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

Stories we're following today: Thursday, September 9, 2010.

Gates: Any Russian Arms Cheating Would Backfire - The Associated Press 

• Defense Secretary Robert Gates told lawmakers Wednesday he expects Russia to abide by a new nuclear arms treaty, but if it doesn't, that could wreck chances for future agreements.
• In a newly declassified letter provided to The Associated Press, Gates wrote that he and the top U.S. military leadership have concluded that Russia will not be able to achieve "militarily significant cheating" under the New START treaty.
• If Russia were to cheat on the New START, the Pentagon could respond by putting its doomsday submarines and bombers on higher alert and arming them with extra nuclear warheads, Gates wrote.
• "Therefore, the survivable and flexible" U.S. offensive nuclear arsenal will "help deter any future Russian leaders from cheating or breakout from the treaty, should they ever have such an inclination," the Pentagon chief wrote.
• Gates said his assessment is shared by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, who announced last week that he is retiring shortly. The Pentagon assessment is based on a recent intelligence agency report on monitoring compliance with the treaty, Gates said.

New START Is the Right START Treaty - Brad Roberts in the Wall Street Journal [link [1]]

• In "Why the Senate Should Block 'New Start'" (op-ed, Aug. 25), Robert Monroe takes aim at the treaty and the Obama administration's approach to nuclear security as set out in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). His aim is badly wide of the mark. 
• Mr. Monroe stands in stark contrast to informed observers including former Secretaries of Defense William Perry and James Schlesinger, who concluded that the 2010 NPR "gives a comprehensive and pragmatic plan for reducing nuclear risks to the United States" . . . and "offers a bipartisan path forward." The administration seeks to restore and renew bipartisanship on nuclear policy. It could not and would not do so on the basis of a treaty that would weaken U.S. security.
• The New Start treaty has been endorsed by the vast majority of living former secretaries of state and defense of both parties and by the nation's senior civilian and military leadership (including the current and seven former commanders of the U.S. Strategic Command). The New Start treaty deserves the Senate's support.

NATO Chief Anticipates Diminished Reliance on Nuclear Arsenal - Global Security Newswire [link [2]]

• The head of NATO yesterday said the military alliance will use a major summit in November to signal a reduced reliance on nuclear weapons for deterring attacks against European member nations.
• "I would expect allies to endorse the grand vision of a world without nuclear weapons," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters at a breakfast event. "But, at the same time, [they will] state that as long as nuclear weapons exist, the alliance will remain a nuclear alliance, while gradually reducing the role and number of nuclear weapons."
• Alliance member states are negotiating a consensus position on the status of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe in the lead-up to a NATO summit of heads of state, to be held Nov. 19 to 20 in Lisbon, according to the former Danish prime minister.
• Some West European leaders have proposed the removal of the roughly 200 B-61 nuclear gravity bombs deployed at six air bases in five NATO nations: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. 
• Though NATO's tactical atomic weapons were widely seen as necessary to counter a Warsaw Pact conventional armament advantage during the Cold War, German State Minister Werner Hoyer said in May that today they "no longer serve a military purpose and do not create security."

Remarks on United States Foreign Policy - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Council on Foreign Relations [link [3]]

• With Russia, when we took office, it was amid cooling to cold relations and a return to Cold War suspicion. Now, this may have invigorated spy novelists and armchair strategists, but anyone serious about solving global problems such as nuclear proliferation knew that without Russia and the United States working together, little would be achieved. So we refocused the relationship. We offered a relationship based on not only mutual respect, but also mutual responsibility.
• In the course of the last 18 months, we have a historic new arms reduction treaty, which the Senate will take up next week ...
• Our two chief negotiators, Rose Gottemoeller, our Assistant Secretary, and Ellen Tauscher, our Under Secretary, are here and they did a terrific job. We’ve had a very positive endorsement of it by former secretaries of State and Defense, of both parties, the Joint Chiefs have come out, everybody’s come out for it. And it’s a political issue. I wish it weren’t because most of these treaties pass 95 to nothing, 90 to 3. They have huge overwhelming majorities in the Senate.
• But we know that we have political issues that we have to address, which we are, and talking to those who have some questions. But I hope at the end of the day, the Senate will say, “Something should just be beyond any kind of election or partisan calculation,” and that everybody will pull together and will get that START treaty done, which I know, from my own conversations with Eastern and Central Europeans and others, is seen as a really important symbol of our commitment to continue working with the Russians.
• Watch Secretary Clinton's full remarks - and the Q&A session - below:

U.S. Welcomes South Korean Sanctions Against Iran - AFP [link [4]]

• The United States hailed new sanctions imposed by South Korea against Iran as increasing pressure on Tehran to return to the negotiating table to address concerns about its nuclear aims.
• "These actions strengthen the growing international resolve to prevent proliferation and Iran's development of nuclear weapons and to press Iran to return to serious negotiations on its nuclear program and meet its international obligations," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a joint statement.
• Seoul earlier agreed to penalize a key Iranian bank and put all financial transactions with Tehran under strict government supervision, which Clinton and Geithner said would "demonstrate to Iran the consequences of its failure to meet its international obligations."
• In the wake of a fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions in June, South Korea joins the United States, Australia, Canada and Japan in taking unilateral measures to check Iran's nuclear ambitions.