Mutual Nuclear Inspections Are a Gain for the U.S. Not a “Concession” to Russia
Verifiable reductions in Russia nuclear missile stockpiles are a large gain for American national security. In order to get Russia to agree to reductions in their nuclear stockpiles, we need to agree to reduce our own stockpiles. Reductions in U.S. stockpiles are a gain for Russian national security, but they’re not a loss to American national security. We have no intention of launching a nuclear first strike on Russia, after all, and there’s nothing we could possibly gain from doing so. But of course American political leaders don’t want to agree to mutual reductions in weapons stockpiles unless the reductions are verifiable. Even though conservatives seem, in general, to have no comprehension of national security issues whatsoever I would think they could grasp this point since “trust, but verify” is inscribed in the Little Red Book of Quotations from Ronaldus Magnus.
And, again, for us to verify Russian disarmament we need to let the Russians verify American disarmament. And, again, there’s no loss to us in the this. The United States isn’t going to secretly keep missiles on line and we’re not going to launch a nuclear war with Russia. A deal for verifiable mutual disarmament is a huge, huge win for America. But as Joe Cirincione tweets out, the right is spinning the deal as some kind of unilateral concession to Russia.
16 Responses to “Mutual Nuclear Inspections Are a Gain for the U.S. Not a “Concession” to Russia”
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October 15th, 2009 at 10:12 am
the right is spinning the deal as some kind of unilateral concession to Russia.
Well, they’re fucking idiots. Ask the DoD and the intelligence community how much they love arms control onsite inspections. They’d give their left nut to keep access to those sites.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Reductions in U.S. stockpiles are a gain for Russian national security, but they’re not a loss to American national security.
Sorry, but that doesn’t make much sense. Either a larger stockpile provides a greater intimidation factor for the U.S. against Russia (in which case the Russians are right to be concerned about it, and to favor U.S. reductions), or it doesn’t (in which case the Russians have no legit security concerns).
October 15th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Matt, you say:
Neither that statement, nor the general statement behind it, have ever been official U.S. policy (although I agree they should be).
October 15th, 2009 at 11:01 am
nbt is right. The Russians might feel better about reducing our arsenal from ridiculously huge to just plain huge, but as long as we could still incinerate half the planet anytime we were crazy enough to do so, their national security hasn’t really improved.
However, I don’t think this should keep us from using nuclear reduction as a bargaining chip to achieve something we want, since it still doesn’t cost us anything. (In fact, we would save money maintaining and guarding a smaller arsenal.) If the Russians want to trade for something that doesn’t really benefit them, that’s their problem.
Although we should probably think about the reciprocal argument: a smaller, but still big enough to be devastating, Russian arsenal is really just about as dangerous to us as their current enormous one, isn’t it? So isn’t the deal about feel-good measures that don’t really improve anyone’s national security?
October 15th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
The Fox News people are such dumbshits. NEWSFLASH!!! We already allow Russians access to our nuclear missile and bomber facilities under the current START Treaty.
From the START Treaty’s section on Verification:
VERIFICATION
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was designed with verification in mind, and verification measures were negotiated in parallel with other aspects. Thus, the basic structure of the Treaty is designed to facilitate verification by national technical means (NTM). The START Treaty contains detailed, interlocking and mutually reinforcing provisions, which supplement national technical means to establish an effective verification regime. This regime provides for data exchanges and notifications on strategic systems and facilities covered by the Treaty, a ban on the denial of data from telemetry, twelve types of on-site inspection and exhibitions, continuous monitoring at mobile ICBM final assembly facilities, and cooperative measures. These elements are outlined below.
– NATIONAL TECHNICAL MEANS (NTM) – START provides for the use of, and non-interference with, national technical means of verification, e.g. satellites. There are explicit provisions prohibiting interference with NTM, or use of concealment measures that impede verification by NTM.
– TELEMETRY – Parties are prohibited from engaging in any practice that denies full access to telemetric information during missile flight tests, with certain limited exceptions. Moreover, Parties are obligated to exchange telemetry tapes, interpretative data and acceleration profiles for every test flight.
– DATA EXCHANGE AND NOTIFICATIONS – Prior to Treaty signature, the sides will exchange data on numbers, locations, and the technical characteristics of START-accountable weapons systems and facilities and will provide regular notifications and data updates thereafter.
– COOPERATIVE MEASURES – Seven times a year, either party may request the other to display in the open road-mobile launchers, rail mobile launchers and heavy bombers at bases specified by the inspecting Party. Additional cooperative measures may be requested following an operational dispersal.
– CONTINUOUS MONITORING ACTIVITIES – START establishes continuous monitoring at the perimeter and portals of each side’s mobile ICBM assembly facilities. The US has the right to establish a monitoring facility at Votkinsk, which is the final assembly facility for the SS-25, and at Pavlograd, which is the final assembly facility for the SS-24. The Soviet side has the right to monitor the Thiokol Strategic Operations facility at Promontory, Utah, the final assembly facility for the accountable stage of the Peacekeeper. Such monitoring would also be established at any future facilities at which mobile ICBM assembly takes place.
