Global Security Newswire

The presidents of the United States and Russia today signed a new nuclear arms control treaty that, if ratified, would slash their respective nuclear-weapon deployments and re-establish each nation's right to monitor strategic nuclear armaments held by the other power, the Wall Street Journal reported (see GSN, April 7).

Moscow and Washington would be required under the deal to both lower their respective strategic arsenals to 1,550 deployed warheads and to cap their fielded nuclear delivery vehicles -- missiles, submarines and bombers -- at 700, with another 100 allowed in reserve. Under a 2002 agreement, the two nations had been required by 2012 to cut their deployed arsenals to no more than 2,200 weapons each.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev inked the agreement in Prague, slightly more than one year after Obama delivered a speech in the Czech capital calling for "a world without nuclear weapons" (see GSN, April 6, 2009).

The new treaty, intended to replace the expired 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, "is just one step on a longer journey," Obama said following the signing. "As I said last year in Prague, this treaty will set the stage for further cuts. And going forward, we hope to pursue discussions with Russia on reducing both our strategic and tactical weapons, including nondeployed weapons."

"This agreement was not meant to be a decisive breakthrough to a world without nuclear weapons," one high-level Obama administration official added, instead describing the deal as a "bridging agreement" aimed at creating a new nuclear arms monitoring framework and improving ties between Washington and Moscow.

"I don't want to oversell it, but a long journey begins with a first step," Andrew Kuchins, a Russia specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the deal.

Moscow, though, has said it would reserve the right to stop participating in the agreement if it judged U.S. future U.S. missile defense deployments to jeopardize its strategic security (Jonathan Weisman, Wall Street Journal, April 8).

U.S. National Security Council adviser Brian McKeon played down the significance of the missile defense tensions in a White House blog post published today.

"Most treaties have a simple withdrawal clause, allowing a country to exit the particular treaty for any reason or no reason," McKeon wrote. "The withdrawal clause in the New START Treaty has a higher bar; it gives a party the right to withdraw if it decides that 'extraordinary events' related to the treaty have 'jeopardized its supreme interests,'" the Los Angeles Times quoted him as stating.

"The Russian statement does no more than give the United States fair notice that it may decide to pull out of the New START Treaty if Russia believes our missile defense system affects strategic stability," the official wrote (Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times, April 8).

Despite the Obama administration's interest in pursuing additional arms control accords, neither Washington nor Moscow seems fully prepared to implement more ambitious arsenal reductions, said George Perkovich, a nuclear analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Reducing deployed strategic weapons to 1,000 or fewer, for example, would require the countries to alter their targeting plans and their land-, sea-, or air-based delivery vehicles, according to the Journal (see related GSN story, today).

In addition, Russia could demand that U.S. negotiators accept binding missile defense limitations before they agreed to further arsenal reductions. The United States would want to put Russia's tactical nuclear weapons on the agenda, while Moscow would look for cuts in Washington's large number of stored but usable warheads (Weisman, Wall Street Journal).

Backers of the treaty appeared to believe it would receive the 67 U.S. Senate votes necessary for ratification, Reuters reported.

"I'm pretty confident that if we can get this treaty to a final vote, not only will the treaty pass, but it will pass with a very large majority," said John Isaacs, head of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.

The agreement has prompted little negative feedback to date among U.S. lawmakers, who have generally endorsed the pact's nuclear weapons monitoring system despite verification terms they considered imperfect. A significant number of Republican and Democratic legislators have also expressed support for the nuclear arsenal cutbacks mandated by the agreement.

Some experts, though, suggested Republicans could object to the treaty in retaliation to other Obama administration policies on missile defense or maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The recent defeat that U.S. conservatives suffered over health care reform could also help fuel opposition to the pending nuclear pact, according to Reuters.

If the treaty becomes bogged down in the Senate, ""it's because the debate becomes broader, rather than just the narrow debate about the provisions of the treaty," said American Enterprise Institute defense expert Tom Donnelly.

Senate critics might argue that Moscow could use the pact in the future to pressure Washington into making missile defense concessions, former State Department arms control chief Stephen Rademaker said.

"Is there an intention on both sides to live with this treaty, or are the Russians essentially coming to this wedding declaring that they want to get married but they don't intend to live in holy matrimony?" he said.

Former U.S. Ambassador Linton Brooks made less of Russia's warnings on future U.S. missile defense deployments. "It would be tragic if we allowed Russian statements made for domestic purposes to derail [the treaty]," he said (Susan Cornwell, Reuters, April 7).

Russian critics of the treaty have questioned whether Moscow gave up too much in the pact, noting its nonbinding missile defense language as well as terms that would permit the United States to quickly redeploy reserve nuclear warheads, the Washington Post reported. Some analysts have even suggested that nuclear disarmament has not been to Russia's benefit, noting the significant advantage that U.S. non-nuclear forces wield over Russia's conventional defenses.

"The departing point or assumption of the critics is that the previous treaty was detrimental to Russian security, and the new treaty, which contains more concessions of Russia to the United States, will be still more detrimental," said Alexei Arbatov, an arms control specialist at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

One point of Russian concern is that the treaty would count deployed warheads individually, rather than by the maximum number a particular delivery vehicle could accommodate. That means missiles could remain ready for launch after having some but not all warheads removed.

"The good news is that your stockpile will be reduced, but the bad news is that you will have more warheads that could be redeployed in six to 12 months," said Sergei Rogov, head of the Moscow-based Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies.

Negotiators would open "a can of worms" if they tried to achieve U.S.-Russian nuclear parity in future talks on nonstrategic nuclear weapons, said Stanford University nuclear expert Pavel Podvig. Russia is believed to hold roughly 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons, four times as many as the United States.

If the new pact improves ties between the countries, though, they might be able to address battlefield nuclear weapons as a safety problem rather than a military issue, he said.

"You have to approach it as securing something that is dangerous and useless," the analyst said.

Although Russian military officials could resist additional nuclear arsenal reductions, economic limitations could prompt Kremlin leaders to place a higher priority on funding for conventional weapons, defense specialist Alexander Golts said.

"Military people who are professional know that, with or without this treaty, Russia has to reduce its arsenal," Golts said. "All these conservatives talking about the treaty not being good for Russia, it's just militaristic rhetoric. It has nothing to do with reality" (Philip Pan, Washington Post, April 8).