The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed optimism Saturday about U.S. and Russian progress toward replacing a key arms control treaty, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, June 25).
"It's really up to the two presidents to make the final decision and to sign it. But I am encouraged by the progress that I am aware of from the negotiations viewpoint," Adm. Michael Mullen said of a potential successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, a 1991 agreement set to expire in December.
Negotiators from Moscow and Washington have met three times to hash out a new pact, which could mandate further reductions in the nuclear arsenals of the former Cold War rivals. U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are expected to discuss the matter during their upcoming summit.
Mullen met last week with Gen. Nikolai Markarov, his Russian counterpart. They were expected to discuss a Bush administration proposal to deploy missile interceptors in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic. Moscow, which has long opposed the missile shield plan, has hinted that it would curtail its nuclear arsenal reductions if Washington moved to deploy the defenses.
"There is a review [of the missile shield proposal] going on in the U.S. right now under the auspice of President Obama's new administration. So there's no final decision which has been made," Mullen told the Russia Today television channel. "Certainly we recognize the sensitivity of the issue" (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, June 27).
Russia and the United States should agree to pursue significant nuclear arsenal cutbacks, said Arms Control Association head Daryl Kimball.
"The United States deploys about 2,200 strategic warheads -- the Russians somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000. Many of these weapons are on a high state of alert, they can be launched within minutes and it simply is a posture, a nuclear posture that's out of step with current day realities," Kimball told Voice of America.
The two governments will have to overcome certain differences to reach an agreement, another observer said.
"The differences on START have to do with what one does with warheads once they are removed -- and the storage of missiles," said David Kramer, a former State Department official who served under former President George W. Bush. "There is no debate any more about the treaty being legally binding -- there's agreement on that. But it's a question of counting, and what qualifies as a warhead, and what one does with them after: whether they should be destroyed or held in storage somewhere."
"There is some discussion back and forth about the numbers," Kramer added. "It is an issue about how low the two sides can go. Under the [2002] Moscow Treaty, the two sides could go as low as 1,700 [deployed strategic warheads]. The talk now in this post-START agreement is for something around 1,500 -- some have been pushing for a lower number."
Significant nuclear reductions, though, are ultimately more important to Russia than the United States, he added: "Their nuclear weapons infrastructure is deteriorating and they aren't able to maintain their current levels -- No. 1. No. 2, if -- and no one is advocating this -- if somehow there were a renewed arms race, Russia couldn't compete. And so Russia has every interest in lowering the levels between the two sides" (Andre de Nesnera, Voice of America, June 26).