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CIAO DATE: 02/03
International Affairs:
A Russian Journal
Relations with the U.S.: A New Model
Iu. Baluevskii *
On May 24, 2002, the Russian and U.S. presidents, in Moscow, signed a new Russian-U.S. treaty on further strategic offensive arms reduction. I believe that resumption of an active dialogue between Russia and the United States on strategic offensive arms cuts naturally arose from the changes in the relationship between our two countries as well as the situation in the world as a whole.
Continuation of the dialogue in the interest of achieving new agreements between Russia and the United States on strategic offensive arms reduction was necessitated not only by the need to straighten out our bilateral relations. Russian-U.S. relations in the sphere of strategic weapons have been, and I believe will continue to be, a determining factor in the behavior of other states, both nuclear and those aspiring to acquire a nuclear status. The fact is that all of these countries have been taking guidance from the limitations, control and verification measures, and other provisions established under these agreements, for more than just one decade now. Depriving them as well as the world as a whole of such restraints on nuclear weapons would not only be unreasonable but would also pose a danger to the whole mankind. This said, it is essential to take into account the fact that the end of the Cold War, de facto formalized at the Moscow Summit, brought about a dismantling of a rigid bipolar structure of the world, thus giving states greater freedom in decision-making on national and foreign policy.
The Onset of Dialogue and the Sides’ Basic Positions
The advent of a new Republican administration in the United States made prospects for drafting and signing a new strategic offensive arms reduction treaty rather uncertain. U.S. foreign policy was reoriented toward ensuring unlimited unilateralism, resulting in a toughening of the U.S. position on all issues—from the Kyoto protocols on green-house emissions to strategic arms cuts to deployment of a national missile defense system. So the base for continuing strategic arms reduction talks was becoming rather shaky.
The situation turned around after September 11, 2001. Terrorist attacks in New York and Washington showed the entire international community that security of any state in the present-day world cannot be ensured in separation from development of the entire world community and that new challenges and threats can only be met through concerted efforts. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction occupies a special place among these challenges and threats to the international community. This in fact enabled us to begin a new dialogue, new negotiations on elaboration of a strategic arms reduction treaty, the Russian and U.S. presidents providing an impetus to it last November. First consultations on the expert level began in late 2001.
The fundamental principle that Russian negotiators followed in the dialogue with the United States was the principle of ensuring RF national security . Sure enough, in shaping a new strategic relationship with the United States, we acted on the assumption that our countries’ nuclear arsenals are now surplus, and so it would be reasonable to mutually reduce the number of nuclear weapons as part of strategic deterrence forces. This is why another basic principle underlying the treaty is the principle of the undiminished security of the sides.
It was on this understanding that our dialogue with the U.S. side on further strategic arms cuts was built. It would not be right to say that the negotiating process was easy. At the beginning of negotiations, the U.S. side proposed reducing strategic offensive arms by adopting and enshrining in a treaty a concept of “operationally deployed warheads.” The latter was envisioning 1,700 to 2,200 nuclear warheads ready for immediate combat employment as part of operationally deployed nuclear forces with the remaining warheads stored in reserve. This approach to reduction would have enabled the sides to preserve their strategic offensive weapons at a level of approximately 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads, as allowed under the START I Treaty, thus legitimizing the replacement of nuclear disarmament with a formal exclusion of strategic weapons from the count.
Not surprisingly, this approach raised many questions on the Russian side. The Russian position was based on the need to carry through real strategic arms cuts while ensuring the sides’ undiminished security, a predictable nuclear policy, and a linkage between strategic arms reductions, on one hand, and limitation on defensive systems, on the other. Our main proposals were as follows:
—implement, within the next 10 years, a real, radical reduction of warheads deployed on strategic delivery vehicles from 6,000, a level laid down by the START I Treaty, to 1,700 to 2,200;
—ensure the elimination (dismantling) of strategic delivery vehicles subject to reduction in an economically viable manner;
—expand transparency (openness) and confidence building measures based on the verification system established by the START I Treaty, which has proven its worth in practice since it was put in place, in 1991; and
—record a natural linkage between strategic arms cuts and limitations on defensive systems following the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty.
At the same time, each side would be free to independently define the structure of its nuclear forces proceeding from its national interests and economic capabilities, also factoring in the limitations established by a new treaty.
A New Model of Negotiations
To provide an insight into the new Russian-U.S. strategic arms reduction treaty, I will now briefly consider what I regard as the most significant moments of the process of drafting and signing the document.
