Madeleine Albright and Igor Ivanov: We must restart our stalled nuclear talks
[Madeleine Albright was US secretary of state 1997-2001. Igor Ivanov was Russian foreign minister 1998-2004. A paper with ideas they submitted to the US and Russian governments is at www.brookings.edu and www.imemo.ru.]
In September the US Senate foreign relations committee voted to support New Start, an important treaty limiting nuclear arms in America and Russia. It was a hopeful step, but sadly politics intervened. The full Senate will not now consider the treaty until after November’s elections, and even then partisan bickering could see delays into 2011. Given that Russia’s Duma is waiting for the Senate, we can now expect delays to a treaty that is in both nations’ interest and will push back the timetable for future nuclear negotiations.
New Start reduces the number of nuclear warheads in both countries, while also boosting the international non-proliferation regime. In signing it Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev bolstered a growing US-Russian partnership. Yet, given these delays, they should now do more. In particular, a number of interim steps can help to maintain momentum.
To begin with, Washington and Moscow should open up new talks on nuclear deterrence. A frank conversation, including a discussion about how missile defence and long-range conventional weapons affect the relationship between both countries, could reveal similarities in thinking. These could, in turn, underpin future negotiations to cut nuclear weapons below even the levels of New Start.
Washington has indicated that it wants limits on tactical nuclear weapons in the next round. Moscow still worries about “non-deployed” strategic warheads, for example those not on ballistic missiles but kept at storage sites. New Start, while a critical step, does not affect either category, limiting only “deployed” strategic warheads. Including both these other categories will allow US-Russian negotiators, for the first time, to address all nuclear weapons. They should also increase transparency by revealing their total numbers of weapons.
The next round of negotiations will be longer and more complex than even those that produced New Start, and such preliminary exchanges would allow both sides to begin moving forward on a number of tough issues. Talks should certainly examine the verification challenges posed by limits on tactical nuclear weapons and non-deployed strategic warheads, which may need to include monitoring limits on nuclear warheads kept in storage sites, something the US and Russia have never before had to do...
Read entire article at Financial Times (UK)
In September the US Senate foreign relations committee voted to support New Start, an important treaty limiting nuclear arms in America and Russia. It was a hopeful step, but sadly politics intervened. The full Senate will not now consider the treaty until after November’s elections, and even then partisan bickering could see delays into 2011. Given that Russia’s Duma is waiting for the Senate, we can now expect delays to a treaty that is in both nations’ interest and will push back the timetable for future nuclear negotiations.
New Start reduces the number of nuclear warheads in both countries, while also boosting the international non-proliferation regime. In signing it Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev bolstered a growing US-Russian partnership. Yet, given these delays, they should now do more. In particular, a number of interim steps can help to maintain momentum.
To begin with, Washington and Moscow should open up new talks on nuclear deterrence. A frank conversation, including a discussion about how missile defence and long-range conventional weapons affect the relationship between both countries, could reveal similarities in thinking. These could, in turn, underpin future negotiations to cut nuclear weapons below even the levels of New Start.
Washington has indicated that it wants limits on tactical nuclear weapons in the next round. Moscow still worries about “non-deployed” strategic warheads, for example those not on ballistic missiles but kept at storage sites. New Start, while a critical step, does not affect either category, limiting only “deployed” strategic warheads. Including both these other categories will allow US-Russian negotiators, for the first time, to address all nuclear weapons. They should also increase transparency by revealing their total numbers of weapons.
The next round of negotiations will be longer and more complex than even those that produced New Start, and such preliminary exchanges would allow both sides to begin moving forward on a number of tough issues. Talks should certainly examine the verification challenges posed by limits on tactical nuclear weapons and non-deployed strategic warheads, which may need to include monitoring limits on nuclear warheads kept in storage sites, something the US and Russia have never before had to do...