Nuclear Arms Control Treaties & Agreements: Discussion

Russia Walks Out of Nunn-Lugar Agreement – Paper

Moscow is to abandon participation in a decades-old program with the United States aimed at dismantling weapons of mass destruction, Russian daily Kommersant reported Wednesday.

The paper reported sources in the US State Department as saying Russia is no longer interested in the Nunn-Lugar program – also known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (CTR) – which dates back to the early 1990's and helped decommission scores of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

US officials told the paper that their Russian counterparts informed them during a recent meeting that Moscow no longer needs the financial assistance, emphasizing instead the importance of guarding state secrets.

The move is the latest in Moscow’s review of its relationship with Washington, and comes after Russia stopped the United States Agency for International Development from working in the country earlier this month.

It also follows comments last week by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the “reset” policy between Russia and the United States “cannot last forever.”

The CTR program began in 1991, and was extended twice – in 1999 and 2006. The current terms expires in 2013. The United States has reportedly spent an estimated $8 billion on CTR programs.

The program included measures to increase safety at nuclear plants in the former Soviet Union and generating alternative work for former institutes and production facilities which had been involved in making weapons of mass destruction, the CTR website says.

http://en.rian.ru/mlitary_news/20121010/176527879.html

Good.

What's funny about this announcement was that after this article came out a lot of statements from Bellona and NTI, which stated that the Russian move is unproductive and dangerous. They even stated that their are still sites that are still in need of protection. They even like to label the term "remnats of the nuclear arsenal" of Russia, what are they trying to say?

In my view this agreement is both one sided and is a big disadvantage for the Russian Federation.

They were even critical of Russia in resuming sub-critical testing in Novaya Zemlya.

I think its time for Russia to get rid of other treaties like the INF.

..and cue a bunch of articles about how Russia is returning to the "Evil Empire" and building all sorts of secret weapons.



Maybe, I don't know, Russia has figured out how to take care of it's own business effectively?

The only real downside to this is that the US government will have more money to not spend responsibly.

Russia is not an "Evil Empire", in fact Russia is a good contributor. Just last year Russia sent humanitarian aid to my country because we were hit by a very powerful storm. Thank you Russia!

Back to topic:
Russia must no longer entertain NATO or US request for nuclear inspection. Are they lucky to think in that notion?

NATO continues to build up a missile defense shield and is continuing to threaten Russian interest, in my view Russia should be focus in modernizing its current stockpile and enhance its break-out capability.

In my view NATO and the US are worried about Russia's nuclear break-out capability.

I've watched that RT documentary, it was about the Nuclear revolution in Russia and the plans to expand the nuclear generating power in Russia. I saw a number of new generation of nuclear reactors being developed.

Further more in my view this agreement is not acceptable, imagine 7,600 warheads and their delivery systems being destroyed while the US/NATO builds up a missile defense and continue to expand NATO.

I hope the Russian leadership realize that having IRBM's and GLCM's can actually be a massive political leverage in the European theater. I would base it in my nations experience, as you may know the US used to maintain several large military bases here in the Philippines however they were very unpopular amongst anti-war activist here. However the motive in removing them here is because our political elites found out that China had aimed DF-3 missiles towards us thus our nations political leadership realize that the bases are more of a liability rather than a useful asset. Even today a lot of people are against the US military to use to those bases again.

I even remember a USAF Colonel who visited the Philippines during a joint-exercise with our nation which is called "Balikatan" (Shoulder to Shoulder), he stated that China can easily take out bases in South Korea and Japan in the event of war thus they would be reliant on their carriers.

US says nuclear deal with Russia not dead yet

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — The United States urged a reluctant Russia on Thursday to engage in talks to extend a program that has helped disarm thousands of ex-Soviet nuclear warheads and missiles.

Russian officials said this week that they had notified Washington that the Nunn-Lugar program, due to expire in May 2013, would not be extended, in the latest challenge to a vaunted "reset" of US relations with the Kremlin.

But the Obama administration said that it understood Moscow wanted revisions to the program and that it was ready to continue negotiations about it.

"There's surely more work to be done in that program and we're going to engage in that effort," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One.

At the State Department in Washington, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that US diplomats started talking to Moscow about the 20-year US-financed program's renewal in July, and that discussions were still going on.

"They have told us that they want revisions to the previous agreement. We are prepared to work with them on those revisions, and we want to have conversations about it," Nuland said.

"This is a program that has paid dividends for the Russian people, for the American people. It's paid dividends globally, and we hope to be able to continue it."

Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday that Moscow wanted to end the program, named after former senator Sam Nunn and retiring Indiana Senator Richard Lugar.

