July/August 2024
By Xiaodon Liang

The Biden administration reaffirmed its commitment to arms control negotiations even as major nuclear-armed states expand and modernize their nuclear arsenals.

The United States needs to “persuade our adversaries that managing rivalry through arms control is preferable to unrestrained competition across domains,” a senior U.S. official said in a June 7 restatement of Biden administration nuclear weapons policy.

Speaking to the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association, Pranay Vaddi, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation, said that “we have adjusted our strategy to account for a more complex and worsening security environment but we are in no way abandoning our principles.” Those principles, he said, include demonstrating responsible action as a nuclear-weapon power, preventing proliferation, and pursuing arms control arrangements.

According to Vaddi, the administration is “thinking through what a future arms control agreement with Russia…might look like” after the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expires in February 2026, but it acknowledges that Russia’s rejection of arms control talks “casts a shadow over the likelihood of a New START successor.” The administration believes that Russia “continues to see value in maintaining limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons” and intends to make public an outline of its ideas for a potential successor treaty, he said.

Vaddi also said that the United States would not “shy away” from discussing China’s proposal for a nuclear no-first-use treaty, affirming comments by Mallory Stewart, assistant secretary of state for arms control, deterrence, and stability, in May. (See ACT, May 2024.) “It would make sense for [China] to try to initiate a more serious discussion in [the P5] format,” he suggested. In August, China will assume the rotating chair of the P5 nuclear process, involving the five states recognized under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as nuclear-weapon states.

In his speech, Vaddi provided some insight into the new nuclear weapons employment guidance that President Joe Biden approved in March. Guidance of this type, which is periodically updated across administrations, typically takes the form of a classified memorandum and may include not only detailed instructions on targets, priorities, and scenarios, but also high-level statements of U.S. policy and assumptions regarding nuclear weapons use that are intended to shape military planning.

The new guidance document, Vaddi said, reaffirms the U.S. intention to abide by the central New START numerical limits until the treaty’s expiration, as long as Russia does the same. He added that unilateral reciprocal statements of continued adherence to the New START limits after February 2026 was a possibility, although the administration does not want to “settle” for this approach.

The guidance also “emphasizes the need to account for the growth and diversity of [China’s] nuclear arsenal,” Vaddi said. The extent of the increase in China’s arsenal will influence the “type of limits we will be able to agree to with Russia,” he said.

The United States is particularly concerned about China’s thinking on the use of lower-yield nuclear weapons in a scenario involving Taiwan, as well as the potential for a future shift of its strategic nuclear posture toward “early-warning counterstrike,” Vaddi said in response to questions following his remarks. He referenced the last iteration of the Defense Department’s annual report on Chinese military forces. (See ACT, November 2023.)

Responding to a reporter’s question about Vaddi’s comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on June 11 that China “always keeps its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required by national security.” Speaking at a ministry press conference, Lin said that the United States “has been calling China a ‘nuclear threat’ and using it as a convenient pretext for expanding the U.S.’s own nuclear arsenal aimed at absolute strategic predominance.”

For now, the United States does not intend to “increase our nuclear forces to match or outnumber the combined total of our competitors to successfully deter them,” Vaddi said, reaffirming comments by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan last year. (See ACT, July/August 2023.)

But “absent a change in the trajectory of adversary arsenals, we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required, and we need to be fully prepared to execute if the President makes that decision,” Vaddi added.

In response to questions June 8 regarding Vaddi’s speech, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova referred journalists to Russia’s existing nuclear doctrine, RIA Novosti reported.

Vaddi also noted recent or ongoing changes to the posture of the deployed U.S. strategic nuclear force below the New START limits.

These include the life extension of certain Ohio-class submarines to provide “additional margin during the transition from legacy to modern capabilities across the triad,” retirement of the B83-1 bomb, and development of the B61-13 bomb variant. (See ACT, December 2023.)

Some members of Congress are pushing forward with additional plans to expand U.S. strategic nuclear forces. The Senate Armed Services Committee, in its version of the fiscal year 2025 defense authorization bill approved June 13, requested that the Defense Department devise a plan to increase the number of deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from 400 Minuteman III missiles today to 450 next-generation Sentinel ICBMs.

The bill also directs the Defense Department to recertify all B-52H bombers for nuclear missions and to provide a briefing on returning five to 10 strategic bombers to “alert status.”

