Bush Administration Sets Russian Arms Talks

Wade Boese

With its time at the helm of U.S. nuclear policy dwindling, the Bush administration announced plans to discuss the expiring START agreement with Russia, which is pressing for a follow-on weapons-cutting treaty. But the outgoing Bush administration endorses a more modest approach and recently reiterated its case for revitalizing the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and developing a new generation of nuclear warheads.

The Department of State issued a statement Oct. 17 that the United States will hold talks with other START states-parties about that accord’s scheduled Dec. 5, 2009, expiration. The meeting is supposed to take place through START’s implementing body, the Joint Compliance and Inspection Commission, in mid-November in Geneva. The other states-parties are Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine, although Russia is the only former Soviet state still armed with nuclear weapons. Under the 1991 treaty, the United States and Russia slashed their deployed nuclear forces from more than 10,000 strategic warheads apiece to less than 6,000 each.

START obligates the states-parties to meet at least one year before its scheduled expiration date to discuss whether the agreement should be extended for another five years. John Rood, acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, told a May 21 Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing that both Russia and the United States “do not wish to simply continue the existing START.”

Moscow and Washington, however, have been engaged in periodic negotiations for the past two years on a post-START agreement. Although the United States put those talks on hold in the wake of Russia’s August conflict with Georgia (see ACT, October 2008), the administration in mid-October apparently delivered to Russia a draft post-START proposal that is expected to be discussed at the November meeting.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates Oct. 28 hinted at what a future compromise might entail. Speaking at a Washington conference, he contended a future agreement “could involve further cuts in the number of deployed warheads” and would “need…verification provisions.” He maintained that the goal should be a treaty that is “shorter, simpler, and easier to adjust to real-world conditions” than those negotiated in the past.

John Beyrle, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, told the Interfax news agency in a mid-October interview that it was “very unlikely” that the two sides would reach a new agreement before the Bush administration leaves office. But he said “we do hope to make some progress in explaining what the American position [is] and hearing how the Russian side sees the future START process in order for the new administration to be able to make as quick progress as possible on that.”

At an Oct. 10 speech in Evian, France, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his government attaches “exceptional importance to concluding a new, legally binding Russian-American agreement on nuclear disarmament” to replace START. He further noted that “what we need is a treaty and not a declaration.”

Medvedev’s admonition stems from Russian unhappiness with the Bush administration’s apparent preference to simply continue the limits agreed to in the May 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT). (See ACT, June 2002.) Touted by the Bush administration for its simplicity, SORT requires Russia and the United States each to lower the number of their operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by Dec. 31, 2012, which is the date that the agreement also expires. To fulfill the reductions, no weapons have to be destroyed, only removed from active service.

In contrast to the Bush administration’s position, the Kremlin is advocating deeper cuts below the SORT warhead levels as well as caps on delivery vehicles, including any future long-range systems outfitted with non-nuclear warheads. The United States is exploring conventional weapons with extended ranges as part of the so-called prompt global strike initiative. (See ACT, September 2008.)

One area of general agreement is that a post-START arrangement should include some verification measures because SORT contains none. However, concerns that START will expire as scheduled without a successor agreement in place three years before the SORT reductions are to be completed have prompted some U.S. lawmakers, such as Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), to urge the administration to reach an agreement to extend START or at least some of its verification provisions.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the Democratic presidential candidate, stated in response to survey questions from Arms Control Today that he would seek “Russia’s agreement to extend essential monitoring and verification provisions of START I prior to its expiration.” The campaign of the Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), did not respond to the survey, but in a May 27 speech he supported pursuing deeper nuclear reductions with Russia and asserted that “we should be able to agree with Russia on binding verification measures based on those currently in effect under the START agreement.”

The Administration’s Nuclear Vision

The Bush administration’s public rationale for negotiating the pared-down SORT was that Russia was no longer an enemy so a Cold War-era START-style treaty was unnecessary. In its latest document setting out a future vision for U.S. nuclear weapons policies, however, the administration contends the United States must maintain “a nuclear force second to none” in part because “considerable uncertainty remains about Russia’s future course.” Medvedev noted in a Sept. 26 speech that Russia “must guarantee [its] capacities of nuclear deterrence” through 2020.

