U.S.-Russian Nuclear Reductions After New START

Background

The New START treaty, ratified by the Senate on December 22nd, 2010, established a path of reductions in the total number of strategic nuclear weapons.

The U.S. Senate indicated through the New START treaty process their interest in addressing the technical and policy challenges associated with reducing the non-strategic nuclear weapons (NSNW) currently deployed in Europe and Russia, commonly referred to as “tactical nuclear weapons.”

The reduction of NSNW is burdened by several issues. There are substantial conventional force and nuclear force asymmetries—Russia has thousands of NSNW and the U.S. has hundreds. An additional complication is that while non-nuclear NATO states have varying opinions as to the utility of the U.S. NSNW, many, particularly the newer members, view the weapons as an assurance of U.S. commitment to their security. Indeed, some regard U.S. deployment of NSNW in Europe as the final and irreplaceable assurance of Washington’s commitment to their security.

Concept

To explore the texture of the various challenges associated with reductions of NSNW, CSIS and the APS proposed an experiment: a discussion of policy and technology options in the context of a hypothetical agreement between the U.S. and Russia. The Department of State supported the concept and on February 25th and 26th, CSIS and APS convened a group of approximately thirty policy and technology participants drawn from the U.S., Europe and Russia, and asked them to explore what would be necessary to implement and to verify the following:

Hypothetical treaty

Withdrawal of U.S. NSNW to the American mainland and withdrawal of Russian NSNW behind the Urals. It was made clear to the participants that this was not necessarily an optimum Hypothetical Treaty, nor was it one that the sponsors were supporting for implementation. Rather the Hypothetical Treaty was one whose discussion would flesh out the issues associated with a real treaty, and — as we fully expected — connections to other issues such as conventional force imbalances and U.S. allies in Asia.

Participants were not constrained by existing mandates of the various governments (e.g., U.S. Congressional statements that the stockpile and Triad be maintained in near-present size and form, Russian doctrines on the use of NSNW, German desire for all weapons removal, Turkish insistence in burden sharing, etc.) We asked participants to work on this construct in the spirit of experimentalists. Indeed, one sometimes does an experiment to find out what experiment should really be done.

Participants were divided into two groups. The first group simply made a cold start on discussion of the problem. The second group received a more detailed scenario and definitions. Both were asked not to fight the scenario, but to instead explore the obstacles and opportunities for ratification. All discussions were conducted under Chatham House Rules, statements made by the participants could be used in the report but with no personal attribution. At noon on the first day, the two groups rejoined to hear Undersecretary of State Rose Gottemoeller discuss U.S. priorities and current thoughts regarding NSNW. The groups rejoined at the end of the first day to discuss their findings, then spent the morning of the second day in a detailed conversation about what had been learned. The notes were written up and then circulated to participants for their comments and approval.