Brent Scowcroft and Jake Garn: Ratify New START now
[Brent Scowcroft was national security adviser during the Ford and George H.W. Bush administrations. Jake Garn is a former Republican senator from Utah.]
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has just approved the new U.S.-Russian nuclear arms treaty (New START) and sent it to the Senate floor. We are writing to urge that the Senate move promptly to ratify it. The arguments that have been advanced in favor of the treaty are strong and compelling.
Why is New START important? The answer is simple: The START treaty, which was signed in 1991 and entered into force in 1994, expired last December. When it did, so too did its verification and compliance regime, which was the culmination of more than 30 years of U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Russian arms-control negotiations. Since December, no American inspectors have been able to visit Russian missile sites and no Russian inspectors have been here. Each side, as a result, has lost an important element of transparency into the other's strategic forces. Transparency enhances predictability; predictability enhances stability. Without transparency, distrust and suspicion grow.
The new treaty resolves this problem by re-establishing a nuclear-arms-reduction relationship - and an accompanying inspection and verification regime. Furthermore, it mandates modest additional cuts (beyond those agreed to in the 2002 accord signed by Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin) in the existing U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals. Moving to lower levels in a verifiable and transparent manner is a time-proven method for achieving a proper balance that both provides the security we need and recognizes changing global realities.
What, then, do opponents say against the treaty?..
Read entire article at Washington Times
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has just approved the new U.S.-Russian nuclear arms treaty (New START) and sent it to the Senate floor. We are writing to urge that the Senate move promptly to ratify it. The arguments that have been advanced in favor of the treaty are strong and compelling.
Why is New START important? The answer is simple: The START treaty, which was signed in 1991 and entered into force in 1994, expired last December. When it did, so too did its verification and compliance regime, which was the culmination of more than 30 years of U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Russian arms-control negotiations. Since December, no American inspectors have been able to visit Russian missile sites and no Russian inspectors have been here. Each side, as a result, has lost an important element of transparency into the other's strategic forces. Transparency enhances predictability; predictability enhances stability. Without transparency, distrust and suspicion grow.
The new treaty resolves this problem by re-establishing a nuclear-arms-reduction relationship - and an accompanying inspection and verification regime. Furthermore, it mandates modest additional cuts (beyond those agreed to in the 2002 accord signed by Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin) in the existing U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals. Moving to lower levels in a verifiable and transparent manner is a time-proven method for achieving a proper balance that both provides the security we need and recognizes changing global realities.
What, then, do opponents say against the treaty?..