WASHINGTON AND MOSCOW ENTER THE NEXT PHASE OF NUCLEAR NEGOTIATIONS

When US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov concluded the two-year phase of the New START Treaty (Treaty) negotiations with an exchange of diplomatic documents on February 5th, 2011, they opened the door on a new foreign policy opportunity for the two countries.

Russia and the US will now turn their focus to their tactical nuclear weapons (a Russian strength), and anti-missile defence (a U.S. strength). As they wade through technical calculations and definitions, the world’s other nuclear powers will face growing pressure to cut their own nuclear arsenals. Eventually that pressure could reach as far as Israel, Pakistan, India and even North Korea — none of which belong to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The final phase we are now entering was born in the political drama of the lame duck US Congress’ final sessions last year. Republicans and Democrats duked it out over income tax rates, but their sudden compromise on that issue cleared the way for passage of a raft of other measures—including ratification of the US-Russian New START treaty.

It’s scary to imagine how Senate rejection of the Treaty would have tarnished the US image in the world. Fortunately, though, the outcome was positive (by a vote of 71-26), and we can now mull over cheerier thoughts about next nuclear arms control steps. (My thanks to fellow Democracy Arsenal blogger Kelsey Hartigan for her help.)

The limits and reductions under New START focused on long-range sea-launched missiles, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, and bomber aircraft, all considered strategic systems.

The question of the next agreement’s scope also has a domestic political context. In the December ratification debate, numerous American senators stressed the importance of limits on shorter-range tactical weapons. As far as I can tell, those concerns boil down to the fact that Russia has a lot more of them, maintained as a hedge against US/NATO conventional forces to the west of Russia. Yet there are complementary imbalances in the US and Russian nuclear arsenals. While New START will leave Moscow with roughly 4,000 tactical weapons to America’s 400, the US will retain a numerical “advantage” of 2,000+ to 500 in warheads that are stored in reserve, separate from any delivery systems—another category that lies outside the recent agreement’s scope. As the blogosphere’s resident arms control wonk Jeffrey Lewis explains, this reflects contrasting philosophies about the upkeep of nuclear weapons. Russia replaces older systems with newly manufactured warheads, whereas the US hoards numerous spares. Time will tell whether the $80B modernization of the US nuclear laboratories, and the new technical knowledge that they gain, will result in a changed approach.

Indeed, President Obama pointed toward a focus on these two categories when he signed New START last April: “going forward, we hope to pursue discussions with Russia on reducing both our strategic and tactical weapons, including non-deployed weapons.” Of course that leaves tricky issues of how reductions will be apportioned, which categories will be lumped together or kept separate in the follow-on treaty’s counting rules, and of course verification measures. (The Brookings Institution has published an excellent guide to the issues by
Steven Pifer, the introduction of which provides a very clear overview.)

The trickiest issue of all will be missile defense. Under New START, Russia deferred its concerns that US anti-missile systems could blunt its forces. While New START does not cover missile defenses, Moscow used a statement in the treaty’s preamble to put down a marker that a build-up of US defense systems could eventually prompt Russia to withdraw from the agreement. This potential out-clause that Russia created for itself prompted the loudest cries among treaty critics in the Senate. At this point, US missile defenses are considered sacrosanct and hard to imagine as a subject for arms control limits (despite an earlier history of just such constraints under President Nixon’s 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty). The only hope for lowering Russia’s hackles, therefore, lies in technical cooperation that convincingly shows the defense systems being developed are oriented at Iran rather than Russia.

Taking a longer-term view, there are fascinating questions about eventually widening the circle of nuclear disarmament—a scenario that hasn’t received the attention it deserves. The United States and Russia possess the vast majority of the world’s nuclear weapons (over 90%), but once their bilateral reductions reach a certain point, three other countries will need to be brought in. The two cold war rivals plus China, France, and the United Kingdom are the five nations that signed the 1970 Treaty on Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NPT) as “nuclear weapon-state parties,” the nuclear ‘haves.’

Under the NPT, these nuclear powers promised to get rid of their weapons, rather than hold onto them. That was the core grand bargain with the 180+ non-weapon states, who would remain non-nuclear on the understanding that the nuclear haves would disarm. The meager progress on disarmament in the 40 years since, and related international frustration with the nuclear powers, is the underlying pressure spurring arms control agreements. The pressure of those expectations will eventually widen to Britain, France, and China.

But what’s really intriguing to contemplate is to look beyond an agreement among those five. As we know, there are four other nuclear powers in the world: Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. As a legal matter, none of these nations is actually a party to the NPT, though in the case of North Korea, it built its first nuclear weapons prior to withdrawing.

As a political matter, though, the nuclear taboo is bigger than the treaty itself, and once the five traditional nuclear powers are all in the disarmament process, new attention and pressure will immediately shift toward Israel, India, and Pakistan.

By David Shorr
Program Officer
The Stanley Foundation

 

RELATED MATERIAL FOR THE WEEK OF FEBRUARY 14

BACKGROUND

The non-proliferation of nuclear weapons is a key area of interest for many nations across the globe. To date, eight states have successfully detonated nuclear weapons and still others are progressing towards acquiring the necessary technology. The emergence of transnational terrorism in recent decades, and the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea and Iran have made nuclear disarmament a most pertinent and pressing security concern for all states. Presently, a number of bilateral and multilateral agreements exist to maintain the nuclear status quo.

The Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), with its three-pillar system of non-proliferation, disarmament and promoting peaceful uses of nuclear technology boasts a membership of 189 states, five of which are nuclear weapon states. Every five years, the treaty is reviewed at a NPT Review Conference. The most recent of these conferences ran during May 2010, and in June 2010 the G8 members pledged compliance to the conferences’ recommended actions at the Canada Muskoka G8 Summit.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBC) bans nuclear explosions for military and civilian purposes to prevent radioactive fall-out on society and the environment. It was also created to discourage the production of new nuclear weapons and prevent new countries from acquiring and testing nuclear weapons technology. It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on  September 10, 1996 and as of May 2010, 153 states have ratified the treaty; 29 states have not and to date, the CTBT has not yet entered into force.

On 26 March 2010, US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reached an agreement on a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which reduces the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers by half in the US and in Russia. The treaty also sets up procedures to allow for mutual inspection of each other’s arsenals. On December 22, 2010, the US senate formally ratified the new START treaty by a vote of 71 to 26.

More recently, states have called for negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) at the Conference on Disarmament (CD), a 65-member forum established by the international community to negotiate arms control and disarmament agreements. The proposed FMTC would prohibit the further production of fissile material for nuclear weapons and explosives. However, discussions on a FMCT failed to begin at the CD due to opposition by Pakistan.

RELATED MATERIALS

  • The Council on Foreign Relations hosted a discussion with Rose E. Gottemoeller, Steven Pifer, and Micah Zenko in the wake of the late December 2010 ratification of the New Start Treaty. Video statements from all four participants on the US-Russian nuclear relationship and nuclear disarmament can be found by clicking on their respective names.
  • The U.S White House website released a fact sheet on the New Start Treaty, which outlines the treaty’s components and key benchmarks. The New START Treat was signed into law by U.S President Barack Obama on February 2nd, 2011.
  • The Nuclear Threat Initiative, co-chaired by former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn and Ted Turner, aims to address the threats posed by the possession of nuclear weapons. Nunn, along with Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, and William Perry, have been staunch activists in recent years for increased focus on nuclear disarmament.