OPINION — President Trump plans to wait until next year to decide what he will do about the 2010 new START strategic nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, which runs out in February 2021, senior administration officials told a Hudson Institute meeting last Wednesday.
The session drew headlines last week after Defense Intelligence Agency Director, Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley Jr. used it to suggest Russia may be capable of — or actually doing — low-yield nuclear testing in possible violation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. But it was a later discussion of the President’s rather ambitious arms control ideas that caught my interest.
Although Trump has hinted in the past via tweets and press conferences about various approaches, it appears as though he may want to include both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons in the mix of new arms control efforts and introduce China to the negotiations.
We saw indicators of that when Tim Morrison, a top National Security Council staff member who deals with weapons of mass destruction, told the Hudson Institute audience, “If we break out of Cold War thinking about arms control, we may be able to achieve a truly effective treaty that provides real threat reduction and not simply a treaty that limits what's easy and defers what's hard to someone else on another distant day.”
Morrison said, “The president has charged his national security team to think more broadly about arms control, both in terms of the countries and the weapons systems involved. The world has moved on from the Cold War and its bilateral treaties that cover limited types of nuclear weapons or only certain ranges of adversary missiles.”
He said, for example that “tactical nuclear weapons must be a part of future arms control. I don't think he's [Trump] interested in continuing to defer those matters just because they're hard or just because the Russians may not want to talk about them.”
As for the Chinese, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Capabilities James H. Anderson told the group that Beijing “will at least double the size of their nuclear arsenal in the coming decade…[and] are moving towards a nuclear triad.” He added, “Given the dynamics of - and the - in fact of China's trajectory, it is altogether fitting and legitimate to seek to include them and bring them to the table with Russia, as the president has articulated.”
It appeared to be a Trumpian “America First” arms control policy when Morrison said, “I think the higher priority is to look at the totality of the Russian and the Chinese programs because we have so much time left on the clock for New START, and figure out, can we get to an arms control agreement that covers more of the systems that threaten the United States and not just the systems that Russia, for example, wants to talk about. And acknowledging that China would just as soon not be in this discussion - that's not necessarily the end of the story, right? We get to say what's in our national security interest.”
So, according to Morrison, “the National Security Council staff is coordinating efforts to provide the president with options on how best to proceed.” He cautioned, “But unlike some true believers who worship at the altar of the current arms control apparatus, we see arms control as a means to an end and not an end unto itself.”
He cited the reason for Trump’s recent withdrawal from the 1987 Reagan-Gorbachev, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, as being forced “after we saw that, after six years of trying to restore Russia's compliance with that treaty across two administrations, national security demanded a choice about whether or not the United States could be the only country effectively bound by that treaty.”
Morrison left out the back history of the INF treaty under which the U.S. and Soviet Union eliminated their ground-based, intermediate-range nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles. Back in 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin, during the George W. Bush administration, warned that “countries located in our near vicinity,” meaning China, were developing such weapons making it “difficult for us to keep within the framework of the treaty.”
Russia, rather than withdrawing from the INF treaty, secretly developed a ground-based cruise missile and when the U.S. discovered it, denied – both then and now - that the missile had the range of the prohibited systems.
Two months ago, after Trump announced U.S. withdrawal from the INF treaty, Pentagon officials said the U.S. would develop and test a ground-based cruise missile and a ballistic missile, much like the previous GLCM and Pershing systems, but neither would be nuclear armed. In addition, the Navy is planning to develop a future submarine-based cruise missile.
Although these developing U.S. systems were not mentioned last week, they have been described in the past by Pentagon officials as possible trades were the Russians to return to the INF treaty regime.
No mention was made last week of the George W. Bush administration’s 2002 withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, justified at the time as needed to meet the “growing missile threats” to the U.S.
Morrison said the Russians were concerned about U.S. missile defense activities, but he added, “President Trump has been very clear that he's not interested in negotiating U.S. missile defense, as he sees them as effectively delinked from offensive nuclear arms control.”
On the other hand, Morrison raised the possibility that Russia might not want to have new nuclear arms control talks saying, “There's a significant question with respect to whether or not the Russians are interested in extending New START. They have these contrivances that they have hurled against us and the prior administration on how we've converted our ballistic missile submarines and our heavy bombers. And so we've got to establish whether or not the Russians are interested in extending the treaty.”
Were talks to be undertaken, Morrison laid out several objectives.
“We would benefit from an agreement that halts the growth of Russian and Chinese nuclear stockpiles, while not undermining our ability to deter attack,” he said was one goal. Since China has a minimum number of strategic nuclear warheads, while the U.S. has thousands, Morrison said, “Here's an opportunity [for Beijing] to match words with actions for a country [meaning China] that purports to have a minimum deterrence policy.”
As a second objective, Morrison said, “The next arms control agreement must constrain potential adversaries' current and planned military capabilities and prevent unnecessary military competition,” even though Gen. Ashley had earlier had pointed out that in March 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin talked about Russia’s development of an intercontinental-range, nuclear-powered, nuclear-capable underwater drone, a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed intercontinental-range cruise missile, and an air-launched ballistic missile.
Morrison said the third objective was “robust verification measures,” saying, “Rigorous verification mechanisms increase our ability to confirm compliance and detect violations in a timely and enforceable way.”
A third administration arms control panelist, Thomas DiNanno, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Defense Policy at the State Department, told the audience, “as technology has changed, we continue to invest and look at the next family of verification technologies. Again, we do it sort of quietly. And - but it's absolutely critical to the work for policymakers and negotiators to know exactly what we can and can't verify.”
Finally, Morrison said, “We must ensure compliance with timely and substantial consequences for violations of arms control.” He cited Trump’s withdrawal from the INF treaty as an example of making “Russia pay a price for its non-compliance; we have upheld the credibility of arms control as a viable national security tool.”
If this is an outline of the Trump nuclear arms control agenda, and President Trump does not sign off on it until next year, little time is left for negotiations with Russia and China as well as U.S. allies.
Morrison did not see it that way. “From our perspective,” he told the Hudson Institute audience, “if the [New START] treaty is enforced until 2021, the President believes we have time to pursue more effective arms control for the American people.”
Read more Fine Print by Walter Pincus in The Cipher Brief
