Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
5/15/2015
The State Department this week called out a Russian diplomat’s recent announcement that his country has “virtually exhausted” bilateral nuclear reductions with the United States through the New START Treaty. “Of course we have not exhausted bilateral nuclear disarmament options,” a State Department spokesperson said in an email to NS&D Monitor. “The United States and the Russian Federation still possess over 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. That is why the United States will continue to engage with the Russian Federation and push for meaningful steps that make progress towards the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
In remarks earlier this month at the 2015 Review Conference (RevCon) for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Russian diplomat Mikhail Uliyanov signaled that Russia would not be willing to drop below New START’s central limit of 1,550 strategic deployed warheads, unless other countries were willing to join bilateral talks. “It must be taken into account that, with the conclusion of the New START Treaty in 2010, our country has virtually exhausted the possibilities to reduce our nuclear arsenal on a bilateral basis with the USA,” Uliyanov stated. “Further steps in this direction can only be made with the involvement of all states possessing military nuclear capabilities.”
Uliyanov’s words came days after Secretary of State John Kerry emphasized that a 2013 offer by President Barack Obama for cuts one-third below the treaty limits remains on the table. “We know that we can cut back even further, and President Obama has made clear our willingness, readiness, now, to engage and negotiate further reductions of deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third below the level set by New START,” Kerry said. “Let me underscore: That offer remains on the table, and we urge the Russians to take us up on it.” The State Department spokesperson touted the offer as “a good one,” and said that the United States and Russia “still have work to do” before multilateral disarmament negotiations can commence. The State Department spokesperson added that the United States has stated a willingness to pursue reductions in deployed and non-deployed, strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons.
Frank Miller, a Principal of the Scowcroft Group, told NS&D Monitor this week that Uliyanov’s statement could have been a response to Kerry’s reiteration of Obama’s offer. “It could have been interpreting Kerry’s statement as an attempt to put pressure on Russia,” he said. “Either way, I think either what he’s saying he really believes, or what he’s saying is an attempt to do reverse jiu-jitsu and put it on our backs.” Miller added that he thinks the U.S. should not engage in arms control agreements with Russia until it comes back into compliance with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which the State Department last year accused Moscow of violating.
Chances of Multilateral Disarmament
While the United States and Russia top the list of countries with the most nuclear weapons of the five declared nuclear weapons states, France, China and the United Kingdom are believed to have an estimated 300, 250 and 225 total nuclear warheads, respectively . While the United Kingdom has expressed willingness to engage in multilateral disarmament negotiations, China and France would likely wait for the United States and Russia to substantially reduce their stockpiles before joining talks, Steven Pifer, Director of the Brookings Institution’s Arms Control Initiative, told NS&D Monitor this week. “My guess is you’re not going to get any of the three right now to jump into a negotiation that would reduce their levels,” he said.
While some have expressed concern to China that the country might seek nuclear parity with Russia and the United States, Beijing has explained that that is not China’s intention, Xu Weidi, senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Studies at China’s National Defense University, said during a speech this week. China has called for more nuclear disarmament before it signs any binding disarmament agreement. The “time is not ready yet,” Weidi said.
What Would a Reasonable Multilateral Deal Look Like?
Both Pifer and Kingston Reif, Director of Disarmament/Threat Reduction at the Arms Control Association, said a reasonable multilateral deal would involve pledges by the United Kingdom, France and China to not expand their arsenals in exchange for Russian and U.S. disarmament. “You can tell the Chinese that you’ve got to reduce, even though, we’ll still be left…[with] a thousand strategic deployed nuclear weapons,” Reif told NS&D Monitor as an example. “It’s just not going to fly.” Pifer said Russian officials like Uliyanov have thrown several caveats into the nuclear disarmament discussion in recent years, including trying to bring U.S. missile defense into the mix. “It really has kind of the sense that what the Russians are doing is creating reasons not to do or not to discuss further reductions,” Pifer said.
