Arms Talks Now Turn to Short-Range Weapons

New York Times
PETER BAKER
Published: December 24, 2010

Fresh from winning Senate approval for a new strategic arms treaty, President Obama plans to return to the negotiating table with Russia next year in hopes of securing the first legal limits ever imposed on the smaller, battlefield nuclear weapons viewed as most vulnerable to theft or diversion.
This time around, though, Mr. Obama may have an easier time with the Senate Republicans who tried to block ratification of the new treaty, known as New Start, than he will with the Russians who were his partners in writing it.

As part of their case against the treaty, Senate Republicans complained vociferously that it did not cover tactical nuclear weapons, short-range bombs that have never been addressed by a Russian-American treaty. To press their point, Republicans pushed through a side resolution calling on Mr. Obama to open new talks with Russia on such weapons within a year.

That was always Mr. Obama’s long-stated plan for following up New Start, so now he has the added advantage of a virtual Republican mandate to negotiate a new arms limitation agreement with Russia. The challenge next time will actually be Russia, which has many more of these tactical bombs deployed in Europe than the United States does, and in its strategic doctrine deems them critical to defending against a potential conventional attack by NATO or China.

“The good news is, with Senate approval of New Start, the administration achieved the essential precondition to getting Russia to consider reductions in tactical nuclear forces,” said Stephen Young, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an arms control advocacy group. “The Russians, however, will try to insist on limitations on U.S. missile defense, which is something the administration is both not inclined to do and couldn’t get through the Senate if it did.”

The White House said after the Senate voted 71-to-26 on Wednesday to approve New Start that it would move forward on tactical weapons. “We will carry out the requirements of the resolution by seeking to initiate negotiations with Russia on tactical nukes within one year of New Start’s entry into force,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman.

Mr. Vietor said the administration was seeking to enlist Russia in collaborating with the United States and NATO on a European missile defense system rather than trying to obstruct it. “We have a robust schedule of consultations on missile defense cooperation with Russia planned for the early part of the new year,” he said.

The new arms control treaty, like its predecessors, placed limits on strategic nuclear weapons, meaning those that can be delivered long distances, but not on shorter-range bombs. Tactical weapons generally refer to those with ranges of 300 or 400 miles or less — some quite small and therefore particularly worrisome to officials responsible for guarding against terrorists obtaining such destructive weapons.

In 1991, as the cold war was coming to an end and the Soviet Union was near collapse, the first President George Bush announced that he would unilaterally withdraw most tactical nuclear weapons from forward positions. President Mikhail S. Gorbachev of the Soviet Union then reciprocated. Experts estimate that thousands of tactical bombs were withdrawn or eliminated.

Today, the United States retains about 500 tactical weapons, according to the figures released this year, and experts say about 180 of them are still stationed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Russia has between 3,000 and 5,000 of them, depending on the estimate, and American officials have said Moscow moved more of them closer to NATO allies as recently as last spring in response to the deployment of American missile defense installations closer to its territory.

“In the 21st century, there is no plausible military, political or deterrent justification for the Russian government to deploy several thousand such weapons,” said Frank Miller, a former national security aide to President George W. Bush and now now at the Scowcroft Group in Washington.

The imbalance animated Republican opponents of the New Start treaty during the Senate debate. “Remember, the Russians have a 10-to-1 ratio of tactical nuclear weapons over us — 3,000 to 300 — not talked about in this treaty, an important issue,” said Senator George LeMieux, Republican of Florida, who inserted the provision calling for new talks in the resolution of ratification accompanying the treaty.

But other experts warned that it would be hard to persuade Russia to give up its advantage without getting something in return. If not a concession on missile defense, these experts said Russia would certainly want to talk about paring back the large stockpiles of stored strategic weapons that are also not covered by the New Start treaty.

In that category of weapons, the United States has the advantage. It reported having about 2,600 strategic warheads in reserve, while experts estimate that Russia has 1,000. At least some of the weapons to be removed as a result of New Start would simply go into storage.

Steven Pifer, a former arms control official at the State Department, said one way to devise a deal would be to negotiate an overall cap on all nuclear weapons of perhaps 2,500 each. Then both sides would have to reduce the weapons they have the most of, but precise parity in each category would not be required.

Mr. Pifer said any agreement would test whether Republicans were serious when they criticized New Start for neglecting tactical weapons. “Will they support it, or will it turn out the lack of limits on tactical nukes was merely a pretext for saying no to New Start?” he asked.

Baker Spring, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation and a critic of New Start, said it would be better not to get into a new round of talks. “The imbalance in tactical nuclear weapons is very worrisome,” he said, “but I do not think the U.S. should enter into negotiations on these weapons, because it has no cards to play.”

In the end, Mr. Spring said, Russia would probably force each side to withdraw all tactical nuclear weapons to its own national territory in exchange for any reductions. Russia, and its weapons, would still be near NATO allies, while the United States would have to withdraw its small force from Europe. “What’s not for Russia to like?” he said.

Jamie Fly, executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a conservative research group, said that an American withdrawal from Europe would probably cost Mr. Obama any Republican support. “Such a move by the Obama administration would not enhance their credibility with Senate Republicans, given the common perception that the Russians got the better of us on several key issues during the New Start negotiations,” he said.