Solid Progress on Nuclear Weapons Reductions
Published by MinutemanMedia.org on July 22, 2009
By Andrew St. Denis
When he was still a senator in 2005, Barack Obama visited Russia with Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar to inspect several nuclear weapons facilities. In traditional Russian fashion, the trip ended with police detaining Obama and Lugar at the border as the pair tried to leave the country. Oops.
Such a comical display of arbitrary Russian law enforcement served as a good icebreaker during this July’s Moscow summit. President Dmitri Medvedev even presented now-President Obama with a memento of the ill-fated 2005 trip that included police photos from the border incident.
Laughing off the mistakes of years past, Obama and Medvedev in Moscow hammered out the framework for an agreement to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expires in December. START reduced deployed U.S. and Russian strategic warheads by 40 percent while cutting the number of bombers and missiles. Yet because START included thorough verification measures that were never strengthened by President George W. Bush, Obama and Medvedev are racing against the clock to negotiate a follow-on agreement by the end of the year.
The United States and Russia have had their differences in the past, but even in the tensest of times the world’s largest nuclear powers have cooperated on nuclear arms reductions. By agreeing in Moscow to cut the number of deployed nuclear warheads per side to between 1,500 and 1,675 and the number of bombers and missiles per side to between 500 and 1,100, the two presidents set the stage for their renewed leadership of the global effort to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
Securing loose and poorly safeguarded nuclear material is a top priority. Years after the fall of the Soviet Union, however, security at many nuclear sites in Russia remains poor. This makes the chances of the material falling into the wrong hands a very real threat.
The nuclear reductions agreed to in principle in Moscow will strengthen U.S.-Russian cooperation and make it more difficult for terrorists to obtain the loose nuclear materials necessary to create a crude nuclear device or dirty bomb, which could harm hundreds of thousands of people if it were detonated in an urban area.
The improvement in U.S.-Russian relations opens the door to future cooperation on a host of common security concerns, including the fight against international terrorism. At the Moscow summit, Russia gave tacit support for U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and agreed to allow the United States to use Russian airspace to transport troops and weapons into that country. This will save the United States over $130 million a year in logistical costs. Such cooperation on military issues – enhanced by the Moscow summit - represents solid progress by President Obama in only the first few months of his administration.
President Ronald Reagan’s favorite words -- “Trust, but verify” – are reflected in Obama and Medvedev’s treaty plans so far. The incorporation of verification measures will allow the United States and Russia each to make sure that nuclear weapons reductions are being performed properly. In an increasingly dangerous world, neither the United States nor Russia wants to see the largest nuclear stockpiles go unregulated.
Though Obama’s exit from Russia this July was less eventful than his first trip in 2005, he can rest easy knowing that he accomplished what he set out to do. Much more work lies ahead, but conditions are now ideal for the United States and Russia to conclude significant arms control initiatives in the coming months and years. These initiatives will strengthen U.S. security and improve America’s standing in the world.
Andrew St. Denis is a researcher at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C.