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“Over the past 50 years, ACA has contributed to bridging diversity, equity, inclusion and that's by ensuring that women of color are elevated in this space.”
– Shalonda Spencer
Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security, and Conflict Transformation
June 2, 2022
March 1997
Edition Date: 
Saturday, March 1, 1997

Helsinki: A Pyrrhic Victory?

Spurgeon M. Keeny, Jr.

At the Helsinki summit, Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin, despite deep differences over NATO expansion, agreed on arms control proposals intended to obtain the Russian Duma's ratification of START II. Despite the appearance of progress, however, it is unlikely that a nationalistic Duma and a conservative U.S. Senate will accept these measures.

Under START II Russia would have had to undertake an expensive buildup of new, single warhead strategic missiles to maintain nuclear parity with the United States. The Duma's concern about parity reflects not only the desire to maintain Russia's image as a nuclear superpower but also to counter any U.S. plans to deploy a nationwide ballistic missile defense system. These concerns have been severely exacerbated by the decision to expand NATO eastward, which is seen across the Russian political spectrum as an exclusionary and aggressive move directed against Russia.

The Helsinki solution is to initiate, as soon as START II enters into force, negotiations of a new START III agreement limiting both sides to 2,000 2,500 deployed strategic nuclear warheads by the end of 2007. At this level, which reduces permitted deployments by 1,000 warheads below START II levels, Russia would no longer be faced with a strategic buildup it can ill afford. In addition, since START III may take some time to negotiate, the date for the final elimination of missile systems under START II would be extended for five years. Russia would not have to eliminate all 150 of its 10 warhead MIRVed SS 18s, now scheduled for destruction by the beginning of 2003, until the end of 2007. Thus, Russia would not have to address the problem of new strategic missile forces during the next decade while reductions are carried out. Moreover, Russia would be in a stronger position if it decided U.S. ballistic missile defense plans or future NATO expansion endangered its security.

Responding to the Duma's fear that the United States might seek to deploy a national missile defense system, Clinton reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the ABM Treaty. And, in a major policy shift, Yeltsin accepted the U.S. position on theater missile defenses (TMDs) which, except for space based kill vehicles, would allow any system designated as such provided only that it is not tested against targets traveling more than 5 kilometers per second (equivalent to a missile with a 3,500 kilometer range). Apparently, Yeltsin was persuaded that, if the Duma was given assurances on the sanctity of the ABM Treaty, coupled with the extension of the timing of the destruction of strategic offensive forces, it should be willing to accept a more permissive approach to the definition of TMD systems, which in turn would help persuade the Republican majority in the Senate to abandon efforts to repudiate the ABM Treaty.

On the central issue of NATO expansion, the presidents could only agree to disagree. Clinton rejected the notion of a formal charter between NATO and Russia, and Yeltsin was only able to get the promise of political commitments from the individual NATO leaders to as yet unspecified assurances. In the circumstances, Yeltsin saved the summit by separating the NATO impasse from arms control. But Russians were united in their indignation at the failure to respond to their concerns on this issue. The prospect of an expanding NATO, whose membership might include the Baltic states and even Ukraine, with the right to station Western forces and nuclear weapons on their territories, was looked upon as an egregious violation of understandings reached at the time of the unification of Germany and a serious threat to Russian security.

In these circumstances, it seems most unlikely that the Duma will move quickly to ratify the amended START II despite its favorable modifications from the Duma's perspective, or to agree to the new permissive definition of TMD systems, despite Clinton's reaffirmation of the ABM Treaty. Prospects for the package appear equally unpromising in the U.S. Senate. Republican leaders have already denounced the Helsinki TMD demarcation accord as unacceptable because it would not allow space based interceptor systems. The five year delay in eliminating the Russian SS 18 force, the principal accomplishment of START II, will also not receive an enthusiastic reception.

If Clinton and Yeltsin can persuade their legislatures to support this package in the face of NATO expansion, the Helsinki summit will be remembered as a remarkable victory against considerable odds. But if reluctant legislatures in both countries fail to act, as seems quite likely, Helsinki will be seen as a Pyrrhic victory, where the successful rejection of Russian efforts to hold back NATO expansion created a new adversarial relationship between Russia and the West and set back arms control for many years.

Administration Releases NATO Expansion Cost Report

On February 24, the Clinton administration released its "Report to the Congress on the Enlargement of NATO: Rationale, Benefits, Costs, and Implications." The study, conducted by the Department of Defense (DOD), estimated the cost of NATO enlargement will total $27 billion to $35 billion over a 13 year period, beginning in July 1997, when the alliance is expected to extend invitations to new members at a NATO summit in Madrid.

DOD assumed the initial expansion would include a "small group of nonspecified Central European countries" integrated at a modest pace, reflecting the lack of any overt threat to the security environment. The estimate assumed no substantial NATO forces or nuclear weapons would be permanently stationed on the new territories. Instead, the report foresees a rear guard strategy emphasizing rapid reinforcement capabilities. Earlier studies by RAND ($42 billion) and the Congressional Budget Office ($61 billion to $125 billion) based their estimates on a more extensive reconfiguration of NATO forces and alternative threat scenarios.

