U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin have both spoken out in the last year on the idea of unilateral reductions in strategic nuclear forces. During his election campaign, Bush let it be known that he preferred to move quickly to reduce nuclear weapons, not waiting, as he put it, for “years and years of detailed arms control negotiations.”1 Bush reaffirmed this view in his May 1, 2001 speech on strategic issues, when he said, “My goal is to move quickly to reduce nuclear forces. The United States will lead by example to achieve our interests and the interests for peace in the world.” Putin, for his part, announced in November 2000 that he was ready to pursue strategic nuclear arms reductions “together or in parallel”—this, even before it was clear that Bush would be entering the White House.2 Putin stressed that Russia was ready to reduce its arsenal to 1,500 deployed strategic warheads or even lower, going below the 2,000-2,500 warheads that Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin had agreed to at Helsinki as targets for START III.
In short, the United States and Russia apparently share an interest in accelerated reductions in strategic offensive nuclear forces. Moreover, they both seem willing to conduct those reductions in a unilateral manner, due in part to a deadlock in the START process over the past few years. The approach, although undertaken independently, is essentially cooperative. It could include coordinated announcements of strategic nuclear reductions in a summit context, transparency measures during the process of implementation, or bilateral consent to use some existing regime measures—such as the verification provisions of START I—to facilitate and build confidence in the reductions. Although it may seem paradoxical, this strategy could be called “cooperative unilateralism.”
The strategic defense case, however, is much more troubled. From the outset, the Bush administration has stressed a preference to pursue unilateral measures to deploy missile defenses, while emphasizing that they would not be designed to counter the Russian offensive arsenal, but rather a more limited “rogue state” threat. The Russians, for their part, have tended to disbelieve these arguments. They stress that the wide-ranging research and development program that the Bush administration is pursuing conveys the impression that a much more ambitious national missile defense system is in the cards, one that would decisively threaten Russian strategic offensive capabilities in future years.
The rhetoric on this matter heated up in the summer of 2001, when a briefing that had been provided to U.S. allies became public. It emphasized that the U.S. missile defense testing program would be “bumping up” against the constraints of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in “months not years.” On that basis, the briefing implied, the United States would withdraw from the ABM Treaty within a year, with the required six months’ notification perhaps being given before the end of 2001.
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton seemed to expand on this theme when he visited Moscow in August. He hinted publicly that November was the United States’ informal deadline for convincing the Russians to join in abrogating the ABM Treaty and proceeding to a new arrangement on missile defenses.3 Although Washington backed away from talk of a deadline after Bolton’s comments, President Bush clearly continued to support unilateral action should the discussions with the Russians fail to bear fruit. The United States will withdraw from the ABM Treaty, the president said, “at time convenient to America.”4
Thus, discussions on strategic defenses have been flavored by a sense of U.S. ultimatum that has hampered chances for progress—this despite considerable U.S.-Russian consonance of views on strategic offenses. In essence, a situation has emerged in which both the United States and Russia appear to recognize the benefits of unilateral action to further reduce strategic offensive arms, but hold widely different views on applying unilateralism to the strategic defense case. Cooperative unilateralism may be possible in speeding offensive reductions, but not, it seems, in easing differences on defenses.
This article examines the essential differences between these two cases. It considers the rationales that the two countries have developed for unilateral measures, both currently and in the past, and the successes and failures that they have encountered. Based on these lessons, it explores how unilateralism might be used to better advantage in the current U.S.-Russian environment, in particular suggesting ways forward for the difficult strategic defense case.
The Arguments for Unilateralism
In recent years, the most important argument that has emerged on the U.S. side in support of unilateral measures is that they permit more flexibility than legally binding arms control treaties that have been ratified by the U.S. Senate and the Duma, the Russian parliament. The United States, in this view, may need to adjust or increase its nuclear force posture in response to future threats, taking advantage of technological changes that would not be permitted by an arms control treaty. Unilateral measures are seen as inherently less constraining on future U.S. strategic force planning.5 Unilateral measures are equally less constraining on the Russian force posture, of course, but U.S. proponents of unilateralism argue that Russian economic problems will preclude a rapid and unpredictable buildup of Russian nuclear weapons.
