WASHINGTON -- Arms control advocates yesterday said the U.S.-Russian presidential summit constituted a substantial first step toward a new treaty and should be followed up next year with even deeper reductions (see GSN, July 6).
(Jul. 7) -
U.S. President Barack Obama, left, speaks today with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Arms control advocates praised a preliminary outline for a nuclear arms control agreement issued by the leaders yesterday (Sergei Chirikov/Getty Images).
Morton Halperin, a senior adviser at the Open Society Institute, said U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had achieved real progress in establishing a new framework for nuclear weapon reductions.
"We now have a commitment from the two leaders to re-establish a system of legally binding agreements, applied both to numbers of deployed warheads as well as to delivery systems, and to back that up with an effective verification process and effective counting rules," he said at a panel discussion here.
Meeting in Moscow, the two presidents announced yesterday their intention to conclude an agreement to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with a new accord, under which each nation would deploy no more than 1,500 to 1,675 warheads. In addition, the United States and Russia would cap their respective strategic nuclear delivery systems between 500 and 1,100, they said.
Negotiations are to continue and could result in narrowing down the announced ranges for warheads and delivery systems to more precise figures, experts said this week.
Without a new agreement, the START ceilings of 6,000 warheads and 1,600 delivery vehicles, along with a set of agreed processes for verifying that treaty obligations are being met, would expire on Dec. 5.
"This is a very modest step, with numbers just slightly below those that the Bush administration was contemplating" as a result of the Moscow Treaty, Halperin said. Under that 2002 arms control pact, the two sides agreed less formally to deploy no more than 1,700 to 2,200 strategic warheads by the end of 2012.
Nonetheless, the new limits announced yesterday are "the right way to begin the process," said Halperin, a member of the congressionally mandated Strategic Posture Commission, which recently offered recommendations on the U.S. nuclear stance (see GSN, May 7).
The bipartisan group in May supported measures that Obama and Medvedev have just embraced, namely that "the first step should be a modest one, but that it should include legally binding limits on both delivery vehicles and warheads, and that it should be verifiable," Halperin noted. "It should then lead -- as one hopes and expects this agreement will -- to future treaties which involve much deeper and more substantial reductions in strategic forces."
The White House said the new accord would "include effective verification measures drawn from the experience of the parties in implementing START." No additional details on verification measures were released.
"This summit marks progress," agreed Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, which sponsored the event. "The negotiations between the two sides on this [START] follow-on agreement just began in April. There have only been four rounds of discussions, so we're really at the beginning phases of this."
Halperin said there is no guarantee that the two former Cold War adversaries would reach an agreement to replace the treaty by its expiration date (see related GSN story, today). "But certainly the steps today make it much more likely that we will have that agreement by the end of the year, an agreement that I would anticipate the Senate would overwhelmingly ratify," he said.
Today Russia is estimated to have roughly 2,790 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and an unknown number in reserve. By contrast, the United States maintains 2,200 deployed strategic warheads, with a comparable number kept in storage.
Russia has approximately 800 strategic delivery systems for its nuclear warheads -- including bomber aircraft and sea- and ground-based missiles -- whereas the United States has about 1,100, according to Kimball.
"The reductions that they're talking about are modest if they're going to be in the upper range" of a 1,100-delivery-vehicle cap, "but could be more substantial if they're in the lower range, around 500," he said.
As the two sides continue to hammer out the details of an agreement, they might end up adopting a solution that allows for warhead and delivery-system limits that fall within a range -- along the lines of yesterday's announcement -- rather than settling on single figures.
Such an arrangement might account for ongoing differences in the two arsenals, with Moscow's force relying mainly on a dwindling number of ICBM warheads and Washington keeping most of its arsenal aboard submarines, according to Robert Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists.
The Moscow Treaty's range in warhead limits was intended to allow each side more flexibility in how it fields and adjusts its nuclear forces. For example, the range would allow Russia to retire aging weapons below a 2,200 upper-end cap, while avoiding a potentially embarrassing dip below the pact's lower-end cap of 1,700, experts say.
"I wouldn't be surprised to see if they actually, in the end, do have a ceiling that is a range," Kimball said. "I don't think that would be the ideal approach," but it could allow either nation to be on the higher end of the range while the other is on the lower end, he said.
Such an agreement "could work, given that this is likely to be an interim arrangement that sets up a more substantial and comprehensive reduction in the next two to three years," Kimball said.
Moscow and the United States have not announced reduction figures for any subsequent agreement, though some arms control proponents are calling for cuts to 1,000 warheads on each side (see GSN, June 30).
Obama and Medvedev in April issued a joint statement committing "our two countries to achieving a nuclear free world, while recognizing that this long-term goal will require a new emphasis on arms control and conflict resolution measures." They also agreed at the time "to pursue new and verifiable reductions in our strategic offensive arsenals in a step-by-step process."
As a first step, Kimball said, "we need to move forward with this agreement, not just to send a signal to the world that the U.S. and Russia are reducing the number and the salience of nuclear weapons, but it's important to us for better U.S.-Russian relations."
However, a panel of conservative nuclear arms experts last week warned against making cuts to the U.S. arsenal until Congress has had an opportunity to assess the Obama administration's Nuclear Posture Review, which is to be completed by the end of this year (see GSN, July 6). The congressionally mandated posture review, led by the Defense Department, is expected to offer a broad analysis of U.S. nuclear forces, strategy and readiness.
Sponsored by the Center for Security Policy, the expert group on Wednesday circulated a report urging a slower and more cautious approach to changes in Washington's nuclear weapons stance.
"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 panel member who served in the State Department during the Bush administration, said at an event.
The nine-member group also argued against any treaty that would preclude "the continued operational deployment of the currently sized triad of American strategic forces." The conservative experts said the current U.S. arsenal is necessary to counter Russia's estimated 13,000 tactical nuclear weapons, and helps protect non-nuclear allies like Japan from foreign interference.
Kimball rejected this line of thinking.
"Doing nothing, as some anti-arms control ideologues would suggest, is not a realistic option," he said. "To allow the START agreement to expire in December would add to the already difficult U.S.-Russian relationship. That's in addition to ... issues relating to the possible expansion of NATO, conventional force balances in Europe, energy issues, as well as missile defense."
He advocated that the Obama administration negotiate limits on tactical nuclear weapons in a next set of negotiations after the initial START replacement treaty is concluded this year. The short-range weapons were first built during the Cold War for potential use on European battlefields.
Halperin went further, insisting that a U.S.-Russian agreement on tactical nuclear weapons -- or on any nuclear weapons held in reserve and not operationally deployed -- could await yet more negotiated reductions in fielded strategic forces.
"We probably can do one more round -- and should do one more round -- with the Russians after this one, before we get to the problem of tactical nuclear weapons and nondeployed weapons," he said.
Halperin suggested that the two sides take the time necessary to sort out these complex issues, without allowing them to become obstacles to achieving a deeper set of cuts in the near term.
"Dealing with those weapons is extraordinarily difficult," Halperin explained. "We do not know how many tactical nuclear weapons the Russians have. And we do not have a clue as to how to verify an agreement [that limits] tactical nuclear weapons in the American and Russian arsenals."
Moreover, he said, the two sides have not worked out how to count or verify reductions in their nondeployed stockpiles.
"Both countries have large numbers of weapons which they have taken out of their nuclear arsenal which they have earmarked for destruction," Halperin said. "[It] is only a slight exaggeration to say that what distinguishes a nondeployed weapon from a weapon earmarked for destruction is the label put on it. ... Those weapons could easily be reconverted into nondeployed weapons and then deployed, and it is very hard to know how to verify these."