March 17, 2014

KERRY: NEW START TREATY WORKING ‘EXACTLY AS ADVERTISED’

By ExchangeMonitor

Three years to the day since President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed the New START Treaty, Secretary of State John Kerry said the arms control pact is working “exactly as advertised,” and he used the treaty’s success to tout another round of arms control with Russia. “We and the Russians both have ‘boots back on the ground’—inspectors who monitor the inner workings of our respective strategic forces,” Kerry wrote in a Foreign Policy op-ed yesterday. “New START is maintaining stability and predictability between the world’s largest nuclear powers, as we promised.”

Kerry, who was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the New START Treaty was debated and ultimately ratified by the Senate, noted that the U.S. and Russia have conducted 78 on-site inspections and have completed more than 4,000 data exchanges since the treaty entered force in February of 2011, working “despite any of the alarm bells treaty foes may have rung.” He also emphasized that the Administration was continuing to pursue a new round of arms control reductions with Russia. “When signing New START three years ago in Prague, President Obama made it clear he intended to seek further reductions in all types of nuclear weapons: strategic and nonstrategic, deployed and non-deployed. We will follow through on this goal in a deliberate, step-by step manner, proactively consulting with Capitol Hill, talking with our allies and engaging Russia on future negotiations. To be clear: reducing nuclear weapons is not an end in and of itself, but a means toward creating a safer and more stable world.”

Comments are closed.