This argument emphasizes the notion that technology is of greater service to U.S. national security than international law. Newt Gingrich put it succinctly when he said, “It’s the difference between those who would rely on lawyers to defend America and those who would rely on engineers and scientists.”6
In earlier days, the emphasis was less on flexibility for U.S. forces than on establishing intent at the negotiating table. An early example of U.S. unilateralism was President Eisenhower’s announcement of a moratorium on nuclear testing at the beginning of the 1958 negotiations on a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)—a move that was opposed at the time by the U.S. military. Eisenhower’s move led to a parallel declaration by the Soviet Communist Party general secretary, Nikita Khrushchev. Although the negotiations did not end in agreement, the parallel moratoria established the serious intent of the negotiators and started a four-decade-long process that advanced through a series of more ambitious test ban treaties, beginning with the atmospheric test ban and moving to the threshold test ban. Eventually, this process led to completion of a CTBT.
Thus, in the past an important rationale for unilateralism has been that it establishes the intent of the parties at the beginning of a diplomatic process and therefore spurs eventual success. This approach has been especially valuable when no regime existed to provide a foundation for negotiations and the parties were developing new concepts from scratch. The unilateral action essentially launched the negotiations and shaped the environment in which they went forward. As confidence in the process grew, negotiated arrangements were completed, but sometimes these too did not become legally binding (i.e., ratified treaties) for many years. Instead, they may have been implemented on an agreed basis, either partially or completely, for some period of time. This was the case with the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, which was signed in 1974 but did not enter into force until 1990. In short, unilateral measures have historically been the rootstock from which new arms control agreements have grown and developed in a kind of evolutionary process.
The current U.S. administration, however, has tended to discount the symbiotic relationship that can exist between unilateral measures and negotiated regimes, insisting instead that unilateral measures should replace negotiated efforts. In this view, the rationale for unilateral measures is that they produce results faster than lengthy, complex negotiations in some international watering hole. Bolton expressed the idea clearly in congressional testimony: “…these are not going to be traditional arms control negotiations with small armies of negotiators inhabiting the best hotels in Geneva for months and years at a time…while we hope, expect, are optimistic for cooperation with the Russians, the president is determined to have an effective missile defense system. If we can do it together, that would be great. But if we can’t, we will do it ourselves.”7
For the Russians’ part, unilateralism in arms control has a long history. Some Soviet leaders embraced it for ulterior motives. In the 1950s, for example, the Soviet political leadership tried to use unilateralism as a way to escape serious verification of arms reductions. As Khrushchev told Harold Stassen in his characteristically colorful way, “Perhaps there is no need to reach formal agreement and sign documents. Supposing we take unilateral decision and disarm a million men, would there be no response from your side to such a gesture? We want to do it, but we are not ready to have controllers in our bedrooms.”8
The Soviet military, in contrast, looked suspiciously on unilateral arms control measures, not least because of the pain that Khrushchev’s unilateral troop cuts had imposed on the armed forces in the late 1950s and early 1960s. General Dmitry Volkogonov, then deputy chief of the main political administration in the Ministry of Defense, expressed it well in 1987 when he wrote, “Just as it is impossible to applaud with one hand, so it is impossible to create a nuclear free world with only unilateral efforts.”9 He went on to say in a later article, “An adequate way to survival lies through compromises, negotiations and mutual concessions, but only provided these are based on equal security.”10 “Equal security” was a code phrase for the military’s insistence that Soviet defense requirements still depended strongly on the posture and capabilities of likely Soviet adversaries, especially the United States and its NATO allies. According to this argument, even when there was a low probability of conflict—such as at the end of the Cold War—the Soviet Union could not afford to unilaterally disarm.
Today, similar arguments are heard in Moscow about the need for caution in unilateral arms reductions. Many older analysts, perhaps bearing the scars of the earlier debates, mention the problem of equal security and argue for continued emphasis on the negotiating table. At the same time, the strand of enthusiasm for unilateral action continues among the political leadership, but with a different twist. Instead of trying to avoid verification, the current Russian leadership emphasizes that unilateral measures should stress verification, monitoring, and transparency in order to be able to understand the degree to which each side has accomplished changes in its force structures. Thus, despite the continuing undercurrent of debate in the Russian arms control community, Putin has seemed genuinely interested in pursuing an agenda of reductions in strategic offensive nuclear forces, either together or in parallel.
