By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — With a high-profile nuclear arms pact announced this week, a senior Bush administration official has declared an end to negotiations on U.S.-Russian Cold War-style nuclear arms control agreements, putting the administration at odds with Russian officials who want them to continue (see GSN, May 14).
“What this treaty represents may well be the last arms control treaty between Russia and the United States. And if it were, that’d be a big step forward,” said a senior administration official, who explained the administration’s approach to Russia while briefing reporters in Moscow Tuesday.
The official said the two countries have “finished on strategic offensive weapons” and now can “move on” to focus discussions on the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The United States is particularly concerned about Russian compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention, he said.
The objectives of the proposed treaty, however, apparently fall well short of what Russia sought, leaving it interested in further strategic arms negotiations.
Unlike previous strategic arms treaties, this agreement would require neither party to destroy any nuclear warheads or delivery systems, U.S. officials have said. Instead, it would require that warheads be removed from the “operationally deployed” force and leave it to each country to decide for itself what to do with the removed warheads.
During the six-month negotiations, Russian officials publicly said they were seeking a binding agreement that would be verifiable and “irreversible,” which has been taken to mean that warheads would be destroyed so they could not readily be returned the operational force at a later date. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov warned that reversible changes could result in another arms race (see GSN, March 12).
Russian reaction to the latest agreement has been tepid, with Ivanov indicating Moscow wants to continue negotiations on issues that were the subject of negotiations but did not make it into the final accord.
“This treaty provides for the establishment of a working group on the implementation of this treaty. Simultaneously, we will continue — we are conducting negotiations, and we will continue conducting negotiations – on other issues in other areas. The conclusion of this treaty does not mean that negotiations stop here,” Ivanov told a press briefing yesterday.
Criticism and Support
The U.S. official’s comments have drawn sharp criticism and some praise from Russian foreign policy and arms control experts.
“One cannot declare the Cold War over as long as both sides have thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons,” said Thomas Graham, a former senior U.S. diplomat who was involved in negotiating every major international arms control and nonproliferation agreement of the past 30 years, and who now heads the Lawyers Alliance for World Security.
Under the terms of the new deal, he said, the United States could be expected to have — in addition to the treaty-limited, operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons — thousands more in reserve and in the inactive stockpile, and 1,000 tactical nuclear weapons.
“As long as we have thousands, there’s no way to say that we’re not in fact targeting Russia, and that’s what the Cold War was all about. We don’t need thousands to target anybody else,” said Graham.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock, on the other hand, thinks the official’s statements reflect a good idea.
“In the sense that you have to trade off in the Cold War fashion and look at these things in almost a zero-sum game, in that sense I think it is the end of arms control and it should be,” said Matlock. “The idea that you can only reduce through a bilateral agreement implies that the two sides are enemies and they’ve got to regulate it that way.”
Matlock does not think it should be the end of treaties on armaments, and favors, perhaps, a treaty on missile defense. Matlock also says he favors much deeper reductions in strategic nuclear arms.
He contends, however, that pursing lengthy, traditional arms control agreements can slow the arms reduction process.
“A real opportunity was lost in the mid-1990s by not simply leapfrogging START II when it got stuck in the Duma and going to these lower levels,” he said.
Graham, however, charges the administration has avoided pursuing traditional arms control agreements not to speed up reductions, but to avoid them.
“The reason that at least this particular official wants to declare the process dead,” said Graham, “is because he’s not interested in nuclear arms control, he just wants to say, ‘OK, we’ve come this far, and that’s as far as we’re going to go,’ which isn’t that far.”
The administration’s policy, as described in its January Nuclear Posture Review, not only suggests the administration does not want to make major nuclear reductions, Graham said, but “strongly suggests that [nuclear weapons] should have an expanded role … and there are even hints that maybe we should have new types of nuclear weapons, which would require nuclear testing” (see GSN, March 14).
A Nontraditional Agreement
With the negotiated agreement, the United States is seeking to avoid a traditional arms control agreement.
“Don’t think of this as a Cold War arms control treaty, because it’s not,” said the senior U.S. official at the briefing.
