Argument: Problems with Verification.

Verification is vital in any agreement to limit arms. Both sides need to trust each other a bit but a lot of this trust needs to come from comprehensive mechanisms to monitor and ensure that both sides are carrying out their commitments. If the verification system is not good enough then neither side will have faith in the agreement and will be more likely to try and bypass it.

Unfortunately the expired START’s verification regime was robust when compared to that for the New START. Baker Spring at the Heritage foundation lists some of the specific areas that are significantly less robust: A narrowing of the requirements for exchanging telemetry (electronic transmissions that give details of missile performance that helps give a good idea about whether Russia is complying with the treaty) , A reduction in the effectiveness of the inspections (the Russians feel that inspections are unfairly biased against them), Weaknesses in the ability to verify the number of deployed warheads on ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), Abolition of the START verification regime governing mobile ICBMs, and A weakening of the verification standards governing the elimination of delivery vehicles. [1]

[1] Spring, Baker. "Twelve Flaws of New START That Will Be Difficult to Fix". Heritage Foundation, The Foundry. 16 September 2010. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/09/twelve-flaws-of-new-start-that-will-be-difficult-to-fix?query=Twelve+Flaws+of+New+START+That+Will+Be+Difficult+to+Fix

Candidate 1: "Agreements between the biggest nuclear powers are a good starting point towards disarmament. We cannot expect countries with a very small number of nuclear weapons to be disarming if the countries that have the vast majority of the world’s arsenal have not already begun the process of getting rid of their own. Even the reductions in New START will not bring either Russia or the United States anywhere near the level of any other nuclear power whose nuclear weapons number in the hundreds not thousands. Both countries would need to reduce a very long way before they lose deterrence against China, let alone North Korea. As former secretaries of state argue America has “long led the crucial fight to protect the United States against nuclear dangers… The world is safer today because of the decades-long effort to reduce its supply of nuclear weapons. As a result, President Obama should remain similarly courageous with New START.” [1]

If linkage between the New START and Russian action on Iran exists then this would not always be a bad thing. Linkage has been used successfully in the past, and to the advantage of the U.S., for example Kissinger credited the peace agreement with North Vietnam in Paris in 1973 as being down to linkage which resulted in pressure on North Vietnam from the People’s Republic of China and the USSR. If linkage could be successful in bringing Russia onside in pressurizing Iran on the issue of nuclear weapons it could be to the benefit of the United States.

[1] Kissinger, Henry A. ; Shultz, George P. ; Baker III, James A’ ; Eagleburger , Lawrence S. ; and Powell, Colin L. "The Republican case for ratifying New START". Washington Post. 2 December 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120104598.html?hpid=opinionsbox1"
Candidate 2: "Many of the worries about the impact of the treaty are much more of a political problem than problems with the treaty itself. U.S. missile modernization in particular is still up to the President and Congress to sort out the funding between them – the restrictions are minor. [1] Worries about the impact on missile defense are also a red herring. Missile defense is not aimed at Russia and the United States simply needs to make sure that its defenses are obviously aimed at who it says they are aimed at: rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. Regarding other defence capabilities, the New START Treaty preserves America’s ability to deploy effective missile defenses, and simply prevents it from being effective enough to undermine deterrence, something which Russia would be right in worrying about if the United States had any intention of building such a comprehensive missile defence. The prohibition on converting existing launchers will have little impact on the United States as the military believes that such conversion would be more expensive and less effective than building new purpose built defensive missiles. [2] Finally if Russia did exercise its right to withdraw then both parties would be in no worse a position than they would have been without the new treaty and could simply restart negotiations.

[1] Spring, Baker. "Twelve Flaws of New START That Will Be Difficult to Fix". Heritage Foundation, The Foundry. 16 September 2010. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/09/twelve-flaws-of-new-start-that-will-be-difficult-to-fix?query=Twelve+Flaws+of+New+START+That+Will+Be+Difficult+to+Fix

[2] Kissinger, Henry A. ; Shultz, George P. ; Baker III, James A’ ; Eagleburger , Lawrence S. ; and Powell, Colin L. "The Republican case for ratifying New START". Washington Post. 2 December 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120104598.html?hpid=opinionsbox1"
Candidate 3: "The New START treaty does not help Russia more than it does the United States. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates argued at the time the Russians are currently “above the treaty limits. So they will have to take down warheads.” [1] If there really is undercounting of missiles on bombers then it affects both sides equally – as Romney says “While we currently have more bombers than the Russians”, so this too should not be a worry. Russia does not currently deploy rail-mobile ICBMs and neither does the United States, explain why the definitions are not there. However the State Department argues that “If a Party develops and deploys rail-mobile ICBMs, such missiles, their warheads, and their launchers would be subject to the Treaty.” As the definitions of ICBM launchers would include them. [2] Finally we should recognize that we do not know that Russia would have reduced its bomber and missile forces without a new treaty, while Russia has more difficulty maintaining its nuclear forces than the United States so has more incentive to reduce them, but without a treaty it might even increase its forces due to a desire to keep parity with the United States while the US has a big lead in conventional weapons. [3]

Furthermore, any agreement made between Russia and the US needs to be one that benefits both parties, it does not matter if someone is getting more than the other. Getting an agreement that meets the needs of both countries is far more important, because it will be upheld more so than one that simple gives both countries the same. Fair and efficent does not mean spilting a pie in half, if one only wanted the crust, and the other only wanted the filling.

