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U.S.-Russian Experts, Fmr. Officials Urge New START Extension, Renewed U.S.-Russian Strategic Dialogue
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Arms Control NOW

In the latest in a series of expert conferences and dialogues in Moscow and Washington, a group of distinguished U.S. and Russian experts released a public statement calling on U.S. and Russian officials to get back to the arms control negotiating table, with the first order of business being agreement on a five-year extension of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), as allowed for in Article XIV of the treaty, and talks designed to head-off new arms competition in the wake of the likely termination of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

The April 10 joint experts statement was endorsed by 29 individuals.

The latest meeting on the crisis in U.S.-Russian arms control was organized by the U.S. and Canadian Studies Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN) and held at the Gorkachev Institute in Moscow. Previous conferences in this series have been co-organized by ISKRAN, the Arms Control Association, the Deep Cuts Commission, the Nuclear Crisis Group, the U.S. National Academies of Science.

As the April 10 joint statement indicates, the participants also agreed that a productive dialogue in these areas would provide a foundation for progress on other issues of mutual concern, including: emerging technologies with potential strategic implications; new kinds of offensive, nuclear-capable systems; non-strategic nuclear weapons; missile defenses and third-country strategic capabilities.

It is also clear to many of us that there is simply not enough time—and not enough trust—between the U.S. and Russian governments to negotiate, let alone ratify, a complex, new, legally-binding treaty that addresses these difficult new issues before New START expires on Feb. 5, 2021. Without the INF Treaty and without extension of New START, there would be no legally-binding limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals for the first time since 1972.

Any proposals that might emerge from the Trump administration suggesting that China must join New START, or that Russia must agree to limits on tactical nuclear weapons, as a condition for New START extension should be recognized for what they are: disingenuous proposals designed to create a pretext for killing New START.

The formal joint statement from the U.S. and Russian experts, and the list of endorsers, is appended below.—DARYL G. KIMBALL, Executive Director, Arms Control Association 

Statement by Participants of the Russian-American Conference on Arms Control, April 9-10, 2019, Moscow

As American and Russian experts in national security affairs, we are deeply concerned by the deterioration of the international security environment, the prospect of heightened competition among major powers in the strategic realm, and the increased risk of military confrontation that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. We encourage our two governments to counteract these disturbing developments and promote strategic stability, including by:

  • Reaffirming the Reagan-Gorbachev understanding that a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought;
  • Extending the New START Treaty until 2026 as allowed by article XIV of the Treaty;
  • Ensuring that the likely end of the INF Treaty does not result in a new arms race;
  • Holding regular, high-level talks to consider the implications for strategic stability and arms control of a range of technological and strategic developments, including:
    • Emerging technologies with potential strategic implications;
    • New kinds of offensive, nuclear-capable systems;
    • Non-strategic nuclear weapons;
    • Conventional systems with strategic implications, including missile defenses and conventional strike systems; and
    • Third-country strategic capabilities.

We believe our two countries should also work together and with other parties to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to ensure the success of the 2020 NPT Review Conference.

List of the American and Russian participants who signed the statement of the Arms Control Conference, Moscow, April 10th, 2019:

  1. Alexandra Bell – Senior Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control and Non- Proliferation, former Director for Strategic Outreach in the Office of the US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security;
  2. Thomas Blanton – Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University;
  3. Robert Einhorn – Senior Fellow in the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative and the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, the Brookings Institution; the U.S. Department of State special advisor for nonproliferation and arms control;
  4. Daryl G. Kimball – Executive Director of the Arms Control Association;
  5. Olga Oliker – Program Director, Europe and Central Asia, International Crisis Group, PhD;
  6. Amb. Thomas Pickering – former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and the Russian Federation;
  7. Frank Rose – Senior Fellow for Security and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, US Assistant Secretary of State for arms control, verification, and compliance;
  8. Svetlana Savranskaya – Senior Analyst, National Security Archive at George Washington University;
  9. Jon Wolfsthal – Senior advisor at Global Zero, former Adviser to U.S. Vice President for nuclear security and nonproliferation, former Special Assistant to the President Barack Obama as a Senior Director for arms control and nonproliferation at the US National Security Council.                                                                        
  10. Svetlana Babich – Deputy Director of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN), Ph.D.
  11. Vladimir Baranovsky – Member of the Directorate of Primakov National Research Institute of World Economy and International relations, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D. , Professor;
  12. Vladimir Batyuk – Senior research fellow at the Department for Military-Political Research of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN), Ph.D.
  13. Evgeniy Buzhinsky – Chairman of the Executive Board of the PIR Center, vice-president of the Russian International Affairs Council, Candidate of Sciences (Military), Lieutenant General (ret.);
  14. Anatoly Diakov – Member of the Advisory Board of the PIR Center, Chief Research Fellow (former director) at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies, Ph.D.
  15. Leonid Drachevsky – Executive Director of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary;
  16. Viktor Esin – Leading Research Fellow at the Department for Military-Political Research of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN), former Head of the Staff of Strategic Rocket Forces of Russia, Ph.D., Colonel General (ret.);
  17. Alexey Gromyko– Director of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IERAS), Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D.;
  18. Anton Khlopkov – Director of the Center for Energy and Security Studies, Editor-in-chief of the Nuclear Club journal;
  19. Andrey Kokoshin – Dean of the School of World Politics of the Moscow State University, former Deputy Defense Minister of Russian Federation, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D. Professor;
  20. Oleg Krivolapov – Research Fellow at the Department for Military-Political Research of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN), Ph.D.;
  21. Valentin Kuznetsov – Senior Research Fellow at the Department for Military-Political Research of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN), former Chief Military Representative of the Russian Federation to NATO, Vice Admiral (ret.);
  22. Sergey Oznobishchev – Head of Sector of Military-Political Analysis and Research Projects at the Primakov National Research Institute for World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO), Ph.D. Candidate of Sciences (History);
  23. Irina Petrova – Senior Research Fellow at the Department for Military-Political Research of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN);
  24. Sergey Rogov – Academic Director of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D., Professor;
  25. Pavel Sharikov – Leading Research Fellow at the Department of Military-Political Research of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN), Ph.D.;
  26. Nataliya Stepanova – Research Fellow at the Department of Military-Political Studies of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN);
  27. Dmitry Trenin – Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, Ph.D.; 
  28. Feodor Voitolovsky – Director of the Primakov National Research Institute for World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO), Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D.;
  29. Pavel Zolotarev – Scientific Leader of the Military-Political Studies at the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN), Ph.D., Major General (ret.).