– ON-SITE INSPECTIONS (OSI) – There are twelve types of OSI and exhibitions. These are: baseline data inspections, data update inspections, new facility inspections, suspect site inspections, reentry vehicle inspections, post-exercise dispersal inspections, conversion or elimination inspections, close-out inspections, formerly declared facility inspections, technical characteristics exhibitions, distinguishability exhibitions and heavy bomber baseline exhibitions.
– COMPLIANCE – Compliance concerns may be raised by either side in the Joint Compliance and Inspection Commission (JCIC) or any other appropriate forum.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
I suppose that incremental reductions in the “ridiculously huge” (to use Chris’s language) stockpiles are necessary initially, in order to eventually arrive at a low or zero level of nukes where national security of the counterparty actually is improved. But right now the incremental reduction does not improve anyone’s security.
October 15th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
The only problem with the article is that it fails to note that any inspection scheme included in the New START treaty would be reciprocal. Both sides would have access to each others sites to count warheads and missiles. Other than that, the article is not that bad. The comments, on the other had are ill-informed, naive, and often, just plain stupid. As another reply has noted, we already conduct on-site inspections under START, and did so under INF, as well. The difference is that the START OSIs, although allowing access to a wide range of facilities, do not actually count warheads. They confirm that the number of warheads deployed on a randomly-selected missile does not exceed the number permitted on that missile in the treaty’s data base. We were looking for cheating, not trying to calculate warheads. In the new Treaty, we may be trying to confirm the deployed number, not simply confirm the absence of more than the deployed number. This is different, and likely to be more intrusive, and, as the article failed to note, certainly to be reciprocal…
October 15th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
With a ridiculous arsenal, a nation could try to launch a first strike which destroys all but the submarine launched missiles of their adversary, and still have enough weapons left to try to deter a sub-launched retributive strike.
I don’t think it is our policy, nor do I think it would work, but reductions from huge arsenals to very large arsenals reduce the risk of someone tryiong this insane strategy.
October 15th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Arms reductions and inspections are inseparable. Let’s count the tactical nukes this time.
October 15th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
The Russians care not not a wit for our nukes. They will negotiate meaningless numbers and access. Verify, don’t verify, doesn’t matter. If you have 10,000, 5,000, or 2,000 warheads, what is the difference? None. But wait! Not so fast.
What the Russians care most deeply is maintaining the ability of their ICBM’s -their MIRV’s- to reach sub orbit and release their payload unimpeded. The Russians know the United States cannot stop incoming ballistic warheads once they are in their descent phase. We do not posses that capability, and possibly never will.
But missile defense is upon us, Matt, and it is REAL and it is PRATICAL. What we have announced, boldly and clearly, is that we now have the capability to shoot down their ICBM’s before they reach sub orbit. This recent announcement by the United States is the number one game changer in the history of the cold war.
The Pentagon has picked a winner. It happens. The new version of the SM-3 is one hell of a missile. If an SM-3 can get within 1,500 nautical miles of its target, an ICBM leaving a launch site, it can track that ICBM and destroy it long before the ICBM can climb to its arc and release its payload.
The SM-3 is a SAM hunting a flying cow. It is not trying to knock out a nimble fighter or a multiple descending warheads. It hunts fully loaded ascending rockets. If the United States can get 15,000 SM-3’s in close enough, the Russians for the first time HAVE NO THEORETICAL DEFENSE AGAINST AN AMERICAN FIRST STRIKE.
And the tragic beauty is there is nothing stopping us from surrounding Russia -and all of Asia and Europe- with 15,000 SM-3’s. The SM-3 is not only highly versatile -it can be launched from many platforms- it is incredibly cheap. It costs less than $15 million. For less than $300 billion you can easily build Ronald Reagan’s cherished missile defense. But not the Star Wars version. This is REAL, and it is PRACTICAL.
What can the Russians do? They can capitulate -kowtow before their masters- or they can escalate. The can try to overwhelm the hunter/killer SM-3’s with sheer numbers. But our missiles are ten times cheaper! The Russians are in between a rock and hard place. The Russians are fucked.
October 16th, 2009 at 12:22 am
The problem, Mr. Yglesias, is that the Russians did not agree to the USA inspecting their nuclear sites.
I agree that if it is a MUTUAL inspection, it makes sense. But from everything I have read, it is Russia inspecting our nuclear missle sites and the USA not doing the same thing in Russia.
if I am mistaken, i would love for someone to put up a link where it shows that Russia is allowing United States of America government and military personnel inspect their nulcear missle sites.
thanks.
October 16th, 2009 at 12:28 am
Also, I think Mr. Ygleisas, you put too much trust on the Russians.
Just a few weeks ago the Russian government claimed that they were going to back the sanctions against Iran. A day or two ago Russia said that new sanctions against Iran would be counterproductive. Is this the trust, but verify that you are talking about? really?
Russia has also come out and said that they reserve the right to preemptively use nuclear weapons against their enemies.
I think the problem with individuals like you, Mr. Yglesias, is that despite history showing otherwise, you tend to believe that the Russians are trust worthy.
and it is Conservatives that know nothing about international relations? really? hmmm….
