Baker Spring on START
An excerpt from The START Follow-on Treaty: Questions the Senate Needs to Ask:
On April 8, President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Mevedev are scheduled to sign the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) follow-on treaty in Prague. The new treaty will require each side to reduce the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 and the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers and bombers to 800.
Regardless of whether a particular Senator views this new treaty sympathetically or not, all Senators should agree on at least one point: The ratification and entry into force of this treaty will have profound implications for the security of the United States. Accordingly, Senators will need to ask some probing questions about the treaty in the coming weeks and months.
1. Does the Treaty, Either Directly or Indirectly, Limit the Missile Defense Options of the U.S.?
The fact sheet released by the White House describing the content of the treaty in general terms states that the treaty places no constraints on the U.S. regarding missile defenses. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, however, begs to differ. He has stated that if the U.S. exceeds current levels of missile defense systems, then the new treaty will cease to have force. Lavrov also asserts that the limitations on strategic defenses take a legally binding form under the treaty.
Even if this is not the case—and that cannot be certain until the text of the treaty is released—informal linkages to missile defense from the treaty can, as a practical matter, be just as limiting as actual text in the treaty. For example, President Obama established precisely such a linkage by canceling a plan to field defensive interceptors against long-range missiles in Poland and associated radar in the Czech Republic last September.
2. Does the Treaty Limit U.S. Conventional Strategic Strike Systems?
Again, the White House fact sheet says no. The White House assertion is difficult to fathom, however, because the fact sheet states that the treaty will limit both deployed and non-deployed strategic launchers at 800. Thus, such launchers would seem to be applicable against the numerical limit—whether or not they are armed with nuclear warheads.
If launchers are subject to the numerical limitation regardless, then the treaty by definition imposes a limitation on U.S. options for fielding conventional strategic strike systems.
Tags: Baker Spring, START