Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Rebuttals to Arguments Against “New START”

by John Isaacs [contact information]

“The moment appears ripe for a renewal of arms control with Russia, and this bodes well for a continued reduction in the nuclear arsenal. The United States and Russia should pursue a step-by-step approach and take a modest first step to ensure that there is a successor to START I when it expires at the end of 2009.” Final report of the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, May 6, 2009

The United States and Russia should have simply extended START I.

Response: Neither the United States nor Russia wanted to extend START I for the full five years as allowed by the Treaty. Both countries find many of the Treaty’s provisions cumbersome and obsolete and wanted to update and amend them accordingly. Many of the same voices now arguing for a simple extension had no qualms with the Bush administration’s decision not to seek an extension of START I in 2007 and 2008.

The Obama administration should have drafted a protocol to the Moscow Treaty regarding verification and transparency measures instead of negotiating a new reductions treaty.

Response:

• This approach, like a simple five-year extension of START I, was a non-starter for Russia. In fact, in November 2008 the Bush administration presented Russia with a proposal that was basically the Moscow Treaty with some limited verification provisions. The Russians rejected the proposal.
• Adding verification and transparency measures to the Moscow Treaty doesn’t make sense because there is nothing in the treaty to actually count and verify. For example, the treaty does not define “strategic nuclear warheads” nor does it limit delivery vehicles or include sublimits on mobile missiles.

It was premature to begin negotiations with Russia until the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is completed. The U.S. should have first developed a strategy to identify the military and political requirements that the U.S. nuclear force must fulfill before any treaty mandating reductions is signed.

Response: First, the George W. Bush administration selected the number of 1,700-2,200 operationally deployed weapons for the Moscow Treaty before the 2001 NPR was completed. This number was announced in Moscow in early November 2001, whereas the NPR was not completed until the end of December 2001. Second, even the Senate Republican Policy Committee memo on New START conceded that the Pentagon is satisfied that the NPR has sufficiently informed the negotiations. In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 9, Marine General James Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: “We prioritized in the Nuclear Posture Review . . . the activities and the analysis that would be necessary to support the timelines associated with the START negotiations or the follow-on START negotiations. . . . I’m very comfortable that we prioritized that analysis at the front end in order to support these negotiations.” The expiration of START I in December 2009 and the close link between the New START negotiations and the NPR process meant that it was both necessary and prudent to try and negotiate a new treaty without waiting for a fully completed NPR.

Mutual reductions in U.S. and Russian arsenal disproportionately benefit Russia, since the deployed number of Russian delivery vehicles (missiles and bombers) will drop dramatically with or without a new arms control agreement.

Response: First, it is not necessarily the case that Russia would have reduced its missiles and bombers without a new arms control agreement. Nor is it true that Russia needs or wants a new arms control agreement far more than the U.S. does. Without limits on the size of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, Russia would have less confidence in its ability to maintain a stable strategic nuclear relationship with the United States. This could prompt Moscow to maintain a larger number of deployed warheads and delivery vehicles than it would with a new treaty.

Second, the Strategic Posture Commission found that “the sizing of U.S. forces remains overwhelmingly driven by Russia.” If the Russians are reducing nuclear weapons, it is appropriate for the U.S. to do so.

Third, the fact the some Russian reductions might happen in any event is beside the point. If START I was allowed to expire without a new arms control agreement to replace it, so too would the important limits on and the means of verifying the two countries’ still enormous nuclear stockpiles and delivery systems. Such an outcome would make the United States less safe.

The United States should not agree to further cuts in its nuclear arsenal so long as Russia does not agree to reduce its stockpile of non-strategic (tactical) nuclear forces.

Response: New START does not impose limits on non-strategic warheads. As levels of strategic nuclear weapons decline, Russia’s larger tactical arsenal could develop into a security (or more likely political) concern for the United States (just as U.S. conventional superiority is of concern for Russia). However, the Bush administration did not include tactical nuclear weapons in its 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) with Russia. While experts agree that these weapons present difficult challenges, there is not sufficient time in 2009 to reach an agreement on nonstrategic forces. The best way to address tactical nuclear weapons is to ratify the New START agreement as soon as possible, which will build the confidence and momentum necessary to deal with this issue in the next round of negotiations. Leaving tactical weapons off the table at this time would not endanger U.S. security because Russia’s large non-strategic nuclear stockpile does not increase the threat posed by its existing strategic weapons.