The proposed treaty would defy the traditional detail on requirements and verification mechanisms, totaling only 3 1/2 pages, according to U.S. officials, as opposed to the hundreds of pages in agreements such as the 700-page START I agreement.
U.S. officials hope to avoid naming the treaty with an acronym, as with previous arms treaties.
“We’re not going to have an acronym. No SALT, no START, no INF. We’re looking for something else,” the U.S. official said.
Some New Thinking on Russia
Some U.S. officials say the administration approach to the agreement, set for signature next week, reflects a new approach to U.S. relations with Russia.
“It’s a different kind of treaty because we live in a different geostrategic environment and we have a different kind of relations with the Russians,” said the senior U.S. official.
President George W. Bush, announcing the proposed treaty Monday, spoke of a new era in U.S.-Russian relations.
“When I sign the treaty with President [Vladimir] Putin in Russia, it will begin the new era of U.S.-Russian relationships. And that's important. The new era will be a period of enhanced mutual security, economic security and improved relations.”
NATO ministers reportedly reached agreement Tuesday in Reykjavik, Iceland, to create a new NATO-Russia Council that will permit Russia to sit with alliance members to formulate joint policy on terrorism and other shared threats and security issues (see GSN, May 15).
Secretary of State Colin Powell was more cautious at the NATO summit Tuesday about the prospect of a major change in U.S.-Russian relations. Regarding the proposed council, Powell called it only “a step forward in bringing Russia closer to the West, and the West closer to Russia.”
In October, 142 Republican and Democratic members of Congress, including many senior members, signed on to proposals prepared by Representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and delivered to President Bush, calling for a new approach to U.S.-Russian relations that moves away from a focus on bilateral nuclear arms control toward engagement on a wide range of areas, from defense to health care, to law and the arts.
“I want to change the basic nature of our relationship,” Weldon said Tuesday on a panel to discuss the new arms pact. “There’s always going to be a problem when our two presidents get together and their focus is only on just arms control agreements, or just the ABM Treaty, or just those issues that have particularly in the history of our relationship have divided us.”
Yet Weldon, a senior House Armed Service Committee member, also declared a need for new negotiations with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons, saying Russia is believed to have more than 12,000 and that they pose a proliferation risk (see GSN, May 14).
U.S. officials have said they do not intend to pursue an agreement on tactical nuclear weapons (see related GSN story, today).
U.S. Has Rejected Traditional Arms Control
John Holum, a former undersecretary of state for arms control and international security and former director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during the Clinton administration, believes the Bush administration does not favor traditional arms control.
“What the official is saying is reflective of the overall context … that the administration doesn’t like formal arms control, whether it’s multilateral or bilateral, and wants to get away from it,” Holum said.
“It’s an overall policy view, rather than the difficulty of any particular negotiation, that is leading to an end to further work.”
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Bush administration officials are saying they will not seek to negotiate an agreement to address Russia’s estimated arsenal of thousands of tactical nuclear weapons, considered by some analysts to be a greater proliferation threat than strategic nuclear weapons.
A senior administration official spoke about the issue during a press briefing in Moscow Tuesday.
“As of now, we don’t feel we have to have a treaty relationship with them on that point, although it may well be a subject of discussion,” said the official.
He said Russia is believed to have a much larger tactical nuclear arsenal than the United States, “the Russians have thousands and thousands of these weapons, and we don’t.”
Bush Administration’s Approach
Another U.S. official, who spoke with Global Security Newswire, reiterated those views.
“I think the general sense is that former arms control negotiations are not the appropriate tool for addressing this issue,” the official said, citing “a host of technical and political obstacles.”
He added that pursuing a treaty on the matter would not be consistent with the administration’s general opposition to traditional arms control negotiations and treaties (see related GSN story, today).
“You’ve probably heard the new treaty to reduce strategic weapons is three pages long,” he said (see GSN, May 14).
The administration has put forward proposals to increase transparency through the NATO-Russia relationship, he said.
