New START Enhances U.S.-Russian Relations
Washington - A new nuclear arms reduction treaty will foster a stable, open and predictable relationship between the United States and Russia, who together possess more than 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, top leaders in the Obama administration say.
At a Senate hearing June 17, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), signed by President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Prague April 8, reduces global nuclear tensions and enhances efforts to make irresponsible governments accountable to the rest of the world.
"By bringing the New START Treaty into force, we will strengthen our national security more broadly, including by creating greater leverage to tackle a core national security challenge: nuclear proliferation," Clinton told a Senate committee. The treaty does not compromise nuclear force levels needed to protect the United States and its allies, and it does not constrain missile-defense plans, Clinton added.
Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the arms control pact. The treaty replaces the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and the 2002 Moscow Treaty.
Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, reminded committee members that the U.S. Senate has previously approved 10 bilateral arms control agreements with Russia and, before that, the Soviet Union, by overwhelming margins. Approval of the treaty by the U.S. Senate requires a vote of two-thirds of the membership, or 67 votes. The Russian Duma must also approve the treaty.
"This New START Treaty supports a credible nuclear deterrent and maintains the nuclear triad while allowing both the United States and Russia to reduce the total number of nuclear weapons," Levin said.
Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona said the treaty has to be verifiable, should not limit future missile defense plans, and should ensure that the future U.S. nuclear arsenal is maintained and modernized to provide for an adequate deterrent force.
The landmark START between the United States and Russia lowers the limits on strategic nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them. It effectively reduces the level of warheads each nation possesses to its lowest level in more than 50 years.
Gates told senators that the U.S. nuclear forces will continue to be based on the triad of delivery systems - land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and strategic long-range bombers. The treaty provides an upper boundary of 1,550 deployed warheads for each nation, and up to 700 deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs or heavy bombers. Additionally, the treaty would permit up to 800 deployed and nondeployed missile and submarine launchers or heavy bombers.
"Under this treaty, we retain the power and the freedom to determine the composition of our force structure, allowing the United States complete flexibility to deploy, maintain and modernize our strategic nuclear forces in a manner that best protects our national security interests," Gates testified.
Mullen told senators that the proposed arms reduction treaty has the full support of the U.S. armed forces, and that it does three key things - allows the United States to keep a strong and flexible nuclear deterrent; helps strengthen openness in relations with Russia; and shows the world the U.S. commitment to reducing the risk of a nuclear incident caused by the irresponsible spread of nuclear weapons from others.
The United States also is working for Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and further progress on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty as additional components of the president's nuclear agenda.
According to a report from the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS), the treaty gives the United States and Russia seven years to reduce forces and remains in force for 10 years from ratification, and it contains detailed definitions and counting rules that will help the parties calculate the number of warheads that count under the treaty limits.
"New START does not limit current or planned U.S. missile defense programs," the CRS report said.
Along with the New START, Obama also submitted a plan to spend $80 billion over the next decade to maintain and improve the United States' nuclear weapons complex, a requirement Republican senators have said is essential for their support of the treaty.