Differences in the sides’ original positions were for a long time a main stumbling block at the negotiations. Yet a common understanding of the problem , a reciprocal aspiration by our two countries to advance the process of nuclear disarmament and their determination to formalize the level of mutual understanding and mutual trust that had been achieved, enabled us to single out the shared elements in our approaches and prepare a coordinated draft treaty, putting off the resolution of specific issues to a later date.
A new model of the negotiating process, new principles of negotiating activity were worked out in the course of Russian-U.S. negotiations that could provide a pattern and framework for Russia’s relations with other, above all nuclear, states. This model is designed to carry out, within a specified time frame, a specific task set by the political leadership and is not encumbered by tunnel vision, mutual distrust, or outdated, archaic approaches.
In the course of negotiations, the sides’ positions were inevitably modified. When they began, about six months ago, we had a different understanding of both the content and format of a future agreement.
The key problems that we believed had to be resolved in the course of negotiations were as follows:
—elaborating a common strategic arms reduction concept, providing for radical, not virtual, arms cuts;
—recording a linkage between strategic arms cuts and limitations on defensive systems; and
—keeping in place the verification system established under the START I Treaty.
What enabled us to attain our goal?
First , a clear understanding by Russia and the United States of their special responsibility for the preservation and maintenance of strategic stability and ensuring international security. Our mutual aspiration to achieve an agreement in this sphere, our understanding of its importance in the present-day situation, and the new relationship that had evolved between our countries enabled us, by casting aside all irrelevancies , to focus on this major area—strategic arms reduction. We laid out our vision of ways of resolving other problems of bilateral relations in a declaration on a new framework of interrelations between Russia and the United States.
Second , while moving away from Cold War principles, we did not engage in any horsetrading or seek any linkage between modification of position by one side and concessions by the other, but built our approaches on respect for each other’s positions. Given the years-long experience in negotiations on strategic arms reduction, we were well aware that the old negotiating practice, based on the sides’ making clearly unrealistic demands that were gradually moderated to levels of mutual acceptability, even if it could produce a positive result, would do so with great difficulty and over an unduly long time span.
Aware that achievement of success in such a significant sphere would enable us to make faster progress also on other issues, we committed ourselves to producing a positive result at any price .
Third , we take a positive view of the fact that the U.S. side accepted our reasoning about the need to sign a legally binding treaty , subject to ratification in line with the Constitution-laid procedure adopted in our countries and being binding not only on the incumbent but also future leaders of our countries. This is not only an indication of a deepening mutual understanding and harmonization of our positions on arms control and arms reduction issues, but also confirms the significance of formalizing interstate relations in a legally binding treaty, thus ensuring their viability and stability.
Fourth , a distinguishing feature of the strategic arms reduction treaty is that it provides answers to the main questions related to the prospects for development of strategic weapons systems, defining the level and time frame for further reduction of the sides’ nuclear forces. Importantly, virtually all strategic arms reduction and verification mechanisms remain intact, as recorded in the START I Treaty. It is a viable treaty ensuring the continuity and advancement of strategic arms limitation processes. At the same time its format, differing from the formats of the preceding START I and START II Treaties, is predetermined by the current state of relations between Russia and the United States, the military-political situation in the world as a whole and the entire history and evolution of the negotiating process in this sphere, which began 30 years ago with the Interim Agreement between the United States of America and the Soviet Union on Certain Measures with Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (SALT I Treaty), and limited the sides’ numerical build-up of strategic offensive arms to a level achieved as of July 1, 1972. Then there were other agreements and treaties—SALT II, START I, and START II, which enabled us substantially to reduce the level of nuclear confrontation. During these years we had advanced a long way toward not only putting in place reduction mechanisms and procedures but also toward realization of the role and place of nuclear weapons in our relations and in ensuring global strategic stability. True, there were some losses as we moved along: Nine years after it was signed, the START II Treaty, which, I believe, had become a subject of political horsetrading for both Russia and the United States, became encumbered with a mass of conditions and demands, quietly dying amid a general realization of its uselessness to both states. Thus, the new format of the treaty is a natural outcome of our common experience as well as the contemporary state of relations between Russia and the United States, and our understanding of ways to further nuclear arms cuts.