Today’s Debate: The Offense Case
The benefits of proceeding with offenses unilaterally but cooperatively are strong. In particular, unilateral action could accelerate the U.S.-Russian strategic arms reduction process that has been stymied in recent years by difficulties at bringing arms control treaties into force. START II, for example, although it was signed in 1993 and has been ratified in both capitals, has been hung up on a legislative requirement put in place by the Russian Duma. The legislation requires that a set of agreements signed in New York in 1997 be ratified by both parties before START II can be brought into force. Since some of the so-called New York protocols deal with ABM Treaty issues that have been unpalatable to many in the U.S. Congress, START II entry into force has effectively been on hold.
Indeed, it seems unlikely that START II will enter into force in the foreseeable future. The Bush administration has indicated no interest in seeking Senate approval of the New York protocols, and the Putin administration has indicated no interest in amending the Russian legislation. Moreover, START III, the follow-on agreement to reduce strategic offensive weapons to 2,000-2,500 deployed warheads on each side, fell victim to similar linkage. Mapped out by Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin at Helsinki in May 1997, the START III proposal had been the subject of intense discussions between Moscow and Washington over the last three years. However, progress on these offensive arms reductions became linked to bilateral accommodation on ABM issues. The Clinton administration wished to amend the ABM Treaty to permit limited defense deployments in Alaska, but Yeltsin, and later Putin, resisted these efforts, stalling progress on both offense and defense.
A cooperative unilateral approach to strategic offensive force reductions would effectively “blast through” these constraints and enable the United States and Russia to make rapid progress where none has seemed possible. Differences would still have to be resolved before the two countries could proceed in this manner. For example, the two sides currently have different notions of how low the reductions might go. President Putin has stressed since November 2000 that he is not only reiterating the Russian offer to reduce strategic nuclear forces to 1,500 deployed weapons on each side but that he is also offering to go lower. Some have speculated that he may be willing to propose a number as low as 1,000 weapons. Meanwhile, President Bush has made it clear that he would like to sharply reduce U.S. nuclear forces, but he has been awaiting the outcome of the U.S. nuclear posture review, due to be completed by the end of the year. It became clear in July 2001, however, that some senior figures in the U.S. military establishment are not keen to go lower than the level of 2,000-2,500 warheads already agreed to with the Russians as the target for START III.11
Another difference is that while the Russians have expressed a clear preference for a “catch-up agreement” to follow and reinforce any unilateral strategic force reductions, the Bush administration continues to express a preference to avoid the negotiating table. For their part, the Russians argue strongly that unless there is a legally binding document to underpin implementation of the reductions, particularly monitoring and verification measures, each side will lose confidence in its understanding of the other’s strategic nuclear force posture.
This problem exists not only for Russia, but also for the United States. Threat assessment and force planning in both countries benefit from predictability in the relationship. The more the United States knows about what is going on with Russia’s nuclear force posture, the easier it is to determine how to counter it. The extension of arms control monitoring in START I beyond national technical means of verification, such as satellites, to on-site inspections and other cooperative measures has done much to ease threat assessment and force planning for both Russia and the United States. Reverting to dependence on national technical means alone would be a step backward.
Another argument that the Russians make is that legally binding agreements are the only mechanisms that actually spur legal, regulatory, and procedural change in the Russian system. This argument has arisen in the context of the so-called Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) agreed to by Bush and Gorbachev, and later Yeltsin, in 1991 and 1992. The PNIs called for the removal of most U.S. and Soviet non-strategic nuclear weapons from operational deployment by certain dates for storage and eventual destruction.12 They were announced in summit joint statements, but did not include any agreed measures to monitor or verify that the steps were being implemented.
As a result, the United States and Russia implemented the PNIs differently. Whereas budget pressures in the wake of the PNIs led the United States to essentially denuclearize the non-strategic elements of its navy, the Russians retained nuclear training and operational practice. They argued that they could not make changes in Russian military procedures for training nuclear-certified troops and handling and maintaining weapons except in response to a legally binding treaty. Russian naval captains, for example, are required by regulation to continue training their troops to handle nuclear weapons, even though (the Russians claim) no nuclear weapons are carried aboard non-strategic naval platforms on a day-to-day basis. They acknowledge that this continuation of nuclear practice makes it difficult to discern from the outside that nuclear deployments have ended. They argue, however, that without a legally binding agreement, they are prevented by Russian law from making changes in that practice. As one naval officer commented, “Presidents come and go, presidential summit statements come and go. In our navy, unless there is a legal government-to-government agreement, the procedures and requirements stay the same.”13
Having had their own difficulties with lengthy, expensive negotiations in Geneva, the Russians have not insisted on a major new strategic arms reduction treaty. Putin said as much in his November 13, 2000 statement: “We share the opinion which is also expressed in the U.S. that in order to reach such an accord protracted negotiations or starting from scratch will not be necessary. We have significant experience, there are legal mechanisms within START I and START II.” In other words, even in advance of Bush’s arrival in the White House, Putin spoke favorably of adapting or building on the foundation of existing regimes to effect implementation of further reductions.
