Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Key U.S. Military Leaders and Influential Moderates and Republicans Strongly Support New START

by John Isaacs [contact information]

Key U.S. Military Leaders and Influential Moderates and Republicans Strongly Support New START

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates

“The answer for successive presidents, as Secretary Clinton has said, of both parties, has always been with an agreement. The U.S. Senate has always agreed. The same answer holds true for New START. The U.S. is better off with this treaty than without it, and I am confident that it is the right agreement for today and for the future. It increases stability and predictability, allows us to sustain a strong nuclear triad, preserves our flexibility to deploy the nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities needed for effective deterrence and defense. In light of all these factors, I urge the Senate to give its advise and consent to ratification of the new treaty.”

June 17, 2010 Robert Gates Testimony before Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on New START

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen

“I am pleased to add my voice in support of ratification of the New START treaty and to do so as soon as possible. We are in our seventh month without a treaty with Russia. This treaty has the full support of your uniformed military . . . the conclusion and implementation of the New START Treaty is the right thing for us to do – and we took the time to do it right.”

June 17, 2010 Adm. Mullen Testimony before Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on New START

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Corps General James Cartwright

“So both for myself, as a previous commander at STRATCOM, and also for General Chilton, we both feel very comfortable with these numbers [in New START].”

March 26, 2010 Gen. Cartwright at a White House Press Briefing on New START

STRATCOM Commander General Kevin Chilton

“If we don't get the treaty, they [the Russians] are not constrained in their development of force structure and the -- we have no insight into what they're doing. So it's the worst of both possible worlds.”

June 16, 2010 Gen. Chilton Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on New START

MDA Director Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly

“Throughout the treaty negotiations, I frequently consulted the New START team on all potential impacts to missile defense. The New START Treaty does not constrain our plans to execute the U.S. Missile Defense program.”

June 16, 2010 Gen. O’Reilly Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on New START

Principal Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Dr. James Miller

“DOD's view of the treaty is that it will allow us to sustain effective deterrents and strengthen strategic stability with Russia and reduce force levels. It will improve transparency and mutual confidence with data exchange and verification provisions. It will enable the United States to retain and modernize the robust triad of strategic delivery systems. It will allow us to treat them to mix our strategic forces over time. And it will protect our ability to deploy non-nuclear capabilities, including front global strike and ballistic missile defenses. In short, the New START Treaty will make United States and our allies and partners more secure”

June 16, 2010 Miller Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on New START

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN)

“I support the New START treaty and believe that it will enhance United States national security. It would reduce strategic nuclear launchers and warheads and replace the 1991 START I treaty that expired last year. Equally important, it will provide forward momentum to our relationship with Moscow, which is vital to United States policy goals related to Iran’s nuclear program, nuclear nonproliferation, global energy security and to stability in Eurasia. Further….it’s essential that a verification system be in place so that we have a sufficient understanding of Russian nuclear forces and achieve a level of transparency that prevents miscalculations.”

March 26, 2010 Statement on New START

Former Republican Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Democratic Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn

“The governments of Russia and the United States have recently concluded the talks started last year. We congratulate them on this important achievement. We look forward to carefully reviewing the Treaty when it is made public. We strongly endorse the goals of this Treaty, and we hope that after careful and expeditious review that both the United States Senate and the Russian Federal Assembly will be able to ratify the Treaty. We also urge the two governments to begin planning now for even more substantial reductions, including tactical nuclear weapons.”

March 26, 2010 Shultz, Kissinger, Perry and Nunn Statement on the START follow-on treaty

Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger

“I think that it is obligatory for the United States to ratify [New START].”

April 29, 2010 Schlesinger Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Former Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger

“Themes from our report run through the Nuclear Posture Review and are embodied in the new START agreement….And it incorporates many of our points — such as pursuing a quick and modest reduction of nuclear weapons with Russia and sustaining the nuclear triad of land-based ICBMs, sea-based SLBMs and bombers.”

