Putin’s Non-STARTer

(Washington, D.C.): Vladimir Putin’s opening foreign policy gambit after his victory at the polls last month says a lot about what sort of leader of Russia he will be. President Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and others have been quick to portray the newly elected President’s success in securing ratification of the START II Treaty — after seven years of studied inaction by the Duma — as evidence that Putin is a man with whom we can safely do business.

Not So Fast

On closer inspection, however, this action is evidence less of a heartening sea-change in Russia than the sort of maneuver — jujitsu — that one would expect from a man who prides himself not only on his black belt in martial arts, but on his career in the front lines of Soviet intelligence’s Cold War operations against the West. We should take little comfort from signs that the most dangerous master of the Kremlin since the last KGB man to rule there, Yuri Andropov, is now able to bend the Duma to his will as he shrewdly works to undermine our advantages and turn Russia’s liabilities into strengths.

Take, for example, Putin’s machinations on the START II Treaty. In its original form, this accord — while defective in important respects — could be said to have had some redeeming features from the American point of view. In particular, it was supposed to result in the early elimination of all of the former Soviet Union’s vast arsenal of SS-18s, heavy ballistic missiles capable of preemptively attacking the United States with large numbers of independently targetable warheads. This was the treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate in January 1996.

Unfortunately, the Clinton-Gore Administration agreed in September 1997 to defer the dismantling of these and other threatening Russian missiles until as late as 2007. And that was the arrangement the Duma approved last Friday. Lest the impact of this change be lost on anyone, Putin subsequently indicated that none of Russia’s long-range missiles will be retired until they reach the end of their useful service life. Some deal.

Making Matters Worse on Missile Defense

What is more, Putin has asserted that Russia will not implement the START II Treaty at all unless and until the U.S. ratifies what the Duma has just done. That would mean accepting several other troubling provisions, notably steps aimed at breathing new life into the strategically obsolete, legally defunct 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

For example, the Russians have attached to their resolution of ratification two other ill-advised agreements also signed by the Clinton-Gore Administration in September 1997. One would effect an extraordinary make-over of the ABM Treaty, from the bilateral accord signed with the USSR — a country that ceased to exist nine years ago — into a multilateral accord between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus on the one hand and the United States on the other. An insight into the Clinton-Gore Administration’s actual attitude towards defending the United States against missile attack may be found in its motivation for seeking this change: Creating multiple foreign vetoes would make it even more difficult to modify the ABM treaty so as to permit U.S. missile defenses to be deployed.

The second agreement addresses the question of “demarcationn”: Where is the technological line to be drawn between so-called “theater” missile defenses that were not supposed to be covered by the ABM Treaty and “strategic” defenses that were? In practice, this accord would have the effect of imposing new limitations on a whole class of promising anti-missile systems. It has already contributed to actions that have “dumbed-down” the Navy’s sea-based Theater Wide missile defense program, rendering it less capable of providing near-term protection for U.S. forces and allies overseas than it could — and than it needs to do.

What ABM Treaty?

In addition, at Putin’s direction, the Duma has served notice that if the United States withdraws from the ABM Treaty, Russia will abrogate not only the START I and II Treaties but from other arms control accords as well. This audacious move takes advantage of the Clinton-Gore Administration’s refusal to acknowledge the fact that the ABM Treaty is no longer in effect as a matter of international law — the ineluctable conclusion of a comprehensive review of legal precedents and practice performed for the Center for Security Policy by former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy Douglas J. Feith and former Justice Department attorney George Miron.¹ It also would, as a practical matter, eliminate a right the United States was explicitly afforded by the ABM Treaty, namely that of withdrawing from the accord on six months’ notice if the Nation’s “supreme interests are jeopardized.”

As the New York Times reported on Saturday:

“Washington has a choice, [Putin] said. The United States will have to renounce its plans to develop a national ABM system in order to preserve START II and the agreement limiting conventional forces in Europe. If it does not and discards the ABM treaty, Mr. Putin said, the United States will ‘become in the eyes of the world the party that is guilty for destroying the foundations of strategic stability.'”

In the interest of promoting that view “in the eyes of the world,” Putin immediately set off for London. To be sure, a focus for the trip is to sell the idea notion that his vision of what might be called a “less kind, less gentle” Russian government will be good for foreign investors. He is also bent, however, on fostering opposition among U.S. allies to any American effort to deploy effective anti-missile defenses. This divide-and-conquer strategy is reminiscent of one that nearly worked in the early 1980s when Andropov ran the Kremlin’s campaign to oppose the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe.

The Bottom Line

It remains to be seen what Putin’s jujitsu will mean for the Clinton-Gore Administration’s highest foreign policy priority: negotiation of a “Grand Compromise” on strategic arms. This would package a follow-on START III agreement (involving far more radical, unverifiable and ill-advised reductions in U.S. offensive nuclear arms) together with Russian permission for an exceedingly limited American anti-missile deployment in Alaska, provided Washington foreswears any interest in more comprehensive “layered” defenses.

Before President Clinton makes matters worse — either in negotiations leading up to or during the summit he plans to hold with Putin sometime next month — he should heed a lesson offered by the bruising fight that led to rejection of his 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty²: Under the U.S. Constitution, the Senate is a coequal partner with the executive branch in the making of international treaties. It would be a serious mistake to enroll, without serious debate let alone prior agreement from the Senate, in a new agreement effecting dubious reductions in U.S. nuclear forces and precluding the sort of layered missile defenses that even the director of the Clinton Pentagon’s Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, says are likely to be necessary.

Alas, a President more interested in securing an arms control “legacy” irrespective of the cost is likely to prove an easy mark for a cunning, ruthless operative like Vladimir Putin. The U.S. Senate must therefore promptly step into the breach, performing the vital check-and-balance role envisioned for it by the Founding Fathers. It should insist upon President Clinton finally submitting for the Senate’s “advice and consent” the September 1997 agreements the Duma has now approved. By rejecting these accords on the grounds that they will make it harder for America to achieve the missile defense required by it and its forces and allies overseas, the Senate can make clear the unacceptability of the “Grand Compromise” President Clinton now seeks — a deal that might just be sufficiently inimical to U.S. national security interests to be acceptable to President-elect Putin.

¹See the Center’s Press Release entitled Message to Albright, Primakov: New Legal Analysis Establishes that the A.B.M. Treaty Died with the Soviet Union (No. 99-P 11, 22 January 1999).

²See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Senate Majority’s Defeat of C.T.B.T. Represents Triumph of Sound Security Policy Over Placebo Arms Control (No. 99-D 116, 14 October 1999).