WASHINGTON -- U.S. envoys meeting this week with their Russian counterparts in Geneva intend to keep open the option for President-elect Barack Obama to extend the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, officials told Global Security Newswire (see GSN, Oct. 20).
(Nov. 20) -
The Bush administration has enabled President-elect Barack Obama to negotiate a possible extension to a key U.S.-Russian arms control treaty (Justin Sullivan/
Getty Images).
Obama's national security team is said to be interested in preserving the option of maintaining the provisions of the 1991 accord, which otherwise would expire less than 12 months after Inauguration Day.
Under the terms of the treaty, diplomats were required to meet by early next month to discuss prospects for extending the treaty past December 2009. In addition to the United States and Russia, other parties to the treaty at the session include Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
Whether that advance exchange would even take place had been in question because neither President George W. Bush's administration nor the Kremlin's current leadership supports extending the accord, as it currently stands.
The Bush administration has opposed treaty extension on the basis that many of its provisions are no longer needed in the post-Cold War security environment. For their part, Russian officials would prefer an agreement offering deeper warhead reductions, limits on delivery vehicles and less-intrusive verification measures, according to arms control experts.
It appears, though, that the White House wants to avoid tying the incoming president's hands on the issue -- despite any temptation there might be to complicate Obama's prospects for reversing Bush's longtime policy distaste for traditional arms control pacts.
"I don't think they'll do anything to preserve that [treaty extension] option, but [they also] would not preclude an extension," said one U.S. official, referring to the U.S. and Russian diplomats convening in Geneva.
Daryl Kimball, who heads the Arms Control Association, agreed.
The Geneva meetings "will effectively fulfill the requirement for the parties to meet about START, and the Bush administration does not intend to close off the START extension option for the next administration," he told GSN yesterday.
The biannual forum in which the discussions are taking place, called the Joint Compliance and Inspection Commission, kicked off Nov. 13 and is to conclude tomorrow.
Obama has expressed support for negotiating additional, verifiable nuclear arms cuts with Russia, though he has not addressed the issue publicly since the Nov. 4 election.
He co-sponsored Senate legislation last year that calls on Washington to initiate talks with Moscow to "further reduce the number of strategic nuclear weapons in the respective nuclear stockpiles of the United States and the Russian Federation in a transparent and verifiable fashion."
Obama's transition team says the incoming commander in chief favors "dramatic reductions in U.S. and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material."
Under START, the United States and Russia each agreed to reduce their long-range nuclear arsenals to no more than 1,600 delivery vehicles and 6,000 warheads, levels that were reached in late 2001.
Bush in 2002 negotiated the Moscow Treaty with then-Russian President Vladimir Putin. The agreement calls for reducing to fewer than 2,200 deployed warheads on each side by the end of 2012. However, the pact contains no verification provisions of its own, so each nation has used the ongoing START regime to maintain confidence about the size and nature of the other's arsenal.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently said the next administration could probably negotiate additional stockpile reductions, but he warned that the United States should begin modernizing its warheads to establish sufficient confidence in a smaller force (see GSN, Oct. 29).
Acting Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Rood this month presented Moscow with a proposal for a follow-on treaty to START (see GSN, Nov. 7). He also told reporters that he had provided the Kremlin new details about confidence-building measures that might ease Russian concerns about a missile defense system that Washington intends to build in Europe (see GSN, Nov. 7).
The current Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, has threatened to deploy new short-range missiles on the border with Poland, which is slated to host 10 interceptors.
After that announcement -- made Nov. 5, the day after Obama was elected -- there were some short-lived murmurs in Republican circles about canceling this week's meetings concerning START extension, Kimball said. However, the Geneva meetings went forward, with State Department official Jerry Taylor leading the U.S. delegation.
Rood hopes to meet in December with his Russian counterpart, Lev Ryabev, to discuss the Bush administration proposal for a potential treaty to replace START, according to Kimball.
That meeting is tentatively expected to take place in Moscow, the U.S. government official told GSN. With Bush preparing to leave office two months from today, "I don't expect any breakthroughs," the official said.
It is unclear whether Obama might favor a simple extension of START, the negotiation of a treaty to replace it, or some other alternative -- such as an executive agreement or informal understanding that might carry the United States and Russia past next year's START expiration.
This month's meetings will help maintain a range of options for the incoming administration, even if Washington and Moscow ultimately opt not to renew the treaty next year, Kimball said.
"The extension of START is something of a safety valve," he said. If a replacement for the accord cannot be agreed on by the end of 2009, START extension could at least prolong verification measures that the U.S. intelligence community has found valuable in providing Russian transparency, he said.
It could also help signal a continued interest in disarmament by the world's two largest nuclear-armed nations, according to Kimball.