John Wohlstetter - Sleepwalking with the Bomb

The problem of deterring violations has often been oversimplified by assuming that a detected evasion would automatically be taken care of by the cancellation of the agreement and the application of such “restorative measures.” But three conditions have to be met if “restorative measures” by themselves are to be an adequate deterrent:

(1) The potential violator must fear the risk of being detected.

(2) He must also fear that a detected violation will cause an unwanted response by the injured country.

(3) He must not expect a violation to bring him an irrevocable advantage that would outweigh whatever gain he derives from abiding by the agreement.

No one effectively sanctioned Soviet violations of Cold War arms pacts. (Circumventing on-site inspection can be easy—as Paul Nitze discussed with a Soviet negotiator in 1969, it takes only six hours to place a warhead on a Russian ICBM.) Enforcing the New START Treaty will run up against the same real-world hurdles that allowed Cold War violations to occur.

The Senate ratified New START in December 2010, but—in contrast to the SORT Treaty, devoid of missile defense language—attached strict conditions. New START as ratified separated missile defense from limits on offensive systems and committed the administration both to fully implement planned missile defense deployments and also to modernize America’s aging nuclear arsenal—regardless of Russian offensive missile deployment.

Such ratification conditions have the same legal effect on the Russians, said former Reagan-era arms-control and international law expert Eugene Rostow, as “a letter from my mother.”

ARMS-CONTROL HISTORY gives us common sense political insights about what deals can be negotiated, with whom, and under what circumstances.

1. If an arms treaty is perceived as sound, it will command huge ratification majorities. The 1987 INF, 1991 START I, and 2002 SORT treaties all commanded over 90 ratifying votes—the 2002 vote was 95–0. The SALT I accord won 88 Senate votes. Treaties that got into trouble were those regarded as poor bargains by many senators: unratified SALT II in 1979 and New START in 2010, whose 71–26 vote garnered only 13 of 46 Republicans.

2. The circumstances in which leaders present arms treaties affect how people perceive them. A broad bipartisan consensus that the time had come to find common ground with America’s superpower adversary greeted SALT I, whereas SALT II met a deeply divided public. The INF Treaty and the arms treaties of the Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr. administrations came when public support was broad, whereas most Republicans sharply opposed New START, and the public—focused on the economy—barely noticed it.

3. A leader people perceive as strong can get large ratification majorities for treaties. Just as it took staunch anticommunist president Richard Nixon to go to China, Presidents Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Bush Jr. won large majorities for arms pacts because the public trusted them. President Obama is less well trusted, and the modest margin of passage for New START reflects this reality.

These factors have to do with gaining support for and ratifying treaties; they apply before the fact. The more important lesson of arms-control agreements, stated at the beginning of the chapter as the Second Lesson of nuclear-age history and repeated here, has to do with how the treaties work in the months and years after they are signed: Arms agreements work well only if the parties correctly perceive commonality of strategic interest. The Soviet Union ruthlessly exploited loopholes in SALT I, while ardent arms-control supporters held America to narrow interpretations of what the treaty permitted. The INF and START I treaties worked well, because Mikhail Gorbachev indeed was a different Soviet leader: he ended the Soviet quest for global dominance, freed his country’s captive nations, and turned the country inward for reform efforts. The 2002 SORT Treaty came when Russian leader Vladimir Putin was acting as an ally of the United States, and worked well. But Putin ended linkage of arms treaties to country conduct later in the decade. Most notably, he invaded Georgia—America’s ally and Russia’s former satellite republic—in 2008.

The years 1967–1992 were the apogee of arms control. Arms-control primacy in Western countries elevated it to an exalted place, supreme above all other competing security priorities, as the path to escape nuclear nightmares. Formalist objections to particular provisions in SALT I were put aside, in pursuit of ending “the arms race”; not until several years later did it become clear that America’s freeze of its arsenal did not encourage the Soviets to freeze its arsenal. Jimmy Carter’s own defense secretary, Harold Brown, conceded that the Soviets built even while we were cutting.

Ironically, New START reflected the Obama administration’s Cold War mindset: a treaty between superpowers. Yet Russia is no longer a true superpower, although it is still able to cause lots of trouble around the world. It makes no sense to place current-day Russia’s concerns at a level higher than those of all other nations. In terms of arms control and deterrence, Barack Obama has traveled in time back to 1967, to the days of mutual assured destruction, placing superpower arms concord above deploying full-scale missile defense as insurance against future “clandestine cache” strategic surprise. To put that in perspective, imagine that President Johnson in 1967 had based American policy on how things looked in 1922. That was the year the Washington Naval Treaty put limits on ships and their armaments. Leaders of the great democracies thought these limits would prevent a second world war. Tyrants in Germany and Japan ended that fantasy.

The Cold War turned out better, but arms accords did not bring about the collapse of the evil empire, nor can it be proven that they alone prevented a nuclear war. All that can be known are two truths: The accords, whether wise or not, did not realize the worst fears of their critics. Equally, it can be said, they did not realize the high hopes of their ardent supporters. They were politically salient, bringing a measure of political peace in Western countries, but ultimately of marginal impact on strategic affairs save for missile defense. Missile defense research lagged and was skewed by arms-control priorities. We are thus more vulnerable to small-power strikes than likely we would be had our research and development on missile defense proceeded without impediments arising out of the prevailing U.S. interpretation of Cold War arms agreements.

President Obama’s “open mic” exchange with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev at the March 2012 Nuclear Summit exemplified his preoccupation with arms control over missile defense, an attitude that animated the now-defunct ABM Treaty. [16] OBAMA: “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved but it’s important for [incoming president Vladimir Putin] to give me space.” MEDVEDEV: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you.” OBAMA: “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” MEDVEDEV: “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.” The president noted that missile defense is a “particular” concern, thus indicating an intention to move towards Moscow’s position after the U.S. 2012 election. Indeed, the White House has sought to share sensitive missile defense data with Moscow, a move strongly opposed by many members of Congress.

Arms control is an essential tool, not a talisman. Agreements with adversaries are possible, but only when interests in fact coincide, as they do with efforts to avoid accidental war, and with several later arms treaties. It is dangerous for America to assume that an enemy’s strategic interests are the same as its own—as Jimmy Carter learned when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and George W. Bush learned when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia. Commonality of strategic goals was, in those cases, simply absent. With Russia, President Reagan put it best by often citing a Russian proverb: “Trust, but verify.”