SORT: All Credit, No Blame

Bush and Rumsfeld’s primary speechwriter, Marc Thiessen, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal generally criticizing the return to arms control.  While he does raise an interesting point about the potentially time consuming nature of arms control, there are a couple implicit implications made that need to be addressed:

1. Bush didn’t need traditional arms control to make big reductions. The article explains:

How did the U.S. achieve such dramatic reductions so quickly? Answer: By abandoning traditional arms control . . .Instead, Mr. Bush simply announced his intention to reduce the U.S.’s operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads by some two-thirds and invited Russia to do the same.

The Bush administration was indeed able to make very large reductions in the arsenal but the Obama administration does not face a parallel situation.  The large cuts that happened under the Bush administration were no doubt significant but moving down to 1700-2200 doesn’t require the same degree of homework for force posture, capabilities, and implications for deterrence and extended deterrence that moving to somewhere like 1,000 does (which is also why it looks like the START follow-on will be much closer to 1500ish).  The current round of arms control is quickly starting to brush up against numbers that would substantially alter some of these questions.  In other words, it seems unlikely Thiessen and other skeptics of arms control would agree that we should currently tell the Russians we are going to unilaterally make further substantial reductions, particularly when the Strategic Posture Commission states:

The sizing of U.S. forces remains overwhelmingly driven by the requirements of essential equivalence and strategic stability with Russia. For the deterrence of attacks by regional aggressors and even China, the force structure requirements are relatively modest. The focus on Russia is not because the United States and Russia are enemies; they are not. No one seriously contemplates a direct Russian attack on the United States. Some U.S. allies located closer to Russia, however, are fearful of Russia and its tactical nuclear forces.

2. SORT is a great example of an efficient arms control lite that is “a three-page pact that took just six months to negotiate.”

One major reason the Moscow treaty was so short is that the US and Russians could rely on the verification measures in the admittedly cumbersome START treaty to ensure reductions occur.  Letting START collapse would be a big blow to SORT.  Also, some of the lessons learned from the good and bad parts of START could also help make negotiating a follow-on somewhat easier.  It is also interesting to note that the heard of “arms control dinosaurs” have a December 5 deadline and could actually end up producing a SORTesque simple document along the lines of informally agreeing to START verification measures while a full follow-on is negotiated.

Arms control is hard but touting the Bush administration’s success in reductions is not a valuable blueprint for moving forward from the current situation.