"We shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it.” These words are from the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which was published in 1955 and therefore, as the Bulletin celebrates 75^th year, is celebrating its 65^th.  It was one of the first explicit calls for nuclear disarmament.

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Many people have asked me how a former secretary of defense could support the abolition of nuclear weapons. This paper is a partial answer to that question, in the form of a personal history of how my thinking on nuclear weapons has evolved from Hiroshima to the present time.

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Brussels Sprouts · How Should Biden Deal with Moscow? with Rose Gottemoeller and David J. Kramer

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Despite a flurry of diplomatic activity over the late summer and early fall, the United States and Russia have yet to seal a deal on extending the New START treaty limiting their strategic nuclear arsenals. Absent an agreement, the treaty will expire on February 5, 2021. Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin recently sent a proposal to NATO calling for a "moratorium" on deploying short- and medium-range missiles in Europe – systems that would have been banned by the now defunct US-Russia INF treaty.

Watch webinar at The Finnish Institute of International Affairs

Sig Hecker is one of the world’s foremost nuclear security and policy experts and has for decades served as a go-to source for journalists writing about nuclear affairs. An emeritus fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Hecker has a long history of working to foster cooperation on nuclear issues between US and Russian scientists and their governments. He has visited North Korea and toured various of its nuclear facilities multiple times and is at work on a book about that country.

Read the rest at  Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will have just 16 days after Inauguration Day in January to strike a deal with Russia to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. If they fail to agree, the last remaining pact limiting the two countries’ nuclear arsenals will expire.

Read the rest at  Air Force Magazine

The Biden presidency that begins in January will adopt some very different directions from its predecessor in foreign policy. One such area is arms control, particularly nuclear arms control with Russia—the one country capable of physically destroying America.

President-elect Biden understands that arms control can contribute to U.S. security, something that President Donald Trump never seemed to fully appreciate. Biden will agree to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the sole remaining agreement limiting U.S. and Russian nuclear forces. His administration should aim to go beyond that and negotiate further nuclear arms cuts. That will not prove to be easy. Doing so, however, could produce arrangements that would enhance U.S. security and reduce nuclear risks.

Little to Build On

The outgoing administration will leave behind an unimpressive record on arms control. Trump withdrew from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty without trying political and military measures to press the Kremlin to end its violation and come back into compliance. Trump administration officials also considered conducting a nuclear test that would have ended a long-standing moratorium and triggered nuclear tests by other countries, eroding the U.S. nuclear knowledge advantage.

The Trump administration unilaterally abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that reduced Iran’s ability to produce fissile material, then found itself isolated when calling for more sanctions on Tehran. While Kim Jong-un exchanged “beautiful” letters with President Trump, North Korea increased its nuclear weapons stockpile and produced larger and larger missiles.

The one bit of good news: the Trump administration did not withdraw from New START. That said, the administration failed to extend the treaty. It can be extended for up to five years, and the Russians offered the full extension. Instead of agreeing, the Trump administration miscalculated the degree of Moscow’s interest and demanded conditions for a one-year extension. The Russians refused, and negotiations collapsed in late October, 2020.

New START and Strategic Stability Talks

With U.S.-Russia relations at a low point, arms control offers a means to constrain some of the more adversarial aspects of the relationship. When Biden takes office on January 20, he will have to move quickly to extend New START, as only two weeks will remain until the treaty will expire. It would be politic to consult first with Congress, but the new administration should rapidly communicate an extension offer to Moscow—for five years and with no conditions.

New START limits the United States and Russia each to no more than 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and nuclear-capable bombers, as well as no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, the lowest levels since the 1960s. Extension of the treaty would constrain Russian strategic forces until 2026, and the verification measures would ensure that the U.S. military and intelligence community would continue to receive important information about those forces. New START extension would not require the Pentagon to change its modernization plans, as they fit within the treaty’s limits.

Extending the treaty also would continue the Bilateral Consultative Commission, which meets periodically to discuss the treaty’s operation. The Biden administration could use that body to address new kinds of Russian strategic arms not currently covered by New START, such as a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed drone torpedo.

The Biden administration should early on conduct a nuclear posture review. One issue for the review is whether the United States should make deterrence of a nuclear attack on the United States and its allies the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons. Biden has endorsed this idea in the past, though adopting it should only follow consultation with U.S. allies.