“And we are helping the Russians improve their safety and security of their nuclear weapons through the Nunn-Lugar CTR [Comprehensive Threat Reduction] program and we will continue to do that,” he said (see GSN, May 9).
President George W. Bush Monday announced the United States and Russia had agreed to treaty language to take several thousand strategic nuclear warheads out of active service.
New Focus on the Threat …
Experts and officials have expressed varying degrees of concern about tactical nuclear warheads in recent months.
Although tactical or “nonstrategic” nuclear weapons lack a strict definition, they generally have smaller blasts than strategic ones and are intended for battlefield use against opposing forces, rather than enemy cities or strategic forces. They can be delivered in a variety of ways, including being placed as “nuclear landmines,” dropped, missile-launched, and fired as artillery shells.
Experts say the tactical weapons can be greater proliferation threats than strategic weapons.
“They’re smaller and easier to conceal than strategic weapons, and a lot of them may have sort of rudimentary permissive action links,” or barriers to unauthorized use, said the second U.S. official.
“It’s probably somewhat less of a threat than the escape of fissile material or scientific expertise, or the deliberate transfer of nuclear technology to Iran, which is continuing,” said John Holum, former undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. The weapons also can be bulky and heavy and “not all that easy to handle,” he said.
Still, tactical nuclear weapons “because they’re small, by definition, can be a serious proliferation threat,” he said.
U.S. Representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), a senior Armed Services Committee member, Tuesday urged new negotiations on the weapons, saying Russia is believed to have more than 12,000 in its arsenal (see GSN, May 14).
Other estimates have put the number at 6,000 to 13,000, including 3,300 operationally deployed, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
… But Low U.S. Priority
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith told reporters in February the Russian tactical nuclear weapons issue “gets very little attention,” Arms Control Today reported.
In a February interview with Arms Control Today, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton said the United States was “willing to discuss tactical nukes” with Russia, but does not consider them a top priority.
“I hope if they don’t pursue that through what would generally be termed formal arms control, they would pursue it as part of their nonproliferation dialogue,” said Holum, Bolton’s predecessor.
The tactical nuclear weapons issue has been addressed before in U.S.-Russian negotiations. Russia put the issue of transparency on the table during the last year and a half of the Clinton administration amid START III and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty negotiations, Holum said.
Discussions on the matter went nowhere, he and former Clinton administration officials said.
The second senior official cited numerous reasons why the United States is opposed to a treaty.
For one, Russia has repeatedly sought a total withdrawal of U.S. nuclear warheads from Europe, saying it pulled all of its nuclear weapons back within its borders in the early 1990s.
“We would like to draw again attention to the Russian proposal that all nuclear weapons should be brought back to the territories of the nuclear states to which they belong,” Russia said in a statement to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference last month (see GSN, April 23).
“The Russian proposal calls for us to do that unilaterally, in exchange for nothing in return,” the U.S. official said. “From our perspective that’s an unacceptable proposal.”
Differing Concerns
Differing U.S. and Russian military concerns could also pose a difficulty in negotiations, according to the official.
While the United States continues to emphasize strategic nuclear weapons for its security, and drastically reduced its tactical arsenal after the Cold War, Russia appears to rely heavily upon tactical nuclear weapons for defending the homeland, and so could be opposed significant cuts, experts say.
“As Russia’s forces deteriorate, it appears there are some people in Russia who believe tactical nuclear weapons are a cost-effective way of enhancing their deterrent forces,” the official said.
Russia proposed taking steps to improve transparency at the START III talks, but even that could pose problems for the United States, according to the official.
“Some of our nonstrategic nuclear warheads are stored in Europe and there are domestic political sensitivities — countries don’t want to declare locations and numbers because they don’t want to have to defend that. That would cause an uproar among some parliaments and the press,” he said.
Some might oppose allowing Russian teams to conduct on-site inspections, he said.
There also is a question of defining tactical nuclear weapons. Some nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal can be used both tactically and strategically — delivered either by a fighter jet in Europe or by a heavy bomber from based in Missouri, said the official.
