Administration officials are seeking to reassure some lawmakers that the new START treaty signed this spring by President Barack Obama and Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, will not require the US to abandon its development or deployment of missile defense systems.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and other high-ranking administration figures insist that Russian statements to the contrary, the treaty signed by the two leaders on 8 April in Prague contains no restrictions on US efforts in missile defense.
They have dismissed an assertion by Medvedev's office that warns Russia may withdraw from the new START if the US continues to pursue missile defense, saying it simply repeats decades of grumbling from Moscow that also had no impact on bilateral strategic arms reductions.
The treaty will not constrain the United States from deploying the most effective missile defenses possible, nor impose additional costs or barriers on those defenses," Gates said in 18 May testimony to the Committee on Foreign Relations. Indeed, Obama's budget request for fiscal year 2011 includes $9.9 billion for missile defense, a $700 million increase from the current year appropriation. "The Russians have hated missile defense ever since the strategic arms reduction talks began in 1969," Gates said, an antipathy he attributed to Russia's inability to afford its own system. "We're going to be building a good one, and they probably aren't going to be able to devote the resources to it, so they try to stop us through political means. This treaty doesn't accomplish that for them."
But Jim DeMint (R-SC) claimed the Russian warning, together with language in the preamble of the treaty, indicates that Russia will repudiate the treaty if its leadership believes that a US missile defense system could nullify the country's strategic offensive capability. Pressed by DeMint, committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA) said that he did not favor the development of a Star Wars-like system capable of shooting down all Russian strategic forces. Gates asserted that current policy, like that of the Bush administration, is to deliberately refrain from building a missile defense capable of rendering useless all Russian strategic forces. "That would be enormously destabilizing, not to mention unbelievably expensive," Gates said. The goal of missile defense, he said, is to protect the US and its allies from limited attacks by rogue nations such as North Korea or Iran.
But DeMint's objections to the treaty went beyond missile defense. With more than 30 allies counting on the US to provide them a nuclear umbrella, he said, the underlying assumption that the US should seek nuclear parity with Russia is "absurd and dangerous," he said. "America is a protector of many nations and a threat to none, while Russia is a threat to many nations and a protector of none," DeMint said.
Clinton called the new START and previous arms control treaties with Russia and the Soviet Union "the bedrock of disarmament." Failure to ratify the new START treaty would result in the loss of US leadership in the global effort to prevent nuclear proliferation, Clinton and Gates warned. Approval of the treaty will strengthen the credibility of the US as it seeks to negotiate arms reduction pacts with other nuclear weapons states, beginning with China, Clinton added.
More intrusive inspections
All US monitoring activities associated with START ended with the expiration of the first START treaty last December. The new treaty provides for more intrusive inspections of nuclear facilities on each side.
At an April committee hearing, two former secretaries of defense, James Schlesinger and William Perry, strongly urged ratification of the new START. "If we fail to ratify this treaty the United States will have forfeited any right to provide any leadership in this field throughout the world," Perry stated then. "For the United States, at this juncture, to fail to ratify the treaty in the due course of the Senate's deliberation would have a detrimental effect on our ability to influence others with regard to, particularly, the nonproliferation issue," Schlesinger concurred.
The Obama administration has portrayed the new START as part of its overall plan to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons and weapons usable materials around the world, the administration has also pledged to a major revitalization of the weapons laboratories and production facilities that will maintain the aging US stockpile. Gates, who said he had been pushing for a revitalization of the weapons complex for more than three years, said he had succeeded in convincing the administration to transfer $4.5 billion from the Pentagon to the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration over the next four fiscal years. "This Administration has called for a 10% increase in FY 2011 for overall weapons and infrastructure activities, and a 25% increase in direct stockpile work. During the next 10 years, this Administration proposes investing $80 billion into our nuclear weapons complex," Clinton said.
David Kramer