Fifth , the challenging nature of the task at hand and the mutual aspiration to achieve a positive result at the negotiations prompted us toward new approaches to resolving contradictions and a search for compromise . A case in point is the new term, "strategic offensive capabilities," which refers to assets, reserves, and potentialities that can be tapped to address particular tasks, which was included into the treaty as a result of a compromise that the sides reached in the course of negotiations in working out a common arms reduction concept. With respect to the strategic arms reduction treaty, it subsumes warheads, delivery vehicles, and everything that predetermines the ability of strategic offensive arms to perform particular tasks. Sure, the term allows for a rather broad interpretation of the letter and spirit of the treaty. But on the other hand, it enables each country to show, and prove, its commitment to radical and irreversible strategic arms cuts. Thus we found a mutually acceptable compromise formula , giving us an opportunity to continue the process of reducing the nuclear threat since the sheer title of a document with the term "strategic offensive capabilities" enables us to single out the shared elements in our approaches, leaving resolution of particular issues to a later date, at the discretion of a bilateral commission on implementation of the treaty.
As for the absence of specific quantitative guidelines and intermediary reduction stages, given present-day realities, this, in our view, is not a shortfall of the document but in fact its merit. This enables both sides to choose optimal reduction options, above all from the economic point of view. We believe that this approach is very important not only from the perspective of the present treaty but also the entire process of arms control and reduction, which, I hope, our two countries are sincerely committed to continue and deepen. Especially considering that the positions of our countries’ leaders give every reason for this.
Sixth , the new strategic arms reduction treaty enables us to reduce our strategic nuclear forces to a level of minimum sufficiency without being unduly concerned about our security interests. RF President V.V. Putin has repeatedly stated the country’s readiness to reduce its nuclear capability to a far lower level than envisioned in the treaty—to 1,500 warheads and even lower. I suppose that today as well as in the foreseeable future this is quite sufficient to ensure our national security. This level well fits into the minimum sufficiency concept. I hope that Russia’s position in this respect will be recognized and supported by the world community.
Finally, seventh , today we have an opportunity to continue dialogue not only on strategic offensive arms but also on defensive weapons, taking into account their interconnection and interdependence. This dialogue is essential not only on ways of further reduction of the nuclear threat in the world and nuclear arms cuts, but also on missile defense. We believe that other countries, including NATO European members, should be involved in the discussion.
The Main Stages of Strategic Arms Limitation and Reduction Negotiations
As the strategic arms reduction treaty cannot be seen outside the context of the entire strategic arms limitation and reduction process as well as the entire history of Russian (Soviet)-U.S. relations in this sphere, we will now briefly consider the prehistory of the nuclear disarmament process. It began with the Treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems (ABM Treaty) and the Interim Agreement between the United States of America and the Soviet Union on Certain Measures with Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (SALT I Treaty).
The Interim Agreement provided only for some measures in the limitation of strategic offensive weapons and was signed for a relatively short term—five years. And although at the moment of signing it well fitted into the Soviet-U.S. military-strategic balance, it was clear that its capacity to limit the sides’ freedom to change this balance would be progressively diminishing with every passing year. Strategic aviation, forward based nuclear systems, and especially MIRVed warheads of strategic ballistic missiles, excluded from the agreement, were bound to eventually reduce to naught the value of the Interim Agreement as a stabilizing factor in the military-strategic balance. It was with that end in view that Article VII of the Interim Agreement recorded the sides’ commitment to continue active negotiations on strategic offensive arms.
The ABM Treaty was of unlimited duration, obligating the sides not to deploy anti-missile systems on their territory and not create a foundation for such systems as well as not to deploy local missile defense systems except in one area centered around the capital or the location of ICBM silo launchers. The Soviet Union and the United States undertook also not to create, test or deploy sea, air, space or mobile land-based missile defense components.
The signing of these documents, primarily the ABM Treaty, appreciably defused international tension and effectively laid the groundwork for maintenance of strategic stability in the Cold War era. Furthermore, bound by bilateral strategic arms agreements, the Soviet Union and the United States had to act with great caution in international affairs so as not to destroy the positive elements that had been achieved, which were also critical to the fate of the whole mankind.
Because the Soviet Union and the United States failed to sign a new agreement within a five-year period, in 1977 the sides declared their intention not to take action incompatible with the Interim Agreement pending a new strategic arms limitation agreement. On June 18, 1979, a new document was signed in Vienna: the Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (SALT II Treaty), effective until December 31, 1985. This treaty was more detailed, providing a more comprehensive definition of the subject matter of the agreement and the relevant terminology, and supplemented with a number of protocols and statements. The Treaty established a total ceiling on the sides’ strategic offensive arms at up to 2,400 warheads, providing for its subsequent reduction to 2,250 warheads and also setting quantitative limitations on particular characteristics as well as modernization of existing and creation of new types of strategic offensive weapon systems.