The nuclear posture review should also examine current and planned U.S. strategic forces. In 2013, the Pentagon concluded that about 1,000 deployed strategic warheads would suffice. Does that hold true today? Numerous experts question the need for a triad of ICBMs, SLBMs and nuclear-capable bombers, suggesting that ICBMs be retired. There are reasons to maintain ICBMs in the force mix, but the current number of 400 deployed missiles is unnecessary. A smaller ICBM force, as well as perhaps delaying a new missile, could save precious dollars for other defense needs, particularly conventional forces.

Even while conducting the review, the administration should launch strategic stability talks with Russia. Those should have a broad agenda, including doctrine, strategic nuclear forces, non-strategic nuclear weapons, missile defense, long-range precision-guided conventional strike systems, hypersonic weapons and third-country nuclear forces. The talks could also consider how developments in space and the cyber world affect strategic stability.

Such talks would provide a useful venue for U.S. and Russia officials to discuss doctrine. The Pentagon believes that Russia has adopted an “escalate to deescalate” doctrine that lowers the nuclear threshold. Elements of the Trump administration’s nuclear posture review, such as the low-yield warhead for the Trident SLBM, could well suggest to Moscow that the U.S. military is lowering its nuclear threshold. The two countries share an interest in understanding when and under what circumstances the other might consider using nuclear weapons.

Strategic stability talks would not aim to produce agreements. But they could help each side better understand the other’s doctrines and concerns. Ideally, they would prepare subjects to take up in formal negotiations.

Moving Forward

Extending New START for five years would give the Biden administration and Russian officials time to work out what might come next. One approach would essentially build on New START and include new kinds of long-range weapons that essentially replicate the capabilities of current strategic forces but are not now captured by New START. Such an agreement would offer a structure familiar to both sides and prove easier to negotiate.

However, the Biden administration should try, at least initially, for something more ambitious: an agreement with a single limit covering all U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, strategic or non-strategic, deployed or in reserve. Within an overall limit of, say, 2,000 to 2,500 nuclear weapons for each side, there could be a sublimit (1,000 each) on the number of strategic warheads on deployed ICBMs, SLBMs and like systems that could be quickly launched. The agreement should have a separate limit on strategic delivery systems, as does New START.

Limiting all nuclear weapons is the logical step after New START. President Barack Obama favored it in 2010. The Trump administration, when it belatedly engaged in nuclear arms talks in 2020, also sought Russian agreement to limit all nuclear weapons.

Negotiating such an agreement would raise a host of difficult issues. Some relate to verification. Monitoring limits on all nuclear warheads will require new procedures to check on weapons kept in storage facilities—some of the two militaries’ most sensitive sites. While not an insoluble problem, working out verification provisions would take time.

In the past, Russian officials demanded that the United States withdraw its nuclear bombs from Europe before they would discuss non-strategic nuclear weapons. If Moscow holds to that, the negotiation would make little progress. In the context of the right treaty, Washington might agree that all nuclear arms be based on national territory, but not as a precondition.

On a related issue, reviving the INF Treaty would prove to be difficult, in part because the U.S. and Russian militaries show strong interest in conventionally armed intermediate-range missiles. The Biden administration might, however, consider proposing an agreement to ban nuclear-armed variants of such missiles.

Missile Defense

In the past, Russian officials have conditioned their readiness to include non-strategic nuclear arms on U.S. agreement to address missile defense, precision-guided, conventionally armed strike systems and third-country nuclear forces. The Russian military over the past five years has developed precision-guided air- and sea-launched cruise missiles and has begun to close the quality gap with the U.S. military in such systems. That could temper Moscow’s interest in constraining precision-guided conventionally armed systems.

Given past Russian concerns on missile defense, the Biden administration could face a difficult decision: Is it prepared to consider some constraints on missile defense in order to get Moscow to negotiate limits covering all nuclear arms? That would be a delicate issue in Washington, where Republicans have made clear their opposition to constraints on missile defense.

Forty-four ground-based interceptors (GBIs) based in Alaska and California currently provide the U.S. homeland a degree of protection against attack by an ICBM or SLBM warhead. How much protection is debatable: the GBIs have proven successful in only about 50% of their tests. Meanwhile, Russia and China have modernized and expanded their strategic offensive forces, in part to ensure that they could overcome any possible U.S. defense, even if a U.S. first strike decimated their strategic forces.

The United States should seek to avoid a race between missile defenses and strategic offensive forces. Future technologies might alter the calculation, but now and for the foreseeable future, defense will lose. Russia, China and, for that matter, North Korea can deploy additional nuclear warheads and decoys far more cheaply than the U.S. military can add additional GBIs.

