WASHINGTON -- With U.S. and Russian negotiators in Geneva continuing to hammer out details of a new agreement to reduce their nations' nuclear stockpiles, experts here predicted yesterday the accord would require each side to exercise greater openness about its deployed arsenal than ever before (see GSN, Dec. 8).
(Dec. 10) -
A U.S. Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile lifts off in a September test. A new U.S.-Russian arms control treaty might require the two nations to provide more access to on-site inspectors who would verify implementation of the agreement (U.S. Navy/Lockheed Martin Corp.).
"They'll have to provide more detail than we have provided" previously for confirming the size and composition of each side's deployed nuclear force, Linton Brooks -- former U.S. President George H.W. Bush's chief negotiator on the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty -- said yesterday. "And exactly how that works -- without getting you into things that would cause security concerns -- will be hard."
New verification procedures would be necessary, in part, because of a practical difference in the way the treaty is expected to count warheads, some experts say. The so-called "New START" is to limit deployed warheads, whereas the previous treaty caps applied to the maximum number of warheads a delivery platform could carry, regardless of how many were actually on the system.
Under new verification practices, each nation might be required to supply the other with more data on the types and quantities of warheads it has deployed, Brooks and others on an expert panel said at the National Press Club. The pact could also involve greater intrusiveness during on-site inspections, they said, though that point is under debate.
Moscow and Washington missed a Dec. 5 deadline to seal the new pact before the START accord expired. An agreement on verification provisions is widely seen as a major obstacle yet to be fully surmounted.
However, Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama said last week in a joint statement that they had a "firm intention to ensure that a new treaty on strategic arms enter into force at the earliest possible date" (see GSN, Dec. 4).
The two leaders pledged in July to cut their nations' respective 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 2012 under another treaty. Obama and Medvedev also agreed to cap strategic delivery vehicles on each side to between 500 and 1,100.
"We're getting closer," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters yesterday, referring to a new agreement. "We're optimistic that we can get one."
Unlike the treaty it would replace, the forthcoming pact is expected to restrict quantities of nuclear warheads actually fielded and available for use, as well as the weapon platforms capable of delivering them.
By contrast, the 1991 treaty counted each delivery vehicle as having onboard the maximum number of warheads it was capable of carrying, regardless of its actual loading. For example, a Trident D-5 submarine-launched missile loaded with fewer than its "attributed" eight warheads would still be counted as eight fielded warheads under the START accord.
This approach allowed for on-site inspections in which Moscow could prevent Washington's monitors from directly viewing sensitive warhead technologies, and vice versa. Instead, each missile was covered by a tarp, allowing visiting officials to confirm maximum loading capability by simply counting the shrouded protrusions.
With the Cold War over, both sides are less concerned than before about the potential for clandestine missile production or warhead uploading that could allow for an all-out surprise nuclear attack. The focus now is more on simply confirming gradual reductions in accordance with agreed limits, rather than on day-to-day monitoring for possible treaty abrogation, issue experts say.
The trick, though, is figuring out how to alter longtime verification processes to fit the needs of the new agreement, experts said.
Under the START verification provisions, "for security reasons ... we put a big shroud with a bunch of bumps in it, so you can count how many warheads could be on that missile, but you don't know how many [there] really are," Brooks said. "Well, that won't work if you're actually interested in what's really there."
Other changes under a new pact appear to include an end to continuous monitoring of missile production facilities, which was aimed at tracking how many and what types of delivery vehicles each side manufactures (see GSN, Nov. 20).
"The verification provisions really need to be driven by the actual [arms] limitations that you agree to," said Steven Pifer, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, speaking on the same panel. "And to the extent that you had different limitations under the START treaty, maybe in some ways this new agreement is going to be simpler than the START treaty. That may impose, in some ways, less demanding verification requirements."
Washington's interest in counting deployed warheads rather than attributed warheads has grown, in part, so that the Navy could have the flexibility of fielding a different mix of weapon numbers associated with its Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, the experts said. Under the new system, empty missile tubes or downloaded warheads would not count against overall treaty limits, as they did previously.
In supporting a deployed-warhead counting approach under the new treaty, U.S. officials "understand this may be more difficult to monitor and verify -- at least compared to the attribution rule -- [but] they are prepared to accept more intrusive verification measures," Pifer said.
Other legs of the U.S. strategic nuclear triad -- bomber aircraft and land-based missiles -- also would likely be subject to more open verification measures. Brooks predicted that, in the future, Washington would load Minuteman 3 ICBMs with just a single warhead, even though the missile could carry up to three.
While the verification approach under the new agreement might be more streamlined, new protocols would likely be necessary to allow each side confidence about exactly how many warheads are loaded onto missiles, panelists said.
Under the new agreement, the U.S. and Russian militaries would "probably have to do a different approach to shrouding, because you'll be demonstrating the actual number of warheads, rather than that it's no more than a certain number," Brooks said.
He added, though, that he could imagine "fairly straightforward" on-site inspection procedures that could allow for verification without compromising security. Brooks did not elaborate.
However, Pifer -- who served in senior diplomatic and security posts during the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations -- ventured to explain how a more open verification procedure might work.
For example, he said, the United States could provide Russia with data on how many missiles are loaded onto a given Ohio-class submarine, and how many warheads are carried by the vessel's various missiles.
When Moscow's inspectors visit a U.S. submarine base, "we could tell the Russians, 'For those 20 missile tubes, here are the number warheads on each missile in there.' And they could choose [something like] three maybe to inspect and confirm that," Pifer said.
Although such spot-checking would not allow Russia to confirm the loading on each and every U.S. missile, Moscow's random checks might offer confidence that the quantities match what Washington has reported.
Such a verification process would create "a significant risk of being caught if you cheat," Pifer said. "You don't [know for certain] what's on every missile. ... But this is a soluble problem."
Brooks agreed that hashing out U.S.-Russian provisions for verification of this kind should not be a deal-breaker, but said these challenges probably account for the inability to reach a final pact by Dec. 5.
"It's not that there's any blinding new breakthrough that's necessary," he said. "But drafting the procedures to verify not the maximum number but the actual number will be time-consuming."
However, one Defense Department official differed with the notion that preparing altered procedures for on-site inspections has posed much of a challenge in the negotiations.
"The warhead-counting on an SLBM or an ICBM under the new treaty will not be substantially different from what it was under START. Honestly, that's easy to negotiate," said the official, who asked not to be named in discussing the ongoing talks in Geneva. "They'll use the same method as they used in the START [on-site] inspections."
That is, actual deployed warheads could still be inspected with shrouds on them under the new agreement's anticipated counting rules, this official asserted.
"There are other verification issues that are taking greater time," the defense official told Global Security Newswire this week. "The real sticking point is, how do you count bombers and the nuclear bombs that go with them? That's more difficult to do than the missiles."
Additionally, Russia might also be grappling with a change in U.S. attitude toward intrusive verification measures ushered in by the Obama administration, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. Former U.S. President George W. Bush and then-Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a Moscow Treaty in 2002 that promised strategic nuclear arms reductions by the end of 2012, but included no verification provisions.
"Many in the Russian military, in particular, I think have gotten used to this American story line that these verification and monitoring provisions are out of date or a vestige of an earlier era," Kimball said. "And now there is a ... significant shift in our position. But I think the Russian position, as a whole, has not adjusted quite as quickly over the last 12 months."
However, most of the discussion in Geneva is likely to be focused on the nuts and bolts of verification, and "not so much an issue of principle," Pifer said.
"It's just sort of getting that right balance between showing enough that allows you to monitor and verify the treaty, while also not making it impossibly difficult" for military forces to operate, he said.