Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON -- A new arms control treaty between the United States and Russia appears nearly within reach, despite continued tensions over verification provisions, a senior U.S. official said this morning (see GSN, Jan. 7).

Though Washington and Moscow had initially hoped to achieve a new agreement by Dec. 5 -- when the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expired -- that deadline passed and the diplomatic effort continued. Negotiators will meet in Moscow this week and begin another formal round of talks in Geneva on Jan. 25.

With the dialogue taking place in secret bilateral meetings, outside observers have begun some amount of hand-wringing over the possibility that the talks have gotten off track or that an agreement might prove elusive.

Despite the delays, progress in the discussions has brought the two sides to a "sweet spot," making it seem feasible that U.S. President Barack Obama's schedule for nuclear-related achievements can be met, said Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

The White House plan has been to complete the so-called "New START" agreement prior to a monthlong international review conference on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which begins May 3 in New York. U.S. officials have said that significant progress in further reducing the former Cold War rivals' large nuclear arsenals through arms control could help build global support for curbing the proliferation of atomic arms worldwide.

Next up on the White House agenda after the NPT review conference has been to submit the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification, a process that the Obama team hopes could be completed before the November 2010 congressional election season ramps up.

Speaking with reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast, Tauscher stopped short of promising that a New START agreement could be signed and ratified by May. However, she said that she anticipates the two negotiating teams will soon submit to their respective political leaders a final treaty for possible approval.

"Our assumption always has been that we were going to do the best we can to get the best deal that we could get," said Tauscher, referring to the START successor accord. "And then [we would] make a decision on whether that was going to meet the test of the president's ambitions for the agenda and for ratification. And we think we're in a sweet spot right there. So we think that we're OK going forward."

Asked if Senate ratification of a START successor pact might be expected before May, Tauscher said, "I'm confident that we're doing everything we can to achieve the president's agenda, and the president has said that's what he wants."

Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced in July that under the forthcoming treaty each nation would reduce its deployed strategic nuclear arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads, down from a 2,200-weapon limit the states are to meet by 2013 under another pact. The two presidents also agreed to limit strategic delivery vehicles on each side to between 500 and 1,100.

Tauscher confirmed reports that the deal is essentially complete but that some challenging treaty-verification issues remain unresolved.

"When do you declare yourself done?" she said. "We could actually say we are done with negotiating, but we have all these other things to do," said Tauscher, noting that complex details in the body of the treaty, technical annexes and protocols are not yet final.

"There's going to be a lag time between the time we say we're done and the time that it actually gets up to the Senate," Tauscher added. "I couldn't say that [we're done] now."

The State Department official, a former Democratic lawmaker from California, noted that disagreements over how the two sides will verify terms of the New START agreement continue to stand in the way of sealing the pact.

Specifically, Tauscher acknowledged, Moscow to date has not accepted a U.S. proposal for exchanging technical data on offensive-missile tests. Sharing such "telemetry" under the recently expired START accord has boosted confidence on both sides that they understand the capabilities of the other nation's nuclear-armed weapons, she said.

"Expectations have always been that telemetry -- which ... certainly is very valuable to the Pentagon and very valuable to the Russian [Defense Ministry] -- that these things are part of confidence-building and they are part of the ability to reassure that there is no break-out, that there is not going to be some kind of surprise," she said.

However, while negotiations over this particular verification provision were left for last, telemetry is not necessarily more important than other points of disagreement that have already been resolved, according to Tauscher.

"I wouldn't say that because it's one of the last things to be done, that it was a big issue or that it is the most important thing," she told reporters. "So don't get caught up in the timing of this."

Tauscher also played down international concerns that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and some of his political allies in Moscow appear to be taking a harder line toward the negotiations. Last month, for example, the former Russian president warned that Washington must be more forthcoming about its missile defense plans or the new arms-reduction pact could be imperiled (see GSN, Jan. 4).

"There are no monoliths in foreign policy," Tauscher said. "Not everyone is on the same page at the same moment and perhaps saying the same thing."

Overall, the "tenor and performance" of Russian actions since Obama initiated a "reset" in the Washington-Moscow relationship "have been very consistent," she said. "I think that we have a much-improved relationship. We have many channels open."

Critics have said the Obama administration -- eager to begin implementing the president's sweeping vision, laid out in Prague last April, for reducing the global role of nuclear weapons -- put itself at a disadvantage in the negotiations by wanting a treaty more badly than Moscow does.

Rather, the White House might need a less-ambitious alternative to its arms control and nonproliferation agenda that does not hinge entirely on first attaining a START replacement deal, asserted one observer.

"Unfortunately, you can't negotiate successfully with the Russians or anyone else unless you are willing to walk away from the table," nuclear nonproliferation expert Henry Sokolski said this week. "In this case, you must have a more modest back-up plan that you can work, something more incremental, a Plan B."

However, Tauscher rejected the idea that a willingness to abandon the negotiations in the face of Russian intransigence would strengthen the U.S. hand.

"Some of the least-satisfying deals I've ever done were the deals where I was constantly getting up and walking out," she said, alluding to her early career as a Wall Street broker and her subsequent experience in Congress. "The key to doing START is, of course, the negotiation itself. It puts us in a better place on arms control [and] on the bilateral relationship. It sends a message of the proof of the president's Prague speech."

Moreover, "the measure of all deals is whether you want to do the next deal," Tauscher said. "And so what we're doing consciously -- and this is part of the reset -- is to use the START negotiation as a preamble to the future and the opportunity to continue to work together."

From that perspective, walking away from the talks would not advance U.S. interests, she said.

"We don't pitch a fit every two days and walk out, or say that we're going to walk out. That's not what we're doing," Tauscher said. "We're trying to get a good deal, but you can never get a good deal for yourself and have somebody across the table that thinks that they didn't get a good deal, and then think that you're going to do another deal."

Sokolski, who heads the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said the lack of a contingency plan -- usable in case it becomes impossible to reach a New START agreement that suits U.S. interests -- might put Obama's other nonproliferation objectives in jeopardy.

"That the administration lacks such a plan and instead has publicly placed nearly all its chips on reaching major agreements with Russia and getting the CTBT ratified by the Senate is a worry," he told Global Security Newswire.