Rose Gottemoeller, the Obama administration’s lead negotiator of the New START nuclear arms control treaty between the U.nited States and Russia, began saying public goodbyes this week as part of her long-planned departure as deputy secretary general of NATO.
“I will be heading back to the United States and I’m looking forward to writing a book about my negotiation of the New START Treaty,” Gottemoeller said in a farewell video interview posted Wednesday by NATO public affairs. She also will be “doing, I hope, some important research that will help to continue the advance of NATO as a defense alliance with many friends and partners around the world.”
Gottemoeller had been second in command at NATO, the transatlantic defense alliance for the United States and its European allies, since October 2016. In July, NATO Director General Jens Stoltenberg announced that Romanian diplomat Mircea Geoana would replace Gottemoeller in “mid-October 2019.”
New START went into effect in 2011. Under the treaty, Russia and the United States each may deploy no more than 1,550 strategic warheads across 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers, while possessing no more than 800 deployed and nondeployed bombers, ICBMs, and SLBM launchers. The treaty will expire in February 2021, but can be extended for five years.
Gottemoeller, an unflinching arms-control advocate who publicly mourned the death of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty earlier this year, previously served in senior roles at the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Energy. At State, during the Obama administration, she was assistant secretary for arms control, verification, and compliance and undersecretary for arms control and international security.
She joined the Obama administration after a think-tank stint in the early 2000s, prior to which she held roles at DOE including deputy undersecretary for defense nuclear nonproliferation.
“I really hate to say goodbye, but it is now time,” Gottemoeller said in the video interview.
