush administration intends to meet treaty requirements by keeping warheads separate from their strategic bombers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers said July 25. “We will count as operationally deployed those weapons that are kept on the base with the bombers in the weapon storage areas, because presumably you can upload those in a matter of, let’s say hours,” he said. ICBM warheads will also be separated, but it could take longer to reload them, he said. “Those weapons will be stored in the weapons storage area at the base,” Myers said, noting that the moving a warhead from storage facility to an ICBM silo could take as long as a six-hour drive. Four Trident submarines, as noted above, will be reconfigured for nonstrategic nuclear missions. Warheads assigned to bombers and missile submarines in overhaul also will not be counted in Moscow Treaty totals as they are by START. Under START counting rules, reductions are made only by eliminating the delivery vehicles — by destroying submarine launch tubes, cutting up bombers and blowing up missile silos. Differing Interpretations of the Treaty With their country unable to afford to operate a large strategic force, Russian negotiators had sought more stringent START-like counting of reductions throughout the negotiations, and insisting the words “operationally deployed” not be included in the treaty text (see GSN, May 30). “The Americans seem to have said that the missiles and the warheads must not be destroyed, they must be mothballed and be capable of swift redeployment on the carriers and be rapidly returned to the battle-ready forces,” said First Deputy Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky in a May 24 interview with reporters. “You understand that we could not accept such conditions and we did not accept them. And today in the treaty neither directly nor between the lines on the pages of the test you will not see the words ‘operationally deployed warheads,’” he said. Abandonment of START-counting rules for the Moscow treaty was made possible, the U.S. officials said, because of a special interpretation the United States applies to the Moscow Treaty. The treaty text calls for reducing and limiting “strategic nuclear warheads” and Bush administration officials have repeatedly said they believe the treaty will require a reduction of the U.S. “strategic arsenal” down to the 1,700 to 2,200-threshold range. As Myers indicated in his July 25 testimony, however, the Bush administration devised a special definition to apply specifically to the new treaty, the words “strategic nuclear warheads” would encompass only operationally deployed warheads. While the START methodology “counts warheads even if there is not a warhead deployed in the delivery platform,” Myers said, “Under the Moscow Treaty, the U.S. will only count operationally deployed warheads.” A reduction through the Moscow Treaty would not necessarily count as a START reduction, he said. “The U.S. may remove a warhead to comply with the Moscow Treaty but a notional warhead may still be counted under the START Treaty as we fulfill our obligations under both treaties,” Myers said. This definition is key for retaining offloaded strategic capabilities, said Ellis said in his testimony. “This construct allows the United States to retain, reduce, or restructure critical dual-use weapons delivery platforms — those that also can deploy conventional weapons — so as to meet a broader range of military requirements,” he said. Most Capabilities Retained In pursuing the Moscow Treaty, Bush administration officials have said they will not pursue future agreements to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons as counted through START rules. START II, which was signed but remains unratified by the United States, would have cut strategic nuclear warheads down to 3,000 to 3,500 from the START I ceiling of 6,000 by cutting delivery platforms. START III negotiations, which stalled during the Clinton administration, were aimed at requiring further cuts to 2,000 to 2,500 warheads and were exploring ways to require the destruction of both warheads and delivery platforms. Though not required to by the Moscow Treaty, U.S. officials have said they are planning cuts. They plan to complete Clinton administration initiatives to eliminate 50 Peacekeeper ICBMs carrying 500 warheads total, deploy only one warhead on each of 500 Minuteman III missiles, and convert four of 18 Trident strategic submarines, a total of 768 warheads, to perform conventional operations. No further platform cuts are planned, however. Rather, the Pentagon plans to retain the remaining 14 Trident submarines, 500 Minuteman III ICBMs, and 76 B-52s and 21 B-2s, all of them capable of delivering strategic nuclear weapons, according to excerpts of the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review leaked this year. A rough calculation shows that altogether, those systems could deliver a total of about 5,000 warheads according to START counting rules, down from the 6,000 allowed by START I. Some of the platforms will be deployed with strategic warheads and some will be involved in conventional missions, according to a Pentagon official in a June briefing. Additional delivery vehicles will be sent into storage, and some bombers and submarines will be put into overhaul. “The thought was that retaining the existing platforms, and taking the reductions, essentially by downloading warheads, gave