New START limits U.S. missile defenses.

Response: Russia is concerned about U.S. missile defense plans, which is why in April 2009 the two sides noted an “interrelationship of strategic offensive and strategic defensive arms.” Yet it is also clear that the Obama administration intends to keep missile defense on a separate track from reductions in strategic offensive arms. The 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Review released in February 2010 stated that “the [Obama] Administration will continue to reject any negotiated restraints on U.S. ballistic missile defenses.” American negotiators could have accepted the Russian position on missile defenses or any of the other complex issues that delayed signature well past START I’s expiration on December 5. But they didn’t.

Obama and Medvedev have stated that New START will deal only with strategic offensive arms. The offense-defense link is noted in the preamble of the new treaty, but the text of New START does not contain any formal or legal limitations on U.S. missile defense plans. According to a White House fact sheet on New START, “the Treaty does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S. missile defense programs.”

As was the case with START I, the U.S. and Russia have issued unilateral statements on how they interpret the relationship between the new treaty and missile defense. In addition, the treaty prohibits both sides from converting launchers for ICBMs and SLBMs into launchers for missile defense interceptors and vice versa. However, it exempts five ICBM silos at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Colorado that were converted to launch missile defense interceptors before the treaty was signed. Regardless, since the U.S. has no plans to convert anymore ICBM or SLBM silos for missile defense, this provision has no impact on U.S. missile defense plans.

New START reduces the number of strategic nuclear launchers to such a low number that first strike targeting options for Russia could become plausible.

Response: The only plausible threat to the survivability of the U.S. nuclear force is Russia’s nuclear force. However, since both the U.S. and Russia will reduce their forces to meet New START’s limits, the vulnerability of their arsenals will decrease as well. While U.S. forces could be threatened at much lower levels of delivery vehicles and warheads, New START does not require significant cuts in the number of deployed U.S. nuclear delivery vehicles and warheads and it will not require any cuts in the number of U.S. warheads in storage. For example, New START’s limit of 700 deployed delivery vehicles is similar to the number of missile and bombers the U.S. actually deploys. It is estimated that the U.S. currently deploys 800 delivery vehicles, while Russia deploys an estimated 600 delivery vehicles, which is already below the limit.

New START limits U.S. advanced conventional weapons systems.

Response: The previous administration proposed putting conventional warheads on long-range land- and sea-based ballistic missiles (also known as prompt global strike). Congress has so far refused to fund the Conventional Trident Modification program, which would have substituted conventional payloads for the nuclear warheads on only two missiles aboard each of the nation’s 12 deployed nuclear ballistic missile submarines (two are in overhaul at any given time). Meanwhile, the Pentagon has proposed to deploy a very small number of conventionally-armed land-based missiles by 2015. It remains to be seen what the Obama administration’s full plans are for a prompt global strike capability.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen has stated that the new treaty “protects our ability to develop a conventional global strike capability should that be required.” New START will count ICBMs and SLBMs whether they carry nuclear or conventional warheads, thus a prompt global strike capability would be subject to the treaty’s limits. However, a warhead limit of 1,550 and a deployed and non-deployed delivery vehicle limit of 800 would still give the U.S. the flexibility to deploy a small number of conventionally armed submarine- and/or land-based long-range missiles, if it ever decides to do so. New START will not count U.S. delivery systems (such as B-1 bombers and four Trident I submarines) that have been converted to conventional-only roles.

Russia’s development of the multiple-warhead RS-24 violated START I.

Response: Russia has developed and tested a new, multiple-warhead version of the single warhead SS-27 (known as the RS-24). However, START I prohibited deployment of the RS-24 because it did not conform to the Treaty’s definition of a new type of missile. Since START I limited the SS-27 to a single warhead, a multiple-warhead version would have violated the Treaty. While Russia had planned to begin deploying the missile in December 2009 to coincide with the expiration of START I, the missile may not begin to be deployed until 2011, after one or two more flight tests.

