The New START Nuclear Treaty Protects America
New START is a legally-binding verified arms control treaty between the United States and Russian Federation. It limits each country to no more than 1,550 operationally-deployed, offensive, strategic nuclear weapons. Other kinds of nuclear and conventional weapons are not covered or constrained by the deal. New START is verified through a complex series of inspections and transparency measures including putting American boots on the ground in Russia and vice versa. Both sides are in full compliance with their obligations under the Treaty.
New START is a ratified agreement between the United States and Russia only and does not cover nuclear forces of other states like American allies England or France, or others states like China, India, or North Korea. It was not meant to, designed to, nor does it need to cover such states to benefit American or global security. New START does what it was meant to do, help manage the nuclear arsenals of two states that possess over 90% of the world’s nuclear forces and reduce the risks of nuclear conflict.
Here are some of the other things New START does not do:
Stop climate change
Cure cancer
Prevent the measles
Help you lose weight
Fight ISIS
Bring peace to the Middle East
Protect bank vaults
Prevent rich people from buying their kid’s way into college
Mow my lawn
Convince my kids clear their rooms
Punish Milli Vanilli for their crimes against humanity
Block computer viruses
Chop, dice, or mince vegetables
Convert LPs to MP3s
Explain the Kardashians
Erase JarJar Binks
Protect your Facebook account
or Mix a decent Manhattan.
The Trump Administration and its Republican enablers don’t like arms control — even when it works. Trump particularly dislikes New START because it was negotiated and approved when President Obama was in office. Some of these extreme critics are now using bizarre and unrelated issues to undermine support for New START. These critics list the lack of global membership in a bilateral agreement as “shortcomings” and use it to attack New START and convince us that it letting this beneficial agreement expire on February 5, 2021 or even killing it outright would be fine. Some of these extremists, however, include the National Security Advisor and treaty serial killer John Bolton and Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas — voices with real influence in the current White House. Their desire and advocacy to kill New START goes against the advice and support of more rational actors who support keeping and extending New START like the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the intelligence community. NATO also broadly support keeping New START in place for as long as possible.
These reasonable voices support New START because of the things it does do.
Like:
It constraints Russia’s strategic nuclear forces.
It puts US inspectors on the ground and gives them access to Russian nuclear missiles, bombers and submarines. (Over 300 on-site, in-person inspections have been conducted to date).
It requires both sides to hand over a list of covered nuclear-tipped missiles, submarines and bombers to the other every six months.
It provides transparency and predictability equally to both sides to reduce the risk of strategic surprise.
It caps the size of Russia’s strategic offensive forces while America pursues programs to replace its aging nuclear forces.
It helps convince the rest of the world that the US and Russia are meeting their global disarmament obligations and are avoiding a full-fledged arms race.
It maintains a legacy of nuclear arms agreements dating back to the 1970s.
It prevents Russian and American politicians and intelligence officials from assuming the absolute worst about each other and helps both avoid engaging in worst-case defense planning.
It allows the US to spend money it might spend on nuclear weapons in the absence of an agreement for other defense priorities like cyber and space defense, conventional weapons that deter Russia and China and protect our allies, and other essential missions.
Some might consider the first list silly — and they would be right. It makes no rational sense to note what an agreement does not do when judging its value. It makes a lot of sense to look at what a deal was intended to do and judge it on whether it achieves those goals and whether those goals arein the American security interest. On this basis, New START is a no brainer and should be extended. There is no reasonable argument against keeping new START which is why people like John Bolton and Tom Cotton are resorting to less serious and spurious arguments and distractions to achieve their goals.
