Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
2/28/2014
An Obama Administration official said this week that the Senate was informed of a possible issue involving Russian compliance with an arms control treaty in the fall of 2010, several months before the Senate cleared the New START Treaty. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee Feb. 25, Brian McKeon, President Obama’s nominee to be Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, said an “issue” was “flagged” by the intelligence community in mid-September 2010 about potential Russian violations of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. He said the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees were notified of the issue a day before the Foreign Relations Committee voted on the New START Treaty.
Republicans on the panel have raised questions about when the Administration knew about the violations, which are believed to have occurred beginning in 2008, especially in the context of debate on the New START Treaty, which the Senate ratified in December of 2010. At the time, McKeon was the top liaison to Vice President Joe Biden on New START. He is currently the chief of staff for the National Security Council. “The IC [intelligence community] and the executive branch were committed to providing timely information about potential concerns,” McKeon said, adding that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also raised the issue during an all-Senators briefing in late September 2010.
‘The Issue is Not Closed’
McKeon testified alongside Under Secretary of Defense for Policy nominee Christine Wormuth and others. After the hearing, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he would block the nomination of Wormuth and Deputy Defense Secretary nominee Robert Work due to “naïve” answers to questions at the hearing. The questions dealt with the Littoral Combat Ship and not the INF Treaty, and there is not believed to be a hold on McKeon.
Citing classification concerns, McKeon largely tap-danced around the substance of the alleged violations, which are believed to center on Russian tests of a new land-based cruise missile that violates the treaty. “We are concerned about the Russian activity that appears to be inconsistent with the INF treaty,” McKeon said. “We’ve raised this with the Russians. The Russians have come back to us with an answer which we do not consider to be satisfactory, and we’ve told them that the issue is not closed.”
GOP Sens. Raise Concerns
Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) outlined their concerns in a Feb. 20 letter to McKeon last week. “We are concerned that the relevant committees of the United States Senate may not have been fully briefed by the Obama administration on the potential Russian treaty violations during consideration of the New START Treaty in 2010,” Ayotte and Wicker wrote. “If the administration knew about potential violations of the treaty and did not fully inform the Senate of these violations while it debated New START, this would represent a serious abrogation of the administration’s responsibilities.”
The INF Treaty that was signed by the Soviet Union and the United States in 1987 required each country to get rid of missiles with ranges of 300 and 4,000 miles, and the accord also prevents each country from testing or building such weapons. But reports last month suggested that top State Department officials met with NATO allies in January to provide info on alleged Russian tests of a new land-based cruise missile that violates the treaty. “If the article is accurate, these violations raise serious concerns about Russia’s commitment to its treaty obligations, as well as the administration’s commitment to keep Congress fully informed,” the Senators wrote.
Senators Unsatisfied
The Senators were not satisfied with McKeon’s response at the hearing. “I have very serious concerns about this,” said Wicker, who was upset that McKeon’s response letter came late Monday night and was classified. “And I will alert members of the committee and members of the Senate that I do not believe this committee and this body was provided with all of the information that you had and that we needed to know to cast a fully informed vote on the New START Treaty, but we will follow up in the proper context.”
Ayotte suggested that the Administration has an obligation to notify Congress of even potential violations. “Let me just say for the record that I believe that we were not fully informed,” said Ayotte, who was not in the Senate at the time, adding: “Regardless of how the intelligence community viewed particular information … Congress should be fully informed.” She said she would press the issue in a classified setting with McKeon.
Rubio: Inaction on INF Treaty Impacts U.S. Credibility
At a separate event Feb. 25, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pushed the Obama Administration to take a harder stance against Russia’s alleged violations of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, suggesting that not treating the violation as a “red line” reduces U.S. credibility among its allies. “I think that should be very concerning to all of us,” Rubio said at a Heritage Foundation event, “because its impact goes well beyond that particular agreement. Its impact affects how other nations view us and the decisions they make and the assumptions they make about what’s in their own national security, if they believe the U.S. is no longer a reliable security partner.”
Administration officials have said they are still investigating the violations, but Rubio suggested the fact that the Administration is still pushing for another round of arms control negotiations with Russia also hurts U.S. credibility. He said that issue is being debated in the Senate’s National Security Working Group that he co-chairs. “One of the areas we continue to focus on is the argument that we should not be entering anymore negotiations with the Russians on any weapons systems so long as they are openly violating [treaties]—and I mean openly. All you have to do is read Russian media reports to learn that they are habitually violating multiple different agreements. I hope that will become a priority for us. We should take that more seriously than we do.”
