A new cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office on the potential cost of a U.S. nuclear-arms buildup shows the New START treaty should be renewed, according to two senior Senate Democrats.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that withdrawing from the last remaining U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control treaty could lead the federal government to spend anywhere between $100 million and several hundred billion dollars to build new weapons.
“The Trump administration’s unwillingness to continue the decades of strategic arms control by failing to extend the New START Treaty is driving the United States toward a dangerous arms race, which we cannot afford,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) wrote Wednesday in a joint statement. “While this report only begins to account for the costs of the Administration’s preposterous claims that we can ‘spend the adversary into oblivion,’ it is further proof of why New START is essential to U.S. and international security.”
Smith chairs the House Armed Services Committee. Menendez is the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They requested the report from the CBO.
New START, ratified in 2011 during the Barack Obama administration, limits the U.S. and Russia to deploying 1,550 strategic nuclear weapons on a mixture of 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers. Previous bilateral nuclear weapons treaties with Russia allowed for many more warheads than that.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that deploying a maximum of 6,000 warheads on 1,600 strategic delivery vehicles, as allowed by the now-defunct 1990s-era START I treaty, would cost the Pentagon more than $400 billion, plus additional annual upkeep the neighborhood of $25 billion. On the other hand, the Defense Department could get away with a $100-million bill by using existing and planned delivery vehicles to carry about 3,000 warheads, as allowed by the 1980s-vintage SALT II treaty.
New START will expire in February unless the U.S. and Russian presidents agree to an extension. The treaty as written allows for a five-year extension, though some speculate the parties could work out a shorter-term extension.
The Donald Trump administration wants to replace New START with a trialteral agreement that also curbs China’s nuclear arsenal, or perhaps condition a New START extension on a Russian promise to bring China to the table in future talks. China and Russia have rebuffed both ideas.
