#2
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
www.ceip.org
May 14, 2003
SORT of a Treaty
by Joseph Cirincione and Jon Wolfsthal

The Russian Duma ratified the Strategic Offensive ReductionsTreaty (SORT) on May 14, which calls for both the U.S. and Russia to reduce their alert strategic nuclear weapons to between 1,700-2,200 over the next ten years. The move follows the U.S. Senate's March approval of the pact and clears the way for the U.S. and Russian presidents to mark the entry into force of this agreement at their upcoming summit in St. Petersburg. While the adoption of the agreement is a political victory for both presidents, it is not clear that the treaty makes a major improvement in the security of either country or for the world as a whole.

Currently, both nations have approximately 6,000 warheads on missiles, submarines and bombers, with most land-based missiles ready for launch within 15 minutes. The United States has announced that while it intends to hit the reduction deadline of December 2012, it will retain most of the warheads slated for deactiviation in its reserves for possible redeployment. Russia may or may not take a similar approach. Unfortunately, while helping to reduce one threat--the danger of an intentional or accidental nuclear strike--the new treaty may exacerbate the new threat of theft or sale of nuclear weapons and materials from Russia to other nations or terrorist groups. Neither the treaty nor any subsequent bilateral discussions address the security of those weapons deactivated by Russia or attempt to expand the legal relationship between the United States and Russia to include the area of non-strategic weapons. Russia possesses an unknown number of these weapons â€" estimates range from 3,000-15,000 weapons -- and there are serious and documented concerns about the security and safety of these arsenals.

There is also substaintial confusion about U.S. plans for its future nuclear force. The new budget contains $320 million to build new plutonium bombs (or "pits"), including construction of a new plant that will turn out 500 new bombs each year. Additional funds will go to restart production of tritium, a gas used to boost the yield of nuclear weapons, design new nuclear warheads for battlefield use, and to speed up the ability to begin new testing of nuclear weapons at the Nevada test site. The expansion of the nuclear warhead production complex will cost almost $3 billion over the next few years, with all nuclear weapons activities reaching a new high of $6.4 billion per year--more than was spent during the Cold War. This raises serious questions about U.S. intentions to reduce to the SORT levels and to continue reductions thereafter. There is no military mission that requires several thousand strategic nuclear weapons on high alert apart from targeting Russia, but the new treaty does not address the future of the US-Russian nuclear relationship beyond the reduction targets.

Despite its shortcomings, the treaty is a useful step for both countries and maintains the continuity of negotiated arms reductions between the two largest nuclear-weapon states on earth. In addition, the two countries have established a high-level consulting group consisting of the U.S. secretaries of state and defense and the Russian foreign and defense ministers, as well as two working level groups to work on new steps to improve transparency on strategic offenses and defense cooperation. These two groups have not yet made concrete progress, and will require continued high level direction from the two presidents if substantial progress is to be made.

That major security and strategic issues remain between Russia and the United States is beyond question. If the process begun by the Treaty of Moscow leads to additional steps that address the glaring issues of Russia's sub-strategic nuclear weapons and the broader issues of stability and transparency between the two states, then its adoption will one day be hailed as an important milestone. If the process remains on its current path, however, it will be seen as a strategic misstep and a missed opportunity to improve U.S. national security.

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