Efforts by Russia and the United States to negotiate a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty are being troubled by Moscow's objections to a U.S. verification proposal as well as friction over proposed cutbacks to nuclear-weapon delivery systems held by each side, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, Nov. 11).
(Nov. 12) -
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stands near a mobile Topol-M ICBM last year. Russia has expressed opposition to an arms control proposal that would keep the nation's mobile ICBMs under U.S. monitoring (Maxim Shipenkov/Getty Images).
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama agreed in July to cut their nations' respective deployed strategic nuclear arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads, down from the 2,200-warhead limit the states are required to meet by 2012 under the 2002 Moscow Treaty. The leaders also pledged to restrict strategic delivery vehicles on each side to between 500 and 1,100 under the successor to the 1991 pact, which expires Dec. 5.
The Kremlin opposed a plan put forward by Washington that would allow U.S. inspectors to continue overseeing Russia's mobile ICBMs under the new agreement, an analyst close to the talks told the Russian newspaper Kommersant.
"They are offering to keep and even strengthen control over our mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles such as the Topol," the source said, contending that the audits would be of a "unilateral character" because the United States possesses no mobile ICBM fleet.
"In their package, the Americans stipulated a new ceiling for warhead carriers that we don't quite agree with," the source added, referring to mutual limits on missiles and bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons to targets.
"There is a number of problems, chief among them control over inspections and some numerical data," said Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the Russian General Staff. "We want the treaty to ensure both the security of the Russian Federation and of the United States on equal levels."
Despite their lingering disagreements, Washington and Moscow have begun considering where the finished treaty would be signed (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, Nov. 12).
In an interview with Russia Today, one expert argued that prospects remain bright for a new treaty because the negotiating powers have reached agreement on reductions to deployed nuclear warheads, an area he considered the pact's most "fundamental issue."
"Russia and the U.S. will have about 1,500 nuclear warheads -- it is close to the raw limits set by the 2002 Moscow SORT treaty. The difference is that the new agreement should involve an inspection mechanism," said Aleksey Fenenko, a leading international security researcher at the Russian Academy of Science.
Russia is rapidly cutting back its nuclear assets without U.S. involvement, adding to Moscow's interest in negotiating larger mandatory reductions to strategic weapons and delivery vehicles, said Alexei Arbatov, a nonproliferation specialist with the Moscow Carnegie Center.
"Unlike the U.S., Russia vitally needs the agreement to keep parity with the States -- it is a matter of prestige, world status, geographical position and so on," he said.
"Shall we take into account sea-based facilities, warheads in the depots, only those on the carriers, or all of them? We have different views on almost every one of these issues," noted Evgeny Minchenko, head of the International Institute for Political Expertise.
The "overwhelming" superiority of U.S. conventional armaments would eventually limit Moscow's willingness to continue eliminating its nuclear weapons, Minchenko added.
The Obama administration's decision to scrap a European missile defense initiative proposed under former President George W. Bush would not entirely resolve Russian concerns about the plan, Fenenko said. The Bush-era plan involved the deployment of ground-based missile interceptors in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic.
The United States retains "two agreements with Poland and the Czech Republic -- they are not ratified, but they do exist and the U.S. has not denounced them. So the next U.S. president can get back to them and push the idea of constructing the bases again," Fenenko said (Russia Today, Nov. 11).