What Can Possibly Come of a Moscow Summit Under These Circumstances? More Reckless U.S. Disarmament
(Washington, D.C.): The prospect of a politically eviscerated President Clinton paying court
next
week in Moscow to a Boris Yeltsin whose grip on power — and perhaps on reality — is slipping
markedly day-by-day would be amusing if it were not so dangerous. The American leader’s
weakness, his determination to prop up the Yeltsin regime and the proficiency of the Russian
Foreign Minister, Yevgeny Primakov,(1) to exploit such
opportunities add up to a formula for an
exceptional menace: More “progress” on strategic arms agreements that will accelerate the
denuclearization of the United States, have little (if any) beneficial impact on the Russian
nuclear threat, but make it still more difficult to deploy needed U.S. missile defenses.
When in Doubt, Do Arms Control
The United States is in no position at the moment to provide much more financial support
for
Yeltsin’s collapsing economy, the $22 billion aid package President Clinton forced through the
IMF just a few weeks ago having disappeared, as predicted,
may pledge to try to round up some more money for Boris, but it will be a very hard sell in
Congress.
To be sure, the President will reaffirm American support for the Russian “reformers.” But it is
hard to see how he will be able to portray the newly reinstalled Victor Chernomyrdin as one of
them when the once-and-present Prime Minister is the paradigmatic crony capitalist. He may be
Al Gore’s preferred interlocutor, but Chernomyrdin represents the apparatchik-turned-oligarch
class that is currently deforming the Russian economy. His announcement today of a
willingness
to form a national unity government with the Communists makes his championing of real reform
an even more remote prospect.
This leaves basically only one area ripe for real presidential running room: arms
control.
The Clinton Administration has made no secret of its intense desire to have this summit be about
further reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear forces. Up until 6 July, the party line
was that President Clinton would not go to Moscow until the Duma ratified the START II treaty.
With that objective as elusive as ever and the imperative growing to appear presidential while
fleeing Monica-dominated Washington, he and his minions reversed course. Doubtless, the hope
is that Mr. Clinton will be rewarded for doing so by Russian agreement to additional accords —
perhaps a formal START III treaty, perhaps another, more detailed text building upon the
“framework agreement” signed in Helsinki last year.
Playing a Strong Hand Badly
When START I was negotiated in the late 1980s, Russia was spending far more than the
United
States on strategic offensive and defensive forces. While the Reagan Administration had mounted
a significant modernization of the U.S. strategic nuclear deterrent, the scope of programs was not
on the same scale as the Soviet Union. Historically, these inventory advantages translated into
advantages at the bargaining table, as well.
As it happens, the Russian Federation is still spending far more than the United
States on strategic
nuclear force modernization, primarily because the U.S. is doing almost nothing in this
area.(3)
The fact is, however, that the Russian Federation cannot maintain its current forces over
the
long-run, while the United States clearly can.
This Russian reality is a function of several factors, notably: the nature and condition of the
arsenal inherited from the former Soviet Union; the breakup of the Russian military-industrial
complex into 12 countries; and the economic conditions of these former Soviet states. In
particular, the Russian Federation is now an economic basket case that cannot support its current
strategic forces.
The problem of finding resources needed to maintain such forces was initially aggravated by
the
Russian military-industrial complex’s ludicrous effort to emulate the Soviet practice of upgrading
its nuclear systems every 10 years. The idea of pursuing five strategic modernization
programs at
once ultimately fell of its own weight.
Russia also lost its capability to produce large, highly MIRVed ICBMs (the SS-18 and the
SS-24)
because these facilities were located in Ukraine. Unwilling to rely upon another nation for future
production of its strategic missiles, the Kremlin decided to base its future force on indigenously
manufactured, smaller road-mobile missiles.(4) For all these
reasons, the days of the Russian
heavy ICBM force and highly MIRVed rail-mobile ICBMs are clearly numbered.
In short, it now appears that there is no appreciable difference between the Russian
force
levels that will exist under START III and what will exist under START I or II — or,
indeed, the situation that would exist without any arms control. As a
result, START III
should be the easiest strategic arms negotiation ever undertaken by the United States.
The reality is very different. The Clinton Administration has been increasingly surrendering to
Russian pressure since the 1996 election. The negotiating style in most respects is similar to that
which resulted in the SALT II Treaty. That accord could not secure the advice and consent of the
U.S. Senate because it was widely regarded as inequitable, unverifiable and contrary to the U.S.
national security interest. Interestingly, a number of the same people who championed SALT II
are now involved in the negotiation of START III. The common denominator is a negotiating
strategy defined by a determination to give the Russians what they want.
