More Experts Comment on New START
Writing at National Review Online, Eric Edelman and Robert Joseph lay out a few issues the Senate must address as it deliberates ratifying the new START. For example, witnesses have testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about ambiguities that would allow conflicting interpretations of “the definition and accountability of rail-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles,” and others are concerned about problems with verification.
“Moreover, had some of the Romney critics attended the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on June 24, they would have heard the authors — both career government civil servants — raise all of the above-mentioned issues, as well as the modernization issues that were addressed in the report of the Strategic Posture Commission. In addition, they expressed worries about the future viability of a resilient triad of nuclear forces (ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and Bombers) under the treaty’s relatively low launcher limit — a limit that will require the U.S., but not Russia, to dismantle launchers.
“We continue to believe that these serious issues must be addressed in a thorough deliberative process — like those that accompanied INF, START I and II, and the 2002 Moscow Treaty — rather than dismissed as political partisanship.”
Edelman and Joseph call for the treaty’s negotiating record, which likely would address of the concerns. Additionally, the Senate must consider U.S. security as it makes a decision. “For instance,” the authors write, “if the rail-mobile-ICBM loophole is as minor a question as proponents claim, it can easily be resolved by either joint statements (by the U.S. and Russian governments) or a unilateral Russian statement that they agree that any new rail-mobile systems will be accountable under the treaty.”
Tags: Eric Edelman, ICBM, Robert Joseph, START