Gen. Chilton: Russians unconstrained, lose insight into Russian nuclear arsenal
“Without New START, we would rapidly lose insight into Russian strategic nuclear force developments and activities, and our force modernization planning and hedging strategy would be more complex and more costly. Without such a regime, we would unfortunately be left to use worst-case analyses regarding our own force requirements. Further, we would be required increasingly to focus low-density/high demand intelligence collection and analysis assets on Russian nuclear forces.”
[General Kevin Chilton, STRATCOM Commander, 6/16/10]
Adm. Mullen: Lost of trust weakens deterrence
“And as I have said many times, in many different contexts, in this fast-paced, flatter world of ours, information, and the trust it engenders, is every bit as much a deterrent as any weapon we deploy.”
[Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, 11/12/10]
Brent Scowcroft: Nuclear negotiations thrown into chaos
“The principal result of non-ratification would be to throw the whole nuclear negotiating situation into a state of chaos.”
[General Brent Scowcroft (Ret.), President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Advisor, Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, 6/10/10]
James Schlesinger: U.S. non-proliferation efforts undermined
“Failure to ratify this treaty “would have a detrimental effect on our ability to influence others with regard to, particularly, the nonproliferation issue.”
[James Schlesinger, Secretary of Defense for Presidents Nixon and Ford and the Secretary of Energy for President Carter, 4/29/10]
William Perry: U.S. leadership on non-proliferation forfeited
“If we fail to ratify this treaty, the U.S. forfeits any right to leadership on nonproliferation policies.”
[Former Defense Secretary William Perry, 4/29/10]
Sen. Richard Lugar: Work to secure nukes in Russia would suffer
“It is unlikely that Moscow would sustain cooperative efforts indefinitely without the New START Treaty coming into force.”
[Sen. Richard Lugar, 11/8/10]
Henry Kissinger: Adversaries and allies unsettled
“This START treaty is an evolution of treaties that have been negotiated in previous administrations of both parties. And its principal provisions are an elaboration or a continuation of existing agreements. Therefore, a rejection of them would indicate that a new period of American policy had started that might rely largely on the unilateral reliance of its nuclear weapons, and would therefore create an element of uncertainty in the calculations of both adversaries and allies. And therefore, I think it would have an unsettling impact on the international environment.”
[Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor to President Nixon and Secretary of State to Presidents Nixon and Ford,5/25/10]
Robert Kagan: Strengthens Putin, undermines cooperation on Iran, Afghanistan
“There’s no getting around it: Failure to pass START will help empower Putin . . . On Iran, Russia will become less cooperative . . . Russia’s refusal to deliver the S-300 air defense system to Tehran and its earlier agreement to allow the U.S. military to ship material to Afghanistan across Russian territory have been the reset’s big tangible payoffs.”
[Robert Kagan, Brookings Institution senior fellow, 11/12/10]
Los Alamos director: Less information about Russians
“Without data from new START, would that create more uncertainty for us about Russia? Certainly the country would not get as much information that the monitoring program would provide through new START.”
[Michael Anastasio, Director of The Los Alamos National Laboratory, 7/15/10]
Lawrence Livermore director: Less certainty
“I think that it is certainly true that the START treaty that is under your consideration does offer the ability to understand, provide more data on what’s going on in Russia with their systems. As a technical person, data is always valuable and so it will certainly reduce our uncertainties.”
[George Miller, Director of The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7/15/10]
Former Senator Chuck Hagel: U.S. leadership on non-proliferation compromised
“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.”
[Chuck Hagel, former Republican Senator from Nebraska, 7/19/10]
Lt. General John Castellaw (US Marine Corps, retired): lose inspections, worst-case planning
“U.S. ability to conduct on-site inspections will continue to be suspended . . .U.S. is obliged to plan on worst-case scenarios with regard to our own deployments.”
[Lt. General John Castellaw (US Marine Corps, retired), 11/15/10]
Lt. General Dirk Jameson (USAF, retired): Less information about Russians
“Without it [New START] we’d be poorly equipped to monitor Russia’s arsenal.”
[Lt. General Dirk Jameson, former Deputy Commander in Chief and Chief of Staff of U.S. Strategic Command, 7/19/10]
Former Senators Jake Garn and Brent Scowcroft: Consensus on modernization funding could be undermined
“In this respect, the treaty provides a vehicle whereby some Democrats not usually known for their support of strategic systems can bring themselves to commit to modernization, while, at the same time, some Republicans not usually known for their support for arms control can bring themselves to vote for ratification. Conversely, rejecting the treaty may well break this consensus and result in no modernization of our forces.”
[General Brent Scowcroft (Ret.), President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Advisor and Jake Garn, former Republican Senator from Utah, 9/22/10]