First, since Russia did not deploy the RS-24 while START I was still in force, it was not a violation. In any event, New START allows for the deployment of the new missile. Second, the Bush administration did not make an issue out of Russia’s development of the RS-24. This was in keeping with the conclusions of the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, which declared that it was no longer appropriate to size and configure U.S. nuclear forces in relation to the Russian arsenal. As former Bush administration official Ambassador Linton Brooks has noted,

Russia is not fulfilling its commitments under the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) of the early 1990s regarding non-strategic nuclear weapons. This has resulted in a Russian tactical nuclear weapons arsenal and stockpile that is far larger than that of the United States.

Response: The PNIs were a collection of voluntary commitments made by the U.S. and Russia in the early 1990s to eliminate certain types of tactical, or “battlefield,” nuclear weapons. Allegations that Russia has violated the pledges it made in 1991 and 1992 are just that: allegations. The fact is that neither Russia nor the United States release information about their non-strategic nuclear forces. The PNIs were not legally binding agreements and for the most part neither side was forthcoming about which systems would be eliminated and when they would be eliminated.

Russia has also committed numerous other violations of START I.

Response: Critics are pointing to a 2005 report known as the Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments as evidence that Russia violated START I. According to the report, “a significant number of longstanding compliance issues that have been raised in the START Treaty's Joint Compliance and Inspection Commission (JCIC) remain unresolved.”

While Congress is supposed to receive a compliance report every year, the Bush administration completed only two from 2001-2009, the first in June 2003 and the second in August 2005. The 2005 report contained far more detail about Russian implementation of START I than previous reports claiming, among other things, that Russia was not allowing the U.S. to effectively monitor and verify some Russian warheads and missiles. Yet Russia has also raised unresolved issues pertaining to its inability to verify the number of warheads on U.S. Trident II missiles. Compliance concerns on both sides have existed for some time, which is precisely why the JCIC exists.

In a Senate floor speech delivered on November 5, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) stated that concerns about Russian cheating have been greatly overblown. According to Lugar, “such concerns fail to appreciate how much information is provided through the exchange of data mandated by the Treaty, on-site inspections, and national technical means. “Our experiences over many years have proven the effectiveness of the Treaty’s verification provisions and served to build a basis for confidence between the two countries when doubts arose. The bottom line is that the United States is far safer as a result of those 600 START inspections than we would be without them.”

The U.S. cannot trust the Russians or verify what is done by the Russians. New START is not adequately verifiable.

Response: It is ironic that some of the same Republican Senators who supported SORT, which contained no verification provisions, are now accusing the Obama administration of being weak on verification. In praising SORT on the Senate floor in April 2003, Sen. Jon Kyl stated: This treaty is a masterstroke. It represents, and, I am sure, will be sent as ushering in a wholly new approach to arms control for a wholly new era. The simplicity of this treaty is a marvel. It is extremely brief, indeed just three pages long. It is shorn of the tortured benchmarks, sublimits, arcane definitions and monitoring provisions that weighed down past arms control treaties.

While New START draws upon much of what was in START I, the new treaty contains new limits and rules. New rules and limits in turn require verification provisions that are actually pegged to those new rules and limits. For example, since the agreement limits warheads, it contains provisions that allow for the monitoring and verification of actual warhead loadings, a first for a strategic arms control treaty. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted at a March 26 press briefing on New START: “The verification measures for this treaty have been designed to monitor compliance with the provisions with this treaty.”

The new agreement is rooted in the facts that: (1) U.S. defense planning is no longer guided by many of the scenarios vis-à-vis Russia (e.g. think protracted nuclear war) that dominated our thinking during the Cold War; (2) the U.S. is starting with a lot more information about Russia’s strategic forces now than it did in the late 1980s and early 1990s when START I was negotiated and signed (thanks in large part to 15 years of experience implementing START I), and; (3) our own national technical means of monitoring and verification have vastly improved.

