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A Look at the New House Republican Leadership on National Security and Nuclear Weapons

By Kingston Reif and Jessica Estanislau

The November 2010 elections saw the Republicans take back the House of Representatives.  The change in power means that there are new Sheriffs in town calling the shots on the key House Committees dealing with nuclear weapons.  Below are brief profiles of the new leaders of three key Committees and Subcommittees: Foreign Affairs, the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, and the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairwoman, Committee on Foreign Affairs

New House International Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen intends to play a very active role on nuclear policy-related issues.  Two areas in particular are likely to come under her close scrutiny.  First, Ros-Lehtinen has long been a skeptic of U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation agreements with other countries.  She opposed the U.S.-Russia 123 agreement, which entered into force last December, and has taken a hard line on administration plans to negotiate similar such deals with Jordan, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia.  Ros-Lehtinen also raised questions about deals negotiated by the George W. Bush administration.  For example, she was one of the few members of Congress to express reservations about the U.S.-UAE 123 agreement.  And although she ultimately supported the U.S.-India Nuclear deal, she co-sponsored a bill to strengthen the agreement which caused unease in India.  Look for her to introduce legislation in the 112th Congress to revamp Congressional procedures for considering civilian nuclear cooperation agreements.  Second, Ros-Lehtinen is an advocate of tougher punitive measures against and Iran and North Korea.  Instead of pursuing a strategy of engagement toward these regimes, she believes that the U.S. must impose tougher sanctions than the Obama administration seems willing to pursue.

Michael Turner (R-OH), Chairman, Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Armed Services Committee

As Ranking Member on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee in the 111th Congress, Michael Turner was a thorn in the side of the President’s nuclear risk reduction agenda.  During the House Armed Services Committee’s consideration of the FY 2011 National Defense Authorization Act last May, Turner offered a sense of congress amendment proclaiming that the Nuclear Posture Review weakens U.S. national security by taking options off the table to respond to a catastrophic nuclear, chemical, biological, or conventional attack.  The amendment was included in the House version of the bill but was expunged from the final bill that passed in the lame duck session of the Congress.  Turner is also a strong advocate of U.S. missile defense programs.  He was skeptical of the Obama administration’s September 2009 decision to cancel the Bush-planned system for establishing a third site for National Missile Defense in Poland and the Czech Republic.  He also accused the administration of slashing funding for missile defense systems and offered amendments to the Defense Authorization Bill to restore that funding.  In March 2010, Tuner released letters from each of the three directors of the U.S. national nuclear weapons laboratories questioning the conclusion drawn by the JASON defense advisory group that “[l]ifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in LEPs [Life Extension Programs] to date.”  Finally, last December Turner organized a letter with Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) and 14 other House Republicans urging the Senate to delay consideration of the New START treaty until 2011. Expect Turner to continue to cast doubt on the Obama administration’s initiatives on nuclear issues in the 112th Congress.

(Note: for an earlier profile of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, see here.)

Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), Chairman, Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, Appropriations Committee

As the new Chairman of the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Freylinghuysen will have an enormous say over funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear weapons activities and defense nuclear nonproliferation accounts.  Freylinghuysen was a strong supporter of the administration’s FY 2011 budget increases for life extension programs and the construction of new nuclear facilities in Tennessee and New Mexico.  However, Freylinghuysen cast doubt on the merits of the administration’s request for an additional $320 million for nuclear security programs, noting in March 2010 that while the President’s goal to secure all vulnerable materials was “laudable”, it is “not well defined and I’m worried about implementation.” Addressing the overall increase in the energy and water appropriations bill, Frelinghuysen said “My constituents are increasingly concerned about the country’s growing budget deficit and are calling for budget cuts, not budget increases,” he said.  Despite these concerns, the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee fully funded the administration’s FY 2011 request for nonproliferation programs, with his support.

