New START’s “extraordinary events”

The editors at the Wall Street Journal observe today:

…Russia has seized Crimea and has 50,000 troops as a potential invasion force on the border with eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin is also abrogating the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Kiev agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal—at the time the third largest in the world—in exchange for guarantees of its territorial integrity from Russia, the U.S. and U.K. That memorandum has now proved to be as much of a scrap of paper to the Kremlin as Belgium’s neutrality was to Berlin in the summer of 1914.

The Kremlin is also violating the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which bans the testing, production and possession of nuclear missiles with a range between 310 and 3,400 miles. Russia has tested at least three missiles—the R-500 cruise missile, the RS-26 ballistic missile and the Iskander-M semi-ballistic missile—that run afoul of the proscribed range limits…

Yet it is against this backdrop that the Department of Defense has announced this week that it is proceeding to reduce the US arsenal of nuclear bombers and submarine nuclear launch components, pursuant to commitments made in the New START arms control treaty with Russia, ratified by the Senate in 2010.

It is worth noting that New START, flawed though it is, contains a withdrawal clause.  Article 14, Paragraph 3 states:

“Each Party shall, in exercising its national sovereignty, have the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests.”

Ironically, the preamble of New START indicates that the treaty’s respective nuclear reductions are predicated on the stated need for the US and Russia to “forge a new strategic relationship based on mutual trust, openness, predictability, and cooperation,…” – making the stated need for such a relationship with Russia a major component of the treaty’s “subject matter”.

Judging from this language, Vladimir Putin’s aggression and deception vis-à-vis Crimea and the INF Treaty constitute the kind of “extraordinary events” that should prompt a rush to the exits on New START.  Here’s hoping that Congress will make that case in the likely absence of leadership from the White House.