U.S.-Russian Nuclear Rhetoric Heats Up
By Michael Bruno 
Nuclear weaponry advocates, critics and analysts ramped up their public outreach March 31, a day ahead of the first meeting between the current Russian and U.S. presidents, as well as a slew of major defense reviews and decisions to occur in the United States and internationally this year.
With Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama slated to meet for the first time April 1, groups in and around Washington are vying for influence over possible U.S. Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), a potential follow-on deal or continuation of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), and the congressionally chartered Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. There is also a nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference next year.
The top Russian and U.S. diplomats have declared addressing START to be at their highest priority, as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently in meeting with her Russian counterpart. Few observers expect the elimination of U.S. or Russian nuclear weapons — reportedly accounting for more than 90 percent of the world’s nukes — any time soon, and many acknowledge their continuing role in national defense. Still, a consensus has formed in the West at least over pushing in that direction, especially with the newly elected Obama administration’s “goal of a world without nuclear weapons” and general support from some key nuclear establishment figures like several Republican officials and former leaders.
But how fast to cut stockpiles while maintaining strategic deterrence and capability in the post-9/11 atmosphere is far from clear.
“We are urging the two presidents to seize this historic opportunity to confront the most urgent security threat to our world: the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the related risk of nuclear terrorism,” former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) said in a March 31 statement with several other advocates who formed Global Zero. Their sentiment is not universally shared.
“It is utterly implausible that [Obama] and his administration have taken any of the planning steps necessary to implement such an ambitious strategic nuclear arms control treaty,” Heritage Foundation analyst Baker Spring declared in February. “Obama’s national security strategy, at a minimum, is months away from completion.”
Arms Control Association advocates said March 31 that, according to their 2008 START declarations, the United States has 550 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 432 seabased missiles on 14 submarines, and 232 bombers — which together can deliver 5,951 warheads. Russia possesses 470 nuclear-armed, land-based ICBMs, 288 seabased missiles on eight subs, and 79 nuclear-capable bombers — which combined can deliver 4,138 warheads.
While not all of these systems are “operationally deployed,” and many missiles and bombers carry less than a full compliment of warheads, the United States nonetheless is believed to deploy at least 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads, with a comparable number of warheads in reserve. The exact number of deployed Russian strategic warheads is not available, according to ACA, but it is believed to range between 2,000 and 3,000.
The 2002 Moscow Treaty, formally called the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, called for fewer than 2,200 deployed warheads by December 2012.
Some Washington officials and analysts recently said the United States already has met that obligation. But arms reduction advocates stress that that treaty has little in the way of future enforcement.
Photo: USAF