"The American side knows that we do not want another extension," Ryabkov told Russia's Interfax news agency. "This is not news to the American side."

The report said Ryabkov was responding to Russian newspaper speculation that the initiative had been shut down as a consequence of the Kremlin's decision to kick out the USAID development program organized by the US embassy in Moscow.

USAID has been ordered out of the country over accusations it supported opposition leaders who helped organize a wave of demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin's rule.

But Ryabkov said the Nunn-Lugar decision was in no way related to the USAID case.

Lugar, who is leaving the Senate after losing a Republican primary challenge, traveled to Russia in August to talk about extending the deal.

He said in a statement on Wednesday that he knew Russia wanted to make changes to the deal rather than to simply extend it.

"At no time did officials indicate that, at this stage of negotiation, they were intent on ending it, only amending it," he said.

The Nunn-Lugar plan was created in 1992 after the breakup of the Soviet Union amid worries over the fate of the Soviet Union's vast arsenal of nuclear as well as chemical and biological weapons.

It began with an effort to safeguard materials by improving security at nuclear complexes and graduated to decommissioning work.

Ryabkov suggested that Moscow was starting to feel constrained by the deal because it gave Washington access to sensitive information that Moscow could not get about America's nuclear arsenal.

Lugar says the scheme has deactivated 7,610 strategic nuclear warheads and destroyed 902 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 906 nuclear air-to-surface missiles along with 684 submarine launched ballistic missiles, among other stockpiles that have been eliminated

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gvPgkPPXL-dPW63oOAaO3963Ie4A?docId=CNG.27dcf87ede78dfe8d704f9fe3d082916.661

Russia nuclear partnership not dead, State Department insists
By Jill Dougherty, CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent

The State Department maintained Thursday that a long-standing partnership with Russia to dismantle and safeguard weapons of mass destruction from the Soviet Union's once-massive arsenal is not dead, as Russian media has reported.

Russian officials, however, indicated they had no intention of extending the agreement - at least in its present form - dealing a serious blow to cooperation between the two countries.

The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which has spent approximately $7 billion in its two decades, financed primarily by the U.S. government, has deactivated more than 7,500 nuclear warheads, implemented security upgrades at Russian's nuclear storage sites, neutralized chemical weapons, safeguarded fissile materials, converted weapons facilities for peaceful use, and mitigated biological threats.

"We are still in talks," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington Thursday. Russia officials "have told us that they want revisions to the previous agreement. We are prepared to work with them on those revisions, and we want to have conversations about it."

But in Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying, "Our American partners know that their proposal is at odds with our ideas about the forms and basis for building further cooperation in that area."

While Moscow "has a positive view" on the program's cooperation, the ministry said, "a more modern legal framework" is needed."

The current agreement on Nunn-Lugar cooperation expires in June of 2013 and U.S. officials have been talking with their Russian counterparts since July about updating the agreement, Nuland said.

"We as a government greatly value the ongoing Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program," Nuland said. "We believe there is a lot of future work for the U.S. and Russia to do together in the CTR space, including cooperation that we do in this area with third countries ... other former Soviet states."

Former Sen. Sam Nunn, one of the co-sponsors of the Nunn-Lugar program, told CNN, "I don't think the Russians have ruled out having a new umbrella agreement that would have a different framework. This framework was put together when the Russian treasury was empty."

Nunn said that in his opinion, Moscow today is sensitive about key aspects of the program. Russia, he said, "does not want to look like they're taking aid on something that's a security issue in Russia."

Another issue for Russia, he added, is the question of access.

"Access follows money," he said, "and we've had unprecedented access to many facilities that the Russians would have never acceded to allow us to have access to if it had not been for their financial plight and the realization in Russia in the early 1990s that they had huge problems with their nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as well as materials."

The move comes at a politically sensitive time in the United States, when the Obama administration is under attack for what Republicans describe as a failed "reset" policy with Russia. In early October, the Russian government announced that it was ending U.S. Agency for International Development programs in the country.

The State Department's spokeswoman denied there was any connection between that move and the current difficulty in reaching agreement on extending Nunn-Lugar.

Russia expert Matthew Rojansky of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told CNN that the United States, eventually, is going to have to adjust its approach on Nunn-Lugar. "At some point, some version of this was going to happen, that's true, if for no other reason than ... we cannot fund global security forever," he said.

"Whether it was going to happen in this dramatic form, in this absolute form, that is a function of the relationship not being as good as it could be. The relationship is not working right, right now, that's for sure ... on both sides."

Nunn meanwhile, says Nunn-Lugar has paid dividends over its 20 years and he holds out hope that "something that could be much more of a partnership could emerge from this."