The Bush administration has not yet openly expressed a view on the idea of adapting or building on existing START measures to ensure smooth monitoring of further reductions. Clearly it would prefer to see those reductions conducted “in parallel” rather than as part of a negotiated regime, but its view of maintaining existing START verification measures to implement unilateral reductions is uncertain.
However, from its earliest days, the administration has been confronted with some of the difficulties that emerge from reliance on unilateral measures alone. In January 2001, just as President Bush was preparing to take office, the U.S. press reported that Russia was reversing PNI reductions by re-deploying tactical nuclear weapons in the Kaliningrad enclave. U.S. public concern was followed shortly by outcry in countries neighboring Kaliningrad, especially Poland. The Polish government called for international inspections of the Kaliningrad sites, only to hear from the U.S. State Department, “We do not inspect nuclear storage facilities except as agreed to under relevant arms-control agreements.”14 Thus, while the PNIs are an excellent example of the speed with which unilateral action can have an impact, questions about their long-term efficacy may be one reason the administration would consider retaining verification and monitoring measures from previous agreements.
A new “agreement” to proceed with cooperative unilateral reductions in strategic offensive forces might be a short, straightforward, presidential summit statement. It would state the intended level of force reductions for each country, and it would reference the monitoring and verification measures of the START I Verification Protocol as the way in which each side would implement the reductions. In essence, the existing “legally binding” umbrella of the START I Verification Protocol would be extended to new, cooperative, but essentially unilateral, reductions.
Trouble Over Defense
While the cooperative unilateral approach seems possible in the case of strategic offensive forces, proceeding cooperatively on strategic defense is problematic. The United States and Russia have thus far disagreed decisively on the future of the ABM Treaty. The Russians have publicly insisted on maintaining the ABM Treaty, although they have implied that some amendments might be possible to accommodate the U.S. testing program. For its part, Bush’s team has insisted that the ABM Treaty is a Cold War treaty that cannot be adapted to new circumstances and instead has suggested a new type of document. As Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “We need an understanding, an agreement, a treaty, something that allows us to move forward with our missile defense programs….”15 This document would also underpin a new framework for strategic cooperation, as President Bush urged in his May 2001 speech. However, up to this point the Russians have remained cautious about this notion.
If neither amendment of the ABM Treaty nor a new agreement is possible at the moment, then a third option might be for the two sides to agree to a process for building confidence concerning ongoing missile defense developments. A perfect parallel to the approach on the offensive side would be for each side to proceed unilaterally with development, testing, and deployment of missile defenses, but in a cooperative and open manner. However, a true cooperative unilateral approach, with similar elements present in each country, is currently not possible. For one thing, the Russians have shown no interest thus far in reinvigorating missile defense as an element of their national strategy. For another, they are unlikely to spend their scarce budget resources on a new missile defense program.
Thus, instead of a cooperative unilateral approach on the defense side, the most feasible option would be a unilateral U.S. effort in which the Russians would acquire over time sufficient transparency to develop confidence in what the United States was doing. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld seemed to be describing just such an arrangement during his August 2001 trip to Moscow. He argued that it may take five or 10 years for the United States and Russia to begin to trust each other fully in a new post-Cold War environment, but said, “What we have to do is find ways through interchanges, consultations, transparency, verification, monitoring—whatever it takes to demystify what we’re doing. To the extent suspicion, even misplaced, persists, then we ought to be able to find ways to demystify that and to reduce those suspicions.”16
Rumsfeld’s words convey some interesting possibilities. Assuming that a limited U.S. ballistic missile defense system is in the cards, the high level of interaction that Rumsfeld is suggesting could give the Russians a greater understanding of U.S. developments than the ABM Treaty alone would provide. For example, Russian involvement in cooperative projects to develop defense technologies would potentially give them transparency into the U.S. program and early warning of any effort to develop a capability against Russian strategic offensive forces. As their confidence develops, the Russians might, over time, be willing to move from cooperation on defense technologies into a new agreement or arrangement on missile defense deployment—a follow-on to the ABM Treaty. This would be the final, logical step in the “demystification” of U.S. strategic defense policy.
