The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START I & II)
Summary and Analysis by Thomas Graham, Jr., and Damien J. Lavera (2003)
The START I Treaty, in its detailed complexity, is a lawyer’s dream. It is the ultimate example of the 1980s approach of arms control conservatives that every element of an agreement had to have the same status as the treaty text, and that subordinate implementing agreements were just not acceptable. This approach gave rise to the doctrine of technical changes (as opposed to amendments) to the treaty text being authorized by the treaty regime; in case of doubt as to whether a particular change is actually a technical change and not an amendment, the change must be approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee leadership. Otherwise, even minor inspection procedural changes (whether inspectors may carry flashlights, for example) would be treaty amendments requiring approval by the U.S. Senate, the Russian Duma, and the national legislatures of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, in the case of START.
There is a dizzying array of documents in the START I package. There is, of course, the treaty proper; then there are thirty-eight agreed statements on such subjects as nontransfer of strategic offensive arms, SS-11 reentry vehicle attribution, strategic offensive arms operations outside national territory, the relationship between the START and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaties, throw weight of new types of missiles deployed before the eighth flight test, reimbursement of costs for telemetry tape exchange. In START I there is a simple flat ban on the encryption of telemetry and provision for the exchange of telemetry tapes in some cases, a far cry from the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) secrecy. There is an annex on definitions that defines 124 terms for the purposes of the START Treaty. There is a highly complex protocol on procedures governing conversion or elimination of strategic offensive arms. There is an even more complex protocol on inspections and continuous monitoring activities-the verification protocol (with twelve annexes on various technical issues and activities). There is a protocol on notifications to assist verification. There is the protocol on ICBM and SLBM throw weight, and procedures to determine and attribute throw-weight values to missiles and to verify them. There is an entire protocol on telemetric information, which ensures access to missile telemetry for verification purposes. There is a protocol on the Joint Compliance and Inspection Commission, the treaty’s implementing body. There is a very lengthy memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the establishment of a database, setting forth the basic information as to strategic systems on which the treaty is based.
And then there are other related agreements, letters signed by the two negotiators containing certain commitments. This includes correspondence on various important issues setting forth commitments signed by the U.S. secretary of state, the Soviet foreign minister, the Soviet defense minister, and in one case both the Soviet foreign and defense ministers (this latter statement is on the subject of the relocation of heavy SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos and contains assurances that any new silos built will be solely for the purposes of replacement). There are joint delegation statements, as well as statements and declarations by one or the other delegations.
All of these letters and statements address important subjects, but one deserves special attention. On June 13, 1991, Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Obukhov, the last Soviet Nuclear and Space Arms negotiator, in a meeting with U.S. Ambassador Linton Brooks, read a statement on the interrelationship between the START and Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaties. It says that the Soviet side states that the START Treaty is effective and viable under conditions of compliance with the ABM Treaty, and the extraordinary events referred to in the supreme national interest withdrawal provision (Article XV) includes withdrawal by one of the parties from the ABM Treaty. (This occurred in June 2002, but Russia did not withdraw from START I — see Chapter 13.)
Article II of the START I Treaty sets forth the central limits: 1,600 deployed ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and their associated launchers, including 154 deployed heavy ICBMs and their associated launchers (halving the longtime Soviet total); and 6,000 warheads attributed to deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers, with 4,900 attributed to ICBMs and SLBMs, 1,100 attributed to mobile ICBMs, and 1,540 to heavy ICBMs (10 warheads each, the existing number). The reductions were to take place in three stages:
1. Thirty-six months after entry into force the deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavybombers are to be reduced to 2, 100; 9, 150 for warheads attributed to deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers; and 8,050 for warheads attributed to deployed ICBMs and SLBMs.
2. Sixty months after entry into force the relevant numbers are 1,900, 7,950, and 6,750.
3. All obligated reductions are to be completed by eighty-four months (or seven years) after entry, into force.
As the treaty entered into force in 1994 this means that reductions were to be completed by December 2001. On December 5, 2001, the United States and Russia formally declared that START I had been fully implemented. (Under the Lisbon Protocol, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazahkstan assumed the START obligations of the Soviet Union after its dissolution. But as a result of the Lisbon Protocol only the Soviet Union had reductions to make under the treaty.)
