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
Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
“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
General James Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Corps
“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
General Kevin Chilton, STRATCOM Commander
“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
Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly, MDA Director
“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
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
“We need the stability, transparency, and predictability that New START will provide by giving us insight into Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal. That is a rationale that previous presidents and congresses of both the Republican and the Democratic Parties have repeatedly and overwhelmingly supported.”
November 17, 2010
James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence
“I think the earlier, the sooner, the better…From an intelligence perspective only, are we better off with it or without it? We’re better off with it.”
Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, Commander of Air Force Global Strike Command
“My sense is that the START Treaty ought to be ratified and ought to be ratified as soon as possible.”
November 9, 2010
Former Secretaries of Defense
James Schlesinger, Former Secretary of Defense for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford
“Failure to ratify this treaty “would have a detrimental effect on our ability to influence others with regard to, particularly, the nonproliferation issue.”
April 29, 2010 Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing
Frank Carlucci, Former Secretary of Defense for Ronald Reagan
“On April 8, 2010, Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed the new START treaty, agreeing to further reduce both sides’ arsenals and bring into force a new regime for inspections and verification. This was a necessary and appropriate step toward safeguarding our national security. Without the new START, the U.S. has no legally binding ability to conduct inspections of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, and would be in a far weaker position to lead the world in stopping nuclear proliferation.”
June 24, 2010, Transparency = Security, Partnership for a Secure America
William Perry, Former Secretary of Defense for President Bill Clinton
“If we fail to ratify this treaty, the U.S. forfeits any right to leadership on nonproliferation policies.”
April 29, 2010 Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing
William Cohen, Former Secretary of Defense for President Bill Clinton
“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
Former Secretaries of State
Former Secretaries of State, Henry A. Kissinger, George P. Shultz, James A. Baker III, Lawrence S. Eagleburger and Colin L. Powell
“As a result, we urge the Senate to ratify the New START treaty signed by President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It is a modest and appropriate continuation of the START I treaty that expired almost a year ago. It reduces the number of nuclear weapons that each side deploys while enabling the United States to maintain a strong nuclear deterrent and preserving the flexibility to deploy those forces as we see fit.”
December 2, 2010, Why New START deserves GOP support, The Washington Post
James Baker, Former Secretary of State for President George H.W. Bush
“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, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing
Henry Kissinger, Former Secretary of State Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford
“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, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing
George Shultz, Former Secretary of State for President Ronald Reagan
“The new treaty calls for modest but significant reductions in strategic weapons, accompanied by verification and transparency measures made necessary by the expiration of the original START last December.”
April 13, 2010, Debating Obama’s New Nuclear Doctrine, The Wall Street Journal
Condoleezza Rice, Former Secretary of State for President George W. Bush
“The treaty is modest, reducing offensive nuclear weapons to 1,550 on each side—more than enough for deterrence. While the treaty puts limits on launchers, U.S. military commanders have testified that we will be able to maintain a triad of bombers, submarine-based delivery vehicles and land-based delivery vehicles. Moreover, the treaty helpfully reinstates on-site verification of Russian nuclear forces, which lapsed with the expiration of the original Start treaty last year. Meaningful verification was a significant achievement of Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and its reinstatement is crucial.”
December 7, 2010, New START: Ratify with Caveats, Wall Street Journal
Colin Powell, Former Secretary of State for President George W. Bush
“The most important feature of New START is to put in place the verification regime again. It will be a little different than the START I verification system, but it is more than adequate to make sure that we know what they are doing and they know what we are doing, and it has been so identified as being adequate by our intelligence community.”
December 1, 2010,<a “=”” href=”http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/01/remarks-president-and-general-colin-powell-after-meeting”> Remarks by President Obama and General Colin Powell following a meeting in the Oval Office.
Former National Security Advisors
Brent Scowcroft, Former National Security Advisor George H.W. Bush
“The principal result of non-ratification would be to throw the whole nuclear negotiating situation into a state of chaos.”
June 10, 2010, Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing
Stephen Hadley, Former National Security Advisor for President George W. Bush
“[New START] will revive and institutionalize some of the verification measures from the START I agreement….These measures are important because they ensure transparency and give each side the reassurance that the other side is complying with the agreement, and that’s of course a very important confidence building effort.”
April 8, 2010, Interview with Xinhua News Agency
Past U.S. Presidents
President George H. W. Bush
“I urge the United States Senate to ratify the START treaty.”
President William J. Clinton
“This is something that is profoundly important. This ought to be way beyond party. They worked very hard. They’ve worked out, in my opinion, the details, and I hope it will be ratified.”
December 9, 2010, Press appearance at the White House
Former Commanders of STRATCOM
Former Commanders of STRATCOM, General Larry Welch USAF, ret. General John Chain USAF, ret. General Lee Butler USAF, ret. Admiral Henry Chiles USN, ret. General Eugene Habiger USAF, ret. Admiral James Ellis USN, ret. General Bennie Davis USAF, ret.
“The New START Treaty will contribute to a more stable U.S.-Russian relationship. We strongly endorse its early ratification and entry into force.”