“What’s the definition of a tactical weapon? Are you basing it on the delivery vehicle, the location, or the design of the warhead? It’s not a trivial matter,” he said.
Holum believes such problems could be dealt with in negotiations.
“Any negotiation creates trade-offs and resolution of thorny issues, so I don’t think that’s a reason not to pursue it,” he said.
Verification has improved during the past decade, both in terms of what is acceptable with respect to on-site inspections and also with respect to technology, he said.
“It’s a lot easier now to verify the presence of a warhead and details about the warhead without gaining access to secret design information than in 1991 and 1992,” he said.
“So I think transparency and controls on warheads are much more feasible than they used to be and would help us get a handle on those tactical systems.”
Refraining from predicting the likelihood of nuclear conflict but declining to rule out its possibility, U.S. officials this week expressed concern that tensions in South Asia might escalate to war.
Fears of conflict grew Tuesday after attackers killed 34 people, mostly civilians, on the Indian side of the line of control in Kashmir, the territory around which much of the Indian-Pakistani conflict revolves. The attack occurred the same day U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca arrived in New Delhi.
“We will have to retaliate,” Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said after Tuesday’s attack, although he did not specify what action India would take. Pakistan said it is ready to repel any attack.
Both countries toned down their rhetoric by Wednesday, but U.S. officials, including Rocca, have repeatedly expressed concern since Tuesday’s attack that the risk of war has increased.
“The sentiment in India is pretty negative after Tuesday’s attack in Kashmir,” a U.S. official said. “The Indian prime minister is facing tremendous pressure to do something, both in the Parliament and outside.”
Tuesday’s attack added to tensions that have been high for months. Gunmen attacked the Indian Parliament on Dec. 13, and India said Pakistan backed the attackers, which Pakistan denied. Both countries mobilized troops and, according to some reports, may have deployed nuclear-capable missiles along the border — creating increased concern in Western countries that the two nuclear-armed countries might go to war (Anwar Iqbal, United Press International, May 16).
“We are very worried about the continued mobilization of two major armies facing each other in close proximity and the threat that could be posed by a spark and lead to an unintended conflict,” Rocca said. According to the Financial Times, 1 million Indian and Pakistani troops are massed along the border.
Analysts said the possibility that India will launch a limited strike (see GSN, Feb. 19) against Pakistan has increased since Tuesday’s attack (Edward Luce, Financial Times, May 16).
Asked how likely it is that India and Pakistan will fight a nuclear war, however, Rocca refused to make any predictions.
“You know that’s sort of a worst-case scenario, and it’s one that is sort speculative. We are trying to prevent any conflict. At this point I couldn’t even characterize that,” she said yesterday (U.S. State Department release, May 15).
A U.S.-Russian joint task force report says Russia’s plan to covert weapon-grade plutonium into mixed-oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel is more complex than a similar U.S. plan created under a U.S.-Russian nonproliferation agreement, Energy Daily reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 24).
The January report, created by the Joint U.S.-Russian Working Group on Cost Analysis and Economics in Plutonium Disposition, outlines Russia’s initial plans for its MOX program.
Under the plan, estimated to cost at least $1.7 billion, Russia would construct two plants for converting plutonium from weapons into material suitable for later processing, the report says. One plant would be a demonstration-scale facility while the second would be an industrial-scale plant built at Mayak, a site in the Southern Urals.
Russia also plans to build three MOX production plants, the report says. Two of the production plants would be small-scale facilities to create MOX fuel for the initial stages of the program. A third, industrial-scale MOX production plant — to be built in Krasnoyarsk in central Siberia — would be brought on later on in the program, the report says.
Three types of Russian nuclear reactors would use prepared MOX fuel, according to the report: a BN-600 fast reactor, a BOR-60 experimental fast reactor and four VVER-1000 reactors. The VVER-1000 is the main type of reactor used at Russian nuclear power facilities, according to Energy Daily. MOX fuel could also possibly be used later at two VVER-1000 reactors at the Kalinin nuclear power plant, the report says.