The corresponding bill approved by the House Armed Services Committee does not endorse these nuclear force expansions, but it does require the Pentagon to establish plans for a third ground-based missile defense interceptor site, over the Biden administration’s long-standing objections.

The Senate bill also takes the first steps toward shifting the cost of new ICBMs off the Air Force’s budget. In the draft, the committee asks for a briefing on the creation of a National Land-Based Deterrence Fund to pay for the Sentinel program, which has overrun the Defense Department’s September 2020 cost projections by 81 percent. (See ACT, March 2024.)

July/August 2024
By António Guterres

For more than 50 years, the Arms Control Association has gathered experts and leaders around an issue of monumental importance: ending the madness of nuclear weapons. Your team has it right. We need to move back from the nuclear brink.

Humanity is on a knife’s edge. The risk of a nuclear weapon being used has reached heights not seen since the Cold War. States are engaged in the qualitative arms race. Technologies like artificial intelligence are multiplying the danger. Nuclear blackmail has reemerged, with some recklessly threatening nuclear catastrophe.

Meanwhile, the regime designed to prevent the use, testing, and proliferation of nuclear weapons is weakening….  [W]e need disarmament now. This was  the central message of my disarmament agenda launched in 2018. Disarmament and conflict prevention are also at the heart of the new agenda for peace to reform the global peace and security architecture.

We need all countries to step up. But nuclear-weapon states must lead the way. They must resume dialogue, commit to preventing any use of a nuclear weapon, and agree that none will be the first to launch one. They must reaffirm moratoria on nuclear testing, and they must accelerate implementation of the disarmament commitments made under the [nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

All parties to the treaty must start collaborating now to ensure consensus at the [NPT] review conference in 2026. I also urge the United States and [Russia] to get back [to] the negotiating table, fully implement the [New Strategic Arms Reduction] Treaty, and agree on its successor. Until these weapons are eliminated, all countries must agree that any decision on nuclear use is made by humans, not machines or algorithms. Finally, nuclear saber-rattling must stop.

The United Nations is proud to stand with groups like the Arms Control Association across this important effort. Let’s continue working to achieve the secure and peaceful world every country wants.

July/August 2024
By Xiaodon Liang

The Ukrainian armed forces launched drone attacks against Russian strategic early-warning radar sites in late May, damaging at least one radar antenna. The attacks against the sites in Armavir and Orsk raised U.S. fears that Russia could misinterpret the move as an attempt to weaken the early-warning capabilities of its strategic nuclear deterrent.

The Washington Post reported on May 29 that the United States has expressed its concerns officially to Ukraine. An unnamed U.S. official cited in the report said that damage to the early-warning radars could hurt strategic stability between Russia and the United States.

The attacks occurred during a period when the White House was deliberating whether to follow NATO allies and permit Ukrainian forces to use U.S.-provided weapons systems to strike military forces inside Russia. Since then, the Biden administration has authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons to hit back against Russian units that are attacking from across the border.

The first drone attack, launched May 22, targeted an early-warning radar site at Armavir, a city in Russia east of Crimea. Satellite imagery taken by Planet Labs and published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty later confirmed that at least one of the two Voronezh-DM radars at Armavir was damaged in the attack.

The second Ukrainian operation was aimed at a Voronezh-M radar at Orsk, in southern Russia near Kazakhstan and approximately 1,500 kilometers from Ukrainian-controlled territory. No evidence of damage to this radar was visible in satellite images provided by Planet Labs and published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, although signs of fire are apparent around the facility.

Both sites host south-facing early-warning radar designed to detect ballistic missile launches against Russian territory as part of the country’s strategic early-warning system. The Armavir radar site, which began operations in February 2009, replaced older Soviet-era early-warning radar sites located in Ukraine. In January 2008, Russia terminated an agreement with Ukraine to continue receiving data from those older sites, citing unreliability. The Russian military first brought the Orsk radar online in December 2016.

An unnamed Ukrainian intelligence source told Reuters on May 27 that the two sites were targeted because “[t]hey monitor the actions of the Ukrainian security and defense forces in the south of Ukraine.” In a statement to The Washington Post, an unnamed Ukrainian official said the radars monitor aerial weaponry such as drones and missiles.

But independent analysts have argued that the role of the early-warning radar sites in Russia’s war against Ukraine likely is limited. In a series of social media posts, nuclear policy expert James Acton published graphs that show that the curvature of the earth and elevation of the Armavir antennae limit the contribution of the radar site to detecting Ukrainian ballistic missile launches against targets in a narrow sector of southern Ukraine that includes Crimea.

