Global Security Newswire

After missing two self-imposed deadlines for completing a successor to a Cold War-era arms control pact, the United States and Russia must consider how drawn-out negotiations could affect a May conference aimed at updating the world's nuclear nonproliferation framework, experts told Agence France-Presse yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 4).

Diplomats were unable to meet their original goal of completing the deal before its predecessor, the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, expired on Dec. 5. Negotiations also failed to produce an agreement before the end of 2009, the second deadline the governments set for resolving various areas of disagreement.

"There are not not insurmountable issues. They, however, are complex technologically," former U.S. Ambassador to Russia James Collins said, adding that the talks "have gone slower than anyone thought they should and hoped."

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced in July that they would reduce each of their countries' deployed strategic nuclear arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 weapons in the new agreement, down from the 2,200-warhead ceiling the sides must each meet by the end of 2012 under another pact.

Diplomats are expected to meet again this month in Geneva. Both nations remain optimistic that they can complete the deal early this year, Collins said, noting that "the vast bulk of the treaty is finished and is agreed."

Still, "pressure will be there to get it (the deal) done sooner rather than later because of its relationship to the nonproliferation meetings that are coming," he said, referring to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference scheduled for May.

As the START talks drag on, "it makes it harder for us to make the case that other people need to work with us to strengthen the treaty," he said.

"A failure to get a START agreement would be a very serious blow to any idea that there is a credible commitment to zero nuclear weapons," Collins added.

Miles Pomper, an expert with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said he would "be astonished" if the sides failed to reach a deal ahead of the NPT review conference. Delays in the negotiations could make countries including Brazil, Egypt and South Africa less "sympathetic" to Obama's nonproliferation agenda, he said.

Moscow, Pomper suggested, might have adopted "brinkmanship" tactics in the talks in an effort to win more U.S. concessions. Russia's nuclear arsenal is aging, though, making an arms reduction agreement necessary for the former superpower to maintain strategic parity with the United States, he said.

Even once the sides sign the deal, conservative U.S. lawmakers could resist its ratification, said Paul Saunders, who heads the Nixon Center in Washington. Support from two-thirds of the Senate would be necessary for the deal to be ratified (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Jan. 6).

The sides have continued to disagree over limits on deployed warheads and strategic delivery vehicles under the new treaty, Time magazine reported.

As the United States maintains more delivery vehicles than Russia, Moscow has expressed concern that a high ceiling on such systems could allow the U.S. military to quickly load excess weapons onto missiles and bombers for a devastating attack on Russia's nuclear assets.

"This is a very important issue and one, I suspect, that has been the biggest cause of delays. We don't want Russian war planners deciding to put as many warheads as possible on their delivery vehicles -- that is not a crisis-stable situation. It provides an incentive to launch first," said Hans Kristensen, an analyst with the Federation of American Scientists.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's call last month for the United States to share more details on its missile defense systems suggests Moscow will eventually force missile defenses to be addressed in future arms reduction discussions, said Steve Andreasen, a former top arms control official on for the U.S. National Security Council (Eben Harrell, Time, Jan. 7).