March 17, 2014

REPORT: OBAMA ADMIN. POISED TO SEEK MORE STOCKPILE REDUCTIONS

By ExchangeMonitor

A new report by the Washington Times suggests the Obama Administration is poised to push for reductions dramatically below the levels found in the New START Treaty to as low as 1,000 strategic deployed nuclear weapons. According to the Times, the new reduction target would be outlined in a soon-to-be-released Nuclear Posture Review implementation study and the Administration would seek the reductions in a new round of arms control talks with Russia. Reducing the size of the nation’s strategic deployed stockpile to 1,000 nuclear weapons would represent a significant cut from the 1,550-warhead cap set by the New START Treaty, but is not as significant a reduction as the Administration is believed to have considered in the NPR implementation study. According to published reports earlier this year, the Administration considered stockpile levels as low as 300 warheads.

In a statement, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) and Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Michael Turner (R-Ohio) criticized the decision to pursue further reductions, noting that the President has not fulfilled the modernization plan agreed to during debate on the New START Treaty. President Obama has threatened to veto the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Authorization Act over language tying the implantation of the New START Treaty to efforts to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex and arsenal. “While Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Russia and China remain committed to nuclear weapons, and in some cases are expanding and modernizing them, this President has thus far succeeded in only reducing the nuclear arms of one country: the United States,” McKeon and Turner said.

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