July 14, 2010, In a joint letter to House Armed Services leadership and the Senate Foreign Relations leadership.
Directors of the National Nuclear Laboratories
Michael Anastasio, Los Alamos lab director, George Miller, Lawrence Livermore Director, and Paul Hommert, Sandia Director
“We are very pleased by the update to the Section 1251 Report, as it would enable the laboratories to execute our requirements for ensuring a safe, secure, reliable and effective stockpile….In summary, we believe that the proposed budgets provide adequate support to sustain the safety, security, reliability and effectiveness of America’s nuclear deterrent within the limit of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads established by the New START Treaty with adequate confidence and acceptable risk.”
December 1, 2010, Letter to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN)
Former Civilian and Military Officials
Ambassador Richard Burt, Chief START negotiator during the George H.W. Bush administration
“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 Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
“If this were to go down, the ripple effect consequences around the world would be the worst possible outcome we’ve seen since World War II. It would set in motion the disintegration of any confidence in the leadership of the two major nuclear powers to deal with this and it would set in motion a disintegration of any structural boundaries and capacities to deal with this. This would devastating not just for arms control but for security interests worldwide.”
Linton Brooks, Former Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration for President George W. Bush
“I will say flatly, I ran [NNSA] for five years and I’d have killed for that budget and that much high-level attention in the administration… I think [the budget] does put us on a very firm, firm basis”
April 9, 2010, Arms Control Association Event
Lt. Gen. Dirk Jameson (ret.), former deputy commander in chief and chief of staff, U.S. Strategic Command
“Without New START, we will reintroduce uncertainty into the U.S.-Russia strategic relationship. Over the length of the Cold War, we learned that uncertainty breeds mistrust, costly worst-case planning, and risk. New START reduces uncertainty by locking in the size of each side’s arsenal and providing for onsite verification. The resulting improved strategic stability under New START would make it possible for both sides to pursue agreements on tactical nuclear weapons and proliferation.”
November 27, 2010, American Forum op-ed
Current Republican U.S. Senators
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
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
“I am confident that New START will provide predictability in our relationship with Russia and thus enhance global stability, and most importantly, our national security.”
December 10, 2010, Statement on New START
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)
“The New START represents a continued effort to achieve mutual and verifiable reductions in nuclear weapons. As the Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I support the President’s commitment to reduce not only the number of strategic nuclear weapons through the New START treaty, but also to reduce, in the future, those weapons that are most vulnerable to theft and misuse – and those are tactical nuclear weapons.”
December 10, 2010, Statement on New START
NATO Allies
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO General Secretary
“The New START treaty will contribute to an improvement of security in Europe and the whole Euro-Atlantic area, and I would strongly regret if ratification is delayed . . . A delay in the ratification of the treaty would be damaging to security in Europe, so I strongly encourage all parties involved to do their utmost to ensure an early ratification.”
November 19, 2010
Foreign Minister Audronius Azubalis of Lithuania
“And also I just would like to add that we see this treaty as an entrance to START negotiations — thank you — as also we see this treaty as a prologue, as an entrance to start talks about sub-strategical weaponry, which is much more even dangerous, and it’s quite difficult to detect. And we are, who are living in the East Europe, especially, know this. That’s what we are for START treaty.”
November 20, 2010
Foreign Minister Girts Valdis Kristovskis of Latvia
“And I want to underline that Euro-Atlantic cooperation is very important for security of my state. And of course, START II [sic] treaty ratification in Congress we support very strongly, and also this policy of President Obama and his administration is very important for security of our region.”
November 20, 2010
Foreign Minister Nickolay Mladenov of Bulgaria
“START is not just key to the security of Europe but it is key to making sure that today what we managed to achieve in the new Strategic Concept, and that is a NATO that reaches out in partnership with — to other countries, can actually be implemented. So all I can say is, don’t stop START before it’s started.”
November 20, 2010
Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi of Hungary
“My country has a very special historic experience with Russia. We also have a special geographic location. And with all that historic and geographic background, we wholeheartedly advocate the ratification of START. It’s a general interest of my region, of Europe, and indeed, most importantly, of the transatlantic alliance. It’s also a global interest, and I would very much encourage, for this reason, not to kill START before it starts, as it has been just said. And this is a process which is a promise at the same time and a commitment for the whole world.”
November 20, 2010
Foreign Minister Lene Espersen of Denmark
“I can tell you, besides being Minister for Foreign Affairs, I’m also the chairman of the Conservative Party in Denmark, which is the sister party of the Republican Party. So nobody will ever accuse me of being soft on security. And this is the reason why I said, well, maybe it could be fruitful for us as a broad member of NATO — the North, the East, the Central — to say why it’s important for us that the START treaty is ratified and that as soon as possible.”
November 20, 2010
Foreign Minister Jonas Stoere of Norway
“I’d just like to say briefly, I second my Danish colleague. Norway neighbors Russia. We live a few kilometers from one of the largest nuclear arsenals there is. And as my colleague from Lithuania said, this is an entry point to a process which can keep bringing these levels down. And if those levels go down, we can do a lot of other things, which will enhance security. So missing this opportunity, I think for all us Europeans, is really something of great concern.”
