In a blistering op-ed published in today’s Wall Street Journal, Keith Payne blasts the preliminary agreement on nuclear arms reductions signed by President Obama and President Medvedev yesterday in the Kremlin. Obama, argues Payne, is putting the proverbial “cart before the horse” by pursuing a new arms reduction treaty prior to the completion of the NPR. Payne writes that
Strategic requirements should drive force numbers; arms-control numbers should not dictate strategy.
More importantly, Payne notes that the new reductions pushed for by Russia - to between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads and between 500 and 1,100 launchers - is a strategically calculated move that would result in unilateral arms reductions by the United States. Why is this?
Because the number of deployed Russian strategic ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers will drop dramatically simply as a result of their aging. In other words, a large number of Russian launchers will be removed from service with or without a new arms-control agreement.
In other words, the reductions proposed by President Medvedev would represent real arms reductions by the United States while Russia would simply “reduce” what it would already have to eliminate anyways. Furthermore, claims Payne, enormous reductions in launchers removes the U.S. capability to adapt its deterrent, encourages “MIRVing,” and does nothing to promote actual stability.
Finally, and perhaps most crucially, the subject of reductions in tactical nuclear arms has yet to be broached. Payne correctly notes that
Russia has some 4,000 tactical nuclear weapons and many thousands more in reserve; U.S. officials have said that Russia has an astounding 10 to 1 numerical advantage. These weapons are of greatest concern with regard to the potential for nuclear war, and they should be our focus for arms reduction. The Perry-Schlesinger commission report identified Russian tactical nuclear weapons as an “urgent” problem. Yet at this point, they appear to be off the table.
Indeed, arms reductions are desirable, but tactical nuclear weapons, of which the Russians possess an enormous quantity (complete with plans for use), pose a potentially far more serious threat than do ICBMs, nuclear submarines, and bombers. Arms control that consists solely of the United States reducing its nuclear force does nothing to promote nonproliferation or reduce the threat of nuclear war.
Oddly enough, these talks have somehow devolved into a Russian insistence on U.S. abandonment of European missile defense coupled with an outright refusal to entertain tactical nuclear arms reductions. What Obama must remember is that the U.S. possesses a significant amount of leverage in these talks, which needs utilized in order to achieve meaningful arms control rather than reductions of any kind at any cost. Otherwise, this could simply end up being the 21st century equivalent of Chamberlain’s infamous and misguided “peace in our time.”