The Nukes of Hazard cover former Bush administration officials Bob Joseph (Under Secretary of State for Arms Control) and Eric Edelman (Under Secretary of Defense for Policy) as they bad mouth the new START treaty, which is under review by the Senate Foreign Relations committee. Nothing they have to say is particularly new, but it's always a good thing to beat back the stupid things they trot out for public consumption.
Sez they: “Despite claims by the administration that the treaty will reduce by 30 percent the number of nuclear warheads each side is permitted to deploy (from 2,200 to 1,550, a net reduction of 650), the numbers are really smaller, since both the U.S. and Russia were moving towards force levels significantly lower than those permitted under the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty negotiated by President Bush, which reduced the levels by almost 4,000 warheads.”
Rebuttal: Without a new arms control agreement the Russians may not reduce the number of warheads they deploy significantly below the upper limit of 2,200 warheads in the Moscow Treaty. In the absence of limits on the size of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, Russia would have less confidence in its ability to maintain a stable strategic nuclear relationship with the United States. This could prompt Moscow to maintain a larger number of deployed warheads (and delivery vehicles) targeted at the U.S. than it would with a new treaty. As STRATCOM Commander General Kevin Chilton stated, “One thing I was pleased to see in the treaty were these limits because…when you look to the future we certainly don’t want them to grow and they would have been unrestricted otherwise without these types of limits articulated in the treaty.”
Sez they: “Moreover, some of the claimed reduction is an artifact of a revised counting rule. In fact, because a bomber will now be counted as one warhead no matter how many bombs or cruise missiles it carries, the agreement may be the first of its kind to permit an actual increase in fielded warhead levels.”
Rebuttal: New START’s bomber counting rule is not a fundamental departure from how START I, which the authors supported, counted bomber weapons. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) noted that counting one weapon per bomber “appears to continue guidance first set down by President Reagan….President Reagan’s position was to minimize the counting of bombers reflecting their stabilizing nature.” Bombers are inherently less destabilizing than missiles because they take much longer to deliver warheads to their target and can be recalled. Neither side is likely to get a strategic leg up on the other via the bomber counting rule. Moreover, according to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the number of Russian deployed strategic warheads “is above the treaty limits. So they [the Russians] will have to take down warheads.”
It's hard to deal with such blatant liars, but it's even harder when the two of them are still doing business with this administration's officials. You might find it hard to believe (or not), but there is this weird relationship between liberal hawks and conservative hawks. They share common friends, they hang out at the same meetings, and for some reason, it's only the liberal hawks who are "nice" about pushing political agendas when they're on the outs. Their conservative friends never take a break from the struggle. If they stop pushing their agenda, in or out of office, they know they lose ground. Would that our side could figure this out.
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