Air Force Commander: "The START Treaty Ought to be Ratified."

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today, Wednesday, November 10, 2010.

Warren Mishap No Bar To START - Colin Clark in DoD Buzz [link]

• “My sense is that the START Treaty ought to be ratified and ought to be ratified as soon as possible.” Those are the words of one of America’s most experienced and respected nuclear arms experts, Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank G. Klotz, who also happens to be the man in charge of protecting, arming and delivering the Air Force’s share of nuclear weapons.
• Klotz, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command and who was director for nuclear policy and arms control for two years at the National Security Council, put his considerable reputation on the line as he addressed calls by conservatives to kill the treaty.
• Some of [opponents] argue that the Warren Air Force base mishap, which left crews unaware of the status of 50 missiles for 46 minutes and triggered the deployment of nuclear missile security forces, marks “one of the most serious and sizable ruptures in nuclear command and control in history.”/li>
• Here is how Heritage described the incident: “On October 24, 2010, at the Warren Air Force base in Wyoming, the United States Air Force lost communication with a sizeable portion of America’s nuclear deterrent: a squadron of nuclear-armed 50 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).”
• Here is how Klotz described it: "I think it has absolutely no link at all to the START Treaty."
• Klotz stepped out this morning, putting his personal experience and judgment on the line and he deserves to be taken seriously.

Don't Stall on New START – William Hartung in The Huffington Post [link]

• The fewer nuclear weapons there are, the safer we all will be. New START offers an important step in the right direction.
• First, the administration needed to make the case for the treaty, with a particular focus on Republican skeptics whose votes were needed to reach the 67 vote total needed to ratify a treaty.
• There have been 18 hearings, dozens of briefings, hundreds of questions answered at the request of individual Senators, not to mention hundreds and hundreds of pages of reports, analysis, and testimony. An impressive bipartisan group of experts, including national security advisors and secretaries of state and defense from the Reagan, Bush (father and son) and Clinton administrations, has endorsed the treaty. So have all of the nation's top military leaders, along with key retired leaders like seven former commanders of U.S. nuclear forces.
• Holding New START hostage to the policy preferences of some -- not all -- Republican skeptics makes no sense. New START is valuable in its own right, and it will make us all safer by reducing the number of nuclear weapons in both Russia and the United States. Debates over what kind of missile defense system to build, or how much to spend on modernizing nuclear delivery vehicles and the nuclear warhead complex, should be pursued on their own merits, outside the context of the treaty.
• The Senate should ratify New START before the end of the year, during its lame duck session. There is no good reason to wait, and there are a number of very good reasons to move forward now.

The Nuclear Excess – David Hoffman in Foreign Policy [link]

• The New Start treaty on strategic weapons, which is pending ratification in the Senate, would restrict each side to 1,550 warheads, or a total of 3,100 in both the United States and Russia.
• This treaty is not taking a big bite out of nuclear arsenals. If approved, there will still be more than 19,000 nuclear weapons in the world. And most of them will still be in the United States and Russia.
• In other words, there is still a ton of work to do. What’s odd about the current debate on whether to ratify New Start is that no one really is arguing that we need so many nukes. No one can point to the threats that will be deterred. Indeed, now that the Cold War has ended, it is clear we have an overhang of weapons, far more than we need.
• The current debate over New Start is misplaced. The treaty is good for verification and continuity; the right thing to do is ratify it, and get moving to the next phase, which ought to get us to far fewer weapons. Smart roadmaps are already available.
• A surprisingly good stack of scholarship has come out recently on how we can reach that destination. These reports deserve to be read, not just thrown into a file drawer.

