U.S. Might Meet Nuclear Arms Limits Early, General Says

By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration will weigh the prospect of completing reductions in its deployed nuclear arsenal up to two years earlier than required by a 2002 U.S.-Russian agreement, according to U.S. officials (see GSN, June 22).

“We’re probably now looking at whether we should accelerate” nuclear weapons reductions, Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Global Security Newswire in an exclusive Oct. 18 interview. 

Cartwright, who was promoted to the senior leadership post in August following three years as head of U.S. Strategic Command, said a decision on the matter awaits “discussions that have to occur at the senior level.”

Top security officials, he said, would address “what the value [is] of setting a leadership position in the world of accelerating these reductions rather than stringing them out to 2012,” he said.

If reductions continue at their current pace, the U.S. nuclear arsenal would reach levels mandated by the Moscow Treaty in 2010, according to Navy Lt. Denver Applehans, a U.S. Strategic Command spokesman in Omaha, Neb.

Under the agreement, signed more than five years ago by U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the two nations agreed to reduce the number of operationally deployed warheads to less than 2,200 each (see GSN, May 24, 2002).

The treaty includes no verification measures of its own and its stockpile limits would expire on Jan. 1, 2013 (see GSN, July 24, 2003; and GSN, May 30, 2002).

Details about the management of nuclear weapons and a precise accounting of the stockpile are cloaked in secrecy, leaving it largely unclear to outsiders why the reductions have been made so swiftly to date and exactly how many weapons are left.

In December 2006, the State Department issued an arms control declaration showing the United States had approximately 3,700 deployed warheads.  The figure indicated to some independent experts that reductions were proceeding at a pace “several hundred warheads faster than the plan entailed,” Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists said last week.

This year constituted the chronological midpoint in the reductions plan — five years after the treaty was signed in the Russian capital and five years to go before stockpile objectives must be met, Cartwright noted. 

The current tempo for reductions might dovetail well with Bush administration plans for introducing a new weapon — the Reliable Replacement Warhead — into the force, Cartwright said.  The concept calls for a new warhead that is safer, more maintainable and more affordable than the aging weapons in today’s stockpile, potentially allowing for an even smaller nuclear arsenal.

Its top-level advocates have said the new warhead would prompt further reductions in the U.S. nuclear force.  The thinking is that with greater confidence in the stockpile, it would be possible to eliminate a number of warheads currently maintained as a hedge against the potential discovery of defects or malfunctions (see GSN, July 25).

“Over time, RRW will enable the United States to transition to a smaller, more responsive nuclear infrastructure that will enable future administrations to adjust the U.S. nuclear stockpile as geo-political conditions warrant,” according to a four-page policy statement issued in July by the secretaries of energy, defense and state. 

Completing the arms reductions faster and building a smaller force of new warheads also might allow the Energy Department to spend more of its resources on dismantling thousands of additional warheads in storage, Cartwright said.

“If we can reduce the number of weapons [the Energy Department must] produce and deliver, that frees up resources — both people and dollars — to then do dismantlement of weapons that are in their stockpile, beyond just the ones that are operationally deployed,” he said.

First, though, U.S. leaders must weigh “the risk-benefit trade and the timing” of forthcoming reductions, the general said.  Defense officials are aiming “not to get too out of sync here” relative to other significant nuclear powers, he said.  Overly swift U.S. reductions might lead a potential nuclear-armed adversary to “erroneously or otherwise believe that they have some advantage,” he said.

Asked which possible adversaries he had in mind, the career naval aviator noted that while Russia remains the only nuclear power on a comparable level with the United States, defense leaders also must account for the “aspirations” of China, North Korea and Iran.

That said, “certainly the perception is that if our relationship with Russia is moving on a positive vector and the trend is downward in stockpiles, we could both probably be more aggressive [about reductions] and still remain comfortable,” Cartwright said.

Last week, U.S. Strategic Command was unable to provide cost figures documenting how much might be saved if the current rate of reductions is maintained, compared to extending the process through 2012.

Independent experts said maintaining a faster pace at this point could not be expected to offer the government much of a financial windfall. 

“Probably the savings aren’t particularly great,” Steven Kosiak, vice president for budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told GSN last week. 

“What costs really is [operating and maintaining] the [delivery] systems, not the warheads,” said Kristensen, who directs the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project. 

The Bush administration did not specify how it would make the reductions from the roughly 6,000 deployed warheads it had when the president signed the Moscow Treaty.  However, some force structure changes the Defense Department is carrying out might account for at least some of the reductions, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

For example, the Pentagon has retired its 50 Peacekeeper ICBMs (see GSN, Sept. 20, 2005); plans to convert four Trident submarines to carry only conventional weapons (see related GSN story, today); and has begun to decommission 400 Advanced Cruise Missiles carried by strategic bombers (see GSN, Oct. 25).

Once the treaty is implemented, the United States might be left with a nuclear force of 450 to 600 warheads on ICBMs; slightly more than 1,000 on Trident D-5 submarine-launched missiles; 300 to 550 on B-52H bombers; and 200 to 350 on B-2 bombers, according to the May 2007 congressional report.

Some pundits have argued that important decisions about downsizing should await a fundamental reassessment of the U.S. nuclear posture, in light of current and future threats.

“A lot of the attention to reductions seems to be conducted in kind of a vacuum,” David Trachtenberg, a former Bush administration policy official at the Pentagon, said in an interview last week.  “I don’t think anyone has done any kind of robust analysis on the effect an increased pace of reductions has on reassuring allies or deterring adversaries.”

Trachtenberg noted the Bush administration has developed the concept of a “new triad” — comprising nuclear and conventional offenses, missile defenses and a responsive military infrastructure — only since conducting the last Nuclear Posture Review in 2002.  A new review should be carried out that identifies the best mix of nuclear weapons, given the growing roles of strategic conventional weapons, missile shields and adaptive targeting plans, he suggested.

Citing a similar interest in a broad reassessment that takes such changes into account, all four key congressional defense committees this year directed the creation of a bipartisan panel to carry out a new review in the coming year on the role of U.S. nuclear weapons (see GSN, June 29).

Kristensen applauded the idea of an end-to-end analysis, which he believes should make clear the current arsenal is excessive in size and capability for the threats facing the United States today and into the future.

“One has to be careful not to fall back into these ‘deterrence’ slogans,” he said.  “We have to look carefully at what [are] the actual functions of the weapons.  What are the actual scenarios in which we would have to use these weapons?”

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