The Biden administration thus should be prepared to put missile defense on the table if Moscow agrees to negotiate limits on all nuclear weapons. Constraints on missile defenses could be negotiated that would permit some capability to defend against North Korea or another rogue state but would not threaten the ability of Russia (or China) to retaliate against a U.S. attack. The agreement constraining missile defenses could be time-limited, as any new U.S.-Russia treaty on nuclear weapons presumably would be.

Third-Country Nuclear Forces

The Trump administration spent much of 2020 seeking a trilateral nuclear arms negotiation with Russia and China. The Chinese, whose nuclear arsenal is less than one-tenth the size of those of the United States and Russia, adamantly refused. Russian officials said they would not press Beijing and instead called for bringing into account the nuclear forces of Britain and France. Those countries’ nuclear arsenals also are less than one-tenth the size of either of the two superpowers’ arsenals.

Those (and other) nuclear weapons-possessing states should not sit on the sidelines forever when it comes to reducing nuclear forces. That said, a negotiation seeking a trilateral or five-way treaty now is doomed to fail. Neither Washington nor Moscow would agree to reduce to the levels of the other three countries, nor would they be prepared to agree that the others could build up to their levels.

The Biden administration should pursue a more nuanced approach. It should discuss with Russia, China, Britain and France nuclear risk-reduction measures (such as the U.S.-Russia agreement on prenotification of ICBM and SLBM test launches) and greater transparency regarding nuclear forces. If the administration can reach another bilateral agreement with Russia on further cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, Washington and Moscow could then ask Beijing, London and Paris not to increase their total number of nuclear weapons so long as the United States and Russia were reducing. That could be reflected in unilateral commitments, which should also include a degree of transparency regarding weapons numbers.

Washington has long sought to engage Beijing in a meaningful strategic stability discussion. The Biden administration should continue to seek that. A readiness to put some constraints on missile defense (in a U.S.-Russia context) and/or move toward a sole-purpose policy would increase the chances for a fruitful dialogue.

Conclusion

All of this would combine to make an ambitious agenda for nuclear arms control, one that would enhance stability and U.S. security. There is, of course, no guarantee of achieving it. Success in any negotiation depends in part on the other side. Success in this endeavor would require that Russian officials see commensurate security benefits for their country.

Still, the Biden presidency should try for something far-reaching. Extending New START for five years would allow time to work out some very knotty questions. If, in the end, an agreement to limit and reduce all U.S. and Russian nuclear arms proves to be a bridge too far, the administration could fall back to negotiate an agreement similar to New START and maintain caps on U.S. and Russian strategic forces. It would be a shame, however, to pass up the opportunity to take a stab at a more ambitious and meaningful result.

Originally for American Ambassadors Review

The Trump administration’s antipathy toward arms control will strike again on November 22, when the United States withdraws from the Open Skies Treaty. That is a mistake. While Russia has violated the treaty, the United States has reciprocated. NATO allies support the treaty — which focuses first and foremost on enhancing European security — and wish the United States to remain a party.

Whether the treaty can continue following the American departure remains to be seen and will depend on what Russia does. When it takes office, the Biden administration should consider reentering the agreement, though that may require some creative international lawyering.

THE TREATY

The Open Skies Treaty, which entered into force in 2002, permits countries to fly unarmed aircraft with cameras and other sensors over the territory of the treaty’s other 34 members states. Based on an idea advanced by Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, Open Skies provides for the collection of imagery of military installations and activities in order to foster transparency.

Each party to the treaty has two annual quotas: the number of flights it may conduct over other treaty-parties (active quota), and the number of overflights that it must accept (passive quota). Aircraft are inspected before conducting an Open Skies flight, and personnel from the country to be overflown are on board during the flight.

The treaty offers several advantages. While the capabilities of U.S. reconnaissance satellites are superior to those of Open Skies aircraft, all 34 treaty-parties have access to imagery from the flights (whereas satellite imagery is highly classified). The treaty gives U.S. allies and partners, who lack sophisticated imagery satellites, the opportunity to gather confidence-building data. Moreover, aircraft offer greater flexibility than satellites in flight plans and can fly under cloud cover. Open Skies flights can also be used to send political signals: After Russia instigated the conflict in Donbas in 2014, for instance, the United States targeted flights at eastern Ukraine and the bordering Russian territory in order to send a message of U.S. support for Kyiv.

By 2019, the 34 parties had conducted a total of more than 1,500 overflights. During the treaty’s first 15 years of operation, the United States conducted 196 flights over Russia and Belarus (the two are paired for treaty purposes), while Russia conducted 71 flights over the United States.

