Why a New START Will Make Us Safer Posted by The Editors

The following post is by William D. Hartung, Director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation.

I'm glad to see that Ariel Cohen and Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation took the time to read my recent post on the security benefits of a follow-on to the U.S.-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).  My piece was a rebuttal of Mr. Cohen's recent New York Times op-ed on the issue, so I welcome their rebuttal of my rebuttal.  Perhaps this can be the start of a beautiful friendship.

I only wish that Mr. Cohen and Mr. Spring had read my post more carefully.  If I were to respond only to their references to arguments that were actually in my piece, this would be a short post indeed.  But I think it's worth addressing their main arguments in any case.

Cohen and Spring's main concerns about a New START are as follows: 1) modernization of the U.S. arsenal in a post-START environment; 2) verification of the treaty; and 3) a possible link between the "performance of the treaty" and limits on missile defense.  I will take these three points in turn and then address some of the other points they raise.

As referenced in my prior post, the United States already has an extensive nuclear weapons sustainment  program in place.  As we reduce our arsenal, we don't need new warheads; we just need to know that the existing ones work. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) already spends billions of dollars per year on "stockpile stewardship" - a science-based initiative that has done an excellent job of assuring the safety and reliability of the current U.S. nuclear arsenal without resorting to nuclear testing.  Specific components are refurbished or replaced as needed, and, as noted in my earlier essay, the widely respected JASON Group has indicated that the current approach can maintain the reliability of the U.S. stockpile for decades to come. A new warhead - which Mr. Cohen and Mr. Spring seem to desire - would actually be less reliable than current designs.  Current warheads have undergone hundreds of tests; a new warhead would not (and should not) be tested.

Mr. Cohen and Mr. Spring seem to want to trust our security to an untested (and unnecessary) new warhead - unless of course they are suggesting an end to the current moratorium on nuclear testing among the major nuclear weapons states. The fact is, the United States has not conducted a nuclear test since 1992--a policy supported by four successive administrations.  Reversing this position would be a disastrous development for arms control, validating the notion of testing (and then building) nuclear weapons at a time when we should be moving towards a global ban on all testing, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

As for verification of a New START agreement, it is hard to criticize the verification measures included in a treaty that has yet to be concluded.  Perhaps Mr. Spring and Mr. Cohen have a crystal ball, but I do not. I trust that the Obama administration is seeking procedures that will be more than adequate to detect any meaningful violations of a New START agreement, and I look forward to evaluating them once we have a treaty to analyze.  In the mean time we shouldn't be distracted by unsupported claims that we need to have inspectors near Russian ballistic missile factories. As I noted in my earlier post, we can develop adequate means to monitor Russian missile production without continuing a Cold War era practice that is no longer necessary.

Which gets us back to Mr. Cohen and Mr. Spring's embrace of the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT), a three-page document with no verification procedures that is scheduled to expire in 2012. As one of my colleagues pointed out, this is not a treaty, it's "sort of" a treaty.  We deserve a legally binding, verifiable and enduring treaty to ensure our security, not an unverified handsake deal written on the back of an envelope after President George W. Bush stared into Vladimir Putin's soul (as the former president claims to have done).

As for missile defense, even Baker and Cohen admit that "it may well be true" that the text of a New START treaty will not include limits on missile defense.  I think it will be true, based on statements from Obama administration officials that missile defense is not on the table in the START follow-on talks.  Furthermore, the Obama administration has not abandoned missile defense in Europe, it has restructured it. He has shifted from a land-based system aimed at long-range Iranian missiles that won't  exist for a long, long time (according to the current intelligence estimates) to one built on sea-based and shorter-range land-based missiles that will address the more immediate concerns raised by possible development of medium-range missiles by Iran.  Given the recent statement by top intelligence official Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess that there is no evidence that Iran has made a final decision to build nuclear weapons, it appears that we have more time to address Iran's nuclear aspirations than many analysts have been suggesting. To be a threat to Europe Iran would not only have to build a nuclear weapon but it would have to build one that could be launched on a ballistic missile, a daunting challenge.

Rather than take Mr. Cohen and Mr. Spring's other charges one-by-one, I will just say that as an advocate of reducing and eventually eliminating nuclear weapons, I advocate a step-by-step process that takes seriously the actions of other nuclear states and the need to verify any and all reductions.  President Obama has indicated his commitment to maintaining a "robust deterrent" until such time as we can safely move to zero, and that this goal may not be reached in his lifetime. That's hardly a "rush to disarmament," as Cohen and Baker claim.

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