Potential Vote Set For "New START"

U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry arranged a possible vote by the panel next week on a pact to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, but the lawmaker did not rule out delaying action, the New York Times reported (see GSN, July 28). U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April signed the "New START" pact, which would obligate both nations to cap their fielded strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550 warheads, down from the maximum of 2,200 allowed each country by 2012 under the 2002 Moscow Treaty. The deal would also limit U.S. and Russian deployed nuclear delivery vehicles to 700, with another 100 platforms allowed in reserve. The pact has been submitted for ratification by Russia's legislature as well as the Senate.

Kerry's committee is scheduled to consider the treaty on Wednesday, suggesting he intended to set a vote ahead of Congress' August break. However, a statement from the Massachusetts Democrat said a vote was not yet set in stone.

"Senator Kerry is working with his colleagues and the administration to hear views and address questions raised by senators about the New START treaty and related issues as quickly as possible," Kerry spokesman Frederick Jones said in the statement. "These efforts and discussions are ongoing, and as of now no final decision has been made about whether to proceed with the vote in the Foreign Relations Committee next week."

Kerry's move reflected lingering uncertainty over the treaty's political fortunes in the Senate, according to the Times. Only one of the eight Republicans on Kerry's committee has openly declared his backing for the treaty, while GOP lawmakers have placed various conditions on their support for the document. These include a long-term, well-funded commitment to updating the U.S. nuclear weapons complex; assurance the document would not limit future missile defense deployments; and confidence that the document's verification provisions are adequate for accurately monitoring the state of Russia's nuclear deterrent.

At least eight Republican senators in this Congress must vote in favor of the treaty for ratification to occur here. Kerry and the Obama administration have courted GOP support for the pact by preparing declarations that the treaty would not hinder U.S. missile defense plans and by pledging to pursue a decade-long effort to update the nation's nuclear weapons and related infrastructure.

A State Department report released yesterday on nations' compliance with nonproliferation and arms control agreements asserts that Moscow had remained within the "central limits" of the now-expired 1991 START pact.

"Notwithstanding the overall success of START implementation, a number of long-standing compliance issues" persisted until the treaty's expiration last December, according to the document. Washington and Moscow “worked through diplomatic channels” to carry out “effective resolution of compliance issues and questions,” it states.

While the unclassified version of the report does not elaborate on the problematic areas, it says they involved conflicting readings over "how to implement the complex inspection and verification provisions of the START treaty.” Moscow addressed a number of compliance concerns, including issues associated with audits of ICBM re-entry systems, the State Department found.

As the report concludes that Russia met the core terms of the 1991 agreement, it "should reassure the U.S. Senate that Russia would also comply with the New START treaty," the Arms Control Association said in a statement (Peter Baker, New York Times, July 28).

The State Department report neither indicates Moscow was "cheating" under the 1991 pact nor places in question the U.S. ability to monitor Russian compliance with its successor, the new treaty's top negotiator told Foreign Policy magazine.

"Cheating implies intent to undermine a treaty. There's no history of cheating on the central obligations of START; there's a history of abiding by the treaty," Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller said. "Generally the record for the major conventions is a good one. With regard to START, the Russians have been very serious and it has been a success."

Both governments raised compliance concerns under the 1991 treaty, and those that went unresolved were insignificant in nature, Gottemoeller said (Josh Rogin, Foreign Policy, July 28).

"These were minor issues that went away when START went out of force." the Associated Press quoted her as saying. There were "some concerns that we had about them, some concerns that they had about us."

The disputes ceased to be relevant when the 1991 treaty expired, she said (Robert Burns, Associated Press/Google News, July 28).

Questions raised in the report over Russia's compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention were not specifically relevant to the nuclear treaties, but Moscow is working with implementing organizations for those pacts to address concerns, Gottemoeller told Foreign Policy.

"It remains unclear," the State Department said, "whether Russia has fulfilled its BWC obligations."

"The United States is unable to ascertain whether Russia's CWC declaration is complete ... and whether Russia is complying with the CWC-established criteria for destruction and verification of its [chemical weapons]," the report adds.

The United States would have no ability to monitor Russia's nuclear arsenal until the new treaty is ratified, a fact lending an air of absurdity to Republican questions about Moscow's compliance with the previous agreement, according to another State Department official.

"We need a treaty to comply with," said the official. "Until the new treaty enters into force, we don't know what they are doing" (Rogin, Foreign Policy).

One analyst, though, said the pact would undermine the U.S. nuclear deterrent while failing to limit Russian nuclear forces, the Washington Times reported.

"An important consideration in this regard is that the treaty's ceilings appear not to require real Russian nuclear force reductions in the near term, and its loopholes and extreme permissiveness would not prevent the renewal of Russian strategic capabilities over time," former Defense Department nuclear deterrence expert Keith Payne told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

Payne also questioned the Obama administration's commitment to updating U.S. nuclear weapons and raised concerns about possible limitations the treaty could place on future missile defense deployments. Supporters of the treaty, including Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), have countered that New START would not allow Moscow to have any say on Washington's antimissile plans.

The pact's monitoring terms would be "inadequate for the next 10 years, in part because New START's provisions are significantly less demanding than START I, and if the Russian economy supports the programs they plan to deploy for their new triad" of nuclear-weapon delivery systems, "we will not have in place the monitoring capability that may be necessary," said John Foster, former head of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, July 28).

"New START could hamper our ability to improve our missile defense system -- leaving us unable to destroy more than a handful of missiles at a time and vulnerable to attacks from around the globe," Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) wrote in a commentary published today in the National Review.

"Additionally, the treaty favors Russia when it comes to tactical nuclear weapons, which are developed for use on the battlefield. Russia’s stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons, which can be affixed to rockets, submarines, and bomber planes, outnumbers the United States' by a ratio of 10:1. These are not covered by the treaty -- New START covers only strategic, long-range, high-yield nuclear weapons -- leaving Russia able to keep its current advantage and produce more of these weapons at will," DeMint said.

"It’s no secret that the Russians do not want the United States or her allies to be protected by missile defense, and believe that New START forbids further development of missile defense," the senator said (Jim DeMint, National Review, July 29).

Global Security News Wire