The Foreign Service Journal, December 2009

30 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9 • U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, establishing a global ban on testing by any country of any nuclear weapon or nuclear explosive de- vice. • A Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty that verifiably ends the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons. Fissile material is the essential building block for such weapons. Why the START Follow-on Treaty Matters The most immediate and time-sensitive of the arms control steps is negotiating the START Follow-on Treaty. It is an urgent priority because the arms reduction treaty which it will replace, START, expires on Dec. 5 of this year. Once completed and ratified, the START Follow- on Treaty would be the fifth arms control treaty to come into force between the United States and Russia (and its predecessor, the Soviet Union) to limit or reduce the number and capabilities of nuclear weapons that each side possesses. Like the treaties that preceded it, the START Follow- on Treaty will both reflect and advance military and diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Russia. Fur- ther, like its predecessors, it will be perceived broadly in the international community as a concrete indicator of the degree of commitment by the United States and Rus- sia to their obligation under Article VI of the multilateral Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to ... nuclear disarmament.” With the NPT Review Conference less than six months away — it will run from May 3 to May 28, 2010 — and the president’s exhortation in his Prague speech for the international community to strengthen the rules against nuclear proliferation and to hold states that break those rules accountable, governments and peoples across the globe are watching closely to see if the U.S.-Russia “reset” button will re-energize the pace of bilateral ef- forts to cut nuclear force levels. For many global ob- servers, U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control reductions are at least a hortatory, if not actual, prerequisite for them to join in strengthening nuclear nonproliferation rules and enforcing compliance when states such as Iran, North Korea and Syria break those rules. A Short History of Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaties The first treaty to enter into force to directly limit the nuclear forces of the United States and Russia/Soviet Union was the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, or SALT. It was followed by the 1987 Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet So- cialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermedi- ate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty), the 1991 Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START Treaty), and the 2002 Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Strategic Of- fensive Reductions (Moscow Treaty). The 1979 SALT II and 1993 START II treaties were negotiated and signed but never entered into force. Although quite modest in its accomplishments when examined through today’s lenses, SALT represented a major breakthrough in cooperation for its time. While it permitted modernization, SALT halted and capped the numerical U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race — that is, what (until then) was a continuing increase in the numbers of U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons capable of hitting each other’s territory. Further, it established, as a principle of arms control relations, the legitimacy of using satellites and other remote means — so-called national technical means of verification — to confirm compliance with arms control obligations. Because both the United States and the Soviet Union were quite wary of each other, with neither party willing to grant the other on-site visitation rights to monitor com- pliance, SALT constraints were focused exclusively on limiting those items that could be seen or for which there were surrogates that could be viewed remotely by satel- lite. Hence, the treaty focused on deployed strategic nuclear delivery vehicles that could carry nuclear war- heads or bombs, that is, deployed intercontinental ballis- tic missiles (whose silos could be seen by satellite), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (the doors of whose F O C U S Sally K. Horn is a retired member of the Senior Executive Service and an expert on arms control, nonproliferation and verification. A former office director in the Office of the Secretary of Defense responsible for these matters, she currently consults on policy and management issues, in- cluding as a senior expert in State’s Bureau of Verification, Compliance and Implementation. The views expressed herein solely represent the views of the author.