Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
5/15/2015
As it appears that bilateral cooperation on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 continues to sputter, arms control experts this week offered recommendations for accomplishing the aims of the accord. Options include boosting weapons transparency and negotiating a similar multilateral agreement. “I see an opportunity now in using the Russian complaints about U.S. violations of the INF Treaty as leverage,” Greg Thielmann, Senior Fellow of the Arms Control Association (ACA), said this week at ACA’s annual meeting in Washington. The solution to the dormant INF dialogue would involve technical expertise, military professionals and people who have worked on the U.S. weapons Russia is concerned about, Thielmann said.
Does Aegis BMD Violate INF?
Countering an initial U.S. claim of a Russian INF violation made public last summer, Russian officials said certain U.S. weapon systems, including the Mk41 Vertical Missile Launch System (VLS) component of the Aegis Combat System, violate the INF Treaty. There are three different versions of the VLS—one for ballistic missile defense (BMD), one for tactical operations, and one for strike operations. While it is known that the VLS used for missile defense can employ the Standard Missile-3 interceptor, Russia has expressed concern that the planned U.S. deployment of a missile defense VLS in Romania and Poland would allow the firing of Tomahawk missiles, which the nation says would a violation of the INF Treaty.
Jon Wolfsthal, Senior Director for Arms Control and Nonproliferation at the National Security Council, during a March speech said that the Aegis BMD system is not capable of launching offensive missiles. “That is a very easy opportunity for us to say, ‘Come and look at this equipment. We’re able to show you why it’s impossible,’” Thielmann said. “We have, as far as I know, have not made such a suggestion at all. Were we to suggest that, then it would be much easier for us to say, ‘We would like to look at our complaints about [Russia’s] testing of a ground-launched cruise missile.’”
Released in July, the State Department’s annual arms control compliance report stated that Russia has violated the INF Treaty by developing a ground-launched cruise missile capable of hitting the range prohibited by the treaty. The agreement prohibits development of conventional and nuclear cruise missiles capable of hitting ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Russia has denied the U.S. accusation, and Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller has said that Russia has not acknowledged development of the missile.
Where is Special Verification Commission?
The Special Verification Commission established through the treaty has not met since 2003. The commission’s purpose is to resolve questions relating to INF implementation, and to develop measures to improve the treaty’s effectiveness. Instead of working from the ground-up with military and technical experts, both sides have engaged in high-level finger-pointing on mutual concerns about INF Treaty violations, and the U.S. could benefit from changing its attitude toward addressing the treaty, Thielmann said.
Escalation between Russia and the U.S. over INF has resembled a “schoolyard fight,” Catherine Kelleher, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, said during the ACA meeting. Kelleher, who served in that position during the Clinton Administration, called for the U.S. to start thinking about how it can strengthen the INF Treaty to include others, “or to replace it with something that represents a verifiable ban on a set of weaponry that has proved difficult… in the past.”
‘We’re Dealing With People’
Matthew Rojansky, Director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, during the ACA meeting said one method for improving U.S.-Russia engagement on INF as well as the broader pool of arms control treaties is a down-to-earth, balanced approach with a clear message. Citing pundits who he said have both called for the U.S. not to give up on the INF Treaty and supported supplying weapons to Ukraine as a means to change Russia’s calculus, Rojanski emphasized that diplomatic approaches must take more than separate issues into account. “I mean, we’re not dealing with some kind of robot here, right?” he said. “We’re dealing with people, and with people, issues are linked. We have to understand that.”
