This means that the United States and Russia are each likely to keep an extra 1,000 missile warheads on alert, ready to launch within minutes if space- or ground-based sensors report an incoming missile attack.

The U.S. nuclear bureaucracy continues to be heedless of the dangers of this hair-trigger configuration. This was recently revealed in leaked U.S. government "talking points" from the January session of the negotiations aimed at persuading Russia to accept a "thin" U.S. national missile defense. Incredibly, the United States argued that, if Russia launched its missiles on warning of an incoming U.S. missile attack, enough would survive even a surprise attack to overwhelm U.S. defenses. This would only reinforce Russia's reliance on hair-trigger readiness and increase the risk of accidental firing of hundreds to thousands of nuclear warheads at the United States.

Presidents Clinton and Putin could dramatically reduce the risk of accidental launch by repeating the bold actions of Presidents Bush and Gorbachev when faced with a similar conundrum over START I implementation in 1991. To reduce the danger quickly, the presidents ordered immediate removal from launch readiness of a large fraction of the missiles slated for elimination.

Presidents Clinton and Putin should similarly accelerate the downloading and storage of the approximately 3,000 warheads to be taken off missiles on each side by START II. This could be verified during the short-notice, on-site inspections allowed by START I. Final irreversible measures, such as destroying missile launchers, would be taken only after the START II treaty officially comes into force.

President Clinton, as the head of the country with much more invulnerable forces, should initiate this action, just as President Bush did in 1991. Wearing his hat as commander in chief, Bush announced that redundant U.S. missiles and bombers would unilaterally be taken off alert, and called on President Gorbachev to reciprocate. Russia's nuclear forces have become much more vulnerable since then, and President Putin probably cannot take the first step. If the United States led, however, world opinion would press Putin to follow suit.

In a recent speech, presidential candidate George W. Bush urged the rapid, even unilateral, de-alerting of nuclear missiles. He should join forces with a bipartisan effort to overturn Republican legislative strictures that attempt to limit the president's authority to change missile alert levels and warhead loadings. Former president Bush enjoyed wide latitude in this area. So should the sitting and future presidents.

Last weekend, at the Moscow summit, Presidents Clinton and Putin announced plans for a center in Moscow where early-warning data will be shared to address the growing danger of false warnings from Russia's crumbling missile-attack early-warning system. This is a constructive move. But the United States has only offered data that have been filtered through U.S. computers. The Russian military would surely disregard such data if it suspected a deliberate U.S. attack. In any case, this plan leaves the nuclear hair-trigger in place.

The immediate removal of the warheads in excess of the START II deployment limits would substantially reduce the risk of accidental nuclear attack. The United States would still have an enormous deterrent, including more than 1,000 survivable nuclear warheads in submarines at sea. Whoever occupies the White House after the election should take additional actions to lengthen the nuclear fuse.

Frank von Hippel is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University.

Bruce Blair is president of the Center for Defense Information