Unfortunately, Russia has violated the treaty by imposing restrictions on certain flights over its territory. In response, the United States imposed reciprocal restrictions on Russian flights over U.S. territory. While the Russian violations are problematic, Washington has not declared that they constitute a material breach — that is, a violation that vitiates the central purpose of the treaty. Nevertheless, on May 21, Secretary of State Pompeo released a statement saying that, unless Moscow returned to full compliance, Washington would leave the treaty in six months’ time. The U.S. government provided formal notification of its intention to withdraw to the other treaty parties the following day; hence, the U.S. withdrawal will take effect on November 22.

A SERIAL KILLER OF ARMS CONTROL?

By all appearances, the Trump administration sees little value in arms control and nonproliferation arrangements. In 2018, President Trump decided to withdraw from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that limited Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Iran can produce the fissile material for a nuclear bomb in a much shorter time today than three years ago. Meanwhile, the United States stands isolated, with close allies such as Britain, France, and Germany staying in the agreement and ignoring Washington’s requests to apply sanctions on Tehran.

In 2019, the Trump administration withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, an agreement signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that banned an entire class of missiles. Russia had violated the agreement by deploying a prohibited missile, but President Trump’s team showed no interest in preserving the treaty, eschewing military and political measures that could have pressured Moscow to return to compliance.

In 2020, administration officials reportedly considered conducting an underground nuclear test. That would violate a long-standing test moratorium observed by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France (the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would prohibit all nuclear tests, has not entered into force). A U.S. nuclear test would open the door to tests by others, eroding the nuclear knowledge advantage the United States enjoys from having conducted more tests than the rest of the world combined.

Happily, the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) appears safe. True, the Trump administration could in its final days give notice of an intention to withdraw, but the intention could only be carried out three months later. President-elect Biden supports New START and supports its extension; he would revoke any such notice.

However, Open Skies looks to be the outgoing Trump administration’s next — and last — victim.

WHAT NEXT FOR OPEN SKIES?

The Open Skies Treaty focused on strengthening confidence and security in Europe, one reason why the Trump administration should have given the views of its allies greater weight. A major question now turns on what Moscow will do, given that the U.S. departure will mean that Russia can conduct flights over European territory and Canada but not the United States.

If Moscow decides to withdraw from Open Skies, perhaps citing the treaty’s decreased value because it can no longer overfly American territory, the treaty will collapse. NATO allies will see little point in overflying other allies or partners such as Sweden and Finland. Alternatively, Moscow could decide to remain in the treaty, at least for a time, in part to score propaganda points over the U.S. withdrawal.

At a November 12 press conference, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that, if the treaty continues to operate, Russia would insist that, when conducting flights over other treaty-parties, its aircraft could overfly and take pictures of U.S. bases and facilities located on their territory. Lavrov added that countries remaining in the treaty would have to commit not to transfer Open Skies imagery or other data to the United States.

His demands do not appear unreasonable. The treaty makes no provision for a country to deny another treaty-party the ability to fly over U.S. facilities on its territory, and the treaty provisions provide that imagery and other data gathered from overflights shall be shared only with other treaty-parties. These conditions will put U.S. allies in Europe in an awkward position — something that Lavrov no doubt relishes.

If, however, the treaty can be sustained into 2021, the Biden administration could consider reentering. The advantages offered by the treaty remain valid, despite Russian violations.

Doing so, however, could require creative work by international lawyers. Were Washington to re-sign the treaty, it then would have to resubmit it to the Senate for consent to ratification. However, with at best 50 Democratic senators (assuming far-from-certain wins in both of the Georgia run-off races), consent to ratify would still need 17 Republican votes. It is difficult to see that many Republicans consenting to ratify a treaty from which a Republican administration has just withdrawn.

Alternatively, the Biden administration could consider rejoining the treaty on the basis of an executive agreement, perhaps one approved by simple majorities in the House and Senate. Such a mechanism would require the agreement of the other 33 treaty-parties. Hopefully, the Russians would not choose to be spoilers.

When it takes office, the Biden administration should seek to rejoin Open Skies. The treaty serves U.S. interests. That is what NATO allies want. And within the treaty, Washington can push to get Russia back into compliance while continuing restrictions that deny Russia the full benefits of overflying the United States. The new administration should make clear its intention to rejoin the treaty and put some clever lawyers to work figuring out a way to make that happen.

While concern had grown over the past several weeks about a breakdown in U.S.-Russian arms control, it appears the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and nuclear arms control more broadly may have a new lease on life, albeit with lots of questions.