Article III sets forth the counting rules. For example, if an ICBM is maintained in stages, the first stage shall count as an ICBM; for the United States up to 150 heavy bombers equipped for long-range, nuclear air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs)-conventional ALCMs and conventional sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMS), although externally identical, are exempt from treaty limits (elaborate verification arrangements address this issue)-shall be counted as 10 warheads each (U.S. bombers can carry 20) and beyond 150 with the number of nuclear ALCMs with which they are actually equipped (this arrangement potentially exempts 1,500 U.S. nuclear ALCMs). Article IV addresses limits on nondeployed systems, training launchers, and bombers equipped for non-nuclear armaments. Other articles set up the relationship to the various protocols and annexes and the memorandum on databases.
The START negotiations began in July 1982 as the Reagan administration’s alternative to the SALT process, which candidate Ronald Reagan had campaigned against in 1980. The Reagan administration asserted that this new process would correct the deficiencies of the SALT process, would limit the real weapons-the warheads-rather than merely the delivery vehicles (as SALT did), and would pursue reductions rather than only capping the arms race, as exemplified by SALT II.
While the START process after some years did produce two treaties that contain dramatic strategic reductions and many other important weapons limitations, the unit of amount is the warhead based on the missile attributed to the launcher or aircraft. The difference from SALT II is minor as this is the only effective way to count. Also, in 1981 the Reagan administration agreed with the Soviet Union to informally observe SALT II, which the U.S. had been doing with the SALT Interim Agreement since 1977, and continued to informally observe both agreements until May 1986, some five months after SALT II would have expired.
The START process, which began in 1982, was terminated by the Soviet Union in December 1983, a few weeks after the Soviets walked out of the INF negotiations in late November in protest of the first US. Pershing II deployments in Germany. After the dark days of the Cold War in 1984, Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko reconstituted the START process in January 1985 as part of a tripartite negotiation referred to as the Nuclear and Space Arms negotiations with three subnegotiations, START, INF, and defense and space. The process was formally initiated in March 1985 in Geneva and proceeded slowly at first. The defense and space subnegotiation never went anywhere, and it soon settled into a polemic between the United States and the Union over U.S. charges of Soviet violations of the ABM Treaty, the merits of the continued viability of the ABM Treaty and the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative, which was made sharper by the debate over the interpretation of the ABM Treaty. The INF subnegotiation concluded successfully in December 1987 after President Gorbachev agreed to global double zero for INF systems flowing from the 1986 Helsinki agreements.
Therefore, with the advent of the first Bush administration only the START process was still going in Geneva. President George H. W Bush and Secretary of State James Baker placed concluding a START treaty high on the U.S. agenda, reinvigorating the negotiations. Considerable progress was made and many issues were settled in 1989 and 1990, but by late spring 1991 there remained a long way to go. At this time U.S. President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to hold a summit meeting in Moscow on July 31, 1991 to sign the treaty. This put the negotiations into overdrive, and somehow the delegations were able to complete the treaty with its many associated documents and side agreements and deliver it to Moscow in time to be signed in the Kremlin on July 31, 1991. Whether President Bush’s insistence on an agreement before his August vacation was serendipity or prescience is arguable, but without the deadline there almost certainly never would have been a START I Treaty and the strategic arms negotiation process would have ended, probably forever. On August 19, a little over two weeks later, an attempted coup against Gorbachev began which led inexorably to the dissolution of the Soviet Union four months later. Renegotiating the hundreds of pages of delicately balanced agreements on strategic systems with four new states-Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan-would have impossible.