[1] Isaacs, John, ‘Rebuttals to Additional Arguments Against “New START”’, The Center For Arms Control And Non-Proliferation, http://armscontrolcenter.org/policy/nuclearweapons/articles/rebuttals_to_arguments_against_new_start/

[2] Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation, ‘Rail-Mobile Launchers of ICBMs and their Missiles’, U.S. Department of State, 2 August 2010, http://www.state.gov/t/avc/rls/145557.htm

[3] Isaacs, John, ‘Rebuttals to Additional Arguments Against “New START”’, The Center For Arms Control And Non-Proliferation, http://armscontrolcenter.org/policy/nuclearweapons/articles/rebuttals_to_arguments_against_new_start/"
Candidate 4: "The verification requirements of New START have satisfied not only the Obama Administration but also a large number of foreign policy experts. A panel including Henry Kissinger argues that New START “emphasizes verification, providing a valuable window into Russia's nuclear arsenal." [1] Howard Baker argues that: "President Reagan was famous for his adage about dealing with the old Soviet Union: “Trust but verify.” Since the last START treaty expired in December 2009, we’ve had no right to conduct inspections of Russian nuclear bases, and thus no way to verify what the Russians are doing with their nuclear weapon systems. For us veterans of the Cold War, that’s an alarming fact and a compelling reason to ratify this New START treaty without further delay." [2]

When the allegations are gone through individually they do not stand up to scrutiny. On the telemetry issue the treaty does not limit throw-weight so the data is not needed; the number of warheads per missile can be verified by other means. There are less facilities being inspected, but more inspections and the decline in Russia’s nuclear forces means that not so many facilities need to be inspected. [3] There is no reason to be worried about the numbers of missiles as there will be a database detailing all the weapons both sides have and inspections to confirm this, [4] this will also mean that there are unique identifier tags on each missile, launcher and bombers so helping inspectors in their counting. [5] Mobile launchers are much less of a problem than they were as we already know the base number the Russia has whereas when START was originally negotiated the US did not know. Technology to track such mobile launchers has also become much more powerful. Finally if worried about the verification of the elimination of delivery vehicles both sides will have the right to inspect the debris and to demand demonstration of the procedures. [6] Neither side will be able to get around the new START’s verification regime.

[1] Kissinger, Henry A. ; Shultz, George P. ; Baker III, James A’ ; Eagleburger , Lawrence S. ; and Powell, Colin L. "The Republican case for ratifying New START". Washington Post. 2 December 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120104598.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[2] Baker, Howard. "Dangerous if we reject New START." USA Today. http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=65289

[3] Blook, Oliver, ‘Nothing to Fear with New START Verification’, Center For Strategic &amp; International Studies, 8 July 2010, http://csis.org/blog/nothing-fear-new-start-verification

[4] Woolf, Amy F., ‘The New START Treaty: Central Limits and Key Provisions’, Congressional Research Service, 24 October 2011, p.3, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R41219.pdf

[5] ‘Verification of New START’, Union of Concerned Scientists, 13 July 2010, http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_global_security/nuclear_weapons/technical_issues/verification-of-new-start.html

[6] Blook, Oliver, ‘Nothing to Fear with New START Verification’, Center For Strategic &amp; International Studies, 8 July 2010, http://csis.org/blog/nothing-fear-new-start-verification"

The verification requirements of New START have satisfied not only the Obama Administration but also a large number of foreign policy experts. A panel including Henry Kissinger argues that New START “emphasizes verification, providing a valuable window into Russia's nuclear arsenal." [1] Howard Baker argues that: "President Reagan was famous for his adage about dealing with the old Soviet Union: “Trust but verify.” Since the last START treaty expired in December 2009, we’ve had no right to conduct inspections of Russian nuclear bases, and thus no way to verify what the Russians are doing with their nuclear weapon systems. For us veterans of the Cold War, that’s an alarming fact and a compelling reason to ratify this New START treaty without further delay." [2]

When the allegations are gone through individually they do not stand up to scrutiny. On the telemetry issue the treaty does not limit throw-weight so the data is not needed; the number of warheads per missile can be verified by other means. There are less facilities being inspected, but more inspections and the decline in Russia’s nuclear forces means that not so many facilities need to be inspected. [3] There is no reason to be worried about the numbers of missiles as there will be a database detailing all the weapons both sides have and inspections to confirm this, [4] this will also mean that there are unique identifier tags on each missile, launcher and bombers so helping inspectors in their counting. [5] Mobile launchers are much less of a problem than they were as we already know the base number the Russia has whereas when START was originally negotiated the US did not know. Technology to track such mobile launchers has also become much more powerful. Finally if worried about the verification of the elimination of delivery vehicles both sides will have the right to inspect the debris and to demand demonstration of the procedures. [6] Neither side will be able to get around the new START’s verification regime.

[1] Kissinger, Henry A. ; Shultz, George P. ; Baker III, James A’ ; Eagleburger , Lawrence S. ; and Powell, Colin L. "The Republican case for ratifying New START". Washington Post. 2 December 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120104598.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

[2] Baker, Howard. "Dangerous if we reject New START." USA Today. http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=65289

[3] Blook, Oliver, ‘Nothing to Fear with New START Verification’, Center For Strategic &amp; International Studies, 8 July 2010, http://csis.org/blog/nothing-fear-new-start-verification

[4] Woolf, Amy F., ‘The New START Treaty: Central Limits and Key Provisions’, Congressional Research Service, 24 October 2011, p.3, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R41219.pdf

[5] ‘Verification of New START’, Union of Concerned Scientists, 13 July 2010, http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_global_security/nuclear_weapons/technical_issues/verification-of-new-start.html

[6] Blook, Oliver, ‘Nothing to Fear with New START Verification’, Center For Strategic &amp; International Studies, 8 July 2010, http://csis.org/blog/nothing-fear-new-start-verification