The Pentagon disclosed on April 24 that the United States had provided Ukraine with short-range ballistic missiles in the previous weeks. Known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems, they have a range of 300 kilometers and were first used April 17 by Ukraine to strike a Russian airfield in occupied Crimea, a Pentagon spokesperson said.

According to Acton’s calculations, the Armavir site would be able to detect drones and aircraft only under unlikely scenarios. It is even more implausible that the Orsk radar, facing Kazakhstan and covering the Middle East and western China, plays any “meaningful role in enabling Russia to detect and shoot down Ukrainian munitions,” according to Acton.

Washington also believes that these “sites have not been involved in supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine,” according to an unnamed U.S. government official cited in the May 29 Washington Post story.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned on June 3 of an “asymmetrical response” to the drone strikes in comments to the Russian press agency RIA. He also accused the United States of acting irresponsibly in failing to prevent these attacks by Ukraine.

Dmitry Rogozin, the former Russian deputy prime minister and currently a senator representing Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, was the first official figure to acknowledge the drone strikes in a May 25 social media post.

Rogozin speculated in his Telegram post that the United States may have known about or even directed the operations. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on May 15 at a press conference in Kyiv, “We have not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine.”

July/August 2024
By Kelsey Davenport

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it is unacceptable for any party to use drones in the vicinity of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant after two drones struck targets in the nearby town of Enerhodar.

Russia attacked the Ukrainian power plant in violation of international law in the early days of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and continues to occupy the facility.

Russia accused Ukraine of conducting drone strikes on June 19 and 21 that cut power to residents of Enerhodar, a town near the Zaporizhzhia plant where many workers at the facility live.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said on June 23 that “drone usage against the plant and its vicinity is becoming increasingly more frequent” and “must stop.” The drone activity “runs counter to the safety pillars and concrete principles, which have been accepted unanimously,” Grossi said.

The June drone strikes targeted electrical substations, but did not disrupt the plant’s power lines, which are critical for maintaining the nuclear reactor units in a cold shutdown. The damage to the electrical substations affected systems around the power plant, such as external radiological monitoring equipment, the IAEA said in a June 23 press release.

In May the IAEA team on-site at the complex was told that there were drones present in the vicinity of the cooling pond, where spent fuel from the six reactors at Zaporizhzhia is stored, but there was no attack reported. In April, drones struck a reactor building. (See ACT, May 2024.) Russia and Ukraine accused each other of being responsible for the April attacks.

Despite the security situation, Russia initially said it would restart the Zaporizhzhia reactors, which are currently in cold shutdown. During a meeting with Grossi in May, officials from the Russian state-run energy company Rosatom said that was no longer the plan, according to Russian media reports.

July/August 2024
By Shizuka Kuramitsu

Amid persistent high tensions among major nuclear-armed nations, states-parties to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) are bracing for a challenging second preparatory committee meeting ahead of the 2026 NPT Review Conference.

The 191 states-parties to the NPT will gather July 22-Aug. 2 in Geneva to review implementation of the landmark 1968 treaty and seek to develop a forward-looking action plan on its key components of nonproliferation, disarmament, and peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

The preparatory meetings focus on making recommendations and advancing substantive debate on key subjects ahead of the review conferences, which are the main vehicle for assessing treaty performance and prodding states-parties to carry out their NPT-related obligations.

After two consecutive failures to adopt substantive outcome documents by consensus at the last review conferences, in 2015 and 2022, the political pressure to ensure a successful outcome at the 2026 conference is high.

Meanwhile, divisions between some NPT states-parties have intensified and played out in many multilateral nuclear-related meetings, such as the first preparatory committee meeting in 2023 and last month’s International Conference on Nuclear Security. (See ACT, June 2024, September 2023.)

One issue that analysts and diplomats expect the preparatory committee meeting to debate concerns the absence of dialogue between Russia and the United States and China and the United States on nuclear risk reduction and arms control as they accelerate efforts to fortify their respective nuclear arsenals.

Article VI of the NPT obligates states-parties to engage in good faith negotiations to halt the arms race and achieve disarmament. Thus far, Russia has rejected a U.S. proposal to negotiate a successor to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which expires in 2026. China has declined U.S. overtures for further talks on nuclear risk reduction. (See ACT, June 2024.)