What Russia Wants
At the moment, the Russians hope to secure four objectives in their negotiations with the
U.S.:
- 1) Vitiating Existing Agreements
First, the Kremlin wants to preserve its existing strategic forces as long as
possible.
After all Russia’s tenuous claim to superpower status now rests almost exclusively on its claim to
parity with the U.S. in nuclear forces. This requires Moscow either to modify or to ignore the
limitations imposed under existing arms control agreements. The Clinton Administration has
accommodated the Yeltsin government on both scores.
Gutting START II: Under President Clinton, the United
States has, for the first time in history,
permitted the renegotiation of an arms control treaty after it was approved by the U.S.
Senate for the express purpose of allowing the other side to maintain larger threat for a
longer period of time.
On 10 June 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared that the START II Treaty
was
“manifestly in Russia’s interest.” This could not have been said about the original START II
Treaty negotiated by the Bush Administration. The Russians asked for a five-year deferral of the
elimination of MIRVed and heavy ICBMs it mandated. After four years of negotiations with the
Clinton team, the compromise solution resulted in the Kremlin being authorized to retain these
missiles for an additional 4 years and 364 days.
The effect of this concession is that the Russians can retain their SS-18 heavy ICBMs until the
last
missile produced is over 15 years old; some would be up to twenty years old. In other
words,
their entire useful lifetime has been protected and the most important benefit to the U.S. of
the original START II Treaty has been largely negated.
Russian MIRVed ICBMs, as well, which will now be eliminated at about the time they were
projected to have lost their military effectiveness. At that point, they will begin to be safety
hazards for the Russians, making their elimination likely irrespective of any vestigial arms control
obligations.
Ignoring Russian Cheating: Last spring, Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman
Jesse Helms (R-NC) objected to the Administration’s mishandling of Russian START I
Treaty
violations. In a 23 April 1996 letter to Ambassador Steven Steiner — the only American arms
control negotiator with the dubious distinction of being the recipient of a medal from Russian
rocket builders(6) — Sen. Helms stated that the Clinton
Administration has capitulated on nearly
every issue discussed at the Joint Compliance and Inspection Commissions (JCIC), which Amb.
Steiner co-chairs. According to Sen. Helms, these concessions involved “de facto
acquiescence
to Russian violations of the Treaty,” affording Russia the ability to “have deployed several
hundred more warheads than allowed” under that accord.
- 2) Denying the U.S. Strategic Superiority
Second, Moscow wants to set limits for START III as low as possible to bring
U.S.
forces down to the sharply reduced levels that Russia can sustain over the long-run. In
addition to the gutting of the START II Treaty at the Helsinki summit, the Clinton Administration
made a number of extremely dangerous concessions with regard to START III.
Unacceptably Low Levels of Strategic Forces: First, the
Administration agreed to a limit of
2,500 warheads in the absence of any limitations of Russian theater nuclear strike capabilities.
The proposed limit of 2,500 strategic nuclear warheads is not new. The Russians proposed it
during the initial START II negotiations in 1992. The Bush Administration rejected this
because it was incompatible with U.S. deterrent requirements. Because of the asymmetry
in the size and preparedness for nuclear warfighting of the two nations’ military
establishments, low levels of strategic nuclear warheads give the Russians a large military
advantage. That advantage is now made much worse by what may be a greater than
10-to-one
advantage in theater nuclear weapons resulting from unilateral reductions in such forces by the
United States.
The force levels contemplated by the START III framework agreement reached at last year’s
summit in Helsinki will also call into question America’s ability to implement its nuclear strategy,
including the less rigorous one promulgated recently by President Clinton.
unclear whether the U.S. will be able to maintain its strategic Triad of land- and sea-based ballistic
missiles and bomber-delivered nuclear weapons at those force levels.
Destruction of Nuclear Warheads: A further problem with
START III arises from the Russians’
acceptance of an ill-advised Clinton proposal to require the physical destruction of strategic
warheads whose delivery systems will be subject to reductions. Heretofore, no strategic arms
control agreement has included such a commitment because it would be completely unverifiable
on the Russian side. Nuclear weapons are simply too small to control. Any attempt to create a
verification regime would amount, at best, to a Potemkin village — a fraudulent facade with no
bearing on the actual status of Russian weapons programs. At worst, it could result in the
compromise of extremely sensitive secrets of the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories and
production complex.