In a joint statement on principles and main lines of further negotiations, adopted in the course of signing the SALT II Treaty; and in a joint communique, the Soviet Union and the United States reaffirmed that further negotiations would continue in accordance with the principle of equality and undiminished security, specifying that each party to the Treaty did not seek, and would not seek, military superiority since this could only lead to dangerous destabilization, resulting in a higher level of armaments and advancing the security of neither side.
The SALT II Treaty was never ratified although the sides had for seven years complied with its provisions unilaterally.
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the Soviet Union and the United States (START I Treaty) provides not simply for limitation but reduction of strategic arms, from the level of 10,000 nuclear warheads that each side had accumulated by the time, to 6,000 warheads, within a seven-year period, as of the moment it went into effect. It was signed on July 31, 1991, but did not enter into force until December 5, 1994. The signing of the Treaty resulted from a change in relations between our countries, related not only to détente but also, above all, the mutual realization that the nuclear stockpiles were superfluous while a global nuclear conflict would be catastrophic.
Many experts, not without reason, regard the START I Treaty as a "classic disarmament treaty." The large volume of the Treaty, containing plenty of addenda, appendices, and the sides’ joint and unilateral statements setting out in detail the procedure for dismantling and elimination of strategic offensive arms and a verification mechanism, also addressing matters of cooperation, laid the legal groundwork for Russian-U.S. relations in the sphere of strategic arms reduction.
Signed in January 1993, the Strategic Arms Limitation and Reduction Treaty (START II Treaty) became the first Russian-U.S. agreement on arms control in which Russia acted not as successor to the Soviet Union but as a state acting independently on the international arena. I believe that everything or almost everything has been said about this document since it was signed. I would just like to point out that most of the disputes between the advocates and opponents of this treaty have rarely been concerned with the substance of the treaty itself or the conditions of its drafting and preparation. I will not deny that the treaty per se is a rather contradictory agreement, but the apparent discrepancy between its provisions with respect to Russia and the United States resulted from the need to address a complexity of interconnected problems of succession under the START I Treaty, the status of the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Kazakhstan and Ukraine as well as Russia’s aspiration to reduce its own strategic offensive weapons on a reciprocal basis with the United States, thus lessening the burden of military expenditure.
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty: Basics and Specifics
What kind of agreement is the new Russian-U.S. Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty?
As already pointed out by both politicians and military experts, this treaty is the last disarmament treaty of a past era—an era of confrontation, and the first treaty of a new era—an era of cooperation and trust. This is very much so since both the format and title of the treaty are to a very large extent innovative.
The term "capabilities" was included in the treaty at the final stage of negotiations, in the course of a search for mutually acceptable concepts and definitions, reflecting the common understanding of the problem that we had achieved in the process of negotiations with the U.S. side. This term in general form refers to the assets, stockpiles, and potentialities that can be tapped to fulfill particular tasks, but from a military point of view, to the number and quality of arms and military equipment. In the context of the new treaty this term subsumes warheads, delivery vehicles, and all systems and assets that predetermine the ability of strategic offensive arms to perform appropriate tasks. We believe, therefore, that it provides a far more comprehensive view of strategic arms as a whole, ensuring a linkage between the sides’ offensive and defensive strategic capabilities.
Another distinguishing feature of the treaty is that unlike its "predecessors," it is a fairly concise -- literally three-page -- document recording but a few key provisions on which the sides reached agreement.
These include:
—the obligation by Russia and the United States, within the next 10 years (by December 31, 2012), to reduce and limit their strategic nuclear warheads to a total number of 1,700 to 2,200 on each side;
—agreement by Russia and the United States on the need to preserve the START I Treaty and comply with its provisions;
—creation of a special bilateral verification commission that will subsequently address development and consolidation of the treaty; and
—the right by each side to withdraw from the treaty, subject to notice of such withdrawal three months in advance.
One of the most challenging moments in working on the treaty was to reflect the interconnection between strategic offensive and defensive weapons in it. This problem was resolved both by using the term "capability" and by including a reference in the text of the treaty to the joint statement by the RF and U.S. presidents on strategic matters, made on July 22, 2001 in Genoa, spelling out this interconnection.