“All parties to the [NPT] must start collaborating now to ensure consensus at the review conference in 2026. All countries need to step up, but nuclear-weapon states must lead the way,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a June 7 video message to the Arms Control Association annual meeting. In particular, the NPT nuclear-armed states “must accelerate the implementation of the disarmament commitments” made under the NPT, he said.

For the Biden administration, the “highest priority” at the preparatory committee meeting is to “continue... to preserve the authority and integrity of the NPT,” Adam Scheinman, special U.S. representative for nonproliferation, told Arms Control Today on June 29.

“[W]e will advocate for a constructive agenda on nuclear disarmament, to include support for bilateral dialogues with Russia and ... China, for the long-overdue fissile material cutoff treaty, and for greater transparency among parties,” he wrote.

Scheinman outlined modest goals, saying that although Washington hopes to “identify areas of convergence ... there are no plans (for the NPT nuclear-armed states) to issue a joint statement.”

Experts’ concern about the ability of states-parties to fulfill their NPT obligations is echoed in multiple forums.
If “[s]tates-parties who have been the custodians of the treaty [and] whose agreement was always key to achieving an outcome…are not in a position to conduct a dialogue directly, what is our road to a substantive outcome in 2026?” Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation asked on May 21. She also stressed the role to be played by bridge-building states and coalitions.

Another theme that may feature heavily at the preparatory committee meeting includes nuclear safety and the security dangers posed by Russia’s continued occupation of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. It was Russia’s objection to language in the draft 10th NPT Review Conference document relating to Ukraine’s sovereign control of that facility that led Moscow to block consensus on a final conference document 
in 2022.

Nuclear sharing arrangements between the United States and its NATO allies, coupled with Russia’s forward deployment of some of its nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Belarus and recent exercises involving its battlefield nuclear weapons, also will be a likely source of contention.

To tackle these and other divisions, Akan Rakhmetullin, Kazakhstan’s deputy foreign minister and chair-designate of the 2024 meeting, held consultations with states-parties, experts in the field, and civil society organizations ahead of the second preparatory committee meeting.

On May 21, he said he feels that all parties understand what their differences are on key issues but they diverge on how to overcome those differences. The outcome of preparatory committee meeting will depend on the political will of participants “and their willingness to work together and readiness for compromise,” he said.

July/August 2024
By Xiaodon Liang

The Biden administration dropped its opposition to a proposed nuclear-capable, sea-launched cruise missile, also known as SLCM-N, in its response to this year’s House defense policy bill. Officials say work on the missile has begun.

In its June 11 statement of administration policy in response to the House Armed Services Committee’s version of the national defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2025, the Biden administration did not repeat its previous years’ opposition to the missile. When asked for comment, a U.S. official told Arms Control Today that last year’s defense bill “directed” the Defense Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration “to establish and commence implementation” of a nuclear-capable, sea-launched cruise missile program.

“We will comply with the [bill] requirement and will look to execute in a manner that provides the most deterrence value for the least risk to the modernization program, the production enterprise, and other defense priorities,” the official said.

In fiscal year 2024, Congress appropriated $90 million for the missile and $70 million for work on its warhead. It also instructed the Defense Department to establish a development program for the missile. The House bill for 2025 would raise the missile’s annual budget to $190 million and maintain warhead funding at $70 million.

Last year’s statement of administration policy said the president “strongly opposes” the missile and that it “has marginal utility.” The statement also said “deploying [the missile] on Navy attack submarines or surface combatants would reduce capacity for conventional strike munitions [and] create additional burdens on naval training, maintenance, and operations.”

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) raised these issues during a May 24 hearing of the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee. “One of my biggest concerns is that we would be giving up something we really need for something we are unlikely to use,” Kelly said, referring to the possibility that the missile would displace conventional munitions aboard Navy attack submarines.

In response, Vice Adm. Johnny R. Wolfe Jr., the Navy’s director for strategic systems programs, acknowledged that “yes, there will be some impact” to the nuclear-powered attack submarine force.

“Anytime you have a conventional mission with a nuclear mission, you have to be very careful to segregate those and make sure that our war-fighters understand how that operates,” he said. Wolfe said the Navy is analyzing how to minimize the impact of fielding the missile.

In his prepared remarks, Wolfe also hinted at the resource constraints that would affect the program. “Executing this program successfully will require careful balancing of [missile] programmatic manning with ongoing Navy programs, which draw from a limited pool of experienced government personnel and the same nuclear weapons industrial base,” he said.

