WASHINGTON -- A think-tank report issued last week warns the Obama administration against rushing into reductions to the U.S. nuclear deterrent in a follow-on agreement with Russia to a major arms control treaty (see GSN, July 1).
(Jul. 6) -
A think tank last week cautioned the Obama administration against agreeing to limit numbers of nuclear-weapon delivery systems like the U.S. Minuteman 3 ICBM, shown lifting off in 2007 (U.S. Air Force photo).
The report, U.S. Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st century: Getting it Right, was issued Wednesday by the New Deterrent Working Group, a panel of experts sponsored by the conservative Center for Security Policy.
"What this report asks the administration to do ... is 'Don't get caught up in a moment; don't go for arms control for arms control sake. Think about not only the world today, but of the world tomorrow,'" Paula DeSutter, a working group member who served in the State Department during the Bush administration, said at the document's roll-out event at the National Press Club.
The report appears to have fallen on deaf ears as U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev today in Moscow signed a statement pledging to reduce their nuclear arsenals in a follow-on agreement to the landmark 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which is set to expire in December (see related GSN story, today).
The agreement provides for the reduction of deployed warheads over seven years to between 1,500 and 1,675 and would trim launch vehicles from 1,600 to a range of 500 to 1,100, Voice of America reported.
Reducing the global count of nuclear warheads was part of a broad nonproliferation agenda Obama laid out in an April 5 speech in Prague.
A 2002 pact mandates the countries cut their numbers of deployed strategic warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200. The United States has a nondeployed reserve stockpile of roughly 2,000 strategic warheads, in addition to 2,200 operationally deployed weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Meanwhile, most of Russia's estimated 2,790 strategic warheads are believed to be operationally deployed, however the number of reserve warheads is unknown.
The new report presents more than a dozen recommendations for the START negotiations. It urges the administration to hold off on a START successor until the Nuclear Posture Review, which will establish policies and strategies for the U.S. nuclear deterrent over the next five to 10 years, has been completed and assessed by Congress.
In addition, no follow-on treaty "should be contemplated that would involve reductions that could impinge upon, let alone preclude, the continued operational deployment of the currently sized Triad of American strategic forces," which encompasses strategic bombers, land-based launchers and submarines, the document says.
The group also argued it would be "ill-advised" to consider cuts below 1,700 warheads because of the "immense advantage the Kremlin enjoys in nonstrategic weapons and the threat they pose to the former Soviet republics and American allies on Russia's littoral." A reduction to that level would represent a 23 percent decrease from the 2002 agreement limit of 2,200, the report states.
The United States must maintain an extended nuclear deterrent because the nation's allies "count on the nuclear umbrella," James Lyons, former commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said at last week's event. He did not say what he considers to be an extended deterrent.
"If that nuclear umbrella was not there, Japan would be nuclear," given the threat posed by its nuclear-armed antagonist North Korea, Lyons said. South Korea and Taiwan also might seek to develop nuclear warheads if they lost confidence in U.S. protection, he added.
Lyons also called on the United States to develop a new warhead in order to bolster the reliability of its nuclear stockpile.
Members of the groups questioned the president's goal of a world without nuclear weapons.
"The administration is rushing to take major, unexplored, high-risk actions" to achieve that goal, Robert Monroe, a former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency, said without elaborating. "It's one thing to have a visionary goal ... but it's quite another to take drastic actions to reach that visionary goal; actions which may well make today's problem's far worse and expose us to much higher risks."
Monroe also decried the state of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous branch to the Energy Department that maintains the country's nuclear stockpile. The agency has not conducted any research and development on a new warhead nor has it conducted a nuclear explosion test of any weapons "new or old," he asserted.
The United States has not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty but maintains a voluntary suspension of atomic test blasts.
The last effort to replace portions of the U.S. nuclear-weapon stockpile was the controversial Reliable Replacement Warhead (see GSN, May 11).
The country's "nuclear freeze" has convinced young scientists that the nuclear weapons profession "is not valued much by our society," leading to a loss in the skills of the nuclear work force, Lyons said.
"Today you can count on one hand, and not use most of your fingers, the number of nuclear weapons designers we have in our labs that have ever designed and tested a nuclear weapon," Monroe said.
A NNSA spokesman said last week that "we welcome constructive insight on the future strategic posture of the United States, including for example the recommendations put forth by the Perry-Schlesinger commission."
That panel, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, examined, among other things, the country's long-term nuclear posture. Its final report, which made more than 100 policy recommendations, was delivered to lawmakers in May (see GSN, May 7).
"As plans for implementing the president's agenda come together and the Nuclear Posture Review is completed, we look forward to taking the steps required to turn a Cold War nuclear weapons complex into a 21st century nuclear security enterprise," NNSA spokesman Damien LaVera stated by e-mail.