The Soviet Union passed into history on Christmas Day, 1991.The Baltic states had already become independent, and the Soviet Union was succeeded by twelve new states (referred to as the NIS, the newly independent states). Fortunately, Bush and Gorbachev made a very important informal agreement in October 1991 pursuant to which, among other things, the United States eventually eliminated 95 percent of its tactical nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union/Russia was to do the same, although today it is unclear how much of this has been actually accomplished by Russia. It also was agreed that nuclear weapons would no longer be deployed on surface ships, strategic bombers would be taken off alert, and strategic missile systems in excess of the START limits would be deactivated. Most significantly, in light of the breakup, it was agreed that all tactical nuclear weapons scattered throughout the Soviet Union would be brought back to the territory of the Russian Federation. This was accomplished by January 1992. Because of these farsighted measures, the nuclear question was limited to only four of the successor states. Strategic offensive arms remained deployed on the territory of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. It was concluded in January 1992 that these were the relevant START successor states. Several alternatives were considered as to how to deal with the START Treaty given the new situation, but after some prodding by U.S. senators that Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus had to be included in START, all four states were regarded as replacing the Soviet Union for START. No one wanted to renegotiate the START Treaty.
Secretary of State Baker made a brief tour of the four new states early in January 1992, shortly after which an arms control delegation visited Moscow, Kiev, Minsk, and Almaty beginning on January 10. The purpose of the trip was to speak with officials primarily about succession for START and CFE, and to urge adherence by Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear weapon states. Russia had already been accepted as the successor to the Soviet Union for the NPT, which was most important as the United States wanted to avoid the creation of additional nuclear weapon states in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Russians were told that the United States recognized Russia as the successor to the Soviet Union for the NPT, and the need to provide for succession for START and CFE was discussed. The Russians mentioned the importance of all the NIS becoming NPT parties as non-nuclear weapon states. They also unequivocally stated the importance of the continued viability of the ABM Treaty in its relationship to START. The U.S. delegation agreed. The reception was different in Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. While Belarus and Kazakhstan said they would cooperate with START, would join the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states, and would join CFE, Ukraine was more reluctant.
Various concepts for dealing with START were advanced, but early in 1992 it was decided to multilateralize the treaty by having the four states where strategic arms were deployed be the successor states for the START Treaty. A difficult negotiation ensued, which led to the Lisbon Protocol of May 1992. By means of this protocol, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan agreed not to have strategic arms deployed on their territories and to join the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states. Persuading Ukraine to do these last two things was not easy. President Leonid Kravchuk agreed to provide President Bush a letter on the question of eliminating strategic offensive arms from the territory of Ukraine, so it was agreed that the elimination obligation would be adhered to outside of the protocol text. The draft letters from Belarus and Kazakhstan were straightforward, but there was much back and forth between Washington and Kiev on the text of President Kravchuk’s letter, which was ambiguous. Finally, it was agreed that the five states would meet in May in Lisbon to complete and sign the protocol making START multilateral.
The Lisbon Protocol provides that Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus all are parties to the START I Treaty in place of the former Soviet Union. It obligates the four states to make the necessary arrangements among themselves to implement the treaty’s limits and restrictions, to allow the proper functioning of the treaty’s verification systems, and to allocate costs that would have been borne by the Soviet Union. It also clarifies how certain treaty terms are to be applied now that there are four states in place of the former Soviet Union. All provisions of the treaty not explicitly addressed remain the same, and any additional procedures required are to be worked out in the Joint Compliance and Inspection Commission JCIC); many have been.
Additionally, the Lisbon Protocol obligates Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan to adhere to the NPT as weapon states in the shortest possible period of time. Letters associated with the protocol from these three states obligate them to eliminate all nuclear weapons and strategic offensive arms from their territories within seven years of the START I entry into force, the same reduction period as the United States and Russia. (The treaty entered into force in 1994.) START I was submitted to the Senate on November 25, 1991. The Lisbon Protocol was signed in Lisbon on May 23, 1992, by the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. The Lisbon Protocol is an integral part of the treaty, and it was submitted to the Senate in June 1992 to become part of the treaty package. START I, including the new protocol, was approved by the Senate in the fall of 1992.