How New START Was Won

by Kingston Reif On February 2, President Obama officially ratified the New START treaty in a low-key signing ceremony at the White House. The eight month-long campaign to win the Senate’s approval of the treaty, however, was anything but low-key. It was a knock down, drag out fight, the outcome of which was in doubt […]

Last word (until the next word) on Keith Payne and New START

Following the Russian Duma’s third and final vote of approval of the New START treaty on Tuesday, the upper house of the Russian Federal Assembly (known as the Federation Council) gave its approval on Wednesday by a unanimous vote of 137-0.  The treaty will enter into force once the U.S. and Russia exchange what are known as “instruments of ratification” (the official treaty documents that Presidents Obama and Medvedev actually sign).  Last week we speculated that this could happen as early as next weekend on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. (UPDATE 1/31: The speculation was correct: The U.S. and Russia will exchange instruments of ratification on February 5 on the sidelines of the Munch Security Conference. Secretary of State Clinton and Foreign Minister Lavrov will do the honors.)

The initial exchange of data on missiles, launchers, heavy bombers, and warheads subject to the treaty is required 45 days after the treaty enters into force.  The right to conduct on-site inspections begins 60 days after entry into force (i.e. sometime in April).

The ratification of New START is a big deal for all of the reasons the administration, the military, NoH, and so many others have laid out over and over again over the past two years. Yet Keith Payne is pointing to the Federal Assembly’s consideration of the treaty as evidence that he was right to oppose it.  For Payne, the politics of churlishness appears to continue to take precedence over the best judgment of our military leadership…  

In a parting shot at New START published in the National Review, Payne alleges that the Obama administration misinformed the Senate about the nature of the reductions required by the treaty. “The Obama administration typically presented the treaty as requiring Russian reductions,” he writes, while in reality Russia plans to reduce its stock of deployed delivery vehicles and warheads with or without New START.  Payne has been beating this drum for over 18 months, but thinks he’s found the smoking gun in the form of Russian Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov:

“Now — after the U.S. Senate has approved New START — senior Russian officials have confirmed the fears of U.S. skeptics. An Interfax-AVN article entitled “Russia’s Current Number of Nuclear Arms Well Within START Limits” reports that in a speech to the Duma about New START, Russian Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov said that Russia will not eliminate any nuclear launcher or warhead before the end of its service life: “We will not cut a single unit.” The article reports that Serdyukov explained to the Duma that “Russia today has fewer nuclear warheads and delivery systems than the quantity set by the new Russian-American treaty” and that “by all the parameters, even launchers, we will only achieve the level that’s in the treaty by 2028. As for nuclear weapons, we will get there by 2018.” The Duma presumably appreciated the news.”

There is far less here than may meet the eye.  First, the administration never argued that the treaty will require Russia to reduce its delivery vehicles.  In a June 14 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated: “The Russians, the number of their strategic nuclear delivery vehicles is in fact below the treaty limits, but the number of warheads is above the treaty limits. So they will have to take down warheads.”      

Regarding warheads, it appears that Defense Minister Serdyukov told the Federal Assembly that Russia won’t eliminate any systems before the end of their service life, which isn’t the same thing as saying that Russia won’t have to eliminate any warheads.  According to unclassified estimates, Russia currently deploys approximately 2,600-2,800 warheads.  In order to get down to the 1,550 limit in the treaty, Russia will eliminate the warheads on its oldest delivery vehicles – namely those on the SS-19 and SS-25 ICBMs and SS-N-18 SLBMs that it plans to retire in the coming years.

As I’ve noted before, the fact the some Russian reductions might happen in any event is beside the point.  New START is not in the first instance a reductions treaty, although some reductions in deployed forces are required.  Rather, the treaty’s legally-binding limits and data exchange, monitoring, and verification provisions will place a cap on Russia’s deployed forces.  The administration has always been crystal clear about this.  As STRATCOM Gen. Kevin Chilton pointed out in April 2010: “One thing I was pleased to see in the treaty were these limits because as you look to the future though Russia may be close to or slightly below them already, when you look to the future we certainly don’t want them to grow and they would have been unrestricted otherwise without these types of limits articulated in the treaty…”

Does Payne want to bet that Russia would continue to reduce its missiles and bombers without New START?  Our military certainly wouldn’t make such an irresponsible wager.  Without limits on the size of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, Russia would have less confidence in its ability to maintain a stable strategic nuclear relationship with the United States.  This could prompt Moscow to maintain a larger number of deployed delivery vehicles (and by extension warheads) than it plans to keep under New START.  Perhaps this is the outcome Payne hoped to see all along.