I’ve been working systematically for 20 years going to Russia trying to help direct a situation in which we’re taking warheads off of missiles every day, destroying missiles that were aimed at us; destroying submarines that carried misslies up and down…
Obama Signs (and Ratifies) New START
Today, February 2, 2011, President Obama signed New START!!! NoH was invited to the ceremony, but sadly had other pressing business to attend to (I kid, I kid, both about being invited and the other pressing business)! The treaty has now officiall…
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.
Russia’s Process for Ratification of the New START Treaty
By Kingston Reif and Jessica Estanislau
Now that the U.S. Senate has approved the New START treaty, the next step on the way to final entry into force (and the resumption of on-site inspections of U.S. and Russian deployed nuclear forces) is approval by the Russian legislature – aka the Federal Assembly of Russia. The Federal Assembly consists of a lower house (the Duma) and an upper house (the Federation Council). Russian law requires that both houses approve the treaty by a majority vote. All indications are that this will happen before the end of the month.
Don’t expect a knock down, drag out fight over the treaty in Russia (as was the case in the U.S.). The Russian legislative and executive branches are tied much more closely at the hip than their U.S. counterparts. In other words, what Medvedev and Putin want, Medvedev and Putin will get. And they want New START.
Which raises the question: Why has Russia waited until now to act on the treaty? When the two sides signed New START last April, Moscow made it very clear that the Russian parliament would be synchronizing its ratification process with the U.S. process. The reason for this is that the Russians feared that if they quickly ratified the treaty only to see the U.S. Senate eventually reject it, they would be the ones left holding the bag.
While the Russian legislature’s approval of the treaty remains assured, it has adjusted the review process to address the conditions attached to the New START resolution of ratification by the U.S. Senate…
In July 2010, the international affairs committee and the defense committee in the Russian Duma recommended that the Duma ratify New START (without any reservations) at around the same time the U.S. Senate gives its approval. However, in the aftermath of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s action on the resolution of ratification, which appended a total of 26 conditions, understandings, and declarations about how it interpreted the treaty, and due to continued delays in the full Senate’s consideration of the agreement, both Duma committees retracted their endorsement in order to reconsider the treaty.
Following the full U.S. Senate’s approval of New START on December 22, the Duma quickly gave its preliminary approval on December 24th by a vote of 350-58. Prior to the Duma’s second reading of the treaty on January 14, Russian lawmakers added six articles to the ratification text that outline the Duma’s understanding of the treaty. Further tweaks to the text could be made in the lead up to the third and final vote in the Duma scheduled for January 25 or 26, after which the Federation Council is expected to give its prompt approval to the treaty. (UPDATE 1/21: In addition to the ratification text responding to the U.S. resolution of ratification, the Duma international affair committee has also prepared a supplementary statement “On the Provision of Combat Readiness and Development of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces, the Nuclear Arms Segment and Defense Plants Operating in it.”)
Pavel and Jeffrey have posted a translation and some analysis of the Russian ratification text. Nothing issued by either side changes the actual text of the treaty. From our vantage point most of it amounts to rhetorical throat-clearing in response to the Senate’s action on the treaty – save for perhaps the statement in Article 2 re: new kinds of strategic offensive weapons. The parts on Russian strategic force modernization and missile defense are nothing new. And it’s interesting that the ratification text describes the controversial New START preamble as having “indisputable significance” (according to the State Department’s translation) as opposed to being “legally binding.” Or is this simply a distinction without a difference? In any event, as Pavel notes, “nothing [in the ratification text] strikes me as irreconcilable.”
Some New START critics have already latched on to the Russian ratification process to claim that their fears about the treaty are being realized. NoH will touch on these claims in a later post. In the meantime, look for Presidents Obama and Medvedev (or duly designated ambassadors) to exchange instruments of ratification sometime in late January or February, perhaps on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference to be held February 4-6.
Playing Chess With Russia: An Update on the New START Agreement
by Kingston Reif Interview published on Daily Kos on November 22, 2009 Negotiators have been working tirelessly and continuously behind the scenes to meet the treaty deadline. Obama and Medvedev met in Singapore during Obama’s recent trip to Asia. Though the leaders downplayed any problems with the negotiations on “New START”, it has become clear […]
