The Final Countdown

With START expiration now 25 days out, it’s high tide as the sides rush to try to finalize an agreement. According to AFP (and GSN) there still some kinks to work out on mobile Topols and delivery vehicle numbers:

The Kommersant daily, citing an expert familiar with the START talks, said Washington was seeking to keep a provision from the original treaty for monitoring Russia's arsenal of mobile ground-based missiles. "They are offering to keep and even strengthen control over our mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) such as the Topol," the expert was quoted as saying by Kommersant. Russia is against the proposal since the United States currently does not have its own mobile ground-based ICBMs and it is therefore of "unilateral character," he said. The maximum number of "carriers" capable of delivering nuclear warheads remains another sticking point, the newspaper reported. "In their package, the Americans stipulated a new ceiling for warhead carriers that we don't quite agree with," the expert told Kommersant, referring to proposals presented to Moscow last month by US National Security Adviser James Jones.

The GSN article also cited Aleksey Fenenko as saying Obama’s moves on missile defense don’t completely placate Russian concerns although this does not seem to be at the heart of the current disagreements. Washington, meanwhile, is less than stoked about Russia’s response to the offer Jim Jones brought over last week. RIA Novosti (via Lexis Nexis) explains:

Ellen Tauscher, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, on Tuesday expressed discontent with Russia's response to an arms control offer recently put forward by the Obama administration. It was the first American official admittance of problems at the talks . . .The snag in the agreement is that the United States wants to retain close control over Russia's Topol mobile ICBMs.

How big of a deal is this latest verbal tussle? Probably not huge. For starters, both sides are already discussing where to sign the treaty which means they can’t be THAT far apart on outstanding issues. RIA Novosti said of the recent “snag”:

The analyst warned against dramatizing the situation and Ms Tauscher's statement. "There has been certain progress, and differences can be ultimately settled," he said. "Tauscher's words can be seen as a desire to put pressure on us."

Meanwhile, the Russia & CIS Military Newswire (Lexis) talked to the Foreign Ministry who explained:

The Russian Foreign Ministry has refused to comment on remarks expressing Washington's disappointment with Moscow's response to U.S. proposals on strategic arms reductions.  "We have certainly paid attention to them [U.S. remarks]. But it is inappropriate to comment on such statements," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told a briefing in Moscow on Wednesday . . ."We hope that it will the last round and our new treaty will be agreed upon before December 5. The talks are proceeding in a serious and constructive atmosphere," he said.

General Makarov likewise refused to fall for the blame game in another Russia & CIS Diplomatic Panorama article (Lexis):

"Intensive work is in progress" for a new Russian-U.S. treaty on strategic offensive weapons and "there are issues that need mutual approval" but "they are mainly technical problems," the chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, Gen. of the Army Nikolai Makarov, told reporters in Moscow on Tuesday . . . Asked by a journalist which country, Russia or the U.S., was responsible for the problems at the Geneva talks on the planned treaty, Makarov said: "Both they and us have problems. I think we're both in the same situation." Makarov expressed hope that a draft the accord would be agreed upon by the time START expires.

In the grand scheme of things, where the sides come down in the 500-1100 range for delivery vehicles (the 800ish ballpark seems like it makes some sense) and how they address mobile Topol’s don’t seem like overwhelming obstacles to a new agreement. All in a day’s work of the diplomatic back-and-forth that goes with negotiating an arms control treaty. That said, it will be interesting to monitor the results of the side conversation involving New START between Obama and Medvedev at the upcoming APEC meeting.  Looking ahead, the two more interesting questions seem to be whether the Dems can get New START through the Senate (Robert Norris is pretty optimistic) and how to address the “verification gap” that will occur during the interim ratification process that Pavel Podvig analyzed yesterday.