Protect New START

Last week, U.S. House Republican lawmakers authorized hundreds of millions of dollars for costly new nuclear weapons-related facilities and missile defense projects the Pentagon says it does not want or need. Worse, the House Armed Services Committee majority is seeking to hold up implementation of the New START Treaty, which entered into force just last year and verifiably reduces U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, unless the Congress approves higher spending levels for National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) weapons activities.

By a narrow 34-28 margin, Republicans on the House Armed Services committee pushed through a 48-page amendment offered by Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, to the National Defense Authorization Act that would block funding for New START implementation unless higher spending targets for nuclear weapons production facilities set in 2010 are met in future years.

This type of partisan “hostage taking” threatens to undermine U.S. national security, and it ignores the fact that there is bi-partisan agreement among congressional appropriators that additional nuclear weapon budget increases are unaffordable and unnecessary.

If Rep. Turner’s provision to tie up New START were to become law, Russia would likely halt its nuclear reductions as well, risking the treaty’s collapse. This would allow Moscow to rebuild its nuclear forces above the treaty ceiling of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and increase the number of nuclear weapons aimed at the U.S.

Moreover, the inspection system established under the treaty could collapse, depriving the U.S. of crucial data exchanges and on-site inspections of Russian forces, undermining transparency and strategic stability. More

 

Nuclear Disarmament’s Midnight Hour - Gareth Evens

CANBERRA – Last month, the Doomsday Clock’s hands were moved a minute closer to midnight by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the respected global organization that for decades has tracked the risk of a nuclear-weapons catastrophe, whether caused by accident or design, state or terrorist, fission bomb or dirty radiological bomb.

Few around the world seemed to be listening. The story – as others like it since the end of the Cold War – came and went within a half-day’s news cycle. But the Scientists’ argument was sobering, and demands attention. Progress since 2007 – when the Clock’s hands were last set at five minutes to midnight – has stalled, and political leadership has gone missing on all of the critical issues: disarmament, non-proliferation, and key building blocks needed for both.

On disarmament, the balloon has well and truly deflated. The New START treaty, signed by the United States and Russia in 2010, reduced the number of deployed strategic weapons, but left both sides’ actual stockpiles intact, their high-alert status undisturbed, weapons-modernization programs in place, disagreements about missile defense and conventional-arms imbalances unresolved – and talks on further draw-downs going nowhere.

With no further movement by the US and Russia, which together hold 95% of the world’s total of more than 20,000 nuclear weapons, no other nuclear-armed state has felt pressure to reduce its own stocks significantly, and some – China, India, and Pakistan – have been increasing them.

The 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference was a modest success, mainly because it did not collapse in disarray, as had the previous one in 2005. But it could not agree on measures to strengthen the regime; its push for talks on a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East has so far gathered no momentum; North Korea is no closer to being put back in its NPT box; and Iran is closer than ever to jumping out of it, with consequences that would ricochet around the region – and the global economy – if it makes that decision.

Despite President Barack Obama’s good intentions, the US Senate is no closer to ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, while China, India, and Pakistan, among others, take shelter behind that inaction, with a fragile voluntary moratorium the only obstacle to resumed testing. And negotiations on another crucial building block for both disarmament and non-proliferation – a treaty to ban further production of weapons-grade fissile material – remain at an impasse.

The only half-way good news is that progress continues on a third building block: ensuring that weapons-usable materials, and weapons themselves, currently stored in multiple locations in 32 countries, do not fall into the hands of rogue states or terrorists. At the end of March, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak will host a follow-up meeting to Obama’s successful Nuclear Security Summit in 2010, which brought together 47 government leaders to agree on a comprehensive program aimed at securing all such materials within four years. High on the agenda will be the security implications of nuclear safety: the Fukushima catastrophe showed that nuclear-power plants may be vulnerable not only to natural disaster, but also to terrorist sabotage. More

 

Stop at START

In his speech Wednesday at the National Defense University here, Vice President Joe Biden opened a new offensive in the administration’s war on nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.

February 18, 2010 - One near-term objective is completion and ratification of a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and Russia. But the ultimate goal, he said, remained the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.

In the absence of a roadmap from a Start accord to global zero, one can only assume that Mr. Biden meant the continued pursuit of similar, incremental arms control agreements. But piecemeal control efforts will never work; we have to think more boldly if we are to achieve global nuclear disarmament. More >>>