A key question, of course, is whether the ABM Treaty would remain in place while this process unfolds. Although the Bush administration would clearly like to move quickly to replace it with a new arrangement, a kind of “gentlemen’s agreement,” the Putin administration would prefer that the treaty remain in place as a transitional mechanism for the process.
Two Cases, Two Models
For both the strategic offense and defense cases, the conclusion can be drawn that unilateralism makes best sense if it is connected—at least eventually—to a cooperative regime that is already in place and being implemented by the parties. The existence of a successful START I regime, for example, is one reason why the United States and Russia might agree to carry out unilateral reductions in strategic offensive forces on an accelerated basis. Thanks to START I, each party understands well what goes on in the other’s strategic offensive arsenal. What is more, they both are likely to want to continue with that level of understanding and so might be willing to extend the provisions of START I verification and monitoring to a unilateral reduction process. This would be a clear example of cooperative unilateralism.
Of course, the willingness of the United States and Russia to cooperate in this regard will depend on a positive outcome to their current disagreement about missile defenses and the ABM Treaty. Although this article has separated the offense and defense cases for the purposes of analysis, the two are closely related—a reality reflected in the recent presidential summit statement at Genoa. If Washington and Moscow are unable to reach agreement on defensive issues, the result in the offensive realm and elsewhere will likely be highly confrontational. If the United States unilaterally withdraws from the ABM Treaty, for example, Russia may decide to make good on its threats to withdraw from START, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and other international arms control agreements. Unilateralism in this case would take on a destructive edge, far removed from the concept of cooperative action conducted in parallel.
In fact, such cooperation is more difficult if the unilateral process is kept at arm’s length from existing bilateral regimes that may provide a foundation for it, but that is evidently the Bush administration’s preference with regard to missile defense. The White House would like to engage Russia in a new process of building understanding about unilateral U.S. aspirations and developments concerning missile defense, but it would like to do so without making use of the ABM Treaty.
In effect, the Bush team seems to be embarking on a process akin to the one that the Eisenhower administration began in the 1950s, when it launched a unilateral moratorium in advance of test ban negotiations. The Eisenhower administration was attempting to establish its intent and build confidence on the Soviet side that it was operating in good faith in a new policy arena. Its action, in turn, drew forth a unilateral moratorium declaration from Khrushchev, and the two sides were embarked on a process that led eventually to a series of nuclear test ban treaties.
In a similar manner, Secretary Rumsfeld has described an extensive effort to establish U.S. intent and build confidence with the Russians that U.S. missile defenses will not pose a threat to the Russian strategic offensive deterrent. A new process is clearly what the Bush administration is aiming for in the missile defense case. While the United States would continue with unilateral actions to develop its limited missile defense system, it would also conduct vigorous efforts to build transparency with Russia and demystify the U.S. program. Eventually, these efforts would lead to a new agreed arrangement: ideally, in the administration’s view, a gentlemen’s agreement that would also serve as a basis for the new framework for strategic cooperation that President Bush has proposed.
A key question, however, is whether such an arrangement would ever pass the threshold to treaty status in international law. From its outset in the Eisenhower years, the process to constrain nuclear testing combined unilateral measures with aspirations to negotiate increasingly more ambitious test ban treaties. The Bush administration has clearly expressed distaste for negotiations, and in several cases has rejected the efficacy of international treaties—the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty being one prominent example.
Another important question is how fast the Bush administration would try to push the new process. Secretary Rumsfeld described a “demystification” effort of five or 10 years in his August remarks in Moscow. However, that timeframe contrasts sharply with the frequent emphasis on speed and deadlines in the administration’s approach to missile defenses. There therefore seems to be a significant contradiction between the slow course that the Bush administration has described to develop new confidence and transparency with the Russians, and its policy aspirations with regard to rapid deployment of missile defenses.
