May 29, 2014

GOTTEMOELLER: REVIEW OF RUSSIAN INF VIOLATIONS STILL ONGOING

By ExchangeMonitor

Rose Gottemoeller, the acting Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, emphasized late last week that a review of potential Russian cheating on a key arms control treaty had not been concluded. Speaking at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit Friday, Gottemoeller said a “very active compliance review process” was ongoing and that the United States was continuing to “engage” with its NATO allies and Russia about Moscow’s suspected violation of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. “There is a process in train and that’s all I will say,” Gottemoeller said. “I will stress a certain nuance though. That is, we do have a review of the compliance going on but no determination of a violation.” She paused, and then said, “Yet.”

While many experts have suggested that the INF Treaty violations could derail any remaining hope of jump-starting a new round of talks on nuclear reductions with Russia, Gottemoeller said pursuing new cuts would remain a priority. The U.S. has suggested that it could reduce its deployed strategic nuclear stockpile to about 1,000—a one-third cut below the 1,550-warhead ceiling established by the New START Treaty—though Russia has not reciprocated interest in reductions. “I can see many reasons why that would be in the Russian Federation’s interest but again it will be up to us to make that case clearly and distinctly,” Gottemoeller said. She later suggested that a new round of negotiations could pick up where New START left off. “It’s a pretty straight line trajectory,” she said. “There are very good national security reasons to do so in terms of the heavy lifting of a brand new negotiation with a lot of complex new parts, a lot of complex new procedures. That’s where I think that too makes it pretty straight forward to pursue but that case is going to have to be made about our mutual national security interests.”

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