Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
3/13/2015
A “new Russian security doctrine” which “explicitly reprioritizes” nuclear forces poses a direct challenge to bilateral disarmament efforts, but the U.S. remains open to engaging Russia on a range of issues affecting strategic stability, according to Tom Countryman, Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation. “We’re also realistic about how much can be achieved without a willing partner in the current difficult strategic environment,” he told attendees of a March 6 speech at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.
The State Department released his remarks on March 11. Mikhail Ulyanov, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s department on arms control, on March 11 signaled an openness to deploying nuclear weapons in Crimea, according to a Reuters article. “I don’t know if there are nuclear weapons there now,” Ulyanov was quoted as saying. “I don’t know about any plans, but in principle Russia can do it.”
NPT RevCon Upcoming
Countryman’s and Ulyanov’s remarks come one month before the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference (RevCon) in New York. Countryman said at the conference the U.S. will focus on assessing and updating the NPT action plan developed in 2010, and on clarifying its position on disarmament to states not aligned with the NPT. “We need now at next month’s conference to take stock of the action plan and update it,” he said. “We developed a series of working papers on how to update the action plan which we are now circulating in diplomatic channels. We want to reinforce all the parts that are relevant, which is most of it, and identify what can be advanced as a result of next month’s Review Conference. And of course we are actively studying all the papers produced by friends around the world because they contain valuable ideas on how to advance the goals of disarmament and nonproliferation.”
Countryman said the 2010 development of a consensus-based action plan was a “breakthrough,” and that the plan’s validity holds true today. “It is a useful yardstick for implementing steps that strengthen the treaty,” he said. “It is not, however, a deadline.”
U.S. Prepared to Defend Disarmament Approach
Countryman pledged the U.S. will be prepared to defend its disarmament approach, which he said involves taking “discrete, practical steps.” The approach “has achieved major reductions in nuclear weapons and fissile material stocks over several decades and continues to do so,” he said. “It is a practical approach. It is a verifiable approach, and we’re prepared to explain it and defend it at the Review Conference.”
Arms control advocates last year criticized Amb. Robert Wood, U.S. Special Representative to the Conference on Disarmament, after he said efforts to move nuclear disarmament into humanitarian law circles only “distract” from the agenda of the 2010 action plan. “We will not support proposals to set up new UN mechanisms to address nuclear disarmament,” Wood said. “Such mechanisms would fare no better because the same political challenges present in existing disarmament bodies would be replicated in any new multilateral body.”
Countryman also cited the need to enforce violations and abuse of NPT Article 10. “We need to discuss how to hold accountable violators of the their own obligations and we also want to develop a consensus about how to address states that may abuse Article 10 of the treaty which gives states the right to withdraw from the NPT,” he said. “The treaty is not perfect, it is not immune to challenge, but it is irreplaceable and could not be replicated if we allow it to fall apart.”
