What is the New START treaty?

The New START treaty is a treaty that will, if ratified, “replace” the START treaty that was signed in 1991 and expired in 2009. Secretary Clinton stated today that the three goals of the START treaty are to promote stability, transparency and predictability between the U.S. and Russia on the topic of nuclear arms control. 

The New York Daily News

Will the New START treaty cut the total number of nuclear weapons held by both the United States and Russia?

Yes. START will reduce the total number of nuclear weapons held both the United States and Russia. Essentially, START will place limits on the number of nuclear warheads and deployed nuclear delivery vehicles for both the United States and Russia. Each country will be permitted to have a maximum of 1,550 nuclear warheads and a maximum of 700 deployed nuclear delivery vehicles.

Will the New START treaty adversely affect our missile defense or compromise United States national security?

No. There is nothing in the treaty that will limit the United States ability to continue to cultivate the U.S. missile defense program. Additionally, the New START treaty will not compromise the United States ability to protect itself and does include a provision for a strong verification regime.

Will the New START treaty have any effect on Iran and North Korea?

Secretary Clinton stated, “I am not suggesting that this treaty alone will convince Iran or North Korea to change their behavior, but it does demonstrate our leadership and strengthens our hand as we seek to hold these and other governments accountable, whether that means further isolating Iran and enforcing the rules against violators or convincing other countries to get a better handle on their own nuclear materials”

After more than eight months of talks between the U.S. and Russia, negotiators have reached agreement on the terms of the New START treaty, reported the Kremlin on Wednesday. The most comprehensive arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia in almost two decades, the treaty calls for reductions of more than one-quarter in the number of  deployed strategic warheads and delivery vehicles in both countries.

New START replaces START I, the 1991 bilateral pact governing arms reduction that expired in December 2009. A new treaty was originally anticipated prior to the December expiration of START I, but disagreement over thorny issues such as the American missile defense system in Europe and the verification process for nuclear arsenals prevented the two parties from finding consensus. Officials from both countries have not disclosed detailed contents of the treaty nor have they discussed how these particular issues were ultimately resolved.

The date of the treaty's signing has yet to be determined, though early April seems likely. Prague is the tentative location for the signing in order to commemorate the one-year anniversary of President Obama's famed Prague speech on nuclear non-proliferation. If the signing ceremony takes place in early April, it will precede the Nuclear Security Summit hosted by President Obama in Washington on April 12-13.

However, some challenges to ratification are anticpated in the Senate, where 67 votes are needed to pass a resolution of ratification and provide "advice and consent" to the President. Some Republicans have stated that they do not intend to agree to a treaty that would restrict the planned missile defense shield for Europe. President Obama has already initiated discussions regarding ratification with Senate Committe on Foreign Relations Chairman John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and the committee's ranking minority member Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.).

Together, the U.S. and Russia share nearly 95% of the world's nuclear arsenals. Success on the treaty will boost President Obama's ambitious nuclear non-proliferation agenda and publicly demonstrate his administration's commitment to reducing nuclear stockpiles.

Citizens for Global Solutions looks forward to the signing of New START and supports a rapid ratification of the treaty.

Vice President Biden spoke on February 18 at the National Defense University regarding the budget increase for the National Nuclear Security Administration as well as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  Increasing the budget for nuclear weapons seems as though the United States is directing policy contradictory to what President Obama had recommended for nuclear non-proliferation.  Yet in this speech, Vice President Biden sought to prove that these budget initiatives were in fact for both non-proliferation and American national security.

Vice President Biden echoed the sentiments of President Obama by showing that the United States can be a leader in non-proliferation while still maintaining a high level of security.  He reiterated this by defining the United States as a leader for a post nuclear world, but to reach this goal we still need a limited nuclear arsenal.  The Vice President explained that nuclear deterrence worked as a Cold War doctrine and retaining an arsenal will further deter our enemies.  Eventually through our leadership, new technologies will evolve bringing a new form of deterrence making nuclear weapons obsolete.  

Explaining the budget increase of five billion dollars over the next five years for nuclear weapons was a main focus of Vice President Biden's speech.  He illustrated that even though these are hard times economically, upgrading our aging nuclear arsenal with modern technology will both aid non-proliferation and national security.  Through this effort, we will reduce the number of nuclear warheads but increase the technological capabilities of our weapons, thus supporting non-proliferation as well as security.  By expanding the nuclear budget, U.S. laboratories will be able to afford research for specializations in locating and disarming nuclear material before they fall into unfriendly hands.

