Last year, President Donald Trump
told reporters that he wanted to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin “to
discuss the arms race, which is getting out of control.”
Unfortunately, Trump’s national
security adviser, John Bolton, stiff-armed a proposal supported by the Defense
and State departments to engage in strategic stability talks with Moscow.
Bolton also persuaded Trump, without a viable plan B, to terminate the 1987
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in response to alleged Russian violations
of the treaty.
Russian President
Vladimir Putin meets with John Bolton, National Security Adviser to the U.S.
President, at the Kremlin in Moscow on October 23, 2018. (Photo: Maxim
Shipenkov/AFP/Getty Images)
Worse yet, Trump’s national security
team has dithered for more than a year on beginning talks with Russia to extend
the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) before it expires in
February 2021. It is now apparent that Bolton is trying to steer Trump to
discard New START.
In an interview published June 18, he
spoke of a New START extension, saying, “[T]here's no decision, but I think
it's unlikely.”
Without New START, there would be no
legally binding, verifiable limits on the U.S. or Russian nuclear arsenals for
the first time in nearly half a century. Today, the treaty caps the number of
deployed warheads at 1,550 for each side; if that ceiling expires, Russia and
the United States could upload hundreds of additional nuclear warheads to their
long-range delivery systems.
Bolton argued that a key flaw of New
START is that it has no provisions or limitations on tactical, or nonstrategic,
nuclear weapons. “So simply extending it,” he said, “extends the basic
flaw."
New START was designed to focus on
the long-range nuclear weapons that pose the greatest threat to the United
States and Russia. Talks on eliminating both countries' short-range tactical
nuclear weapons are overdue, but would not be easy. If U.S. negotiators seek
limits on Russia’s estimated 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons that are kept in
central storage, Russia is sure to press the United States to remove the 180
tactical nuclear bombs it now deploys in five European NATO countries. Also,
Russia will likely seek to limit French and UK nuclear arsenals.
Bolton further suggested that new
strategic weapons being developed by China and Russia, including hypersonic
glide vehicles, and other new delivery vehicles “are simply not effectively
covered by New START.”
In fact, if Russia deploys its
Avangard hypersonic weapon, which is launched by an intercontinental ballistic
missile (ICBM), the weapon would be covered by New START, according to the
State Department. Also, Washington could insist that any new Russian strategic
nuclear delivery system, whether a long-range torpedo or missile, also be
subject to New START limits.
Bolton also argued that Trump wants
to bring China into trilateral negotiations with Russia on a new agreement to
limit nuclear weapons not covered by New START.
Pursuing talks with other
nuclear-armed states and trying to limit all types of nuclear weapons is an
admirable objective, but such a negotiation would be complex and
time-consuming. It would be malpractice to discard New START in the hopes of
negotiating a more comprehensive, ambitious nuclear arms control agreement with
Russia and China and getting it ratified and into force.
There is no realistic chance a new
agreement along these lines could be finalized before New START expires. The
first step should be a five-year extension of New START, which would provide a
foundation for a more ambitious successor agreement.
Bolton’s malign influence on U.S.
arms control and international security objectives requires that Congress make
it clear that the evisceration of common-sense arms control is unacceptable.
A bill introduced by a bipartisan
coalition led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.)
and Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), the committee’s ranking member, calls for
extending New START as long as Russia remains in compliance, or until a new
treaty that“provides equal or greater constraints” enters into force. It would
also require intelligence assessments of how New START’s expiration would
affect the size and posture of Russian nuclear forces and of the additional
intelligence capabilities that would be needed to compensate for losing the
treaty’s extensive transparency and on-site monitoring provisions.
Meanwhile, Sens. Edward Markey
(D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have launched a bill to prohibit any
funding for nuclear weapons that would violate New START limits as long as
Russia continues to stay below treaty ceilings. Such an approach would guard
against a breakout by either side and help to maintain strategic stability.
If Trump continues to listen to
Bolton’s advice and allows New START to expire, he will likely become the first
president since John Kennedy to fail to conclude at least one agreement with
Russia to reduce nuclear dangers, and he will have opened the door to a new and
dangerous nuclear arms race.
Last year, President Donald Trump
told reporters that he wanted to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin “to
discuss the arms race, which is getting out of control.”
Prospects for extending the 2010 New
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) dimmed in late June as U.S.
National Security Advisor John Bolton criticized the pact that is due to expire
in February 2021.
U.S. National Security
Advisor John Bolton speaks outside on the White House on April 30. In a June
interview, Bolton said “it’s unlikely” that New START will be extended. (Photo:
Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
“There’s no decision, but I think
it’s unlikely,” he told the Washington Free Beacon in an
interview published June 18. His comments came less than a week after top U.S.
and Russian arms control diplomats met in Prague to discuss the resumption of
talks on strategic stability and the future of New START.
In his interview, Bolton said most
Republican senators who voted to approve New START in 2010 actually opposed the
treaty, primarily because the pact has no provisions or limitations on tactical
or non-strategic nuclear weapons. “That flaw remains today,” he said, “so
simply extending it, extends the basic flaw.”
The treaty was negotiated to last 10
years after its entry into force, but it can be extended by up to five years by
mutual agreement of the U.S. and Russian presidents.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told
reporters on June 6 that Russia is prepared to let New START lapse if the Trump
administration is not interested in extending the agreement. Russia has
“already said a hundred times that we are ready to do so, but no one is willing
to talk about it with us,” he said. Putin and President Donald Trump are
expected to briefly meet at a late-June Group of 20 summit in Japan.