Russia ratified START I on November 4, 1992. As required, Belarus and Kazakhstan acceded to the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states on February 4, 1993, and December 13, 1993, respectively. They ratified START I on February 4, 1993, and July 2, 1993, respectively. Ukraine continued to be reluctant. Finally, after many diplomatic discussions, Ukraine ratified START I on February 3, 1994, and joined the NPT as a non- nuclear weapon state on October 30, 1994. START was brought into force on the margins of the Budapest Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Summit on December 5, 1994. Finally, the permanent strategic arms limitation treaty contemplated by the SALT Interim Agreement was in force after twenty-two years.
In mid-June 1992, a month after the Lisbon Protocol was signed, President Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin held a summit in Washington, D.C., at which agreement in principle was reached between the United States and Russia to further reduce the START I levels. This agreement came to be known as START II, and it reduced the warhead levels from 6,000 to between 3,000 and 3,500 and put additional limitations on strategic bombers. The Russians wanted a level of 2,500 warheads, but the United States did not agree, so the Russians eventually accepted the 3,000 to 3,500 number, a level they could not financially support. The warhead level was an obstacle to Duma ratification of START II, until the parties agreed as part of the 1997 Helsinki Agreement on a START III level of 2,000 to 2,500, to be negotiated promptly after START II entered into force.
The idea of START II was that it could be a short agreement in that it was based on the comprehensive START I Treaty. Also, the parties were limited to the United States and Russia. Pursuant to the START I agreement, strategic offensive arms would be eliminated from the territory of Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. As draft START II texts were exchanged through diplomatic channels, some problems developed. The Russians wanted tighter constraints on U.S. bombers, and they wanted to be able to “download” their SS-19 ICBMs (that is, to reduce the number of warheads on a missile, which is not verifiable), just as the United States was going to “download” the D-5 missile on its Trident submarines in order to reach START II warhead levels. There would be on-site warhead inspection to attempt to verify this, although everyone recognized the breakout potential. Also, for economic reasons, the Russians wanted to continue to use the SS-18 silos for a single-warhead missile. One of the strengths of the START II agreement, from the U.S. point of view, was that land-based MIRVed (multiple independently targettable reentry vehicles) ICBMs (the Russians’ strong point) would be eliminated. One of the weaknesses of the agreement, from the Russian point of view, was that MIRVed SLBMs (the U.S. strong point) would not be severely impacted. Thus, the United States would have to eliminate its MX or Peacekeeper ICBM, but could keep the D-5 SLBM, perhaps with fewer warheads, but not as a singlewarhead missile. Russia would have to eliminate (or download, in the case of the SS-19) their SS-17, SS-18, and SS-19 ICBMs, the backbone of their strategic force. They could keep their single-warhead, mobile SS-25 ICBM. The Russian Duma saw this as an unequal deal; but only through U.S. reductions could the Russians hope to maintain parity. Eliminating MIRVed ICBMs was a good deal for the United States. Writing a provision that would permit the Russians to keep SS-18 silos, but verifiably prevent them from using such silos for SS-18 ICBMs, and writing restrictions on the U.S. bomber force were sufficiently complicated tasks that it was clear by autumn that there would have to be a negotiation using delegations. A brief but intense negotiation of START II was held in Geneva from December 27, 1992, to January 2, 1993, and the START II Treaty was signed in Moscow on January 3, 1993, by President Bush and President Yeltsin.
Article I of the START II Treaty provides for reductions from START I levels in two stages to a level of 3,000 to 3,500 warheads attributable to deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers. Within such limitations, SLBMs are to be limited to 1,750, MIRVed ICBMs limited to zero, and heavy ICBMs limited to zero (thus the feared SS-18 would be eliminated). Article II provides for the elimination or conversion of all MIRVed ICBMs to a single-warhead ICBM. Article III indicates that START I rules are to be used for warhead attribution. Article IV eliminates the 150 nuclear ALCM bomber special treatment in the START I Treaty and the special treatment for bombers not carrying ALCMs. It also required that the number of warheads attributed to a heavy bomber in all cases must be the number with which such a bomber is actually equipped (set forth in the Memorandum on Warhead Attribution and Heavy Bomber Data).
