The US and Russia Reach a New START Agreement "in Principle"

We are happy to serve you a daily summary of the day's top nuclear policy stories each morning, with excerpts from the stories in bullet form.

Stories we're following today:

 U.S., Russia Close in on Nuclear Treaty - The Wall Street Journal [link]

• U.S. and Russian arms-control negotiators have reached an "agreement in principle" on the first nuclear-arms-reduction treaty in nearly two decades, administration and arms-control officials said Tuesday.
• Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based advocacy group, said the agreement is a milestone, the first arms-control treaty to not only set goals on warhead deployments but to establish strict limits, with verification measures to hold each side to those limits.
• The deal was approved in principle last week during a phone conversation between Mr. Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Under the agreement, the Russians will share flight-test data, something they had resisted as they develop more-modern ballistic missiles.
• But Mr. Kimball said the deal will clear the way for the broader Obama nuclear agenda. When the accord is formally unveiled, he said, both sides are expected to announce "consultations" on more-ambitious arms talks that would further bring down strategic nuclear forces and limit the deployment of smaller, battlefield nuclear weapons.

Tauscher Highlights the Importance of the "Journey on the Road to Zero" - U.S. Department of State [link]

• U.S. Undersecretary for International Security and Nonproliferation Ellen Tauscher promoted Obama's nuclear agenda Wednesday at the Global Zero Summit in Paris.
• Tauscher said, "This issue animates the president, it’s not one of those issues that an aide had to tell him about. He has put his political capital and muscle behind that vision [of a world without nuclear weapons.]"
• She went on to say, "Nuclear disarmament is not the Holy Grail. It’s only worth pursuing in so far as it increases our national security. I believe that the journey on the road to zero is perhaps more important – than the goal itself.  It’s those concrete steps that we take that will enhance the national security of the United States and make the world a more stable place. So just don’t look at what we say, look at what we’re going to do over the next few months."
• Note: For the French media perspective on the Global Zero Summit in Paris, read these articles in Le Monde and Le Figaro.

Reviews and Missing Reviews - Laura Rozen in Politico [link]

• With Obama's requested 2011 budget out, and the Quadrennial Defense Review and Missile Defense Review released yesterday at the Pentagon, there are tens of thousands of pages of administration national security posture and planning documents to be poring over. And there's more to come.
• A couple other Congressionally-mandated reviews that should have come out around now appear to be delayed, including the Nuclear Posture Review.
• Among the reasons for the delay, non-proliferation hands say there are also still several issues that remain to be worked out. They describe something of a philosophical gap between the nonproliferation goals Obama set out in his Prague speech last April, and more status quo views held by factions within the government, particularly at the Pentagon.
• In a statement to nuclear disarmament advocates gathered at the Global Zero conference in Paris today, Obama said the NPR review was coming.
• "Make no mistake, this will be hard," Obama said. "Progress will be neither quick nor easy. Rather than fixed deadlines, we will work toward reductions that are historic yet realistic, ambitious yet achievable."

Ahmadinejad backs deal to remove bulk of enriched uranium from Iran - The Washington Post [link]

• A long-dormant proposal to remove the bulk of Iran's enriched uranium from the Islamic republic appeared to be revived Tuesday as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran had "no problem" with a deal initially brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
• The deal, which Iran formally rejected weeks ago, would swap low-enriched uranium for fuel for a research reactor that produces medical isotopes.
• U.S. officials had viewed the proposal involving the research reactor as a test of whether a broader diplomatic deal could be broached on Iran's nuclear programs. "There is a still a deal on the table. The question is: Is he prepared to say yes," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.
• Crowley said he was "unaware of a formal response" by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency changing its stance. "If Mr. Ahmadinejad's comments reflect an updated Iranian position, we look forward to Iran informing the IAEA," said White House spokesman Mike Hammer.

QDR's Nuclear Tea Leaves - Max Bergmann in The Wonk Room [link]

• There are also a couple of interesting tidbits from the QDR related to nuclear policy. First, this Administration is really concerned with stopping nuclear terrorism and proliferation. This isn’t really news, but the new QDR confirms the priority the Administration has given to these issues and lays out some very important tangible steps, such as investing in nuclear forensics.
• This is of key importance to deterring proliferation, since ensuring that the US can identify the source of nuclear materials that were used in a bomb, provides an added disincentive to countries contemplating proliferate to third party groups. 
• As Travis Sharp from the Center for a New American Security notes, “There is a big, big role for the nuclear weapons laboratories in the new QDR. In order to prevent WMD terrorism.”

A View from the Dark Side

Bolton: Obama's Dangerously Low Nuclear Stockpile - The National Review [link]

• John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tells National Review Online that he is skeptical of the reported “agreement in principle” between U.S. and Russian negotiators on a successor to the START treaty that expired last year.
• “On strategic offensive capabilities, we don’t know the specifics, but the levels of nuclear weapons contemplated are dangerously low,” Bolton says.
• Bolton adds that it is “still not clear what the Obama administration has agreed to on strategic [missile]-defense issues,” noting that “there is speculation in the Russian press that the Obama negotiators have made concessions in the arms-control negotiations in order to get unspecified Russian support for sanctions on Iran.”