Washington’s negotiation with Moscow on New START hit a roadblock on October 16.  President Putin said Russia would agree to a one-year extension, which U.S. negotiators had proposed instead of five years, but without the conditions sought by the American side.  National Security Advisor O’Brien summarily rejected the Russian position because it ignored the U.S. demand for a freeze on all nuclear warhead numbers.

Things changed yesterday.  The Russians announced that they would agree to a one-year extension of New START and said they are “ready to assume a political obligation together with the United States to freeze the sides’ existing arsenals of nuclear warheads during this period.”  The Russian statement added that this presumed no additional U.S. conditions.  The Department of State spokesperson quickly and positively reacted, saying U.S. negotiators are “prepared to meet immediately to finalize a verifiable agreement.”

New START constrains U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces to their lowest levels since the 1960s.  However, when it comes to nuclear warheads as opposed to delivery systems, the treaty limits only “deployed” strategic warheads—that is, warheads on deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).  The treaty does not cover reserve strategic warheads or any non-strategic (tactical) nuclear weapons.

If Russian acceptance of a one-year freeze means that the Trump administration has succeeded in persuading Moscow to negotiate a treaty limiting all U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, that is a commendable breakthrough.  Indeed, a treaty covering all the two sides’ nuclear arms has long seemed the logical next step after New START (President Obama proposed such a negotiation in 2010).

Questions remain, however.  The Russian statement indicates that Moscow is ready to undertake, as a political obligation, a one-year freeze on nuclear warhead numbers.  It remains unclear whether Russian officials, beyond that freeze, are prepared to negotiate a legally-binding and verifiable treaty constraining all nuclear warheads that would be in effect for a number of years (New START is in force for 10 years, with the possibility of its extension for an additional five years).

In the past, Russian officials have made a variety of demands for negotiating such a treaty.  They made withdrawal of U.S. non-strategic nuclear weapons from Europe (about 150 nuclear gravity bombs) a precondition.  They also insisted that the United States had to address Russian concerns about long-range, precision-guided conventional strike systems and missile defense.

When it comes to negotiation of a treaty, not just a freeze, will Russian officials maintain these demands?  If they do, a complex negotiation will become even more difficult.  The Trump administration has been adamant, for example, that it will not agree to constraints on missile defense.

Verification presents another stiff challenge.  New START provides procedures for counting strategic warheads on ICBMs and SLBMs.  However, when a warhead is taken off of an ICBM or SLBM and placed in storage, for all intents and purposes, it disappears as far as New START is concerned.

The State Department spokesperson’s statement about finalizing a “verifiable agreement” left uncertain whether it referred to the treaty to be negotiated or the freeze.  U.S. arms control negotiator Billingslea later said the freeze would require measures for effective verification.  Yesterday’s statement from Moscow, however, was silent on verification.

Provisions to allow effective verification of all nuclear warhead numbers will prove far more intrusive than anything the U.S. and Russian militaries have accepted to date.  The Trump administration has expressed interest in a portal system, which would provide for monitoring of things that leave or enter a production facility.  However, accounting for the total number of warheads on each side presumably would require monitoring systems at, and perhaps access into, storage sites for nuclear weapons.  These are among the most sensitive facilities that either side has.  Negotiating that kind of verification will prove an arduous process and take a time—and may require the development of new technologies for monitoring purposes.

Finally, Mr. Billingslea said that, while the freeze would apply to the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, the treaty to be negotiated would be trilateral and include China.  Beijing consistently has rejected taking part in a trilateral arms treaty.

So, it appears that U.S. and Russian negotiators still have issues to resolve.

Irrespective of the freeze, New START is worth saving and extending to 2026 (the treaty’s terms provide that there could be multiple extensions).  Extension to 2026 would mean five more years of limits on Russian strategic nuclear forces.  It would mean five more years of information about those forces provided by the treaty’s verification measures, including data exchanges, notifications and on-site inspections.  And extending the treaty would require no change in U.S. strategic modernization plans, as those plans were designed to fit within the treaty’s limits.

One last observation:  New START requires that, if a side wishes to withdraw from the treaty, it must give the other three months’ notice before doing so.  It is now October 21, which means that, if negotiations with the Russians do not go well and the Trump administration were to give notice, the United States could not actually withdraw from the treaty until after January 20, 2021—when Donald Trump will be starting his second term or Joe Biden will have become the 46^th U.S. president.  Mr. Biden is on record as supporting New START’s extension for five years, with no conditions.

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