President Donald Trump has yet to lay out a straightforward message regarding his approach to nuclear arms control, but any pullback from the U.S.-Russian New START accord could be unfortunate at best, according to Thomas Countryman, who last month ended his decades-long career at the State Department as the agency’s top arms control official.
“So far there’s been no coherent statement from the administration about their intentions in this field, about any of the issues of the field of arms control or nonproliferation. There’s only a series of tweets and contradictory statements out of the White House,” Countryman said in an interview with NS&D Monitor.
Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin inherited New START, which was signed by their predecessors in 2010 and requires both nations by next February to deploy no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on 700 long-range delivery systems. While speaking with Putin by telephone on Jan. 28, Trump reportedly appeared unfamiliar with the treaty and described it as one of a number of bad bilateral deals sealed by President Barack Obama.
The treaty has a withdrawal clause, but the White House has not given any signal on whether it would pull the trigger. That also applies to its approach to the permitted five-year extension for the accord, which would push its expiration back from 2021 to 2026.
Trump is not quite one-third of the way through his agenda-setting first 100 days in office, so any lack of clarity on New START is understandable. And the embattled administration has many other challenges, both internal (questions about its links to Russia, culminating in the rapid exit of national security adviser Michael Flynn) and external (recent ballistic missile tests by Iran and North Korea).
But the treaty will have to be addressed at some point, and the wrong decision could lead to a new nuclear arms race, Countryman said: “We perhaps could afford a new nuclear arms race better than the Russian Federation can, but there’s no economic or military logic for pursuing such an arms race, and New START is what’s holding back that sort of arms race.”
Countryman spent 35 years at the State Department, serving at several embassies and then in a number of positions of greater authority. He retired on Jan. 31, at the Trump administration’s request, as acting undersecretary for arms control and international security and assistant secretary for international security and nonproliferation.
Since then, he has not been shy about his opinions regarding the administration, tweeting on Thursday, for example: “Hannah Arendt wrote of the banality of evil. Is it time for us to begin discussing the incompetence of evil?”
In the following interview, Countryman discussed his exit from the State Department, the key strategic issues facing the United States, New START, and a host of related issues. The article has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Countryman will join dozens of officials and issue experts presenting at the ExchangeMonitor’s Nuclear Deterrence Summit, being held from Feb. 28 to March 2 at the Capitol Hilton in Washington, D.C.
We’re speaking on Feb. 14. On Nov. 8, or even into late 2016, had you anticipated that on this day you’d still be in your position at the State Department while the new administration settled in?
I expected that it would be the practice as in similar transitions, that key officials in the Department of State and other departments, particularly if they were career appointees rather than political, would be in their position until their successors were named and confirmed.
So that was fairly unusual. It’s not unprecedented, but it is fairly unusual that so many key officials in State and other agencies were let go, before there is a replacement even nominated.
There was a lot of chatter regarding how your retirement played out, particularly the word that you were actually turned around while traveling to Rome. Can you say how the whole situation broke down?
It’s a normal practice for every Senate-confirmed official, political or career, to tender a letter of resignation. Tender means the same as it does when you tender a contract: it’s something that can be accepted or ignored.
So, like every other official, I tendered my resignation in December. I was actually in Amman, Jordan, at a meeting together with British and Russian colleagues with Arab League officials, when I got a phone call from Washington saying that my resignation had been accepted. So instead of flying on to Rome after that meeting in Amman, I flew straight back to Washington, signed things, locked things up, packed up my desk, and was gone a few days later.
Is this something you see in every administration, or if not how has it been different here?
First, it’s not bad for me, I’m happy to be retired. Second, every president has the right to appoint his own people, so I’ve got no right to complain for myself.
I am concerned that this is different from any other administration in the way that the top levels of the State Department have been left with a vacuum at a time when there are many pressing foreign policy concerns, and that is unprecedented.
That goes into my next question: From your position now, what would you say are the most pressing arms control or nuclear security issues facing the United States?
The most important is North Korea. They continue to make steady progress toward being able to mount nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles and eventually on ballistic missiles with sufficient range to reach the United States. That’s a serious challenge, not only in the direct threat to the United States, but in terms of the confidence it would give North Korea to engage in other adventures in their own neighborhood.
Second is to ensure that the Iran deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, continues to be implemented faithfully by all parties to the agreement. And that means Iran and the United States. It is a deal that does not solve all our problems with Iran, but it does address the nuclear problem in a way that gives us confidence that Iran will not be able to develop nuclear weapons.
Third, I would say the importance of getting back to strategic stability discussions with the Russian Federation. We have the New START agreement, which is being implemented faithfully by both sides and which is good for America’s national security. But we can do more in terms of reducing nuclear risk by getting back to that conversation with Russia.
Can the discussions with Russia, or really any of those matters, be addressed sufficiently without that top level at the State Department that is still missing?
Well, certainly I left behind at the State Department … highly qualified individuals who have experience in negotiations with Russia, who understand the strategic issues involved, and they’re fully capable of negotiating. But without direction, without affirmation that they are pursuing the path that the White House wants to pursue, they can’t really get stuff started on the project.
