The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) might lose political support in Congress for a key mission if the U.S.-Russia New START nuclear arms control treaty lapses, the immediate past head of the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency said this week.
About 80% of lawmakers on Capitol Hill support both nuclear arms modernization and international nuclear arms control, retired Lt. Air Force Gen. Frank Klotz said in Wednesday webcast hosted by the nonprofit Arms Control Association.
To support his case, Klotz repeated the oft-cited notion that Democrats and Republicans, in a Democratic-majority Senate nearly a decade ago, bartered New START ratification for a 30-year, $1-trillion round of nuclear weapons modernization.
“Were we to withdraw, or allow New START to expire without replacement, I think that consensus would be in jeopardy,” said Klotz, who led the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency from April 2014 to January 2018. “I think it would seriously undermine the political support, the broad political support, which has been there for both the U.S. military’s nuclear modernization program as well as that of the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration.”
The NNSA is seeking roughly a $20-billion budget for 2021, but has been about a $15-billion agency, give or take, in recent years. The semiautonomous branch of the civilian Department of Energy modernizes and maintains all the nuclear warheads and bombs in the U.S. fleet. The current round of modernization, which started in 2016, is essentially intended to refresh the existing arsenal so that weapons remain reliable into the 2080s. The U.S. also added a low-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile to its arsenal late last year.
New START is set to expire in February, unless the White House and the Kremlin extend the deal for another five years. The treaty limits the U.S. and Russia to each deploying no more than 1,550 warheads across 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers.
The Donald Trump administration has said it prefers a trilateral arms control treaty to replace New START. It also wants to constrain China’s nuclear arsenal, and to place limits on Russian tactical nuclear arsenal.
Advocates for New START say there is plenty of time to negotiate such a treaty, once the current accord is extended. Some supporters accuse the White House of using the notion of a broader pact as a ploy — an impossible gambit meant to fail, and key to the White House’s real objective of walking away from any treaty that constrains U.S. arms.
New START went into force in 2011, in a different political environment from today’s. Last year, Democrats who control the House of Representatives were unable to win many firm legislative concessions on nuclear arms, and were totally unable to stop the Trump administration’s low-yield warhead supplement to the Barack Obama administration’s $30-year, $1-trillion modernization program.
Should Trump win re-election in November and Republicans maintain even their razor-thin margin in the Senate, upper-chamber Democrats would remain the chief bulwark against expanding the U.S. nuclear triad beyond New START limits — assuming they would draw such a red line en bloc. To do that, they would have to be willing, at last move, to filibuster the annual National Defense Authorization Act, as well as defense and energy and water appropriations legislation — assuming, of course, the administration wants a post-New START force.
“I wouldn’t just assume that this is automatically bipartisan,” retired Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during Wednesday’s webcast. “I’d want to test that pretty hard. It wouldn’t be as bipartisan as it was 10 years ago.”
On the other hand, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has said he would extend New START. With Inauguration Day only two weeks before the lapse of the treaty, there is, legally speaking, time for a prospective Biden administration to extend the deal.
“None of us should forget, there’s an election in November,” Mullen said.
