LA VISTA, Neb. — The United States could be at a strategic disadvantage without a multilateral nuclear arms-reduction treaty, the Navy admiral in charge of setting targets for U.S. nuclear weapons said here Wednesday.
“The INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty] is a great system between us and Russia to limit forces within a certain range,” Rear Adm. William Houston, deputy director of strategic targeting and nuclear mission planning for U. S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), said during a panel discussion at the 2018 STRATCOM Deterrence Symposium.
“However, we need to recognize all the potential competitors we have out there, and not entering a multilateral treaty for arms control could put us at a strategic disadvantage,” he added.
Houston spoke here only a week after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the White House was examining the future of nuclear arms-control treaties “in a holistic way,” and a little more than two weeks after President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for direct talks in Helsinki.
Strategic Command commander Gen. John Hyten told reporters here he supports the “holistic” approach to arms-control negotiations put forth by the current administration. That approach would apply to any possible follow-on to the landmark U.S.-Russian New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed during the Barack Obama administration. Hyten said he supports that treaty, but did not provide a STRATCOM wish list for a successor pact.
The White House has not said exactly what it means by a “holistic” approach to arms control. The word “holistic” appears in neither the 2017 National Security Strategy nor the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review: a document that warned of “an unprecedented range and mix of threats,” including “non-nuclear strategic attacks” that could target U.S. nuclear infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty remains on shaky ground. In 2014, the Obama administration said Russia violated the bilateral treaty by testing a cruise missile capable of operating in the prohibited range. Congress subsequently green-lighted Pentagon research into an INF-range weapon, even though the Department of Defense had not requested one.
Amid this back-and-forth arose discussion that the Cold War-era INF agreement did not do enough to stabilize nuclear-armed nations not party to it. Houston, for example, cited the threat of Chinese ballistic missiles in the Pacific region.
The INF Treaty, signed in 1987, prohibits Russia and the U.S. from fielding ground-based cruise and ballistic missiles with flight ranges between 500 kilometers and 5,500 kilometers, or about 310 miles and 3,100 miles. The measure’s ratification precipitated a massive reduction in the number of deployed tactical nuclear weapons — lower-yield weapons intended to be launched from a site near a conflict zone — by both nations.
Although the INF Treaty does not expire, the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act would if signed into law allow Trump to decide by Jan. 19, 2019, whether the United States still has an obligation under U.S. law to comply with Article VI of the pact — the section that prohibits testing and developing missiles within the prohibited range. Trump could make the decision if he finds Russia has not returned to compliance with the treaty, the bill reads.
The Senate approved the bill Wednesday, sending it to Trump’s desk.
