START treaty breeds Cold War nostalgia


by Robert Robb - Jan. 5, 2011 12: 00 AM
The Arizona Republic



After all the huffing and puffing over new START, what remains is the sense that it was, primarily, the last gasp of Cold War nostalgia.

Substantively, there was little about the new START treaty that was important, and what was important was troubling.

The treaty sets limits on strategic nuclear warheads and launchers toward which both sides were trending anyway.

After the end of the Cold War, the George W. Bush administration decided that the United States didn't need to correlate a reduction in its nuclear arsenal with Russia and announced a unilateral reduction. Russia wanted to do it in the context of a treaty, so the Bush administration complied. But it made no pretense that the agreement was important.

Nuclear arsenals are expensive to maintain. After the end of the Cold War, the extensive redundancy built into the configurations of both sides made no sense and, in the case of Russia, was no longer affordable. Self-interest would lead to reductions independent of agreements.

What is important about the new START treaty is the acknowledgement in the preamble of the link between offensive weapons and missile defense. The Obama administration said it was dross and to ignore it. The Russians take a decidedly different position.

The Russians have made it abundantly clear that they regard U.S. missile defense as a threat, to which they will respond with improvements in offensive capabilities. And they have also made it abundantly clear that they regard new START as limiting the ability of the United States to improve missile defense without their consent.

Given the disagreement and ambiguity over something so important, why the rush to negotiate and approve the treaty? After all, Russia is not currently much of a threat to the United States. Right now, our interests clash much more extensively and potentially dangerously with China than with Russia. Yet there is no clamor for an arms-control treaty with China concerning deployments in the Pacific. Why such importance attached to an arms-control deal with Russia?

This is easier to understand from the Russian perspective than the American perspective. For the U.S., the Cold War is over. For Russia, it is not.

Russia views with alarm the extension of Western alliances - NATO, the European Union - into what it regards as its rightful sphere of influence along its borders. Russia is no longer an expansionary power. But it fears that the United States may be.

So, it wants to continue the arms-control process, both for what it symbolizes about the continuing importance of Russia and for whatever constraints it can impose on the United States in areas that trouble it, such as missile defense.

The importance the Obama administration attached to the treaty is more difficult to fathom.

President Obama famously wanted to push the "reset" button on Russian relations. Russia can be helpful, for instance on Iran. The WikiLeaks documents strongly suggest that the Obama administration at least implicitly agreed to drop land-based missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic, to which Russia vigorously objected, in exchange for greater Russian cooperation on Iran. This tendency by the Obama administration to view missile defense as a bargaining chip, rather than a pillar of security, is what is most worrisome about new START.

Russia wants a continuation of arms-control agreements with the United States. So, perhaps the Obama administration went along as part of the "reset" strategy.

But there appeared to be more than realpolitik involved. The Obama administration seemed genuinely to believe that the treaty was important, in a way the Bush administration clearly didn't.

But it never articulated a reason why that wasn't tinged with Cold War rhetoric and perspective - the need to keep an eye on what those pesky Ruskies were up to.

I don't think the Obama administration misses the Cold War. But it may miss the days when agreements between superpowers were more consequential than they are today

Russian Lawmakers Begin Endorsing New START
Monday, Jan. 3, 2011


Russia's State Duma on December 24 offered preliminary endorsement of a new nuclear arms control treaty with the United States, but lawmakers in Moscow indicated they were unlikely to rapidly finalize approval of the pact, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Dec. 23, 2010).

(Jan. 3) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2009 poses inside a Russian nuclear-capable SU-34 strategic bomber. The Russian State Duma last month gave initial approval of a new nuclear weapons treaty with the United States (Dmitry Astakhov/Getty Images).
The lower chamber of Russia's parliament voted 350-58 in support of the New START treaty.

However, amendments the U.S. Senate made to its New START ratification document would delay the next of three mandatory Russian votes on the pact until this month or later, State Duma International Affairs Committee Chairman Konstantin Kosachyov said. The Seante voted on December 22 to ratify the treaty.