Consequently, New START contains an updated, streamlined, and more cost-effective system of verification procedures that are tailored to the new limits, reflect the realities of the current U.S. and Russian arsenals, and, most importantly, will allow the U.S. to effectively verify Russia's compliance with the treaty. As Secretary Gates put it: “I think that when the testimony of the intelligence community comes on the Hill, that the DNI and the experts will say that they are comfortable that the provisions of this treaty for verification are adequate for them to monitor Russian compliance, and vice versa.”

It’s possible that over time our information about Russia's nuclear forces could diminish without the kind of intelligence we got from START I’s verification provisions. But while our intelligence community would probably prefer to retain all of START I’s provisions (e.g. on continuous monitoring at Russia’s mobile missile production facility at Votkinsk and telemetry), these same provisions are not necessary to verify Russia’s compliance with the new treaty, which is the only appropriate basis for including them in the first place.

The closure of the Votkinsk Portal Monitoring Facility will compromise our ability to monitor Russian mobile missile deployments.

Response: Votkinsk is where Russia produces its Topol-M (SS-27) and Bulava (SS-26) missiles. In November 2008 the Bush administration presented the Russians with a proposal for a follow-on agreement to START I that did not include continuing monitoring at Votkinsk. According to Ambassador Linton Brooks, “the continuous monitoring at Votkinsk was done at a time when we were worried about large numbers of spare launchers and large numbers of spare missiles that could be brought together, and that has proven not to be a genuine worry….Further, the whole philosophy under that was for enduring or continuing a protracted nuclear war, which to the best of my knowledge, nobody in the world believes in anymore.” While New START will not include on-site monitoring at Votkinsk, it will include provisions that will continue to allow the U.S. to monitor Russia’s mobile missiles. For example, the treaty requires Moscow to notify the U.S. 48 hours before new solid-fueled ICBMs and SLBMs leave Russian production facilities such as Votkinsk.

New START does not contain START I’s provisions on telemetry.

Response: New START contains a simplified and less demanding provision on telemetry. START I stated that “telemetric information…assists in verification of Treaty provisions concerning, for example, throw-weight and the number of reentry vehicles.” This data was useful in helping the U.S. monitor Russian missile development and ensure that it did not attempt to add warheads to its existing types of ballistic missiles.

However, the very purposes for which the telemetry provision was crafted in START I no longer exist in the new treaty. The treaty does not prohibit Russia from adding additional warheads to its missiles and does not limit the maximum number of warheads missiles can carry, but rather the actual number of warheads each missile carries. According to Secretary of Defense Gates, “we don’t need telemetry to monitor compliance with this treaty.” That the U.S. negotiating team was still able to secure an agreement to exchange telemetric information on up to five missile launches a year is a nice win for transparency and confidence-building.

New START’s bomber counting rule will give the Russians a strategic advantage.

Response: New START counts each bomber as one warhead against the treaty's limit of 1550 warheads. Since neither the U.S. nor Russia actually deploy warheads on bombers anymore, on-site inspections of bombers would not have uncovered any warheads to actually count. Thus the two sides had to choose an arbitrary number.

New START's counting rule for bombers is not a fundamental departure from how START I counted bomber weapons. Moreover, neither side is likely to get a strategic leg up on the other via the bomber counting rule. National technical means (NTM) will still allow the U.S. to track the number of Russian bombers. While NTM will not allow for monitoring of the number of warheads at Russian bomber bases, 15 years of START I implementation has provided us with quite a bit of information about what Russian bombers can carry. Bombers are also inherently less destabilizing than missiles because they take much longer to deliver warheads to their target and can be recalled.

The United States should not agree to further cuts in its nuclear arsenal unless a program is put in place to “modernize” the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

Response: The link between the modest reductions along the lines of those called for in the New START treaty and “modernizing” our nuclear stockpile has been greatly overstated.

