Nuclear Disarmament 2

New START treaty might be finished in weeks

Russia stated on January 27 that negotiations on a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that expired on December 5 could be finished in a matter of weeks. Progress has been made at high-level meetings in Moscow that involved U.S. national security adviser Gen. James Jones and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen and their Russian equivalents, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Igor Lyakin-Frolov. “The talks were successful, and as a result we can hope that it will take just a few weeks for negotiators to come up with a document,” he said.

Last summer, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that they had agreed to reduce their countries’ respective stockpiles of deployed strategic nuclear weapons to between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads. The two nations are required under the 2002 Moscow Treaty to cut their arsenals to no more than 2,200 warheads by 2012.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had said in December that U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe were the main obstacle to reaching a new deal on reducing Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons. Lyakin-Frolov said Washington should consider Moscow’s concerns regarding U.S. missile defense activities, though he indicated the replacement START accord might not cover the matter at great length. That issue could kill the deal, as the U.S. Senate would not be expected to sign off on a nuclear arms pact that also dealt significantly with missile defense.

One thing that is holding up treaty completion, Lyakin-Frolov suggested, is the matter of telemetry, in which a missile's launch and flight path is monitored from a distance. While the expired agreement obligated both countries to share their telemetry information, Moscow felt it received a bad bargain as it supplied the Pentagon with data on new Russian missiles while Washington only disclosed information on old missiles it was refurbishing because it was not developing any new missiles.

Verification protocols are the most contentious issue though, officials say, with Russia calling for something less stringent than what the old START agreement required.

The negotiations have been going on for 10 months, and more holdups in the negotiations could potentially hurt the chances for realization of a new treaty. Other nuclear-armed nations and states working toward that capability might also take away the wrong message from such delays. These worries have contributed to Russia and the United States shooting for a completed treaty before a Global Nuclear Security Summit is held in Washington in April. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said it is “hard to make any predictions in terms of what a time line is, but I think we’re reasonably optimistic that the finish line is within sight.”

– edited from Global Security Newswire, January 27, 2010– PeaceMeal, Jan/February 2010

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U.N. Security Council adopts measure on nuclear weapons

President Barack Obama presided over the United Nations Security Council on Sept. 24 as it unanimously passed a resolution aimed at shoring up the international commitment to limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, in particular halting the diversion of nuclear material for bomb development. The special session was only the fifth time that the Security Council had met at the summit level since the United Nations was founded after World War II, and Mr. Obama was the first U.S. president to preside over such a session. He and most of the other presidents and prime ministers at the session focused their brief remarks on their dreams for a world free of nuclear weapons.

President Nikolas Sarkozy of France, however, gave a forceful speech saying that despite such ideals, the Council had to confront the reality of two crises — that Iran and North Korea continued to flout resolutions seeking to limit their nuclear programs. “What these two nations are doing undermines the very rules on which our collective security is based,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “We must stop proliferation. That is what this resolution stipulates.”

The French president said that Iran had pursued nuclear proliferation activities in violation of five United Nations resolutions. “No one can seriously believe that the aims of these activities are peaceful,” he said. On the subject of North Korea, he said that for the past 20 years, Pyongyang had been developing nuclear missiles and exporting sensitive technology. He called on all nations to monitor and intercept illegal arms and nuclear exports from North Korea.

The United States, which put forth the resolution (No. 1887), said it was not focused on any country in particular. Rather, it was meant to produce a renewed international effort with an eye toward an international review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty next spring, as well as to finally win the passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Among other things, the resolution seeks to improve security around nuclear materials to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists; says the Security Council will act against those who provide such material to terrorists; and calls for efforts to strengthen the detection, deterrence and disruption of illegal trafficking in nuclear-related materials.

It also includes provisions that would continue to hold countries responsible for any actions that violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty even if they withdraw from it. That is an attempt to deter any such withdrawals, a step that was taken by North Korea several years ago.

Despite the show of unity behind the 15-0 vote, the arguments leading up to the resolution underscored the differences on the Council. China and Russia agreed to new Council sanctions against North Korea last June, but they have been less supportive in the council on action against Iran.

Mr. Obama said the resolution was about ensuring that international agreements have real-world heft. “International law is not an empty promise, and treaties must be enforced,” he said. Officials noted that the resolution is not binding, and would become so only if the Security Council required countries to take other steps, including making their nuclear exports subject to additional restrictions.

– edited from The New York Times, September 25, 2009
Peacemeal, Sept/October 2009

U.S. and Russia announce deal on nuclear arms reduction

MOSCOW — Presidents of the United States and Russia announced July 6 that they had reached a preliminary agreement on cutting each country’s stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons. The “framework” agreement was put together by negotiators as President Obama arrived in Moscow for his first Russian-American summit meeting. Seeking to move forward on one of the most significant arms control treaties since the end of the Cold War, it was approved by Mr. Obama and Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev. Both sides say they hope that the nuclear agreement would effectively set the stage for a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), a Cold War-era pact that expires in December. Beyond that, they said they wanted to build momentum for a broader agreement to be negotiated starting next year to impose deeper cuts in their nuclear arsenals and put the world on a path toward eliminating nuclear weapons altogether.

The summit meeting comes almost a year after the armed conflict in the Republic of Georgia caused the worst tensions between the United States and Russia since the end of the Cold War. President Obama has said he wants to rebuild the relationship. He also announced an agreement to resume military-to-military contacts.

The specter of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and North Korea raised deep concerns, Mr. Obama said, and he called for the United States to host a summit meeting on global nuclear security next year. “We have a mutual interest in protecting both of our populations from the kinds of danger that weapons proliferation is presenting today,” he said.

Mr. Medvedev said that although Russia and the United States were trying to repair their relationship, differences still remained on missile defense and other issues. Russia has repeatedly objected to a U.S. anti-missile system based in Poland and the Czech Republic, which was initiated by the Bush administration to ward off an alleged threat from Iran. Russia views the system near its border as a threat to its security.

“While the previous administration of the United States took a very hard-headed position on this issue,” Mr. Medvedev said, “the current administration is ready to discuss the topic. I think that we are fully able to find a reasonable solution here.” And while Mr. Obama is not enthusiastic about the system, he has not abandoned it and is awaiting a review by his advisers. In the meantime, he has resisted linking the missile defense system to the nuclear arms reduction negotiations.

The nuclear arms framework document sets the parameters for talks through the end of this year, according to officials. Negotiators are to be instructed to craft a treaty that would cut each side’s strategic warheads operationally deployed on ballistic missiles and bombers to between 1,500 and 1,675, down from the limit of 2,200 slated to take effect in 2012 under the Treaty of Moscow signed by President George W. Bush. The limit on delivery vehicles would be cut to between 500 and 1,100 from the 1,600 currently allowed under START. The countries would be required to meet the limits in the treaty within seven years, officials said. Perhaps more important than the specific limits would be a revised and extended verification system that otherwise would expire with START in December.

The United States currently deploys an estimated minimum of 2,200 strategic thermonuclear warheads, all of which are dangerously on high-alert to launch on warning. While the number of deployed Russian strategic warheads is not known, the Arms Control Association estimated it between 2,000 and 3,000. Both sides also have thousands more warheads that are not covered in the treaty discussions — strategic warhead reserves, many of which can be put into action within a few days, and smaller, tactical nukes that can be delivered by cruise missiles or fighter jets.

– edited from The New York Times, July 6, 2009
PeaceMeal, July/August 2009