Released in September, the administration’s “National Security and Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century” is a follow-on report to a July 2007 letter sent to Congress by the secretaries of defense, energy, and state articulating the administration’s views on nuclear deterrence. Despite signing the previous letter, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not attach her name to the recent report. A State Department official told Arms Control Today Oct. 15 that Rice “supports the paper’s conclusions” but elected not to sign it because it was more technical than the previous letter, focused on the actual force structure, and dealt with issues that she considered to be more in the purview of the secretaries of defense and energy.

Aside from a potentially more hostile Russia, the report argues the United States must maintain nuclear weapons to address “states of concern,” such as Iran and North Korea, that have developed nuclear forces or are allegedly trying to do so. In addition, the report cites the pursuit of unconventional weapons by nonstate actors as well as the modernization of China’s nuclear forces as potential challenges in which U.S. nuclear weapons might have some part. China has approximately 20 missiles capable of reaching the continental United States, while neither Iran nor North Korea has demonstrated such a capability.

Specific roles U.S. nuclear weapons play and will continue to play, according to the report, include reassuring friends and allies that they do not have to acquire nuclear weapons for their protection and deterring and, if necessary, defeating aggression by adversaries. The report further recommends that U.S. nuclear forces should be kept at levels high enough to dissuade potential peer competitors from engaging in arms races and discourage countries with fewer nuclear weapons from contemplating arms buildups to try to draw even.

Still, the report contends that the future U.S. nuclear force can be “smaller and less prominent than in the past.” To facilitate that goal, the administration argues the United States must revitalize its nuclear weapons production capabilities and introduce a new generation of nuclear weapons through the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. Once that happens, the administration says, the United States can enact deeper cuts in its estimated nuclear stockpile of 5,400 warheads because there will be less need to preserve backup warheads when new warheads can be manufactured on an as-needed basis.

The RRW program, launched in 2004, is described by the administration as the “key enabler” for moving toward the so-called responsive infrastructure. Nominally, the program is supposed to produce new warheads that are safer, less vulnerable to theft, more easily maintained, and more likely to perform as planned than existing warheads. All of these goals are supposed to be achieved without breaking the U.S. nuclear testing moratorium initiated in 1992. Indeed, the administration asserts that the United States increases the possibility of having to resume nuclear testing if it stays on its present course rather than embarking on the RRW program.

But critics, including many lawmakers, remain unconvinced. They point out that current warheads continue to be certified as safe and reliable and that the current process of extending the lives of older warheads by replacing aging components is working. Moreover, critics argue that the United States should not be building new warheads until it determines how many will be needed in the future and for what missions.

The administration’s paper sought to answer those questions but apparently failed in the minds of skeptical lawmakers, who recently denied funding for the RRW program for a second consecutive year (see page 42). Although the document was released publicly in September, another version was sent several months earlier to Congress. In a June report on their preliminary funding bill for the nuclear weapons complex, House Appropriations Committee members argued they were worried that the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) “nuclear weapons programs have lost their direction.” They also observed that the United States “has the most destructive nuclear arsenal in the world, far more effective than those of all other nations combined.”

Meanwhile, the NNSA, the semiautonomous Department of Energy entity that manages the nuclear weapons complex, released Oct. 9 its preferred option for sizing and organizing future U.S. nuclear weapons activities and facilities. That plan was contained in a so-called environmental impact statement that has been subjected to public commentary and 20 public hearings since Jan. 11. The final product deviates little from the NNSA’s original concept, which does not close any of the enterprise’s existing eight facilities but seeks to consolidate nuclear materials and special operations at select sites.

One adjustment the agency made was to endorse a lower production rate for plutonium pits, the core trigger component of U.S. nuclear warheads. Instead of potentially making up to 80, the agency settled on a cap of 20 until the Pentagon completes a congressionally ordered review of the U.S. nuclear posture, which is supposed to happen next year.

The NNSA stated it plans to begin announcing incremental implementation steps for its overhaul of the complex in roughly a month, although Congress could still act to block certain moves through the annual budget process.