Global Security Newswire

Failure to ratify the successor pact to the expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty would endanger U.S. security by preventing future monitoring of Russia's nuclear arsenal, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 9).

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April signed the "New START" agreement, which would obligate both nations to cap their fielded strategic nuclear weapons at 1,550 warheads, down from the maximum of 2,200 allowed each country by 2012 under the 2002 Moscow Treaty. The deal would also limit U.S. and Russian deployed nuclear delivery vehicles to 700, with another 100 platforms allowed in reserve. The pact has been submitted for ratification by Russia's legislature as well as the Senate.

At least eight GOP senators in this Congress must vote in favor of the treaty to achieve its ratification in the United States. Clinton expressed optimism that Republicans would ultimately endorse the pact.

"Once the New START treaty is ratified and enters into force, it will advance our national security and provide stability and predictability between the world's two leading nuclear powers," she said in a statement.

Provisions enabling the former Cold War rivals to verify each other's compliance with the pact are "a critical point," she said. Such measures were suspended when the 1991 treaty expired at the end of 2009.

"Opposing ratification means opposing the inspections that provide us a vital window into Russia's arsenal," according to Clinton.

"As time passes, uncertainty will increase. With uncertainty comes unpredictability, which when you're dealing with nuclear weapons is absolutely a problem that must be addressed," she said (Andrew Quinn, Reuters, Aug. 11).

"This treaty is too important and it will merit the most thoughtful and substantive response from members of the Senate. It should not be in any way caught up in election year politics," ITAR-Tass quoted Clinton as saying.

"When I look back at the ... enormous bipartisan commitment to continue arms reduction as a policy that is embraced by both sides of the aisle, I believe that the vast majority of senators will judge this treaty on the merits," she said.

Last week's decision by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) to delay his panel's vote on the treaty until September was "a gesture of good faith," Clinton added (see GSN, Aug. 4).

“The chairman’s decision to give members of both sides of the aisle additional time to review the underlying materials, but set a committee vote for the middle of September, is a gesture of good faith and underscores the tradition of bipartisan support,” she said.

“But when the Senate returns, they must act, because our national security is at risk," she said

(ITAR-Tass, Aug. 11).

Clinton noted the Obama administration's intention to allocate $80 billion over 10 years to update and upgrade the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, Reuters reported. Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) has sought as much as $10 billion more in arsenal modernization investments (see GSN, July 23; Quinn, Reuters).

Numerous GOP senators have criticized elements of the new pact they overlooked in considering the 2002 Moscow Treaty, which received overwhelming support from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Kyl and other Republican senators have pressed the Obama administration to release New START's negotiating record to ensure there were no secret agreements and to clarify relationships drawn between strategic offensive weapons and missile defenses. However, Republicans made no similar demand to determine what weapons under the Moscow Treaty are considered "operationally deployed," even though the pact only covers armaments in such a configuration.

Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) in June stressed the importance of feeling "confident that [New START] is verifiable." The lawmaker supported ratification of the Moscow Treaty, even though then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged -- at a hearing McCain did not attend -- the pact's lack of monitoring measures.

"One reason we saw no need for including detailed verification measures in the treaty" was "there simply isn't any way on earth to verify what Russia is doing with all those warheads," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2002.

Republicans have expressed concern that Washington would prove unwilling to maintain the elevated spending level for nuclear weapons modernization in future budget cycles. However, key GOP senators failed in 2002 to press the Bush administration on plans for securing nuclear weapons funding for the following five years, the Post reported. An administration official's hint at a gap in the nation's ability to produce plutonium warhead cores prompted little protest from participants in one hearing.

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and his Republican colleagues in July called for the Foreign Relations Committee to hear additional testimony from critics of New START, as only two of 25 witnesses in 12 sessions had expressed reservations about the pact.

Inhofe and other GOP senators expressed no desire in 2002 to go beyond the six hearings held on the Moscow Treaty. In the last of two Armed Services Committee hearings held on the pact, Inhofe said he would "be very quick" in his questioning because "we have had so many of these hearings, I have run out of questions" (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Aug. 10).

Meanwhile,there appears to be little chance Congress would reject a pending U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, May 26).

Obama in May submitted the "123" deal that would allow for U.S.-Russian trade in nuclear technology and for companies in the two nations to conduct collaborative atomic activities. The proposal originated with the Bush administration but was withdrawn from congressional consideration in 2008 as part of the diplomatic fallout from Russia's invasion of Georgia (see related GSN story, today).

Only a handful of U.S. legislators to date have expressed opposition to the pact; a House rejection resolution has made only marginal gains.

Some lawmakers referred to Russia's nuclear assistance to Iran as grounds for opposing the agreement, but that argument ebbed after Moscow backed a fourth U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution against Tehran in June.

Congress has 90 days of continuous legislative session to block the pact or to do nothing and allow it to go into effect, making passage of the pact likely in October, according to AP (Desmond Butler, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Aug. 12).