"With the lessons learned and the best practices we've had of two decades of working together," he told CNN, "I think that partnership could be very valuable for the U.S., for Russia and for the globe. But it will be on much more of a reciprocal access basis.

"The Russians swallowed their pride a lot in the 1990s and the last 20 years, and I think we have to recognize that reciprocity is going to be the order of the day. ... In other words, they will say trust is a two-way street."

Whether the United States will be willing to do that, Nunn added, is a question, "but it seems to me it's fundamentally in our interest and their interest."

"The fact that the United States and Russia have 90 to 95% of all the nuclear weapons and materials in the world indicates that there's got to be a partnership if this problem is going to be tackled."

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/12/russia-nuclear-partnership-not-dead-state-department-insists/

Russia's move is understandable because Russia is a sovereign state that is exercising its right to walk away on any obligation that it is a signatory to.

For them to paint Russia as a country that is planning something "big" is simply unacceptable. In my view they should look at NATO and US action and other realities that they have made to force Russia to take action in this sensitive matter. Before they say that Russia is being unproductive please kindly tell NATO to look at Poland, Romania, Turkey and in Asia before jumping the gun.

Another point on this is why is the US in particular is so uneasy of this move?

Another thing is that they like to use the term "once massive arsenal" and "remnants of"?

Wow, looks like i made a total ass of myself to Garry, i have only just found out that INF treaty wasn't the treaty that barred export of missiles and such that go over 300km, my bad   

The MTCR Treaty seeks to limit the risks of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by controlling exports of goods and technologies that could make a contribution to delivery systems (other than manned aircraft) for such weapons. In this context, the Regime places particular focus on rockets and unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering a payload of at least 500 kg to a range of at least 300 km and on equipment, software, and technology for such systems.

Either way hoping both the INF and MTCR Treaties burn.  

AlfaT8 wrote:Wow, looks like i made a total ass of myself to Garry, i have only just found out that INF treaty wasn't the treaty that barred export of missiles and such that go over 300km, my bad   

The MTCR Treaty seeks to limit the risks of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by controlling exports of goods and technologies that could make a contribution to delivery systems (other than manned aircraft) for such weapons. In this context, the Regime places particular focus on rockets and unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering a payload of at least 500 kg to a range of at least 300 km and on equipment, software, and technology for such systems.

Either way hoping both the INF and MTCR Treaties burn.  

The more the merrier!  

Treaties were one thing that lead to WW2, so in my opinion, they are worthless.

Mike E wrote:

AlfaT8 wrote:Wow, looks like i made a total ass of myself to Garry, i have only just found out that INF treaty wasn't the treaty that barred export of missiles and such that go over 300km, my bad   

The MTCR Treaty seeks to limit the risks of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by controlling exports of goods and technologies that could make a contribution to delivery systems (other than manned aircraft) for such weapons. In this context, the Regime places particular focus on rockets and unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering a payload of at least 500 kg to a range of at least 300 km and on equipment, software, and technology for such systems.

Either way hoping both the INF and MTCR Treaties burn.  

The more the merrier!  

Treaties were one thing that lead to WW2, so in my opinion, they are worthless.

I don't know Mike, to me the START treaty still holds some signifacance, but if the U.S keep pushing there luck like this then all treaties go out the fricking window, there's no point in restraining yourself when the enemy is at the flipping gates!!   

True, but you could say there was a reason U.S. never nuked the USSR (or vice-versa) in the 50's and 60's and it ain't treaties! MAD may not be a "dreamy solution", but is has worked so far. Besides, both parties already have enough ICBM's to decimate the other.

Mike E wrote:True, but you could say there was a reason U.S. never nuked the USSR (or vice-versa) in the 50's and 60's and it ain't treaties! MAD may not be a "dreamy solution", but is has worked so far. Besides, both parties already have enough ICBM's to decimate the other.

Yes, i agree MAD was the real reason why both sides didn't/couldn't kill each other, but the START Treaty did help cutting down both parties nuclear arsenal while maintaining MAD and also bringing greater control of both parties arsenal, by this i mean the chances of nukes getting lost or missing becomes less likely, i still recall from some cold war documentary about the U.S losing numerous nukes in accidents and then being called broken arrows.

In short, less nukes mean less Broken Arrows.

You have a point...

I think rather than having treaties, they should have ICBM "management" agreements. (A mutual agreement in which they guarantee safe transportation etc.) They could be overseen by the U.N, or something like that.

Mike E wrote:You have a point...

