False START— The Great Nuclear Swindle in Moscow
The recent Moscow START Treaty is a step backward, not forward, from 1997
By Sean Howard
CAPE BRETON, CANADA—The fanfare accompanying Presidents Bush and Putin¹s signing in Moscow of the May 24th US-Russia treaty on nuclear arms has been a public relations triumph for both governments. It¹s also been an exercise in oversell, false claims and misinformation from a gullible, uninformed press.
The public perception is that the numbers of nuclear weapons are about to come tumbling down to insignificant levels, "liquidating" the legacy of the Cold War at a stroke and ushering in an era of free-trading peace, harmony and prosperity.
But such sentiments sound wearyingly familiar. It was only five years ago—Helsinki, March 1997—that Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin announced an agreement to cut their nuclear arsenals by two-thirds over the next 10 years, moving decisively to dismantle the wasteful and destructive inheritance of the US-Soviet standoff.
Under the Strategic Arms Reduction (START) III Treaty agreed in principle that year, intercontinental-range, high-yield nuclear warheads were to fall to 2,000-2,500 on each side by 2007. For the first time in the arms control process, not only delivery systems (missiles, bombers, submarines), but the warheads themselves would be destroyed. Equally unprecedented, START III would take into account "non-strategic," shorter-range weapons such as "tactical" and "battlefield" nuclear artillery shells and nuclear-armed cruise missiles.
But the Helsinki plan was effectively scuppered by the Republican-controlled Congress—led by Senator Jesse Helms—and then trashed by the new Bush administration because the two sides had agreed that deep, irreversible cuts required a framework of stability and predictability. Specifically, each side needed to know that the other would not do four things— first, simply remove warheads from missiles and keep them in reserve; second, build missile defenses to provide a strategic advantage which might be small at first, but would be increasingly effective as reductions continued; third, build new or new kinds of nuclear weapons; or, fourth, resume nuclear testing, not least to test such new designs.
Because the Bush administration does not to make of these four commitments, describing them as "traditional arms control" and a "relic of the Cold War," it is ignoring the radical and stabilizing nature of the 1997 proposals. ItŐs time to move forward, say Messrs Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell, the three Secretaries of Defense in the cabinet. But forward into what?
By coincidence, these men see four "new" directions in U.S. strategic arms strategy for the post-Cold War era: remove the warheads from missiles and maintain a huge reserve force; second, build a large-scale, nationwide missile shield; third, explore new design options, such as "bunker-busting" mini-nukes; and, fourth, prepare for the speedy resumption of nuclear testing.
Thus, instead of reducing warheads to 2,000-2,500 by 2007, accompanied by the destruction of warheads and missiles and a guarantee of no testing, we have a new agreement to reduce warheads to 2,200-1,700 over a much longer period—by 2012—that omits mention of warhead or missile destruction, and that is signed in the context of both possible new weapons development and testing, and a multi-billion dollar missile defense spending spree.
Why, then, did Russia agree to such a bad deal? Joseph Cirincione of the independent Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington argues that Putin "doesn't want to let an arms control agreement get in the way" of a new political and economic relationship with Washington. But he cannot be seen acting so obviously with this as his only agenda, so Putin instead points to that fact that Moscow has won a point by ensuring that at least the new accord is legally binding-the first such agreement signed a treaty-allergic White House. Unfortunately, however, as Cirincione observes: "there are so many loopholes in this that it's legally binding mush".
The "spin" from Russian officials is that the treaty nonetheless forms a platform for future progress. Putin has even suggested the way is now clear for US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which is as likely as a Saddam Hussein visit to the White House.
In reality, the new agreement is, indeed, a platform—a green light from the Kremlin for the Pentagon to proceed with war—fighting plans that radically blur the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons use, as leaks of the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review make clear. But it seems no one wants to look back to the distant past of Helsinki, and to talk about how much was lost—not gained—in global security in recent weeks.
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Sean Howard is editor of Disarmament Diplomacy, the journal of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, UK, and adjunct professor of political science, University College of Cape Breton, Canada. The views expressed are his own.