April 14, 2010 Perry and Schlesinger joint Op-Ed in Politico

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

“The treaty before this Committee is the latest of a series of measures seeking to control strategic arms going back to the 1970s when the numbers of strategic nuclear weapons were limited in the so-called SALT agreements. The treaty before this Committee is an evolution of the START treaties begun in the Reagan administration and elaborated by its successors of both parties . . . The current agreement is a modest step forward stabilizing American and Russian arsenals at a slightly reduced level. It provides a measure of transparency; it reintroduces many verification measures that lapsed with the expiration of the last START agreement; it encourages what the Obama administration has described as the reset of political relations with Russia; it may provide potential benefits in dealing with the issue of proliferation.”

May 25, 2010 Kissinger Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on New START

Former Secretary of State James Baker

“It's [verification] really important -- it's really important that we be in there. It's been quite some -- well, I think START expired December the 5th. It's been a number of months now since we've been able to really go in there and verify anything and it's important that we have that right. And not just so much because we might think the Russians are cheating, which I personally wouldn't suspect right now -- first place, I think it'd be economically very difficult for them -- but because it gives us the sense of assurance and them as well when they're over here. It promotes stability. It promotes atomic and nuclear stability and it's very good and it leads to the kind of things that we discussed in my colloquy with the chairman.”

May 19, 2010 Baker Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on New START

Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft

“…the principal result of non- ratification would be to throw the whole nuclear negotiating situation into a state of chaos, and the reason this treaty is important is over the decades we have built up all these counting rules, all these verification procedures and so on, so that each side feels, ‘Yes, we can take these steps.’ If you wipe those out, you're back to zero again…”

June 10, 2010 Gen. Scowcroft Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on New START

Former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley

"I think you do need to see this treaty in context of really a 20-year effort spanning Republican and Democratic administration. And what it does, even if budgetary and modernization considerations push the forces down, this does provide some transparency, some predictability into the relationship. And quite frankly, it's an indication of one more thing where Russia and the United States have found it in their interest to work together cooperatively. And that's an important contribution to the overall environment between Russian and U.S. relations."

June 10, 2010 Hadley Testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on New START

Former National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Ambassador Linton Brooks

“The primary benefits of the treaty are two. One is transparency. Transparency leads to predictability; predictability leads to stability. That’s why the last administration initially wanted a pure transparency regime. So that’s one benefit. The other benefit is, at a time when we and the Russians don’t have a track record of working as well together as we’d like, something that was reasonably difficult to do got done. And so I think those two benefits are important benefits and obviously, having something that regulates the nuclear balance is important.”

April 9, 2010 Amb. Brooks at a Press Briefing on Understanding New START and the Nuclear Posture Review

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE)

“I don't think it needs to be divisive at all. This is clearly in the interest of both countries and the world.”

April 21, 2010 Sen. Hagel at an Event on New START at the Atlantic Council

Chief START negotiator during the George H.W. Bush administration Ambassador Richard Burt

“I can say as a former political appointee of two Republican administrations, it will be very difficult for anybody to come up with a strong set of coherent arguments against this treaty. This treaty itself does not take sweeping steps to reduce either the United States or Russian deployed arsenal.....It's a very small step toward further reductions,,,,, Anyone who would vote against [the treaty] needs to think about the consequences of the signals we would send to the rest of the world....What would be the impact on proliferation?....What would it do to US leadership...on a whole range of international order issues?”

April 9, 2010 Amb. Burt at a Press Conference on New START

Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen

“It's a big deal in the sense the optics that here the two biggest possessors of nuclear weapons have agreed to reduce their inventories significantly, although we're nearly down to those numbers already. So it's not that much of a substantive cut where we are today, but it's a significant reduction from where we started from. And secondly, there is not really that much of an impact upon the U.S. forces because we still have was we call a triad -- air, land and sea. So I think it's significant in terms of the optics and the appearance and the fact that we are now working more closely with the Russians.”

April 8, 2010 Cohen Interview with Andrea Mitchell