I think rather than having treaties, they should have ICBM "management" agreements. (A mutual agreement in which they guarantee safe transportation etc.) They could be overseen by the U.N, or something like that.

I think you just described a transportation treaty, not sure.  

AlfaT8 wrote:

Mike E wrote:True, but you could say there was a reason U.S. never nuked the USSR (or vice-versa) in the 50's and 60's and it ain't treaties! MAD may not be a "dreamy solution", but is has worked so far. Besides, both parties already have enough ICBM's to decimate the other.

Yes, i agree MAD was the real reason why both sides didn't/couldn't kill each other, but the START Treaty did help cutting down both parties nuclear arsenal while maintaining MAD and also bringing greater control of both parties arsenal, by this i mean the chances of nukes getting lost or missing becomes less likely, i still recall from some cold war documentary about the U.S losing numerous nukes in accidents and then being called broken arrows.

In short, less nukes mean less Broken Arrows.

START does not maintain MAD whatsoever, it actually does the opposite! Unless NATO members like Britain and France signs on to START when they have nukes pointing at Russia, till otherwise it's a fools errand for Russia to be apart of it!

magnumcromagnon wrote:

AlfaT8 wrote:

Mike E wrote:True, but you could say there was a reason U.S. never nuked the USSR (or vice-versa) in the 50's and 60's and it ain't treaties! MAD may not be a "dreamy solution", but is has worked so far. Besides, both parties already have enough ICBM's to decimate the other.

Yes, i agree MAD was the real reason why both sides didn't/couldn't kill each other, but the START Treaty did help cutting down both parties nuclear arsenal while maintaining MAD and also bringing greater control of both parties arsenal, by this i mean the chances of nukes getting lost or missing becomes less likely, i still recall from some cold war documentary about the U.S losing numerous nukes in accidents and then being called broken arrows.

In short, less nukes mean less Broken Arrows.

START does not maintain MAD whatsoever, it actually does the opposite! Unless NATO members like Britain and France signs on to START when they have nukes pointing at Russia, till otherwise it's a fools errand for Russia to be apart of it!

START was more a way to moderate both parties nuclear arsenal, while also maintaining there ability to destroy each other (what 6000 nukes ain't enough) and if i recall at the time the plan was too gradually reduce the arsenal of both parties with new START Treaties till there are non left (at least that was how it was presented too the public).

As for Britain and France, according to Wiki there peak stockpiles was around 600 nukes respectively, so i don't think they exactly qualify for START.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

And even less so now.

http://www.ploughshares.org/world-nuclear-stockpile-report

Are we really going to stake the future of mankind on wikipedia (to know reliable thermonuclear stockpile data)? Russia needs to demand France and Britain to join START, let's see some transparency and some legal binding we have to actually take everything in to consideration and not just rely on some talking-points from pro-NATO media.

magnumcromagnon wrote:Are we really going to stake the future of mankind on wikipedia  (to know reliable thermonuclear stockpile data)? Russia needs to demand France and Britain to join START, let's see some transparency and some legal binding we have to actually take everything in to consideration and not just rely on some talking-points from pro-NATO media.

Enforce Israel to hand over their missiles since they are all illegal or arm other countries with nukes to make a balance.

AlfaT8 wrote:

Mike E wrote:You have a point...

I think rather than having treaties, they should have ICBM "management" agreements. (A mutual agreement in which they guarantee safe transportation etc.) They could be overseen by the U.N, or something like that.

I think you just described a transportation treaty, not sure.  

I meant that organizations should have watch over the missiles to prevent terrorists taking them etc. That way they can still "have the numbers" and be safe at the same time.

magnumcromagnon wrote:

AlfaT8 wrote:

Mike E wrote:True, but you could say there was a reason U.S. never nuked the USSR (or vice-versa) in the 50's and 60's and it ain't treaties! MAD may not be a "dreamy solution", but is has worked so far. Besides, both parties already have enough ICBM's to decimate the other.

Yes, i agree MAD was the real reason why both sides didn't/couldn't kill each other, but the START Treaty did help cutting down both parties nuclear arsenal while maintaining MAD and also bringing greater control of both parties arsenal, by this i mean the chances of nukes getting lost or missing becomes less likely, i still recall from some cold war documentary about the U.S losing numerous nukes in accidents and then being called broken arrows.

In short, less nukes mean less Broken Arrows.

START does not maintain MAD whatsoever, it actually does the opposite! Unless NATO members like Britain and France signs on to START when they have nukes pointing at Russia, till otherwise it's a fools errand for Russia to be apart of it!

Not to say I disagree with that, but I don't agree. In my opinion, countries should be able to have as many nukes and ABM systems as they like.