Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement 2010

Summary: The United States and Russia agreed on a new strategic arms limitation agreement in 2010 that would reduce the number of nuclear warheads held by each nation by about 30 percent, and the number of delivery vehicles by half. Both limits were to be met within seven years. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty in December 2010 and the Russian Duma ratified it in January 2011. The new treaty replaced the 1991 START agreement (expired in December 2009) and the 2002 Moscow Treaty (not yet expired). The agreement sidestepped a mutual disagreement over an American anti-missile missile system which the United States plans to build in Europe despite Russian objections, which nearly derailed the new treaty.

After a year of negotiations and at least one missed deadline, Presidents Barack Obama of the United States and Dmitri Medvedev of Russia on April 8, 2010, signed a new strategic arms reduction agreement. The treaty required a reduction in both nuclear warheads and delivery systems within seven years of ratification.

Legislatures of both nations ratified the treaty, the U.S. Senate on December 22, 2010 (the vote was 71 yea, 26 nay; 67 required for ratification), the upper house of the Russian Duma (parliament) on January 26, 2011 (350 yea, 56 nay, 226 needed to ratify).

Although the numbers of warheads and delivery vehicles are lower than the numbers allowed under the 1991 treaty, in practice both sides had made unilateral reductions, meaning that neither country would be required to make significant reductions in the number of warheads actually deployed. Moreover, the new treaty covered only strategic nuclear weapons; it did not include so-called "tactical" nuclear weapons or strategic warheads held in reserve.

The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) expired on December 31, 2009. Obama and Medvedev had vowed to get a new agreement in place before that expiration. When that failed to happen--partly over Russian objections to American plans to deploy an anti-missile missile defense system in Europe--they vowed to continue talks. Russia had demanded that the anti-missile system not be deployed; the United States insisted on proceeding. The impasse was resolved with both sides issuing non-binding statements. The United States declared that it would continue to develop defensive missile systems, but insisted these were not aimed at Russia. (The United States has long maintained that missile defense in Europe was meant to defend against missiles from Iran.) Russia said it would continue to push for a binding treaty on defensive missiles. The Russian Duma attached a non-binding statement "interpreting" the agreement to mean that it bans the American missile defense system. That statement mirrored a similar statement by the American Senate

At the signing ceremony in April 2010 the presidents declared that the new treaty heralded a new era in American-Russian relations that had become strained at the time of Russia's invasion of the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2008.

Main terms of the 2010 agreement:

• Nuclear warheads. Each side would be limited to 1,550 warheads, down from 2,100 held by the United States at the treaty's signing and 2,600 held by Russia (according to the Federation of American Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council). Under the agreement one strategic bomber equipped with nuclear arms counts as a single warhead. The new totals represent a 74% reduction from the levels at the start of the 1991 START treaty and a 30% reduction from the limits under the 2002 Moscow Treaty.
• Delivery systems. Each side will be limited to a total of 800 delivery systems, deployed and non-deployed, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and manned bombers. Each side will also have a separate limit of 700 deployed launch vehicles. These totals represent a reduction of more than half from the start of the 1991 START agreement. (See "Technical Issues" below.)
• Term. The treaty was to last 10 years, unless renegotiated in the meantime, and could be extended for not more than five years.
• Verification. The 2010 agreement includes some elements of the 1991 agreement plus some new elements. It includes on-site inspections, exchanges of data, and notification of changes related to offensive arms and facilities covered by the treaty has a verification regime that combines the appropriate elements of the 1991 START with new elements tailored to the limitations of the Treaty. Measures under the 2010 treaty include on-site inspections and exhibitions, data exchanges and notifications related to strategic offensive arms and facilities covered by the treaty, and provisions to facilitate the use of national technical means for treaty monitoring. To increase confidence and transparency, the agreement also provides for the "exchange of telemetry."
• Technical issues. The new agreement made a distinction between "deployed" and "non-deployed" launchers (700 and 800 respectively) which in both cases numbered about half the number of warheads. Pavel Podvig, a Russian-trained physicist now working at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, wrote on the Web site of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that "as a disarmament measure, [the 2010 agreement] will be a very modest step. The treaty will set a ceiling of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads--technically a reduction of more than 30 percent from the current levels--but almost all of the reductions will be accomplished by changing the way the warheads are counted." (http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/pavel-podvig/assessing-start-follow).

A summary of the limits placed on warheads and delivery vehicles by the three agreements (1991 START, 2002 Moscow Treaty, and 2009 strategic arms reduction agreement):

Previous Treaties

START agreement, 1991. Presidents George H. W. Bush of the United States and President Mikhail Gorbachev of the USSR signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in July 1991, just months before the USSR dissolved on December 25, 1991. (The government of Russia succeeded the USSR and continued to observe terms of START.) Under START the Soviet Union agreed to destroy more than 3,000 ballistic missiles, 45 atomic submarines, and more than 65 strategic bombers. The United States reduced its arsenal by more than 3,000 missiles, plus cuts in launchers and bombers. START took nearly 10 years to negotiate.

Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions, 2002. Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin signed a supplement to the 1991 treaty in 2002 that reduced both the number of warheads and delivery vehicles held by each side. The Moscow Treaty called for each side to reduce warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by December 31, 2012 and allowed each side to determine its "strategic forces," i.e. delivery systems, consistent with the reduced number of warheads. The Moscow Treaty established a bilateral Implementation Commission to meet twice a year to discuss issues that might arise.

SALT I (1972). The beginning of the end of the nuclear arms race came in the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties I and II. Talks leading up to these agreements were first proposed by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in 1967. The two parties agreed to hold talks in 1968, and actual negotiations began in November 1969 under President Richard Nixon. SALT comprised a set of agreements including the Treaty on Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Interim Agreement and protocol on Limitation of Strategic Offense Weapons. These agreements were signed in Moscow on May 26, 1972, by President Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. The ABM treaty was designed to limit each side to just 100 anti-missile missiles stationed in a limited area in each country, assuring that the vast majority of territory would still be vulnerable to attack.

SALT II (1979). Negotiations for a follow-up SALT agreement began in 1972 and lasted for seven years. SALT II limited both sides on the number of launchers, notably the number of missiles that could be armed with multiple warheads, each of which could be independently targeted. SALT II limited both sides to about 2,400 launchers each. SALT was signed in Vienna in July 1979 by President Jimmy Carter and Brezhnev.

Bibliography

Norris, Robert S. and Hans M. Kristensen. "Russian Nuclear Forces, 2009." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 65:3 (May 2009) 10p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=39347590&site=ehost-live

Obama, Barack H. "Statement on Beginning of Negotiations on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty." Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents. May 29, 2009. 1p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=41877252&site=ehost-live

Schell, Jonathan. "Obama's Nuclear Challenge." Nation. 288:17. (May 4, 2009) 2p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=37606307&site=ehost-live

Woolfe, Amy F. "Strategic Arms Control After START: Issues and Options: R40084." Congressional Research Service: Report October 9, 2009. 34p. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tsh&AN=45018199&site=ehost-live

Podvig, Pavel. "Assessing START follow-on." Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. March 29, 2010. http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/pavel-podvig/assessing-start-follow