How ready do you think the White House, particularly relative to the events of the last day [Flynn resigned on Feb. 13], is to set that direction and to really take on these issues?
Frankly, not at all ready.
What does it need to do to get ready?
Well, there are qualified people in the middle and lower ranks of the National Security Council. But, to my knowledge, there’s not been a good discussion of the direction that this administration wants to take with Russia. I think that’s been further thrown into confusion in the last day.
The arms control-strategic stability discussions do not have to be linked with every other issue that stands between Washington and Moscow. But there has to be some coherent, some clear vision of the general direction, and we certainly don’t have that yet from the White House.
The INF Treaty has been a source of tension between the U.S. and Russia for years, and The New York Times reported today that Russia has started to deploy the missile that has been at the center of that. Is this a treaty that can be saved?
Certainly that’s the United States’ goal, and it should be, to bring Russia back into compliance with its obligations under the INF Treaty. It’s an extremely important treaty for the security of not only the United States but of our allies in Europe and elsewhere. Whether, and how, we can bring Russia back into compliance is a difficult issue that the Obama administration worked on for several years and the Trump administration has yet to begin.
How would a presidential administration go about trying to bring back Russia into the fold on the INF Treaty?
No. 1 is to consult closely with allies. You have to keep in mind that NATO allies are the ones who would be threatened by any deployment of Russian intermediate-range nuclear missiles. That’s the first thing, to keep the alliance strong and together.
Second is to maintain a tough position in terms of insisting on Russian compliance with the treaty, making clear that it is difficult to move forward on other issues if Russia intends to remain outside the bounds of that treaty.
More specific than that, it’s very difficult to say.
North Korea seemingly obviously, possibly Iran, appear to be testing the new president. Do you see moves by Russia as it relates to the INF Treaty as being along those lines?
Well, it is very difficult to draw a distinction between a move that is seen as a test or a provocation of a new president and one that is a normal step in long-term programs that Iran and North Korea and Russia are each pursuing.
I don’t immediately see them as a test of a new president, but obviously the new administration has to deal with these in a firm but measured manner. And I hope that we will continue to see that sort of approach.
New START and the INF Treaty would seem to be obvious components of a discussion on strategic stability with Russia. Overall, what should those talks involve?
First, I would hope that we would see both capitals agree to an extension of the New START treaty, as provided for in the treaty, for an additional five-year period from 2021 to 2026. Both sides are implementing it faithfully and it’s working well for the national security or both countries.
Second, the INF Treaty has to be addressed in those kinds of discussions.
Third, we should continue to press, as the Obama administration did without success, for the Russians to engage in additional reductions of nuclear weapons, both strategic and tactical, both long range and short range.
Those are the key elements. The Russians will also want to put on the table the missile defense plans of the United States, which they see as a threat to strategic stability.
Those are just some of the items on the agenda. You could discuss each of them separately, but ultimately I think that the whole discussion is of a piece, and ideally we get to the kind of discussion with Russia where all of those topics can be on the table.
Do you have any sense that the administration, rather than pursuing an extension of New START, might actually walk back from it?
Yeah, that Reuters report certainly gave me that concern. That would be a spectacularly dumb move by this administration to walk away from New START.
We perhaps could afford a new nuclear arms race better than the Russian Federation can, but there’s no economic or military logic for pursuing such an arms race, and New START is what’s holding back that sort of arms race.
Presuming that an extension were on the table, would some of those issues you mentioned – missile defense, or what have you – be wrapped into that, or could the two sides just say, “An extension is a good idea, we’ll deal with everything else later”?
In my opinion that second option would be the wiser course.
Is that the option you think they’ll take?
I have no idea.
What’s the likelihood that the administration would pursue new nuclear arms control talks?
So far there’s been no coherent statement from the administration about their intentions in this field, about any of the issues of the field of arms control or nonproliferation. There’s only a series of tweets and contradictory statements out of the White House.
Given the administration’s complex relationship with Russia, including the president’s statements of admiration for President Putin, does that all play into how it addresses the issues we’ve been discussing – and how?
Well, that’s complex. What I would say about the arms control and arms limitation treaties that the U.S. has concluded with the Soviet Union and with the Russian Federation is that they have been balanced and reciprocal, that is they impose identical or nearly identical limits on both countries, and they impose equal obligations for verification on both countries. They have not been linked historically to other issues in a very fraught relationship.
I continue to believe that that is the best course, that there shouldn’t be incentives given to the Russian Federation in return for concluding an agreement that is symmetrical and balanced. So I frankly don’t understand the idea that the president-elect threw out at one point that seemed to link the easing of sanctions on Russia with a new arms control agreement. I think that a terrible way to negotiate is to put that sort of linkage on the table in advance.
But clearly the overall relationship with Russia, and the degree of trust the two countries can build on other issues, that’s always been the case that has been to the benefit of arms control discussions.
