With the U.S.-Russian strategic arms limitation treaty heading for Senate debate at a time of political troubles for Obama, it’s time to be absolutely clear: The New START treaty deserves to be ratified promptly, both for its own sake and so as to clear the way for more significant arms control diplomacy.
A modest agreement in terms of nuclear disarmament, New START merely keeps the United States and Russia on track toward meeting their commitment to disarm under the Nonproliferation Treaty–a commitment they were very late to address, at that. U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and negotiation of a fissile material cutoff would do much more to shore up the nonproliferation regime and set the stage for serious consideration of denuclearization by the existing nuclear weapons states. For the CTBT and fissile material ban to get back onto the agenda, New START must first be affirmed.
But the treaty doesn’t have to been seen just in the larger context of global disarmament efforts; New START should be adopted if only because of its verification provisions, as Greg Thielmann recently argued in an Omaha newspaper, addressing an audience that continues to look straight down the barrel of the nuclear gun. “Growing up in Iowa during the Cold War, I used to look toward the western horizon (and Omaha) with both fear and reassurance. I realized that in the event of a nuclear exchange, Soviet targeting of Strategic Air Command headquarters would result in the Omaha area’s destruction, sending deadly clouds of radioactive fallout . . . over my hometown,” wrote Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association. “Yet I was also aware that the powerful deterrent forces directed from SAC headquarters provided the best guarantee that no sane opponent would ever unleash such an attack in the first place.”
Citing testimony by the current strategic air commander, Thielmann states the case for New Start ratification in terms of the limits the treaty places on the most threatening Russian missiles, the flexibility U.S. strategic force planners retain, and–above all-the verification regime it will re-establish. “Since the original START [treaty] expired nearly nine months ago, U.S. inspectors have not been able to monitor Russian strategic forces ‘up close and personal,’ so gaps in our understanding of the threat they pose are growing.”
Rose Gottemoeller, assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance, and implementation and chief U.S. negotiator for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, makes the same argument but in exacting detail in the current issue of Arms Control Today. “U.S. knowledge of Russian nuclear forces will substantially erode over time if the treaty is not ratified and brought into force, increasing the risk of misunderstandings, mistrust, and worst-case analysis and policymaking,” she concludes.
A retired Foreign Service officer and former Senate intelligence committee staffer, “>Thielmann had more than his allotted fifteen minutes of fame in 2003 when he publicly discussed the dissenting views of a State Department intelligence unit he headed regarding the Bush Administration’s claim that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.