The president would find this contradiction eased if he would reconsider using the foundation of an existing regime to underpin unilateral action and achieve accelerated results with Russia. This model ideally would involve working with the Russians to adapt the ABM Treaty to the needs of the U.S. missile defense testing program, combining that process with new technology cooperation and transparency and confidence-building measures, as Rumsfeld has proposed. If that course were pursued, the administration would likely find that testing and early deployment of missile defenses could occur in a relatively straightforward manner, with a minimum of political and diplomatic heavy lifting required both with the Russians and with U.S. allies.
However, the model in its purest form is probably not possible to pursue with this administration, given its thorough criticism of the ABM Treaty as a “relic of the Cold War.” This being the case, several variants to the model might be considered, one of which might be acceptable to the Bush team. One option, for example, might be a “timed transition” in which an adapted ABM Treaty would operate within a strictly defined period of time, perhaps keyed to a certain number of events in the testing schedule. By the end of the timed transition, a new agreement or arrangement would have to be in place. Another option might be to mine the ABM Treaty for the parts that are particularly relevant and amend or adapt them to form a limited development and testing protocol. This limited protocol, in turn, would provide the transitional environment in which a new, more comprehensive arrangement could be negotiated.
If the Bush administration chooses not to make some use of the existing regime but depends wholly on a new process with the Russians, then it is likely to have difficulty moving quickly to a new strategic arrangement. The process that the administration has described is attractive in some regards. If it offers extensive transparency and confidence-building, for example, it would give Russia more opportunities to understand the nature of the new U.S. missile defense system than would the ABM Treaty alone. As the process gathers momentum, it could contribute in important ways to the goal of finally moving beyond the Cold War, as President Bush has stressed. Nevertheless, the administration should consider whether its goal could be achieved more quickly by making use of the ABM Treaty rather than taking immediate steps to discard it.
NOTES
1. George W. Bush, “New Leadership on National Security,” Washington, D.C., May 23, 2000.
2. “The Statement of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin,” November 13, 2000.
3. Patrick E. Tyler, “U.S. Sets Deadline for Settlement of ABM Argument,” The New York Times, August 22, 2001; Peter Baker, “Envoy Gives Russia Target on ABM Pact,” The Washington Post, August 22, 2001.
4. David E. Sanger, “Bush Flatly States U.S. Will Pull Out of Missile Treaty,” The New York Times, August 24, 2001. For commentary playing down the “deadline” theme, see Peter Baker, “U.S. Fails to Sway Russia on ABM Pact,” The Washington Post, August 23, 2001; Michael Wines, “U.S. Envoy Says Russia Has Time in Missile Talks,” The New York Times, August 23, 2001.
5. The argument against “legal rigidity” is well laid out in Rationale and Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Forces and Arms Control, Volume I, Executive Report, National Institute for Public Policy, January 2001.
6. Quoted in Stephen Fidler, “Conservatives Determined to Carry Torch for US Missile Defense,” The Financial Times, July 12, 2001.
7. Testimony of Undersecretary of State John Bolton, Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Panel 1: Missile Defense and the ABM Treaty, July 24, 2001.
8. Quoted in Janet Morgan, ed., The Backbench Diaries of Richard Crossman (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981), p. 492.
9. Krasnaya zvezda, May 22, 1987.
10. Asia and Africa Today (Moscow, in English), January 1988.
11. Walter Pincus, “Nuclear Arms Chief Questions Cut in Warheads,” The Washington Post, July 15, 2001.
12. For an interesting compendium on this topic, Jeffrey A. Larsen and Kurt J. Klingenberger, eds., Controlling Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons: Obstacles and Opportunities, (Colorado Springs, CO: USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2001).
13. For more on this Russian view, see Rose Gottemoeller, “Lopsided Arms Control,” The Washington Post, December 7, 2000.
14. Quoted in “Russia Places Tactical Nukes in Kaliningrad, Worries NATO,” Editorial Information Network, Week of January 8, 2001. The article that first reported the transfer is Bill Gertz, “Russia Transfers Nuclear Arms to Baltics,” The Washington Times, January 3, 2001.
15. Steve Mufson and Alan Sipress, “Powell Says U.S. Will Seek Arms Accord With Russia,” The Washington Post, July 14, 2001.
16. “Remarks by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a Roundtable with Russian Political Scientists,” Itar-Tass, August 13, 2001, distributed by the Federal News Service.
Rose Gottemoeller, who served as assistant secretary of energy for non-proliferation and national security during the Clinton administration, is a senior associate with the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.