Exactly how this unverifiable proposal will be finalized remains to be seen. But it
has the
potential significantly to compound the dangers inherent in START III’s low force
levels.
After all, the elimination of strategic nuclear warheads is easily reversible by a Kremlin that retains
a vast nuclear weapons production complex. It may, as a practical matter, be irreversible for the
United States given the cumulative effects of the Clinton policy of “denuclearization.”
For example, the Clinton Administration is drastically reducing U.S. nuclear warhead
production
capability. If these plans are carried out, U.S. capacity will be at best 5% of those of the
Russian Federation. Worse still, while Russia could produce thousands of
completely new
warheads each year, the U.S. will be limited to using existing fissile material “pits” (assuming the
START III treaty does not require their elimination as well as the rest of the warhead’s “physics
package.”)(10)
What limited production capabilities the U.S. will retain, moreover, could be completely tied
up
eliminating existing warheads to meet START III requirements. Thus, when the inevitable
stockpile problems occur, the U.S. will have to correct them without either nuclear testing —
thanks to the Clinton Comprehensive Test Ban(11) — or a
functioning production complex. Fixing
even a minor problem under these circumstances will be exceedingly problematic.
- 3) Capturing Non-Strategic U.S. Capabilities
A hardy perennial of Kremlin negotiating strategy from the Soviet days
forward has been
the effort to hamstring key elements of U.S. conventional forces such as sea-launched
cruise
missiles and anti-submarine warfare (ASW). The importance of the
former in affording the
President flexible, long-range, precision-strike capabilities has been in evidence in recent days and
is sure to grow in the future. American capabilities with respect to ASW are becoming an ever
higher priority as U.S. naval forces seek to project power ashore while contending with the
proliferating threat posed by advanced submarines operated by the Russians or sold by them or
others to prospective adversaries.
If past practice is any guide, were the Russians to assert that U.S. concessions on such topics
are
showstoppers to any new arms control agreement coming out of the Moscow summit, there is a
distinct possibility that the Clinton team will fold. Should it do so, American military equities far
beyond the strategic nuclear realm will be lastingly and adversely affected.
- 4) Permanent U.S. Adherence to the ABM Treaty
Last but hardly least, Moscow insists that the United States make
commitments relating
to future American adherence to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that will
preclude any
type of national missile defense and/or anti-satellite capability
theater ballistic missile defense programs. Unfortunately, in this case, the Clinton
Administration
is only too happy to oblige: Its arms control theologians — notably, Vice President Al
Gore, his
National Security Advisor Leon Fuerth, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe
Talbott and NSC
staffer Bob Bell — are even more anxious than the Russians to preclude the deployment
of U.S.
anti-missile defenses that would contravene the letter or spirit of the ABM Treaty.
In fact, it may even be that the need to fashion a package that will permit the
President to try
to head off mounting congressional pressure for such national missile defense deployments
is the principal impetus for holding the Moscow summit at this time. The
Administration has
made no secret of its belief that if it combined an appeal for Senate approval of new ABM
agreements signed last September with Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus with a
Russian-ratification of START II or a START III deal made contingent upon permanent U.S.
adherence
to the ABM Treaty, the Senate would go along.
You Want It Bad, You Get It Bad
The Moscow summit may actually result in a START III deal even less
compatible with U.S.
strategic requirements than framework agreed to at Helsinki. Yeltsin has already
publicly
signaled that he wants to reduce the number of allowed strategic warheads by one-third below
Helsinki’s 2,000-2,500 levels. Worse, Russia has repudiated the Helsinki commitment to extend
the START I Treaty beyond its expiration date of 2009. Absent that, the START II Treaty
commitment to eliminate MIRVed ICBMs and heavy ICBMs goes away. So does the entire
START I and II verification regime and the requirements to actually destroy strategic nuclear
forces that are “eliminated” by the agreement.
Obviously, if (as noted above) it would be difficult to execute
U.S. strategic doctrine and
preserve the forces necessary to do so under Helsinki’s 2,000-2,500 warhead limit, it would
probably be out of the question should a further one-third reduction be imposed. The
maximum number of warheads available to U.S. forces on a day-to-day alert would not be able to
cover the number of nuclear weapon and command-and-control targets that exist in Russia. This,
of course, assumes that U.S. forces will be on alert. The very existence of
an alert and
survivable deterrent force may well be another victim of the START III negotiations. The
Clinton Administration is now actively considering the de-alerting of U.S. strategic
forces.(13)
The Bottom Line
It is understandable that President Clinton sees a Moscow summit that makes “progress” on
arms
control at any cost as an opportunity to demonstrate his continued “relevance,” to assure his place
in history, to help his friend, Boris, or at least to change the subject from his political death throes.
