Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
1/16/2015
Echoing the Obama Administration’s current stance, an independent panel of national security experts on Jan. 14 reiterated its recommendation published last month in a State Department report that the U.S. should work to bring Russia back in compliance with the INF Treaty and not withdraw from the agreement in an effort to bolster deteriorating bilateral relations between the two countries. The International Security Advisory Board (ISAB), a 30-member Federal Advisory Committee comprising experts with experience in arms control, disarmament, international security and nonproliferation, provides recommendations to Secretary of State John Kerry on how to strengthen the U.S. relationship with Russia. Among other recommendations, the group advised the U.S. to press Russia to correct its violations of the INF Treaty.
Speaking at the Wilson Center in Washington during an event focused on the report, ISAB member and former National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks said he had heard that theories were floating around the Pentagon what the U.S. could do in the absence of the INF Treaty. “But there isn’t a lot of money floating around the Pentagon,” he said. “Therefore, my personal view is if the INF Treaty’s going to go away, the onus should be on the Russian Federation. If they withdraw from the INF Treaty, they withdraw from the INF Treaty. If they don’t withdraw from the INF Treaty, then we will continue—we should continue—to push for compliance. I don’t think it’s useful to get into what we might do if compliance doesn’t work on the part of the government.”
During a joint House subcommittee hearing last month, Rose Gottemoeller, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, and Brian McKeon, Principal Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, both said the U.S. is continuing its effort to convince Russia to resume compliance with the INF Treaty, adding that one of the other response options to Russia’s violation is U.S. withdrawal from the agreement. The U.S. last summer accused Russia of developing a missile capable of hitting a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers in violation of the INF Treaty. Russia has denied any such violation. Also speaking at the Wilson Center, ISAB member Walter Slocombe, Senior Counsel at Washington law firm Caplin & Drysdale and former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, said INF does not cramp potential U.S. responses to Russia’s treaty violation. “I don’t think there’s anything the INF Treaty keeps us from doing that we ought to do, so we should take that as a last measure,” he said.
Russia Believes U.S. Seeks First-Strike Capability
The ISAB became concerned with what Brooks called Russian fears that the U.S. is seeking a first-strike nuclear capability against Russian strategic forces, and there is no easy way to assure Russia that the U.S. was not installing the weapons, he said. “Simple statements aren’t going to be enough, and they’re not going to be enough in our view, because the Russians won’t believe them,” Brooks said. “In part, this is because the Russian elite assumes government lines.” While global nuclear security could be an arena in which to build confidence, Brooks said it would “almost certainly” take years, rather than months, to initiate new nuclear security confidence-building measures.
Slocombe recommended the U.S. keep stable its supply of the hundreds of nuclear weapons it provides NATO, and refrain from decreasing the hundreds of nuclear weapons it currently provides under the NATO umbrella. “This is not the time to” decrease, he said. “Nuclear weapons always have political significance. … These absolutely have a political significance which is many orders of magnitude greater than their military, but this is not the time to rock that particular boat.”