Furthermore, Vice President Biden spoke about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  He made it a point to say that testing nuclear weapons previously has brought much harm to individual health and the environment.  These tests were set up to confirm and evaluate the effectiveness of nuclear weapons, but now there is no need for this.  Biden stated that our labs today know more about our nuclear arsenal than they ever had while testing the objects.  The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty again allows for progressive steps towards non-proliferation without compromising national security.  By ratifying this treaty, the United States will help lead the world past the threat of nuclear war.  Along with the treaty, increasing the National Nuclear Security Administration budget will continue this Administration’s progressive policy.

Take Action!

Support non-proliferation with Citizens for Global Solutions.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was opened for signature in 1968 and entered into force in 1970.  According to the United Nations, the organization responsible for the legislation, “the Treaty represents the only binding commitment in a multilateral treaty to the goal of disarmament by the nuclear-weapon States.”  Five of the states party to the treaty are considered nuclear weapon states: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China.  

President Obama

However, the United States has been criticized on several occasions for violating the provisions of the treaty when negotiating arms sales with India, a recognized nuclear state that has refused to sign the NPT.  In 2008, President Obama stated that he wished to “strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that nations that don’t comply will automatically face strong international sanctions.”  Additional nuclear states that are noticeably absent from the list of signatures are Israel and Pakistan.  The treaty, set to be assessed every five years, will be reviewed in May of this year.

With regard specifically to negotiations between Russia and the United States regarding US-Russia nuclear relations, one successful treaty is the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).  The goals of the legislation are to limit the number of warheads each state has within its nuclear arsenal.  The treaty, which expires in 2012, requires semi-annual negotiations of the provisions of the document.

With the release of his FY2011 budget today, President Obama demonstrated where his priorities stand.  Under the Department of Energy, the President included $2.7 billion to “secure nuclear material, develop and field technology to detect and deter nuclear testing and smuggling, and support international nonproliferation treaties, regulatory controls, and safeguards.”  This funding could demonstrate President Obama’s commitment to non-proliferation, as it could be utilized toward the passage of the CTBT and START treaties.   Additional priorities of the Department of Energy are to “dismantle excess nuclear weapons,” which is definitely in line with the overarching goal of nuclear non-proliferation.  As analysis of the budget continues, it will be imperative to focus upon the DOE’s funding of nuclear non-proliferation efforts.  

I remember watching President Obama’s speech on nuclear non-proliferation in Prague. Like so many of the President’s speeches, it was deeply moving; evoking the historical context and projecting a bold new vision of the future.

Yet something felt missing from his speech. I realized it was nothing he actually said or failed to say, but it was my own reaction: the issue, nuclear weapons, simply did not move me in the way that other issues he has addressed, such as peace in the Middle East or improving the United Nations.

I consider this strange, because I am trained in international law. If anyone should care about non-proliferation, it should be me. Yet I realized that growing up, I and my entire generation, simply don’t have the same appreciation of the issue as generations past. Horrific images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been relegated to the history books, we were not taught to duck and cover in school, we did not live through the fear of Mutually Assured Destruction, nor were subjected to the infamous Daisy ad. All of these things added to the public consciousness, and nuclear non-proliferation was an issue that mattered to all on an emotional level. While intellectually I don’t think that North Korea and Iran should have the bomb, on a deeper level, it does not particularly perturb me if they do. I believe this is the feeling which many people in my generation would have, if they thought about this honestly. Our generation, in many respects, has ‘emotionally forgotten’ this issue.

What does this mean, in practice? Ultimately, our congressional representatives do our best to represent us – it keeps them getting re-elected. So when we lack passion on a subject, chances are, they do too. I look around and see very limited activism on nuclear issues, and even less attention to them by our Congress. The President may be displaying great leadership on the issue, but it will ultimately be pointless if we don’t follow and push Congress to take action on it, such as ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Worse still, it is far from certain that future Presidents will take as strong an approach as Obama on an issue which simply does not make a blip on the electoral radar.

Obviously this is a massive, complicated issue that can’t be solved easily. Getting people to care enough about an issue to take action is the art of the social movement, and countless books have been written on that. But there is one very important step that can, and must, be taken for this issue to remain prominent over time.

