Mapping a National Security Failure: Ratification of the New START Treaty

Throughout the long and complex New START ratification process, three strands of the debate emerged as intertwining elements of the process itself with substantive matters raised by the treaty and its critics:

1. The Obama administration’s decision to seek swift ratification during a lame-duck session of the Senate, which the administration sought to defend in part by arguing that New START was urgently necessary to monitor and verify the Russian nuclear posture;
2. The insistence by some Senators that the Obama administration provide the full negotiating record in order to resolve severe discrepancies in American and Russian positions with respect to the treaty’s implications for U.S. missile defense systems, which the administration refused to provide; and
3. The effort by some Senators to link ratification with modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and infrastructure (the administration’s commitment to which would be called into question both during and after ratification) in part to offset the proposed reductions in deployed weapons and launchers.

As we will see, several key Senators cast votes in favor of ratification in no small measure because they were persuaded—in part by military leadership—that these specific issues had been satisfactorily resolved.

Rapid Ratification

Several arguments were advanced to support the notion that New START needed to be ratified sooner rather than later. Principle among them was the assertion that New START had to be ratified quickly in order to restore the ability to monitor and verify the disposition of Russia’s nuclear weapons. As 2010 progressed and President Obama faced the possibility of having to start the ratification process over with a new Senate, consisting of more conservative Republican Senators inclined to view New START unfavorably, the verification argument would be ratcheted up to help push the treaty through a lame-duck session of the 2010, where it stood a better chance.

The original START, or “START I” treaty, between the United States and Russia expired on 5 December, 2009. START I had stipulated that the United States and Russia would be limited to a total of 6,000 deployed strategic nuclear warheads each, and 1,600 delivery vehicles each.[64] The START I verification and monitoring regime was comparatively much stronger than that produced by the New START treaty. Specifically, START I verification measures included:[65]

• The use of, and non-interference with “national technical means” of verification (satellites);
• A prohibition on any practices that deny access by either party to telemetric information, coupled with an obligation to exchange specific forms of data for every missile flight-test;
• A requirement that prior to signature, each nation would exchange data on the locations, numbers and technical characteristics of weapons accountable under the treaty, with regular notifications and updates to follow;
• An option that seven times a year, either nation could request that heavy bombers, as well as road-mobile and rail-mobile launchers, be displayed in the open at specific bases for inspection;
• The right to continuously inspect each nation’s mobile ICBM assembly facilities;
• Twelve types of on-site inspections;
• The opportunity to raise compliance concerns with the Joint Compliance and Inspection Commission or another appropriate venue.

Not long after New START was signed, Obama administration officials, including high-level military leadership, began to assert that New START should be ratified in order to ensure that the United States can continue to verify Russia’s nuclear capabilities. Then-Secretary Gates, in his op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, stated that one of the principle ways in which New START “promotes strategic stability between the world’s two major nuclear powers” is through “an extensive verification regime to ensure that Russia is complying with its treaty obligations” to limit the number of weapons in its arsenal.[66]  Gates went on to state:

Since the expiration of the old START Treaty in December 2009, the U.S. has had none of these safeguards. The new treaty will put them back in place, strengthen many of them, and create a verification regime that will provide for greater transparency and predictability between our two countries…[67]