Lawrence J. Korb -- A path toward renewing arms control

Dear Sirs,

Why did not the Trump Administration answer until now the proposal of President of the Federation of Russia, Vladimir Putin, when he stated ( I quote him on his interview to 'Corriere della Sera' here https://www.corriere.it/esteri/19_luglio_04/putin-ready-to-talk-to-the-us-constant-contact-with-salvini-s-league-157f245e-9dec-11e9-9326-3d0a58e59695.shtml

on second question, line 16):

"Another fact is worth mentioning. In October last year, we made a proposal to the United States regarding the adoption of a joint declaration on the “inadmissibility” of nuclear war and the acknowledgement of its destructive consequences. To date, the Americans have not replied".

I would appreciate very much your answer to this point.

Respectfully,

luisa

A path toward renewing arms control

By Lawrence J. Korb, July 18, 2019

Rocket models are stuck in a bucket during a February protest action in Berlin against the imminent withdrawal of the INF disarmament agreement between Russia and the USA. Photo: Paul Zinken/dpa

At the late June G-20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, US President Trump and Russian President Putin met to discuss a number of issues, including Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, and arms control. While all of these are important, none is more urgent at the current time than arms control because we are on the brink of a new arms race that could be an existential threat not only to these two nuclear super powers but to humanity.

To deal with the troubled arms control situation before it becomes a catastrophe, Global Priorities—an international network of experts, religious leaders, and non-governmental organization collaborators, all dedicated to reducing nuclear weapons, dangers, and expenditures, in favor of human needs—met in Rome last month to discuss the situation and propose some solutions to avert a disastrous outcome.

If the two major nuclear super powers, which between them account for more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, do not act quickly, the era of arms control—which has lasted for more than 50 years and reduced the combined destructive potential of the two nuclear arsenals from 1.3 million Hiroshima bombs to about 80,000—will end. At that point, a new nuclear arms race, already under way, will accelerate. Unfortunately, the two presidents did not make any progress on this issue at their Osaka meeting. In fact, Putin complained publicly that President Trump did not even want to discuss extending New START (which limits each side to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear weapons), the only strategic arms reduction treaty currently in place. It went into effect in 2010 and expires in 2021, unless the two nations jointly agree to extend it for another five years, which they can do without approval from the US Senate or the Russian Duma.

But an even more immediate issue is the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).  On August 2, 2019, this treaty between the United States and Russia will end, because the US has formally withdrawn from it. Negotiated by President Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev in 1987, the INF eliminated an entire class of weapons, that is, all ground-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,000 kilometers. The Trump administration gave its six-month notice to withdraw, claiming that Russia had violated the treaty by testing missiles with a range of about 500 kilometers.

This will be the second major arms control agreement with Russia from which the United States has withdrawn. In 2002, the US withdrew from the Anti-ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty which had been in effect since the Nixon administration and which limited each side to one ballistic missile defense site. The Russians believe that by breaking out of the ABM, the United States has undermined the security of Moscow’s nuclear deterrent.

In February 2021, about 18 months from now, the New START, an agreement that took two years to negotiate, expires. President Trump and his advisors do not want to extend it unless China is also included.

Compounding disagreements about existing arms control agreements, the United States and Russia have both undertaken massive nuclear modernization programs that will make their existing arsenals much more lethal. Both countries have also begun to develop new weapons, including hypersonic missiles that might carry conventional or nuclear warheads and new tactical, smaller nuclear weapons that are, in theory, more “usable” in battle.

The 20 expert participants at the Global Priorities meeting in Rome included former Russian and American officials who actually participated in the negotiations that led to the existing arms control agreements between the two nations and who now work on these issues in major public policy research institutions and universities; US and Russian clergy; former UN officials; and former military officers who actually handled nuclear weapons during their time in service.

On June 19, as the conference in Rome was held, the US Defense Department posted a new edition of its official doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons. In demonstrating how far the United States has come from the Reagan assertion that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, the document states, “Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability.” This post created such concern that it was actually taken down quickly from the Defense Department website. But no administration officials have actually contradicted the policy.