The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) might lose political support in Congress if the U.S.-Russia New START nuclear arms control treaty lapses, the immediate past head of the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency said Wednesday.
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 a webcast hosted by the nonprofi 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,” Klotz said. “ 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.”
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 place limits on Russian tactical nuclear arsenal.
Those who support 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 treaty 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 concessions on nuclear arms, and were totally unable to stop the Trump administration’s low-yield warhead supplement to the Barack Obama administration’s modernization program.
