Russia’s presidential swap, which brought Vladimir Putin back to power last month, isn’t expected to bring about big changes to the arms control relationship between Moscow and Washington, according to the State Department’s top arms control official. Speaking at the Arms Control Association’s annual meeting yesterday, acting Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller noted that Putin has expressed an interest in maintaining arms control talks with the United States in statements before and after last month’s election. “There’s an emphasis in each of those documents on continuing the arms control agenda, continuing the arms control work,” Gottemoeller said. “There aren’t any details laid out there, but I do think it is important that that kind of emphasis has appeared, and [it is] also a very positive perspective on implementation of the New START Treaty.” She added: “As far as the arms control traditional nuclear arms control environment I see a continuity there with the way this issue has been approached since the late ‘60s, early 1970s with the Soviet Union.”
She also suggested that one of the major stumbling blocks to future nuclear talks—Russia’s insistence that the U.S. remove its tactical nuclear weapons from Europe before it would include its own tactical stockpile in talks—wouldn’t be “big blockages.” The Obama Administration has said it would like to include tactical nuclear weapons in any new round of arms control talks. Gottemoeller said she considered the issue, and other Russian conditions, as “issues that must be worked in the run-up to negotiations, and we’ll see where we get. They may see an interest over time in enhanced transparency and understanding further what’s going on in for example former Warsaw Pact facilities that have now been closed out and no longer hold nuclear weapons. They may be interested in learning more about the issue. Let’s work the issue and let’s see where we get and we’ll see what we do about a negotiation.”