Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Nukes Remain Top Security Issue

by Kingston Reif [contact information]

Published in the Deming Headlight on June 8, 2009

"There are no second acts in American lives," the famous author F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote. Tell that to U.S. and Russian officials who met in Moscow in mid-May to begin negotiating a new nuclear arms reduction agreement. Left for dead during the Bush administration, nuclear arms control is back for an encore performance - and not a moment too soon.

The landmark 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) greatly reduced the dangers posed by U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Under the Treaty, the United States and Russia cut their deployed nuclear arsenals from about 10,000 warheads at the end of the Cold War to less than 6,000 by December 2001. The agreement also limited each country to no more than 1,600 strategic delivery vehicles, the bombers and missiles used to convey nuclear warheads.

Despite the success of START, the Bush administration had a different view about how to deal with nuclear arms. In May 2002, the United States and Russia signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, also known as the Moscow Treaty, which commits the two countries to reduce their deployed nuclear arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads apiece by the end of 2012.

Unlike START, the Moscow Treaty did not impose limits on delivery vehicles or on how many strategic warheads the United States and Russia could keep in storage or reserve. Nor did it contain any monitoring or verification provisions. Instead, the two sides agreed to rely on the START infrastructure to verify implementation and compliance.

But START expires on December 5, of this year, three years before the Moscow Treaty limit takes effect. Faced with the impending expiration of START, the Bush administration claimed that the United States and Russia no longer needed formal arms control agreements to manage their strategic relationship.

In keeping with his campaign promise, President Barack Obama already has taken steps to reverse this approach. On April 1, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a joint statement in which they "agreed to pursue new and verifiable reductions in our strategic offensive arsenals in a step-by-step process, beginning by replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with a new, legally-binding treaty."

U.S. and Russian official pronouncements indicate that the follow-on agreement will call for reductions in deployed warheads below the level of the Moscow Treaty, perhaps in the range of 1,000 to 1,500 warheads.

This renewal of the formal arms control process is important for three key reasons. First, together the United States and Russia possess some 20,000 nuclear weapons, about 95 percent of all these in the world. Designed for the Cold War, such massive arsenals don't help against current threats like terrorism. Today, more nuclear weapons mean more opportunities for accidents or theft.

Second, though the United States and Russia have serious differences on several foreign policy issues, the formal arms control process can bring predictability and stability to U.S.-Russian relations and greatly limit the incentives for renewed strategic competition.

Third, deeper nuclear reductions can reinforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Such demonstrations of good faith are essential for retaining the continued commitment of non-nuclear weapons states not to pursue nuclear arsenals.

But don't just take President Obama's (and my) word for it. There is broad and wide support, even among conservative Republicans, for reducing the size and role of nuclear weapons in U.S. and Russian national security policies. The recently released report of the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States concluded, "the moment appears ripe for a renewal of arms control with Russia, and this bodes well for a continued reduction in the nuclear arsenal."

Minimizing the global danger posed by nuclear weapons is a top U.S. national security priority and something we owe to future generations. Achieving deep, verifiable, and legally binding nuclear reductions is a necessary first step toward achieving that goal.