U.S. and Russian Agreement Will Ensure Future Arms Reductions

By Jacquelyn S. Porth

Washington - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said the nuclear status quo is neither desirable nor sustainable. It gives countries an "excuse to pursue their own nuclear options."

But recently, U.S. and Russian officials have been through eight rounds of negotiations in Geneva to change the status quo. They're hammering out the details of a new accord to succeed the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, often referred to as START, scheduled to expire December 5.

The 1991 treaty called for cuts in nuclear warheads on each side to less than 6,000 and of launchers to less than 1,600. The deadline was met in 2001.

In 2002, the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, or SORT, otherwise known as the Moscow Treaty, stipulated that the numbers of operationally deployed warheads would drop by 2012 to within the range of 1,700-2,200 for each side. As of May 2009, the United States had achieved its limits.

In June 2009, President Obama met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow and agreed to push the numbers lower yet. Each side will retain between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads under a new follow-on START agreement being negotiated that would also reduce delivery vehicles - long-range heavy bombers, submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles - by at least 30 percent, to a level between 500 and 1,100.

Linton Brooks, chief negotiator for the 1991 agreement, said he expects the pending accord to reduce any lingering suspicion between the two countries by promoting additional transparency and predictability.

Both countries seek a treaty to further reduce weapons, increase stability and support pressing nonproliferation objectives. While details of the negotiations are confidential, Vladimir Yevseyev - a specialist with Russia's Institute of World Economy and International Relations - told Global Security Newswire that the two sides are trying to overcome a disagreement about how to count stored nuclear weapons.

The executive director of the nongovernmental group Arms Control Association, Daryl Kimball, said the two sides have had "relatively little time to work out the many details of the pact" since serious talks began only in mid-2009. Even so, he said he doesn't anticipate major problems that can't be resolved by the end of December. The negotiators "can and must reach agreement on new, lower ceilings for strategic deployed warheads and strategic nuclear delivery launchers that can carry them," he said, "and they must decide on which verification, monitoring and information exchange provisions from the original START agreement they will carry forward."

U.S.-Russian differences "can be bridged if there is sufficient political will," he added.

Kimball said concluding a successor agreement to START "is an essential step toward reducing excessive U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear stockpiles and opening the way to deeper verifiable reductions of all types of ... warheads - strategic and nonstrategic, deployed and nondeployed - in the next round of talks, which should begin early next year."

A new, legally binding and verifiable treaty concluded in 2009 will reinforce U.S. and Russian confidence by allowing inspections to continue. Russia, for example, has conducted 400 inspections in the United States under START.

Kimball said the ability of the United States and Russia "to monitor and confidently predict the size and composition of each other's vast nuclear forces would diminish" without continuing key verification provisions drawn from the 1991 strategic pact.

Joe Cirincione, president of the nongovernmental Ploughshares Fund, said the treaty now under construction sets the stage for additional U.S.-Russian talks needed in the next few years to tackle "bold reductions." The easy steps have already been taken, he said. Any future bilateral agreement, coming after the U.S. Senate and the Russian Duma ratify this one, will be harder to achieve.

START WILL PUSH NONPROLIFERATION AGENDA

START follow-on measures are in keeping with Obama's nonproliferation agenda, which envisions working toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said a START successor agreement will be a milestone in the nuclear disarmament process, setting the scene to draw all nuclear-weapons states into the process eventually.

Replacing START, winning ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) - which Obama has pledged to do - and promoting fruitful negotiations to secure a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty will go far in building international support for a renewed nuclear nonproliferation regime, Steinberg said, as will the global nuclear security summit convening in Washington in 2010.

Kimball said a 2009 START accord and U.S. ratification of the CTBT will "enhance U.S. security by helping to restrain the nuclear capabilities of other states and increase international support for measures to strengthen the beleaguered Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," which comes up for review in 2010.

Max Kampelman, a Democrat who worked as a strategic arms negotiator during the Reagan administration (January 1981 to January 1989), said President Ronald Reagan "very much wanted the world free of nuclear weapons."

Obama, addressing the 2009 United Nations Security Council Summit on nuclear nonproliferation, quoted Reagan: "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."

The goal of abolishing nuclear arms is gaining "a great deal of traction," according to Kampelman. While it's easier to talk about than to achieve, he said, the political suggestion that the world "ought to reduce to zero" is powerful.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)