us enormous flexibility in terms of responding to changes in the security environment,” said the Pentagon official. “But also, it was based on a recognition that at least today, a portion of that force, the bomber force, is also heavily involved or engaged in conventional capabilities,” said the official. An Energy Department official, meanwhile, testified Thursday the department was expecting to dismantle no warheads under the treaty until at least until 2014 (see GSN, Aug. 1). U.S. officials otherwise have been contradictory on the fate of downloaded warheads (see GSN, July 26). Russian Forces Likely Outmatched As the United States is expected to retain and improve its strategic nuclear capabilities, Russian strategic forces are expected to dwindle to below 2,000 weapons by 2015 for lack of resources, according to the latest published U.S. intelligence estimate (see GSN, Jan. 10). Russia has few options to match U.S. strategic capabilities other than to leave aging ICBMs “rotting in their holes” a few years longer, and adding additional warheads to other missiles, the U.S. analyst said. Citing an improving U.S.-Russian relationship, U.S. officials have said projected levels of U.S. strategic forces are no longer structured to counter Russian or any other specific country’s forces. Echoing the Nuclear Posture Review, however, Rumsfeld at the July 17 hearing suggested the 1,700 to 2,200 operationally deployed range reflects Russian capabilities, as well as Chinese — “they are increasing their defense budget and they are increasing their nuclear capabilities, purposefully” — and those of “other countries.” Retaining remaining warhead and delivery platform capabilities, Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials have said, will make available spares to replace faulty warheads and will discourage other countries from “sprinting” to numerical parity. They also provide the military flexibility to rearm to respond to a radical change in the international strategic environment such as the emergence of an unforeseen peer competitor on the scale of the Soviet Union, the officials have said. Arguments Against Deep Cuts The administration’s desire to avoid further platform reductions also can be explained as a product of institutional resistance from within the Pentagon, bolstered by strategic rationales. There was a concern with some in the Pentagon, some experts said, that a requirement to eliminate platforms could have possibly eliminated, or at least seriously undercut, one leg of the Pentagon’s nuclear “triad” of long-range bombers, ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. “You can’t get down to 2,500 using the START rules unless you cut up lots of bombers, and the Air Force did not want to cut up lots of bombers, because it uses them for conventional missions,” said a U.S. government arms control analyst. Eliminating additional strategic submarines would have been an “operational nightmare,” said the analyst, because if the Navy operated less than 10 or 12 there would not be enough submarines to justify two ports, on the Atlantic and the Pacific. That would limit global coverage and make it easier for an enemy to locate and pick off the submarines, the analyst said. Land-based missiles, meanwhile, also have special advantages, according to the Strategic Command: on continuous alert, they can be quickly targeted and launched. Eliminating them would not greatly reduce the overall strategic numbers, but could make the Strategic Command a less attractive career for senior Air Force officers, the analyst said. “There is a constituency there and you’re not going to do that,” the analyst said. “So it’s both nuclear arguments and conventional politics that prevent you from cutting up any one particular leg of your triad.” Eliminating one leg of the triad has always been “a bridge too far,” said Rose Gottemoeller, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for nonproliferation during the Clinton Administration, now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There’s been huge resistance over the years from [the Strategic Command], you know the nuclear guys, to moving beyond that, moving beyond the 2,000 barrier, because that’s where in theory we would have to get rid of one leg of the triad.” Gottemoeller, however, said other areas of the military leadership have seemed less resistant to additional platform cuts. “It’s my understanding that there is some worry about this among some of the uniform ranks because of the drain that this will bring about on defense budgets, to sustain platforms over time,” she said. The administration’s decision to avoid additional platform cuts, she said, was driven by a “mania among a rather limited group of people within the [defense secretary’s office] who came in with this administration and have this kind of maniacal emphasis on flexibility.” At the July 9 hearing, Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested the chosen force levels were driven purely by strategic rationale, arguing cost considerations would have discouraged keeping more weapons than needed. “As chairman and the succeeding chairmen that followed me, we have every incentive to reduce the number. These are expensive. They take away from soldier pay ... They take away from lots of things. There is no incentive to keep more than you believe you need for the security of the nation,” Powell said.
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