Testifying at an April 30 hearing before the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, Bill LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said that the Navy has set up an office to manage the missile program and that it aims to clear its first programmatic hurdle, known as Milestone A, within a year. Before passing Milestone A, program officials must produce documents justifying the need for the missile, conduct an analysis of alternatives, and provide an initial cost estimate.

The Navy said on June 14 it likely would award the first contract for the missile in July. In a presolicitation notice required under contracting rules, the Navy said it intends to negotiate a sole-source contract with Virginia-based Systems Planning Analysis Inc., covering research and development for up to four years.

July/August 2024
By Kelsey Davenport

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a mutual defense treaty and committed to strengthening military ties during a June summit in Pyongyang.

The treaty comes as Russia continues to court North Korean support for its war in Ukraine and as tensions between North Korea and South Korea escalate.

According to Article 4 of the treaty that Kim and Putin signed on June 19, North Korea and Russia “shall immediately provide military and other assistance” to the other party if it “falls into a state of war due to armed invasion from an individual or multiple states.” The treaty stipulates that the assistance must be in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, which preserves the right to “individual or collective self-defense” in response to an armed attack against a UN member.

Putin told reporters after the summit that the treaty represents a “breakthrough” in Russia’s relationship with North Korea and a “new level” of strategic partnership between the two countries. Putin last visited North Korea 24 years ago, although he did meet with Kim in September 2023 near Vladivostok. (See ACT, October 2023.)

Kim described the treaty as “a most powerful agreement” that is “peaceful and defensive in nature.” He said it will be a “driving force” toward a “new multipolar world.”

In a June 23 joint statement, Japan, South Korea, and the United States condemned the “deepening military cooperation” between North Korea and Russia, noting in particular Pyongyang’s provision of arms to Moscow that “prolong[s] the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”

The three states said the partnership between North Korea and Russia is “of grave concern to anyone with an interest in maintaining peace and stability” on the Korean peninsula. The statement said that Japan, South Korea, and the United States will “further strengthen diplomatic and security cooperation” to counter the threat from North Korea and prevent escalation.

In a June 25 televised speech marking the 74th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said that the treaty is in direct violation of UN Security Council resolutions on North Korea. South Korea “must stand up to North Korea’s provocations and threats overwhelmingly and decisively,” he said.

In addition to the provision of military assistance in the event of attack, the treaty suggests that Russia and North Korea may engage in military cooperation. According to Article 8, the parties “shall establish mechanisms” to “strengthen defense capabilities to prevent war.”

In a June 19 video statement released by the Kremlin, Putin said Russia does not rule out the possibility of military cooperation with North Korea.

Kim said that North Korea would continue to support Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Chang Ho-jin, the South Korean national security adviser, responded by saying that Seoul will reconsider selling arms to Ukraine. Currently, South Korea is providing humanitarian support, but has not offered any weaponry to Ukraine due to a policy of not exporting arms to states involved in conflict.

Putin warned South Korea to refrain from providing military assistance to Ukraine, saying Seoul would be making a “very big mistake” if it transfers arms. He said Russia’s partnership with North Korea does not pose a threat to South Korea. Because South Korea “does not plan aggression against” North Korea, there is “no need to be afraid” of defense cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang, Putin told reporters during a June 20 press conference in Vietnam.

The treaty also opens the door for Russian assistance to North Korea’s nuclear energy and space programs. Article 10 states that North Korea and Russia will “develop exchanges and cooperation” in certain scientific fields, including space and “peaceful nuclear energy.”

Russia is prohibited from providing assistance to North Korea’s nuclear and space programs under the terms of UN Security Council sanctions, but Moscow has already violated the sanctions by accepting armaments from Pyongyang.

Putin said Russia will continue its opposition to sanctions imposed on North Korea, which he described as “illegal,” and suggested the two countries will work to develop payment systems that are “not controlled by the West.”

During a June 12 event at the Stimson Center, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said that Washington will be “watching carefully” to see what assistance Russia provides to North Korea.

Kim’s visit to Russia in September 2023 suggested that North Korea is interested in assistance in developing its space program. Despite announcing ambitious plans to deploy satellites, North Korea has struggled with its launch vehicles. On May 27, North Korea attempted to put a satellite in orbit using a new space launch vehicle, but it exploded midflight.

