A high-level U.S. diplomat is set to travel to the Czech Republic shortly for talks that are expected to address the revised European missile defense plan, Foreign Policy reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 9).
Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher was in India yesterday, where she was expected to discuss nuclear nonproliferation. She was likely to promote a similar message during a stop in Turkey.
In Washington on Tuesday, Tauscher defended the Obama administration's revamped program for defending U.S. forces and allies in Europe against missile attacks. She rejected accusations that it shortchanged older plans for deploying systems in Europe.
Under the "third site" plan developed by the Bush administration, the Czech Republic would have hosted a large radar center while 10 long-range missile interceptors would have been deployed in Poland.
The Obama administration now intends in coming years to deploy sea- and land-based versions of the Standard Missile 3 interceptor to counter what is seen as a growing threat from Iranian short- and middle-range missiles. Prague and Warsaw have been presented with options for playing a role in the new plan.
"We didn't abandon the third site," Tauscher said. "We already have two sites that protect the United states from the emerging Iranian long-range threat."
The United States has long-range missile interceptors deployed at military bases in California and Alaska (see GSN, Oct. 30).
"The idea of putting a third site with a redundant capability in Poland to protect us against a threat that wasn't emerging as we expected, and have us naked now (to shorter range threats) ... I thought it was crazy," she said.
Tauscher also spoke about the challenges facing an Obama administration effort to see the United States finally ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty next year (see related GSN story, today). Senate Republicans are expected to oppose the measure.
"The CTBT will be very difficult to ratify. The opposition still remembers why they opposed it back in 1999, some of them are still in the Senate," Tauscher said. "And we still have a lot of people that don't know why they would be for it because there are 40 senators that have never voted on a treaty."
She advocated a compromise for ratification of the treaty that would provide assurances that the U.S. nuclear stockpile is protected and safe without the need for testing. She said the Nuclear Posture Review, which reassesses the role of nuclear arms in U.S. defenses, is expected at the beginning of 2010.
Tauscher said the Reliable Replacement Warhead would not be included in the Obama administration's fiscal 2011 budget, which should be submitted in January or Feburary.The Bush administration pressed the program as a means of developing new nuclear warheads that would be more reliable and secure and less expensive to maintain. Critics argued that the program undercut U.S. efforts to encourage nuclear nonproliferation (see GSN, Nov. 9).
"We had to kill it to save it," she said.
In place of the scrapped initiative, Tauscher said, would be a program for updating existing warheads (Josh Rogin, Foreign Policy, Nov. 12).