New START

The multilayered limits of the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and the elaborate verification measures flowing out of them were born of the difficult negotiations conducted in the waning days of the Soviet Union. The streamlined verification measures in the New START agreement, finalized in April 2010, are an appropriate response to the replacement treaty’s specific limits, which are designed to address post-Cold War realities. Combining proof-tested measures from 15 years of START implementation with new approaches to contemporary challenges, New START verification provisions are well suited to fulfill their core function. These provisions promise to permit the same high confidence in compliance achieved when the original START was in force, but will do so with more focused and up-to-date methods, including innovative verification provisions for monitoring deployed warhead ceilings.

Setting the stage for what could be a major showdown with Senate Republicans, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) April 8 in Prague. The signing of the treaty “demonstrates the determination of the United States and Russia—the two nations that hold over 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons—to pursue responsible global leadership,” Obama said. Medvedev said, “What matters most is that this is a win-win situation.… [B]oth parties have won. And taking into account this victory of ours, the entire world community has won.”

Today in Prague, Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev signed the most important nuclear arms reduction treaty in nearly two decades. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) puts Washington and Moscow back on the path of verifiable reductions of their still-bloated Cold War nuclear arsenals and renewed cooperation on other vital nuclear security priorities.

U.S. and Russian negotiators have concluded a new strategic arms agreement to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), which expired in December. Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev are to meet in Prague on April 8 to sign New START. If the Senate and the Russian Duma ratify the treaty, the United States and Russia each will be limited to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads on no more than 800 deployed and non-deployed strategic nuclear delivery vehicles—a steep cut from the levels of START I, which permitted each side 6,000 warheads on 1,600 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles (SNDVs) or launchers. The New START limit on deployed strategic nuclear warheads would be 30 percent below the 2,200 target set by the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty. (Continue)