All of the Russian reactors that would use MOX fuel would have to be modified and relicensed, according to the report. New gas-cooled reactors could also be constructed, but at high cost, the report says.
The Russian MOX plan examines storage of spent MOX fuel to be conducted in two stages — short-term “wet” storage at reactor sites and a long-term “dry” storage at the Krasnoyarsk facility, according to the report. The plan also examines transportation of plutonium from conversion to production sites, as well as MOX fuel shipments to reactor sites and spent fuel shipments to the long-term storage facility, the report says.
Speeding Up the Process
The report also examines Russia’s potential options for accelerating the plutonium disposal plan to four metric tons per year, up from two metric tons, Energy Daily reported.
By speeding up the initial plan, the program would be shortened by five years at a minimal cost increase, converting by 2020 all 34 metric tons of plutonium slated for disposal, the report says. The cost increases, however, would have to be paid at the start of the program, according to Energy Daily.
The accelerated scenario calls for increasing the amount of plutonium to be converted into MOX fuel at each production plant and to use MOX fuel at the start of the program at another three VVER-1000 reactors, including the two at Kalinin, the report says.
Another potential option would be shipping two metric tons of MOX fuel to non-Russian nuclear reactors and using two metric tons in Russian reactors, according to the report. In order to do so, Russia would have to produce MOX fuel that could be used in pressurized water and boiling water nuclear reactors used by other countries, in addition to fuel that could be used by Russian reactors, according to the report. The export scenario fuel is estimated to cost more than $2 billion over the initial plan but would reduce the end date for the program to 2019, the report says (George Lobsenz, Energy Daily, May 15).
U.S. Representative Mark Udall (D-Colo.) yesterday introduced House legislation to fine the Energy Department $1 million per day if it does not remove all plutonium from the Rocky Flats former nuclear weapons plant by late next year (see GSN, May 10).
Under the legislation, if Energy does not begin shipments from Rocky Flats to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina by July 1, the department would be required to examine alternate sites for the waste. If Energy does not remove all of the plutonium by November 2003, the department would be fined $1 million per day — with a $100 million annual limit — until it does.
“No matter what happens with South Carolina, we need an insurance policy to make sure the DOE keeps its promise to Colorado to close Rocky Flats by 2006,” Udall said in a press release. “This bill focuses on protecting Colorado” (Udall release, May 15).
The legislation has been referred to the House Armed Services and Energy and Commerce committees. Senator Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) has introduced an identical bill in the Senate, where it has been referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee (Library of Congress release, May 16).
A spokeswoman for South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges, who opposes Rocky Flats plutonium shipments to Savannah River, said the Colorado legislation is not likely to succeed.
“We don’t foresee this bill going anywhere,” said Hodges’ spokeswoman Cortney Owings. “It is nothing more than another attempt to force-feed South Carolina plutonium. The people of Colorado would be better served if their elected officials pressured the federal government to be honest and keep their commitments rather than wasting time on bogus legislation” (Jon Sarche, Associated Press, May 15).
Russia signed an agreement with Myanmar yesterday on the construction of a nuclear facility that will include a low-power nuclear research reactor, the Kremlin said today (see GSN, Jan. 24).
Russia and Myanmar will cooperate to build the center, which will include a 10-megawatt reactor, two laboratories and a nuclear waste site, the Russian statement said. Russia will oversee the construction project and provide technical and material assistance and fuel for the research reactor, the statement said.
Although the United States has not explicitly opposed the project, it has called for safeguards to be installed to ensure that Myanmar cannot use the reactor for military purposes, according to Agence France-Presse (Agence France-Presse, May 16).
The Kazakh Senate today ratified an extension of a U.S.-Kazakh agreement on preventing nuclear proliferation and destroying former Soviet ballistic missile silos remaining inside Kazakhstan (see GSN, April 4).
The extension has now been sent to Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev for his signature, according to Interfax. The agreement, which the United States and Kazakhstan first signed in 1993, lasted for seven years with an option for extension. Six ICBM silos remain in southern Kazakhstan, Interfax reported (Interfax/BBC Monitoring, May 16).
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