North Korea’s National Aerospace Technology Administration said that the explosion likely was caused by a defect in the first stage of a new type of rocket motor that the country is developing.

Kim said that the failure will not stop North Korea’s space ambitions and reiterated that Pyongyang needs satellite capabilities due to South Korean and U.S. threats.

The failed launch took place shortly after leaders from China, Japan, and South Korea, met in Seoul. Yoon, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Chinese Premier Li Qiang released a joint statement during the May 27 summit that included a reference to “denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”

In a rare criticism of China, the North Korean state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) denounced the trilateral statement, saying that denuclearization “means a power vacuum and hastened war.” KCNA said North Korea viewed the reference to denuclearization as “a blatant challenge” to the country’s sovereignty.

South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lim Soo-suk defended the reference to denuclearization, saying that UN Security Council resolutions call for North Korea’s “complete abandonment of nuclear weapons.”

North Korea claimed to have tested a missile armed with multiple warheads on June 26, but South Korea called the launch a failure. KCNA reported on June 27 that the test involved three mobile warheads and a decoy separating from a missile. The warheads were guided to three different targets, KCNA said, adding that North Korea will now begin full-scale testing of the capability. Japan and South Korea said the missile exploded and described the test as a failure.

The test took place after South Korea conducted a live-fire exercise near the inter-Korean maritime border on June 25. South Korea was prohibited from conducting live-fire exercises along the border under a 2018 joint military agreement with North Korea, but Seoul suspended its participation in that agreement on June 4 after Pyongyang sent more than 1,000 balloons filled with trash into South Korea. North Korea withdrew from the agreement in 2023.

July/August 2024
By Chris Rostampour

A federal program that has aided thousands of people in communities harmed by U.S. nuclear testing and weapons production activities expired June 7, and it is unclear whether it can be revived.

Since the Senate voted in March to extend and expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has not scheduled a House vote on the Senate bill or any variant.

Lawmakers continue to debate how they could salvage the program, but Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) told a press conference May 17 that Johnson’s office has cited high costs as the reason for not acting. Later, she told Arms Control Today that she finds the argument ironic because the government always seems to have “money for war and weapons.”

To date, the RECA program has approved claims totaling $2.7 billion for 40,000 people, according to the Justice Department. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the future cost of the Senate-approved bill at $50 billion over 10 years.

Originally passed in 1990, RECA established a program to provide health screening and one-time payments to people harmed by exposure to radiation from atmospheric nuclear testing or uranium mining. It was limited to those who lived in 22 largely rural counties of Arizona, Nevada, and Utah between 1951 and 1958 and in the summer of 1962 and had developed leukemia or one of 17 other kinds of cancer.

The program also covered uranium workers from 1942 through 1971 who could document a subsequent diagnosis of diseases that are deemed eligible for compensation. Numerous health studies since 1990 have shown that fallout from past nuclear tests did not stop at the county or state lines recognized under the original RECA program.

The Justice Department announced in June that it is no longer accepting new claims, saying that “only claims postmarked on and before June 10, 2024, will be filed and adjudicated.” But health facilities continue to offer screenings for cancer and other radiation-induced illnesses. The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration said health facilities providing screening under RECA “would remain active” for the time being, Radio KJZZ in Arizona reported.

The Senate bill, sponsored by Sens. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), would extend RECA for six years and expand the program to communities that previously were excluded. This would include people in New Mexico affected by the first nuclear test explosion and communities in Missouri and Kentucky dealing with contamination from Manhattan Project-era uranium operations. The Senate passed the bill 69-30 in March. President Joe Biden has said he would sign it if it arrived on his desk.

Since the Senate vote, lawmakers from both parties and activists have urged Johnson to hold a House vote on RECA, either as a stand-alone bill or as an amendment to another legislative vehicle. (See ACT, May 2024.) 

In mid-April, Utah Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Mitt Romney, who both voted against the Senate-approved bill, introduced legislation to extend RECA for two years without expanding coverage. In late May, Johnson announced that the extension legislation would be put to a vote, but later pulled it from the House calendar due to opposition from downwinder communities and Hawley, who called the move inadequate and vowed to block the bill if taken up by the Senate.

In a May 7 letter to House leaders, dozens of downwinder communities and organizations wrote, “Our communities 
have been suffering under this injustice for many decades, and it cannot continue. Congress must improve RECA to include many communities that have been excluded and abandoned by our government.”