U.S. and Russia Reach ‘Starting
Point’ for Dialogue
A June 12 meeting in Prague between
Andrea Thompson, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and
international security, and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov was
their fourth meeting this year, but the first where “strategic security issues
on which the United States would like to engage in a more constructive dialogue
with Russia” were discussed, according to the State Department.
Senior U.S. and Russian officials
last met for a dialogue on strategic stability in Helsinki in September 2017,
but a subsequent conversation scheduled to take place in early 2018 was
canceled. (See ACT, October 2017.) The previous meetings between Ryabkov and Thompson
this year were largely focused on the narrower issue of the 1987
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
The recent discussion followed a May
meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov and Putin in Sochi. Pompeo told reporters after the
meeting that the two nations would soon “gather together teams” to discuss New
START and its potential extension, as well as “a broader range of arms control
issues.” (See ACT, June 2019.)
After his latest meeting with
Thompson, Ryabkov told Russian journalists that it was a “starting point” for
further conversations and negotiations and that both sides recognized the
importance of continued dialogue. Prior to the meeting, Ryabkov said on June 7
that Russia intended to discuss New START, prospects for next year’s nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, U.S. allegations about Russian
compliance with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the prospect of
space-based weapons and U.S. missile defense systems.
The two diplomats also discussed the
Trump administration’s recently stated desire for a more comprehensive nuclear
arms control agreement that would include China, according to Ryabkov’s June 12
statement to reporters. (See ACT, June 2019.) He added that although a multilateral process was a
good idea, it must involve all five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the
NPT, including France and the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, Russia had sent several
proposals to the United States over the past year on strategic stability and
arms control, according to Lavrov. Russia “expects specific responses” to
proposals that “cover the entire range of issues of strategic stability,” as
well as “control over nuclear and other strategic offensive and defensive
weapons,” he said, adding that one of the proposals “of fundamental importance”
is for both countries to reaffirm “at the top level” that “a nuclear war cannot
be won, and therefore it is unacceptable.”
Congress Urges New START Extension
Eight Senate and House Democratic
committee leaders sent a June 4 letterto Trump encouraging him to extend
New START.
Forgoing “the benefits of New START
by failing to extend the agreement would be a serious mistake for strategic
stability and U.S. security,” they wrote.
The letter praised the
administration’s “effort aimed at bringing both China and Russia into new arms
control talks,” but stressed that, in light of “the challenges inherent to
reaching new agreements with Russia and China, we strongly believe the
limitations and verification measures of New START must remain in place while any
such negotiation occurs.”
The letter was signed by the
Democratic leaders of the House and Senate foreign affairs committees, Rep.
Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.); the House and Senate armed
services committees, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.); the
House and Senate intelligence committees, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen.
Mark Warner (D-Va.); and the House Appropriations defense subcommittee and
Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.) and
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.).
Engel and the ranking Republican on
the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), also
continue to pursue House approval of their bill which expresses the sense of
congress that the United States should seek to extend the New START so long as
Russia remains in compliance. Their bill would also require several briefings
and reports, including an intelligence assessment of how the expiration of New
START would affect the size and posture of Russian nuclear forces and the
additional intelligence capabilities the United States would need to compensate
for the loss of the treaty’s extensive transparency and on-site monitoring
provisions.
Eleventh Hour for the
INF Treaty
The United States and
Russia have continued to set the stage for the demise of the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, slated to expire Aug. 2 after
the U.S. announcement of its withdrawal plans in early February.
The Defense Department
has requested nearly $100 billion in fiscal year 2020 to develop three new
missile systems that would exceed the range limits of the treaty, but the
Democratic-led House of Representatives has expressed concern about the
rationale for the missiles.
The House versions of the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act
and defense appropriations bill zeroed out the Pentagon’s funding request for
the missiles. On June 18, House Democrats defeated an attempt by Republicans
on the floor of the House to restore the funding by a vote of 225–203.
On June 18, Russian
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov reiterated Russia’s position that it
will not deploy INF Treaty-range missiles until the United States does. The
United States alleges that Russia has already deployed the treaty-noncompliant
9M729 missile, also known as the SSC-8. (See ACT, March 2019.) Ryabkov made his comments as the Russian State
Duma supported legislation submitted by Russian President Vladimir Putin to
suspend Russia’s participation in the INF Treaty. The upper parliamentary
body, the Federation Council, is expected to approve the legislation soon.
NATO defense ministers
met in Brussels on June 26 to discuss defense and deterrence measures “to
ensure the security of the alliance” if Russia fails to resolve U.S.
allegations of treaty noncompliance. In remarks to reporters June 25, NATO
Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, “Russia has until 2 August to
verifiably destroy its SSC-8 missiles, which violate the treaty. But
unfortunately, we have seen no indication that Russia intends to do so.”
Stoltenberg said the
ministers “will decide on NATO’s next steps, in the event Russia does not
comply. Our response will be defensive, measured and coordinated. We will not
mirror what Russia does. We do not intend to deploy new land-based nuclear
missiles in Europe. We do not want a new arms race. But as Russia is
deploying new missiles, we must ensure that our deterrence and defense
remains credible and effective.”—SHERVIN TAHERAN
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