Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- Proponents of a plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons proposed yesterday that Russia and the United States agree to an interim step in which they each cut their arsenals to 1,000 strategic warheads by 2018 (see GSN, June 29).

The "Global Zero" international advocacy group recommended that the two leading nuclear powers negotiate such an accord after agreeing on a replacement pact for the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, expected by the end of this year.

Under the terms of the 2002 Moscow Treaty, each side anticipates deploying between 1,700 and 2,200 deployed strategic warheads by the end of 2012. Unofficial reports have indicated that U.S. and Russian negotiators might agree to reduce their respective deployed forces to a level of 1,500 weapons under a START replacement pact (see GSN, June 22).

The outlines of such an agreement are to be in place prior to a July 6-8 summit in Moscow between U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

A next step should be to reduce warhead counts to an even 1,000 on each side, according to the organization.

"The second phase we've talked about with 1,000 would include not simply deployed weapons but also those that were in stockpiles," said U.S. Ambassador Richard Burt, a former START negotiator who sits on a commission overseeing the Global Zero effort.

The United States currently maintains a nondeployed reserve stockpile of roughly 2,000 strategic warheads, in addition to its 2,200 operationally deployed weapons, according to Hans Kristensen, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' Nuclear Information Project. By contrast, the "vast majority" of Russia's estimated 2,790 strategic warheads are believed to be operationally deployed, but exactly how many might be in reserve is unknown, he said.

Even if all 1,000 strategic weapons remaining on each side under a follow-on treaty were operationally deployed, the reductions would be significant, Burt suggested.

"We are talking about a fairly substantial reduction, but one that we think is realistic and plausible," he said at a press conference yesterday. "Still, at this stage, we recognize you've got to build up confidence and trust."

The panel -- comprising nearly two dozen former defense, diplomatic and other leaders from nine nations -- met Sunday and yesterday in Washington.

The former senior officials have set 2030 as an objective date by which nuclear weapons around the globe should be eliminated. Between now and then, the group envisions four phases of reductions:

-- 2010 to 2013: The United States and Russia negotiate cuts to 1,000 warheads apiece, while preparations are made for multilateral talks;

-- 2014 to 2018: A multilateral accord for proportional reductions among all nuclear weapons nations is negotiated and ratified, and civil nuclear safeguards are strengthened;

-- 2019 to 2024: A Global Zero accord is negotiated and ratified; and

-- 2025 to 2030: All remaining nuclear warheads are eliminated.

The commissioners acknowledged that the multilateral accord could be among the greatest obstacles along the path to global disarmament. Such a pact must include Israel, which has never publicly acknowledged its nuclear arsenal, Burt noted. "It will require a lot of ... creative and sensitive diplomacy to have them participate in this process," he said.

North Korea and Iran, which have generally resisted international controls on their nuclear development programs, also could pose serious hurdles on the road to zero, the group said. However, Pyongyang has taken some steps to dismantle its nuclear weapons program and Tehran has insisted its sole interest is in peaceful nuclear power, offering a basis for optimism, said former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, a commissioner whose diplomatic posts have included the United Nations, Russia and India.

The push to strengthen safeguards would include extending inspections to uranium mining and reactors, developing an international fuel bank, and establishing international management of enrichment and reprocessing facilities, according to a Global Zero "action plan."

In the nearer term, determining how numerous Washington and Moscow's next reductions should be, following the START replacement agreement, is no easy matter, Burt said.

"On the one hand, the two big boys in this process -- Russia and the United States, in terms of their nuclear holdings -- have to be prepared to make serious reductions ... that are large enough to convince the other nuclear states to come to the negotiating table," he said. "On the other hand, you can't ask those two countries to take reductions that are too dramatic, too quickly, because that's just not going to be politically realistic."

The panel proposed the cut to 1,000 as a next step because it "would show how serious the United States and Russia were on the one hand, and on the other hand not be so low as to leave voices in either country to feel as though ... security was in jeopardy," Burt said.

The Global Zero advocate described his group's disarmament action plan as a "work in progress," an interim summary of a longer document that remains in preparation. The commission expects to hold another meeting, likely in October in Moscow, and complete work on its detailed plan in time for a Paris summit in February 2010.

Many details have yet to be worked out (see GSN, Dec. 16, 2008).

For example, Burt acknowledged that his organization has not yet thoroughly considered a potential need for additional pacts to reassure nations that their security can be maintained without nuclear weapons.

"We have not specifically examined [that]," he said. "But we do have an agenda that will address issues like that going forward."

"Before ratifying a global zero accord, nations will assess whether going to zero will serve their national interests, taking into consideration the state of various geopolitical, regional and national security issues at that time," according to the provisional action plan.

Another member of the Global Zero Commission explained the thinking.

"It is not our hope or belief that by eliminating nuclear weapons, we can eliminate clashes of national interest," Ambassador K. Shankar Bajpai, a former Indian foreign minister, said at yesterday's press conference. "There were clashes of national interest before the nuclear weapons were introduced, and no doubt until mankind changes, there will be in the future."

However, nuclear weapons involve an "added dimension of danger" for conflicts, suggesting that their elimination could enhance national security around the world, Bajpai said.