Tina Cordova, a nuclear exposure survivor from New Mexico and a long-time advocate of expanding RECA, told KOBTV that “while they play politics, we’re gathering up our resources for someone to have cancer treatment.”

July/August 2024
By Shizuka Kuramitsu

Efforts are underway to breathe new life into the campaign to expand and strengthen nuclear-weapon-free zones as nuclear disarmament negotiations remain stalemated.

Kazakhstan and the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs have scheduled a workshop August 27-28 in the Kazakhstan capital of Astana to explore ways to cooperate in advancing these zones.

This will be the first time in five years that states-parties to the five nuclear-weapon-free-zone treaties, international organizations, and various other interested parties are gathering to discuss zone-related issues, including “fostering cooperation and enhancing consultation mechanisms” among the existing zones, according to the organizers’ planning document.

Participants plan to “explore how [the zones] can help respond to the existing and emerging threats that challenge the international community today, including through the full realization of the zones’ provisions and potential for new zones in other regions of the world,” the document stated.

The five existing zones are in Latin America and the Caribbean region, the South Pacific region, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia. In addition, Mongolia maintains a self-declared nuclear-weapon-free status. Nuclear-weapon-free-zone treaties commit states-parties within the designated zones to refrain from manufacturing, stockpiling, testing, developing, and possessing nuclear weapons.

The zones have played an important role in maintaining the global and regional nuclear nonproliferation regime. Article VII of the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) affirms the right of NPT states-parties “to conclude regional treaties in order to assure the total absence of nuclear weapons in their respective territories.”

The five states recognized under the NPT as nuclear-weapon states (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) have been called on to provide legally binding assurances to states in the zones that nuclear weapons will not be used against them. The workshop expects to discuss how to strengthen such security assurances.

“Sadly, the risk of a nuclear weapon being used, deliberately, or by mistake or miscalculation, has risen dramatically,” the planning document said.

“However, many of the challenges facing [the zones] have also not changed since 2019. In today’s fragile geostrategic context, finding ways to fully implement the security benefits due to member states in light of the commitments they have made as parties to [the zones] must be a top priority,” the document said.

The United States remains the only NPT nuclear-armed state that has failed to ratify three existing zone treaty protocols, for the South Pacific (Treaty of Rarotonga), African (Treaty of Pelindaba), and Central Asian treaties. Some members of Congress are discussing ways to remedy that situation.

July/August 2024
By Garrett Welch

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he will not rule out lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons in Russia’s nuclear posture.

During a June 7 discussion at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin was urged by Sergey Karaganov, head of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy think tank, “to escalate much more forcefully and be prepared to use” nuclear weapons to achieve victory in Ukraine. In response, Putin said that nuclear weapons would only be used in “exceptional cases…when there is a threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country,” reaffirming Russia’s official declaratory policy issued in 2020. But he refused to “rule out the possibility of making changes to this doctrine.”

Speaking to journalists June 20 during a state visit to Vietnam, Putin said that possible changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine would be driven by concerns about adversaries’ development of “explosive nuclear devices of extremely low power,” Reuters reported.

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin has made several direct and indirect threats referencing Russia’s nuclear weapons in the context of military setbacks and in protest of NATO support for Ukraine. (See ACT, June 2024; October 2022.)

Russia maintains a stockpile of 1,000 to 2,000 nonstrategic nuclear weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists. The Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review asserted that Russia had adopted a strategy of “escalate to deescalate” as part of its nuclear posture. This hypothesized strategy would involve the use of low-yield nuclear weapons early in a conventional conflict with the goal of shocking the adversary and deterring further aggression. Although the Biden administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review did not repeat this assertion, it raised concerns about the possibility that Russia would use nonstrategic nuclear weapons to “try to win a war on its periphery or avoid defeat if it was in danger of losing a conventional war.”

The Financial Times reported in February that it had obtained training documents on nuclear operations originating from the Russian Navy, describing a low threshold for nuclear use. The documents date from 2008 to 2014 and are incompatible with Russia’s declared nuclear doctrine as reaffirmed by Putin this month.

In his comments in St. Petersburg, Putin also refused to rule out the resumption of nuclear testing, stating that “if necessary, we will conduct such tests.” He added that there is currently no need for testing because Russia’s “information and computing capabilities allow us to conduct this entire process in its present-day form.” Russia revoked its ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on Nov. 2. The Kremlin justified the move as mirroring the U.S. failure to ratify the treaty.