Up to one hundred heavy bombers may be reoriented for a conventional role (that is, taken from their nuclear assignment), but they must be deployed separately from other heavy bombers, used only for non-nuclear missions, and have differences observable to NTM that would differentiate them from other heavy bombers of that type that have not been reoriented. These differences must distinguish such bombers from reoriented bombers of a type that have been returned to a nuclear role, as well as heavy bombers of the same type that were never reoriented. If not all bombers of a type are reoriented, one reoriented bomber must be exhibited in the open, to demonstrate to the other party the observable differences that distinguish it from other bombers of its type. Likewise, if not all reoriented bombers of a type are returned to a nuclear role, one such bomber returned to a nuclear role shall be exhibited in the open. This will demonstrate to the other party the observable differences distinguishing the returned to nuclear-role bomber from other same-type, never-reoriented bombers and from those same-type reoriented bombers not returned to a nuclear role. These exhibitions are to be carried out pursuant to the Protocol on Exhibitions and Inspections. These elaborate provisions are designed to permit the United States, its military being more dependent on bombers, to live with the tighter rules on bomber armament.
Article V provides that the START I Treaty verification provisions are to be used for implementation of the START II Treaty except where otherwise explicitly provided. The Protocol on Elimination and Conversion of Heavy ICBMs sets forth the rules on removing heavy ICBM launchers and missiles from Russia’s inventory. The first section provides for complete elimination of the launcher and the missile, and the second section provides procedures for those cases in which Russia desires to retain the launcher for a single-warhead ICBM. It provides, among other things, that concrete is to be poured into the silo up to a height of five meters from the bottom of the silo launcher, and that this be measured and verified. Thus, should the START II Treaty ever somehow come into force, the heavy ICBM would finally be eliminated after many years.
START I was approved by the U.S. Senate in the fall of 1992. It was a relatively problem-free ratification as the Lisbon Protocol was well received, despite a minor skirmish on the ABM Treaty. (Several senators wanted to question the continued viability of the ABM Treaty in the context of START ratification.)
START II was a different matter. There was concern in the Clinton White House that if U.S. senators spoke too favorably about the treaty the Russian Duma would react negatively. In 1993, after the Clinton administration took office, there was a great deal of debate about how to proceed. The administration decided to send the treaty forward, and to request ratification hearings but ask the Senate to delay floor consideration to permit the administration to gauge reaction in the Duma. The U.S. Senate gave its advice and consent to START II by a vote of 84 to 7 on January 26, 1994. Because of many factors-including the perceived one-sidedness of START II, Russia’s reluctance to spend the money to achieve START II levels as its forces were deteriorating, NATO expansion, the war in the Balkans, and Russian domestic politics-the Duma did not approve the START II Treaty until April 2000. But, pursuant to agreement in Helsinki in 1997, the START II Treaty has amendments extending the reduction timeline from 2003 to 2007 in order to accommodate Russia. Thus the treaty had to be returned to the U.S. Senate, which must approve the amendments, before it could enter into force. By the end of 2000 and the close of the Clinton administration, START II still had not been resubmitted to the Senate. The administration, which committed itself to sending the 1997 ABM Demarcation Protocol and Memorandum on ABM Treaty Succession to the Senate at the same time, was concerned that sending all three documents would engender a major debate on national missile defense. Since then, the George W Bush administration decided to pursue a new strategic framework with Russia that includes significant reductions in operational forces (but no actual eliminations) and withdrawal from the ABM Treaty (see Chapter 30) rather than bring START II into force. In May 2002, Presidents Bush and Putin signed a brief agreement that would simply require that by December 31, 2012, neither party would deploy more than 1,700 to 2,200 strategic nuclear weapons (see Chapter 30). In June 2002, at the time the United States gave notice of withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, Russia withdrew its ratification of START II. Thus it does not appear that START II will enter into force.