• We should want our weapons to be safe, secure, and effective whether we have one weapon or ten thousand.
• On arms reductions the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States was clear and unequivocal. Nowhere in the chapter of the report on arms control is there any attempt to make modest reductions along the lines of those called for in New START contingent upon the design and production of new warheads and new warhead production facilities.
• Instead the Commission notes that existing life extension programs and new warhead designs represent opposite ends of a spectrum of options. The evidence that we can continue to rely on existing stewardship and life extension programs to maintain our nuclear weapons is overwhelming. As a September 2009 independent report from the JASON scientific advisory group pointed out, “Lifetimes of today's nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence.”
• The Obama administration’s FY 2011 budget request should leave no doubt that the President is strongly committed to maintaining our nuclear stockpile and its supporting infrastructure. The budget devotes $7 billion for maintaining our nuclear-weapons stockpile and complex, and for related efforts. This commitment is $600 million more than Congress approved last year. Over the next five years the administration intends to boost funding for these activities by more than $5 billion. This funding provides more than enough resources to maintain the reliability of all major warhead types through ongoing Life Extension Programs. As Secretary of Defense Gates wrote in his preface to the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, these investments “represent a credible modernization plan necessary to sustain the nuclear infrastructure and support our nation’s deterrent.”
• Contrary to the claims of some Republicans, the U.S. has not allowed its nuclear arsenal to atrophy since the end of the Cold War. Even before the huge funding increase for our nuclear weapons proposed by the Obama administration, the U.S. has maintained a safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal that is second to none. The fact that the U.S. is not building new missiles and warheads like the Russians and Chinese does not mean we’re falling way behind. Those who continue to argue that Washington doesn't show enough interest in modernizing its nuclear weapons should be forced to answer a simple question: If given the choice, would they trade the U.S. nuclear arsenal for the Russian or Chinese nuclear arsenals? Clearly, the answer is no.

Reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles will not prevent North Korea or Iran from attempting to acquire nuclear weapons.

Response: The Senate Republican Policy Committee claimed that U.S. nuclear numbers have zero effect on North Korea and Iran’s nuclear programs. Thus increasing or decreasing the U.S. stockpile or retaining the status quo will not convince either North Korea or Iran to refrain from developing nuclear weapons. But, as already pointed out, there are plenty of reasons to reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles. Moreover, as the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States pointed out, the U.S might not be able to marshal the international support it needs to safeguard and eliminate dangerous nuclear materials, universalize the Additional Protocol, which grants the IAEA far more intrusive rights of access to suspected nuclear-related information and sites, or put added pressure on North Korea and Iran if it doesn't take steps to reduce the size of its nuclear arsenal.

New START limits should not be so low as to invite peer competition.

Response: Even after a New START agreement, the U.S. will still have at least 1,500 deployed strategic nuclear weapons (as will the Russians), plus many more in reserve. Other nuclear powers such as China have only 200-250 nuclear weapons, far from the U.S. total.

The missed deadline on the START follow-on negotiations reveals how haphazard the negotiations have become.

Response: The expiration of START I on December 5 was expected, which is why the Obama administration has strongly pushed to finalize negotiations on New START. In a joint statement released on December 4, the United States and Russia pledged “to continue to work together in the spirit of the START Treaty following its expiration, as well as our firm intention to ensure that a new treaty on strategic arms enter into force at the earliest possible date.”

It's also important to take into account that the two sides only began negotiations on a new treaty in April 2009, in large part because the Bush administration was not interested in a new arms control agreement to replace START I. They knew that the expiration of START was on the horizon, and they simply weren't interested in doing much about it. The Obama administration's negotiating team entered the negotiations in a tight spot. It was always going to be a challenge to get an agreement negotiated before December 5, to say nothing about actually getting an agreement negotiated, signed, and then ratified by the U.S. Senate by December 5.

The Senate should take its time on ratification.

Response: Some Senators have pointed out that the Senate took many months or even more than a year to vote on treaty ratification and should take its time on New START approval. However taking more time does not necessarily mean more thorough consideration but rather fairly customary Senate delays. It makes sense for both the U.S. and Russia to move expeditiously on the new agreement. The longer the treaty remains in limbo, the longer the verification procedures remain in limbo.