It Ain’t No Thing - Jeffrey Lewis in Arms Control Wonk [link]

• [A news helicopter caught footage of an interesting contrail in the sky off the coast of Los Angeles, which eventually caused a buzz in the media that the contrail came from a missile launch about which the U.S. military had no information.]
• There are multiple hypotheses for the contrail seen near Los Angeles. But the most likely one is pretty boring: It’s a jet contrail viewed from a weird angle. A jet contrail viewed from just the right angle looks a lot like a missile launch.
• The short explanation is that we don’t see a lot of jet contrails head-on, especially from the vantage point of a helicopter. So, it looks like a missile to everyone else, including a former Deputy Secretaries of Defense. But it probably isn’t.
• That would explain why no one else in LA saw a missile launch other than the helicopter crew — or, rather, why everyone else from every other angle saw a typical jet contrail — and why DSP didn’t light up like a Christmas Tree.

My Uncle, the Veteran, and His Shoebox of Memories – Susan Shaer in The Augusta Free Press [link]

• As we honor our veterans this Veterans’ Day, we embrace the prospect that the U.S. Senate will a strong step toward ensuring that many of the world’s nuclear weapons are never used.
• New START, a treaty between the U.S. and Russia, should be voted on before the end of this post-election Senate session. In September the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved New START with bipartisan support. Now the treaty is ready to be considered and voted on by the full Senate.
• For almost one year, there have been no on-site inspections of Russia’s large nuclear arsenal. New START must be promptly ratified by the full Senate in order to reestablish inspections. This is vital to a transparent and stable relationship with nuclear – armed Russia.
• As a veteran, my uncle, patriot to his dying day, and honoring his fighting partners, knew without question that using a nuclear weapon would be wrong. Therefore, it should be no surprise that New START has the unanimous support of the United States military.
• The recent election demonstrated a clear desire by voters for bi-partisanship. New START would be a huge step to show the country that Republicans and Democrats can work together for the good of the country and the world.
• The United States Senate can validate veterans with this vote. I know my Uncle would love to know that the country he and his buddies fought for understands that ratification of New START is good for American security, improves international stability, supports the fighting soldiers, and makes the entire world safer.

India, U.S. Back Talks by All Nuclear-Armed Nations – Global Security Newswire [link]

• The United States and India yesterday jointly called for dialogue between the world's five acknowledged nuclear powers and the three nations that have developed nuclear weapons outside of the global nonproliferation regime.
• U.S. President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh released a joint statement that "affirmed the need for a meaningful dialogue among all states possessing nuclear weapons to build trust and confidence and for reducing the salience of nuclear weapons in international affairs and security doctrines."
• The heads of state of the world's two largest democracies also "support strengthening the 6 decade-old international norm of nonuse of nuclear weapons," according to the statement. Obama yesterday wrapped up his high-profile trip to the South Asian nation.

A View From the Dark Side

Why Rush to Cut Nukes? – John Bolton and John Yoo in The New York Times [link]

• The treaty’s supporters are likely to try to rush it through the Senate before Congress adjourns. They worry that since the Republicans have gained six seats, New Start will fail to get the required two-thirds majority when the new Senate convenes in January.
• New Start’s faults are legion. The low limits it would place on nuclear warheads ignore the enormous disparities between American and Russian global responsibilities and the importance of America’s “nuclear umbrella” in maintaining international security.
• The Obama administration hopes to sell this dangerous bargain with a package of paper promises. The Foreign Relations Committee’s resolution contains various “conditions,” “understandings” and “declarations” holding that New Start doesn’t “impose any limitations on the deployment of missile defenses” or dilute Congress’s aspiration to defend the nation from missile attack. A second understanding exempts conventional weapons systems with a global reach. A third affirms Congress’s commitment to the safety and reliability of the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
• To prevent New Start from gravely impairing America’s nuclear capacity, the Senate must ignore the resolution of ratification and demand changes to the treaty itself. These should include deleting the preamble’s language linking nuclear arsenals to defense systems, and inserting new language distinguishing conventional strike capacities from nuclear launching systems or deleting limits on launchers entirely. Congress should pass a new law financing the testing and development of new warhead designs before approving New Start.