"These issues have to be studied very carefully," Kosachyov said ahead of the first Russian vote. "And that takes time."

President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed New START in April. The pact would require Russia and the United States to cap their deployed strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550, down from a limit of 2,200 required by 2012 under an earlier treaty. It also would set a ceiling of 700 deployed warhead delivery systems, with another 100 allowed in reserve.

"Common sense" prevented the inclusion of language undercutting critical elements of the treaty, but Moscow was "absolutely not in agreement" with an amendment to the U.S. ratification text that defends Washington's plans to deploy missile shield elements in Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said (see GSN, Dec. 22, 2010).

"This is an arbitrary interpretation of the principles of international law. The agreement, like any other, is a single whole," Lavrov said.

Urging lawmakers to support the agreement, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov emphasized the pact's sole focus on reducing strategic nuclear stocks, an area in which the United States now holds an numeric advantage.

"We will not have to make any cuts to our strategic offensive weapons," Serdyukov told communist opponents of the deal. "These will be removed from service only when the time comes to decommission them."

Conversely, Russia maintains several times the number of tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Europe by the United States. Another amendment to the U.S. Senate's ratification text presses Obama to within one year launch negotiations with Russia aimed at curbing the battlefield bombs.

Much like their counterparts in Washington, members of Russia's parliament were expected to submit additions to the ratification document. The defense minister called on them to address U.S. missile defense plans, which Moscow says could threaten Russian strategic security and could lead the nation to withdraw from the nuclear pact.

"We think it essential that the State Duma adopt a declaration confirming the importance of the link between strategic offensive and strategic defensive arms," Serdyukov said (Dmitry Zaks, Agence France-Presse/Google News, Dec. 23, 2010).

The Obama administration intends to "carry out the requirements of the [U.S. ratification] resolution by seeking to initiate negotiations with Russia on tactical nukes within one year of New START's entry into force,” White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said following the Senate's approval of the ratification text.

The endorsement by GOP senators for further nuclear talks with Russia could benefit the Obama administration's arms control goals, Union of Concerned Scientists senior analyst Stephen Young told the New York Times. “The good news is, with Senate approval of New START, the administration achieved the essential precondition to getting Russia to consider reductions in tactical nuclear forces,” Young said.

“In the 21st century, there is no plausible military, political or deterrent justification for the Russian government to deploy several thousand such weapons,” said Frank Miller, a former national security staffer for the George W. Bush administration.

Still, Moscow could demand U.S. concessions on missile defense or nondeployed strategic forces in exchange for reductions to its tactical nuclear stockpile, other observers said.

Washington and Moscow should negotiate a ceiling on their total nuclear weapons holdings, possibly allowing each side to retain 2,500 weapons and to determine their own configurations of strategic and nonstrategic armaments, former State Department arms control official Steven Pifer said (Peter Baker, New York Times, Dec. 24, 2010).

The U.S. negotiator for New START, though, last month suggested any agreement on battlefield nuclear weapons would take time, the Washington Post reported.

"I don't want anybody to think, you know ... (we) dive right in when January rolls around, because we do have some homework to do in that regard, and I'm sure the Russians do as well," Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller said. "Any big negotiation takes preparatory work and some careful consideration."

"Anybody who's followed this over the years knows that the Russian Federation has had a kind of - well, clear conditionality for beginning negotiations on tac nukes, and that is that NATO should bring all of the nuclear weapons deployed in NATO -- on NATO territory in Europe -- back to the continental United States before Russia -- and this is a long-standing conditionality, was from Soviet times -- before they would consider beginning talks in this arena," she said (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Dec. 27, 2010).

Meanwhile, Washington would seek to involve Russia in U.S. and NATO plans to establish a unified antimissile system, the Times quoted Vietor as saying (see GSN, Dec. 17, 2010). “We have a robust schedule of consultations on missile defense cooperation with Russia planned for the early part of the new year,” the White House spokesman said (Baker, Times).

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