There is simply too much at stake, however, for him to translate this ultimate act of expediency
into a lasting — and potentially disastrous — liability for the Nation. If war is too important to be
left to the generals, then arms control is too dangerous to be left to the tender mercies of
weakened Presidents and ideologues on their staff who have consistently made treaties an
end in themselves, to be pursued even when such accords are manifestly inconsistent with
American national security.
– 30 –
1. For more on Primakov’s machinations, see the Center’s
Decision Briefs entitled Caspian
Watch # 10: Russia Makes Its Move In Yeltsin’s ‘Pipeline War’ (
1998) and Primakov Watch: Destroying NATO From Within (
2. See the Casey Institute’s Perspectives entitled
As Expected, Russia Gets a Bail-Out — But It
Won’t Get Moscow Through Next Year, or Protect U.S. Security Interests (
July 1998) and ‘Russian Clean-Up’: Expectations of Western Bail-Out Artificially
Buoy
Markets, But Serve to Compound the Problem (No.
98-C 99, 4 June 1998).
3. See the Casey Institute Press Release entitled
Tilt: Heritage Panel, Casey Institute’s
Robinson Warned Last Month of Unsustainability of I.M.F.’s Russia Rescue
Effort (No. 98-R
146, 14 August 1998).
4. Russia is now attempting a more modest modernization program
involving both its ICBM force
and its SLBM force. It has recently announced the deployment of a new ICBM, the SS-27, to
replace the perfectly serviceable SS-25. Russia has also laid down the first of a new generation of
ballistic missile submarines and tested (so far unsuccessfully) a new sea-launched ballistic missile.
They are also attempting to stretch the lifetime of existing strategic systems, and those now being
introduced, to 15 years or so.
5. The Clinton Administration argues that, in the absence of START
II, the Russians would likely
MIRV the SS-27. This may well be true, but is probably strategically irrelevant. Even if the
Kremlin were legally able to do so, given economic realities, it would have difficulty fielding more
than 3,500 warheads. By contrast, the U.S. could easily maintain 5,000-6,000 warheads absent
START II.
6. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
The Envelope Please… (No. 96-D
53, 4 June 1996).
7. In this letter, Sen. Helms also served notice about his concerns
about the Administration’s
readiness to renegotiate the START I Treaty: “Several U.S. proposals constitute substantive
modifications of the START I Treaty text and significantly diminish U.S. inspection rights. Thus,
we appear to be going to substantially lower numbers of weapons in START II and III with
diminished verification capability.”
8. See Clinton Legacy Watch # 28: ‘Peace For Our
Time’ With China (No. 98-D 122, 6 July
1998).
9. For more on the multifaceted effects of this policy, see
Press Barrage Signals New Phase of
Denuclearization Campaign (No. 98-D 50, 18
March 1998) and Clinton Legacy Watch # 14: A
Doctrine for Denuclearization (No. 97-D
190, 8 December 1997).
10. This initiative is not to be confused with another misbegotten
Clinton arms control initiative —
the Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty. For more on the latter, see Clinton Legacy
Watch # 30:
America the Proliferator (No. 98-D 145, 14
August 1998).
11. See Biden-Specter, House Proposals to Fund
C.T.B. Preparatory Commission Amount to
Treaty Implementation Without Ratification (No. 98-D
141, 30 July 1998), Death Throes of
the C.T.B.? As George Will Demonstrates, Claims for Test Ban Become Ever more Contorted,
Untenable (No. 98-D 102, 8 June 1998) and
Warning to the Nuclear Labs: Don’t Count on
‘Stockpile Stewardship’ to Maintain Either Overhead Or Confidence (
December 1997).
12. The U.S. may even throw into this bad bargain access to
information concerning the
vulnerability of U.S. satellites, information that could be exploited by Russia or its allies in future
crisis or conflict situations.
13. See Wall Street Journal, Kathleen Bailey Warn
Against Latest Clinton Denuclearization
Scheme — ‘De-Alerting’ (No. 98-D 09, 20 January
1998) and Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament
By Any Other Name Is Still Recklessly Irresponsible; Will Clinton Be Allowed To Do
It? (No.
98-D 06, 13 January 1998).
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