Of course any treaty resulting from tortuous negotiations is bound to be a product of compromise. Thus the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty fails to reflect some matters bearing on strategic stability that have long been debated in Russian society—e.g., space based weapons, anti-ship activity, precision weapons, and some others. All of these matters are a subject of our close attention, and dialogue on them will continue, in particular within the framework of the consultative group on strategic stability, headed by foreign and defense ministers, as envisioned in the declaration on new strategic relations.
The Treaty Has Been Signed—What Now?
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, just like other documents signed by the RF and U.S. presidents in Moscow, takes on special significance against a backdrop of many other important international events that have occurred in the recent period, such as the Russia-NATO and Russia-EU summits, the Moscow session of the Collective Security Council, the Almaty summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, and many other bilateral meetings and negotiations. Decisions made in the course of these meetings lay the groundwork for a new collective security system both in the Euro-Asian region and the world as a whole.
We believe that the military aspect of this work should have the following priorities:
—promotion of relations primarily between permanent members of the UN Security Council, who are entrusted with special responsibility for the fate of the world; NATO and EU member countries, and all other states based on principles of cooperation, mutual benefit, mutual respect for each other’s positions, and renunciation of attempts to obtain unilateral advantages;
—advancement of the process of radical, verifiable and irreversible reductions of strategic offensive arms, matched by appropriate limitations on strategic defensive systems;
—consolidation of the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) regime; and
—elaboration and harmonization of measures aimed to enhance predictability and trust in military-strategic activity, including through an ongoing dialogue in the military sphere.
All of this will of course require serious work and a responsible attitude to these matters on the part of all members of the world community.
From the point of view of strategic stability, strengthening the WMD nonproliferation regime and prevention of leaks of sensitive nuclear and missile technologies takes on added significance. This is due to the fact that as a result of evolution of the system of international relations and the changes in the international situation over the past decade, the nonproliferation regime, formed by the late 1980s, its stability ensured by the two superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union), had weakened substantially.
The disappearance of the bipolar system strengthened, or provided new, incentives to many states to acquire WMD, in particular nuclear weapons, while nonproliferation controls declined. This has to do with the fact that earlier (in the Cold War era), the bipolar system ensured not only enforcement but also a certain measure of protection against attack. This applied also to countries of the "Third World": The superpowers suspiciously watched each other, trying to block the use of force against the so-called neutral parties, which could have resulted in a strengthening of an opposite bloc. Today, however, with the UN’s diminishing role in controlling the use of force, there are objective incentives for acquisition of nuclear and other types of WMD by states that are not part of the so-called zone of U.S. influence.
Rapid evolution of conventional weapons, coupled with dramatic technological breakthroughs, prompts countries that are afraid of force being used against them to look for WMD, including nuclear weapons, which are more attractive and accessible as well as cost effective. This is to do with the fact that nuclear arms, developed in the middle of the past century as a weapon of rich states, are now increasingly become a weapon of poor states, enabling them to effectively counter military threats on the part of more developed countries. Meanwhile, technological progress makes nuclear weapons technologically more accessible—that is to say nothing about chemical and biological weapons.
From this perspective, we cannot but be concerned by the U.S. and British aspiration to assign nuclear weapons the role as a deterrent of other types of WMD , which is in conflict with the principle of "negative safeguards" for non-nuclear states. This also applies to the U.S. plan, in line with its new nuclear doctrine, to create low-yield nuclear charges for pinpoint, including preemptive, strikes with the "noble" goal of fighting terrorism.
Thus, new threats and challenges to security compel many countries increasingly to rely on nuclear arsenals, indirectly increasing the likelihood of nuclear proliferation, which, for its part, affects strategic stability and security.
Therefore, nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and other types of WMD should become a national security policy priority for nuclear states.
The Russian Federation is clearly ready for this work. The country follows a firm course toward integration into the world community and the search for mutually acceptable and mutually beneficial forms of cooperation with any state or a coalition of states interested in this cooperation.
Yes, security comes at a price, but it is indispensable. We will be able to fulfill this task all the more successfully with better mutual understanding and closer cooperation. The pooling of scientific, technical, financial, and organizational capabilities of Russia, the United States, and all other states will expedite the attainment of this goal.
Endnotes
Note *: Col.Gen. Iurii Baluevskii, First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces. Back.