While our generation might be oblivious to the threat of nuclear weapons, we are far from disengaged on foreign policy. Thanks to globalization, the internet, etc. there are millions of young people across America who would proudly consider themselves citizens of the world. The passion is there, but it is not for a particular issue, but towards a more generalized loyalty to humanity as a whole. It comes not from a fear of nuclear war, or terrorism, or even climate change, but from the vision of a better future – without knowing the details of what it might look like, we aspire to build a more beautiful world. At the moment, this is a sentiment that foreign policy activists are, for the most part, failing to tap into.

Thus the time has come to assemble a grand foreign policy coalition in this country, pinned together on this sentiment. It would encompass groups dealing with climate change, peace and conflict, UN Reform, human rights, poverty, international financial institution reform, etc. Nuclear issues would fit squarely within it – it is not the trendy issue of the hour, but it would capitalize on the fire of this broad coalition. A coalition like this, which respected the different issues but harnessed their commonalities, would have a profound impact on this country’s foreign policy.

I am deeply optimistic that this will happen. Over my months here as an intern at Citizens for Global Solutions, I’ve come to see that this, ultimately, is what this organization is working towards. Other organizations are working towards this as well. Yet it is a process which is only just beginning. I would encourage all activists on international issues, and people who are simply sympathetic to a particular cause, to look beyond their individual issue, and realize that not only could we achieve more if we worked under a single banner, but that ultimately, we are all fighting for the same thing.

It is obvious that the majority of the world wants to live without the threat of nuclear war. Even those who have the nuclear capabilities that could cause war would most likely not want to use those weapons. However, whose responsibility is it to prevent other countries from using nuclear weapons, let alone prevent them from building capabilities? In recent years, the United States has often been referred to as a world policeman, telling countries what they can and cannot do.  It has especially been a point of contention when it comes to other countries developing nuclear capabilities since the U.S. has them itself. Iran is one country that is in the international spotlight for its nuclear activities, and the United States would like to have more control over those activities.

The rumors have been swirling for years that the Iranians are building up their capabilities to create atomic weapons at their nuclear power sites. Tensions have headed up in recent years leading the U.S. to firm statements condemning Iran for any efforts to create nuclear weapons. However, the Obama administration knows that it cannot win this fight alone. At the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Obama led a meeting on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. He made it clear that he was looking for multilateral support and cooperation to handle these elaborate challenges to global security.

In recent weeks, U.S. diplomats have pushed with its international partners to nudge Iran into agreeing to not use its nuclear facilities to build atomic weapons. Just last week, the U.S., Russia, France and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) gave Tehran until last Friday to accept a negotiated offer. The deal would mean that Iran would convert low-enriched uranium into fuel to run its Tehran Research Reactor, which Iran might otherwise enrich further to make a bomb. Friday came and went without an official Iranian response. White House officials indicated they would wait a bit longer to see if Iran would accept the offer.

The United States seems to be more of a team player when it comes to Iran these days despite Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s mention of a “defense umbrella” in July. A defense umbrella or extended deterrence is meant to protect U.S. friends and allies in the Middle East and Europe, similar to the security umbrella the United States provided to Germany during the Cold War.

Overall, friendly countries with less power and capabilities are willing to give the United States the power to protect them from Iranian nuclear threats. More prominent countries want the United States to work multilaterally in order to sanction and pressure Iran. Knowing the United States, our administration is likely to try and walk a thin line between international cooperation while also serving its own interests and those of its allies quite openly. We’ll have to wait and see how long it takes before the international community starts calling the United States a global policeman again.

Today at a UN conference a declaration was adopted to promote entry into force of Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). This treaty prohibits the testing of nuclear weapons, which helps to limit the negative impacts that nuclear weapons have on the environment. It also slows the production of new nuclear weapons. The declaration that was adopted today, by a large majority, urges nations to sign and ratify this treaty as soon as possible:

"The overwhelming support for the Treaty and its early entry into force has been expressed by the United Nations General Assembly and other multilateral and regional organs and initiatives, which have called for signature and ratification of the Treaty as soon as possible, and have urged all States to remain seized of the issue at the highest political level. We affirmed the importance and urgency of signatures and ratifications without delay to achieve early entry into force of the Treaty"

Hillary Clinton's remarks at the conference support the CTBT and emphasizes President Obama's goal of a world without nuclear weapons. Furthermore, she asserts that the administration will work to get the CTBT ratified through the Senate.

Act now to urge the U.S. Senate to ratify this treaty!