Only a fool, Right or Left, would believe that the Russians can be trusted.
October 16th, 2009 at 4:33 am
I’ve been thinking about this for two weeks. How did the Russians miss this? They missed it, there is no doubt. It’s like Barbarossa all over again. They were fooled completely, and when the horror of their stupidity dawned on them, they went silent -like old Joe Stalin. For 12 days, they retired to their room with a bottle.
The Russians mis-conceptualized. They thought of missile defense the way many people do, in terms of umbrella defenses and bullets trying to intercept bullets. They thought of space based weapons systems floating and firing, and fleets of Boeing 747’s retrofitted from tail to nose with nothing but a giant laser. They viewed all this, correctly, as stupid shit that could never work or was -optimistically- many decades away.
The Russians also perceived, correctly, that the Patriot class missile systems are nothing but classic-style ABM’s, missiles that rocket toward the heavens from defensive positions seeking to intercept level flight or descending warheads before those warheads detonate near the surface. The arithmetic is in the volley, 5 or 6 Patriots for each warhead, a volley from several modern Patriot launchers perhaps capable of taking out one or two incoming warheads.
But the Russians believed, again correctly: no amount of Patriot class ABM’s could intercept even a fraction of the 2,000/5,000 nuclear warheads that would descend on the United States from subspace should hostilities commence. The Russians believed -despite the Americans repeated attempts at various forms of missile defense- they remained marginally safe.
Unfortunately, and to complicate matters, the Russians have been getting increasingly paranoid over the last decade as a result of the fact they are going blind. Half of their early warning radar was lost with the former territories and their satellite network is next to worthless. They also know we now possess the ability to see almost everything they do. We can track on a minute to minute basis every mobile missile launcher in Siberia -the majority of their ICBM capability that sits in the open.
Still, the Russians believed they maintained the capability (the time) to launch a counterstrike. And despite the fact the balance of power had tipped significantly in our favor, the Russians could still be reasonably assured that the concept of MAD was still in play.
BUT, everything has changed. What I believe has dawned on the on the Russians is this: the SM-3 is not a defensive weapon at all. If it falls into a category, it would fall into the category of a combined arms weapons system -a weapons system that works in tandem with other weapons systems, in this case nuclear, to compliment one another during in a coordinated attack.
The Russians are no doubt -for the first time in the Cold War- contemplating a scenario where they can offer no defense. It is a scenario in which the United States launches a successful combined armed preemptive strike. ICBM’s and bombers are launched stateside and SM-3’s are launched shortly thereafter from land and sea based platforms stretching from Germany to the Sea of Japan. All weapons systems cruise toward Siberia and other Russian territories at various and coordinated speeds and with most of their targets ALREADY ACQUIRED.
By the time the Russians react to our incoming ICBM’s and fire their missiles the SM-3’s are streaking toward them and closing at an astonishing 4 to 1 rate. They impact Russian ICBM’s not long after they exit their silos and mobile launch pads with a force that can knock down a ten story building.
Kid, even though you know most this, you should pay me for this shit. 20 quatlooms! Remember quatlooms? Original Star Trek? The currency used by the gambling aliens with the big brains for heads? A favorite episode.
Are we contemplating attacking Russia. Not really. But for the first time since that moment when Stalin stole The Bomb 60 years ago a stabilizing -if somewhat unreal- force has left the system. Mutual Assured Destruction, suddenly and shockingly, now belongs to a bygone era.
The big question is: what are the Russians going to do? They have at most ten years. If the Russians do nothing they will be surrounded by 2020, and from close range, by first strike missiles. And don’t forget China. We are surrounding them too.
Exciting times, for you, young blogger. A new and more complex Cold War has arrived.
October 16th, 2009 at 7:47 am
@CJ – Go to the DTRA website and look up the INF and START treaties. DTRA has been sending inspectors to Soviet and Russian missile manufacturing facilities, operational missile bases, test facilities, etc., since the late 1980s. We are still sending inspectors to Russian missile facilities until START expires in December.
October 16th, 2009 at 11:53 am
I was at work and my co-worker was listening to Mr. Savage, and he was discussing this issue.
The man was going insane on the radio. Callers were suggesting that military leaders not allow Russian inspectors to view our nuclear arsenal.
His whole point was that Obama adminstration officials were traitors and giving away our national security.
I told my co worker, the aim is a treaty to get Russia to reduce nuclear weapons, something that Ronald Reagan did, and since Ronald did it that means in Republican speak that reducing nuclear weapons is good.
It potentially decreases the global threat to ourselves and other nations which could be an opening to discuss those nations halting their own aims for nuclear weapons.
Now, there can be disagreement about whether that policy pursuit will work, but to suggest that an attempt to implement that policy is treason and giving away our national security is just not reality based.
This is where we are in American politics, one party, a very flawed party, tries to address our pressing issues, while the other one babbles like crazy people.
October 16th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Pretty soon they’ll be talking about the Commies sapping our precious bodily fluids and pulling a General Jack D. Ripper.