The Straightforward Case for New START Ratification: "It Makes Us Safer"

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

Stories we're following today: Tuesday, September 7, 2010.

Senate Must Okay U.S.-Russia Pact on Nuclear Arms - Brigadier General John Adams in the Arizona Republic [link]

• The case for U.S. Senate ratification of the New START Treaty is straightforward:  It makes us safer.
• Senior Republican and Democratic officials from the last seven administrations have testified in favor of New START. Seven former commanders of the U.S. Strategic Command urged the Senate to ratify it. Thirty high-level national-security experts - including Bush and Reagan officials like Colin Powell and Frank Carlucci - signed an open letter in support.
• In short, there is an overwhelming consensus among the military and national security establishment in support of the treaty. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona has raised a number of questions about the treaty, and over the course of 21 Senate hearings and briefings over the last five months, those questions have been addressed.
• Rejection or delay of this treaty carries serious consequences. By the time the Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes in mid-September on whether to send it to the floor for ratification, it will have been more than 280 days since U.S. on-site monitoring of Russia's nuclear weapons and facilities was suspended.
• Given the overwhelming bipartisan support for the treaty and the serious implications of failing to renew monitoring of the Russian arsenal, the Senate should heed the advice of those experts who command our nuclear weapons and maintain our arsenal - and promptly approve New START.

Learning from Experience on Arms Control - George Shultz in the Wall Street Journal [link]

• The New Start treaty provides an instructive example of how, when everyone works at it, an important element of arms control treaties can be improved by building on past treaties and their execution.
• People responsible for monitoring the original Start treaty were included in the negotiations, so operating experience was present at the table. The result was a further advance, building on the transparency measures already in place under the Start treaty. On-site inspection now allows the total number of warheads on deployed missiles literally to be counted directly.
• The United States will have the right to select, for purposes of inspection, from all of Russia's treaty-limited deployed and nondeployed delivery vehicles and launchers at the rate of 18 inspections per year over the life of New Start. It is also important that each deployed and nondeployed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) or submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) or heavy bomber will have assigned to it a unique code identifier that will be included in notifications any time the ICBM or SLBM or heavy bomber is moved or changes status. 
• The notification of changes in weapon systems—for example, movement in and out of deployed status—will provide more information on the status of Russian strategic forces under this treaty than was available under Start.
• The original Start treaty expired last December. The time has come to start seeing again, with penetrating eyes, and to start learning from the new experience. 

Let's Reduce the Nuclear Threat - Greg Thielmann in the Omaha World Herald [link]

• Nebraska’s U.S. senators are front and center in one of the most important national security debates in Washington. The Senate will soon vote on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), signed on April 8 in Prague.
• The votes of both Sens. Ben Nelson and Mike Johanns are needed to ensure that this essential treaty does not get delayed or derailed by partisan wrangling.
• In Senate testimony, Gen. Kevin Chilton, the Omaha-based commander of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), provided three reasons for prompt ratification of New START — the treaty would limit the Russian missile warheads that pose the greatest threat to the United States; retain sufficient flexibility for U.S. deterrent forces; and re-establish a strategic nuclear arms control verification regime that provides intrusive access to and predictability for Russian nuclear forces.
• New START is an urgent, high-priority national security issue, and the Senate needs to deal with it accordingly. Since the original START expired nearly nine months ago, U.S. inspectors have not been able to monitor Russian strategic forces “up close and personal,” so gaps in our understanding of the threat they pose are growing.
• The Senate, with support of Nebraska’s delegation, must promptly approve this treaty, providing for the most efficient and effective use of the U.S. strategic deterrent and reducing the risks still posed by Russia’s arsenal.

276 Days Without Verification... and Counting - Ploughshares Fund 

• As of September 7, it has been 276 days and counting since the U.S. last had the ability to inspect Russia's strategic nuclear weapons under the now-lapsed 1991 START treaty.
• Ploughshares Fund has launched the above "Days Without Verification" counter to stress the urgent need to ratify the New START treaty.
• The counter is available for free to any organization, office, or individual who wants to post it on their website. To get a counter for your website, please contact Benjamin Loehrke - bloehrke@ploughshares.org.

UN Nuke Agency Warns Monitoring of Iran Hampered - Associated Press 

• In an unusually blunt warning, the U.N. atomic agency said Monday that its monitoring of Iran's nuclear activities is being hampered because Tehran objects to giving some agency inspectors access to its program.
• The complaint by the International Atomic Energy Agency was made in a restricted report on Iran made available to The Associated Press. It follows Iran's recent decision to strip two experienced inspectors of the right to monitor Tehran's nuclear activities after the two reported undeclared nuclear experiments.
• The quarterly report, which was being circulated to the IAEA's 35-nation board and to the U.N. Security Council, also said Iran continues to enrich uranium in contravention of U.N. Security Council demands.
• The report, by IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, also said that Iran continued to stonewall the agency in its efforts to follow up on U.S. and other intelligence indicating past experiments meant to develop a nuclear weapons program. It also warned that with the passage of time chances of establishing the accuracy of such information were diminishing.