The DOD report estimated U.S. costs at $1.5 billion to $2 billion over 10 years. DOD assumed the United States would incur minimal costs for the restructuring of new members' militaries and for upgrading the regional reinforcement capabilities. The United States would be responsible for 15 percent of the direct costs of NATO enlargement, such as ensuring interoperability of forces and integrating command and control systems, while new and current members would account for the other 85 percent. Overall, the U.S. portion of total NATO expansion costs would be approximately 5 to 8 percent using the DOD estimates. The administration cautioned that this was not an official NATO position and that costs were subject to change if underlying assumptions proved incorrect.

The Post Cold War Settlement in Europe: A Triumph of Arms Control

Michael Mandelbaum

On March 26, Michael Mandelbaum, Christian A. Herter Professor of American Foreign Policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University, addressed the annual luncheon meeting of the Arms Control Association (ACA). Mandelbaum, who is also director of the Project on East West Relations at the Council on Foreign Relations, spoke on the impact of arms control advances on European security. As one of the leading critics of NATO enlargement, he focused on the implications of the expansion policy for future arms control agreements. Mandelbaum delivered his remarks only days after the Helsinki summit meeting between President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Mandelbaum has written and edited several books on U.S. foreign policy, including The Dawn of Peace in Europe (Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1996), and has taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard University. Mandelbaum earned a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. The text is an edited version of his luncheon speech.


If a cure for cancer were discovered, what would be the response? There would be admiration for the discoverers and celebration of the discovery. It would be a great, triumphal public event.

For the political equivalent of cancer, a cure has been discovered. The greatest scourge of our century is war. The worst and most destructive wars—World Wars I and II—have begun and been fought in the heart of Europe. The Cold War began and ended there. The danger of a major war in Europe was the central obsession of the American government for much of the 20th century, and rightly so. But that danger is now at its lowest level in decades, perhaps in all of Europe's modern history.

What is the reason for this? What is the equivalent, for war in Europe, of a cure for cancer? It is, among other things, arms control. The post Cold War settlement now in place in Europe is a triumph of arms control. That statement raises three questions. First, how and why could this statement be true? Second, if it is true, why has this achievement been so little appreciated? And third, why does it matter whether this achievement is appreciated?

In my book, The Dawn of Peace in Europe, I argue that there is a new security order in place in Europe, one that differs from the two most familiar ways of organizing security: balance of power politics and world government. Balance of power politics has been the source of such stability as Europe has enjoyed for most of its recorded history, including during the Cold War years. World government is a utopian dream that has been envisioned and advocated but never implemented, and that might not be a source of celebration if it were implemented, which it almost surely will not be.

The theme of The Dawn of Peace in Europe is that, in the wake of the Cold War, Europe has established a third method for achieving security, which I call common security and that owes something to the concept of cooperative security that was developed at the Brookings Institution. Within this common security regime, Europe is still made up of sovereign states. There is no supranational authority. The states of Europe are still armed. But peace in Europe does not depend—as it has for most of Europe's recorded history—on a finely balanced hostility between and among the most powerful European nations. The new common security order has dramatically reduced both the incentives and the capabilities for war.

The incentives have been reduced by the great political changes of 1989 and 1991. It is important to understand the events of those years as not only liberating the people involved, from whom the yoke of communism was lifted, but also as reducing substantially the threat of war. Communism itself, and the imperial domination that came with it in Europe, were standing causes of war. As long as communism and a communist European empire lasted, those oppressed would struggle to break free and those of us who were already free would struggle against the threat that communism posed.

Not only the end of communism, but also the beginnings of democracy contributed to peace in Europe. For democracy is associated with peace. There is, of course, no iron law that democracies are necessarily and always peaceful. And the most problematical country in Europe for the purposes of European security, Russia, is not fully democratic. Nonetheless, there has been since 1989 and 1991, a marked and remarkable surge of democratization across formerly communist Europe, and that contributes to the unprecedentedly peaceful character of relations between and among sovereign states there.

The military capabilities of the countries of Europe are also less threatening now than in the past, and this has been accomplished by arms control. Specifically, it has been accomplished by the remarkable series of accords that were signed beginning with the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces [INF] agreement of December 1987, and culminating with the START II accord of January 1993. These arms control agreements are similar in appearance to those of the earlier part of the Cold War, but as I argue in The Dawn of Peace in Europe, they differ in content in two truly revolutionary ways.

First, the later series of arms reduction agreements is characterized by "defense dominance." That is, they have reshaped military arsenals to make them more useful for defense than for offense in the case of conventional forces, and more useful for deterrence than for actual war fighting in the case of nuclear armaments. Country "X" will be concerned, of course, about the capabilities of its neighbor, Country "Y" no matter what "Y" says about its own intentions. Country "X" will be least concerned about Country "Y" if Country "Y" has no weapons at all. But the nations of Europe have not laid down their arms completely, and are unlikely to do so.

The next best circumstance, from the point of view of peace, is if Country "X" does not feel threatened by the armaments of Country "Y" because those armaments are suitable for self defense and not for attack. That is now the status quo in Europe thanks to arms control.

Country "X" will also want to know that Country "Y" is abiding by the limits to which it has agreed, and that what Country "Y" is actually doing with the armaments that it legally has is not threatening. The later arms control in Europe fulfills both conditions. The 1987 to 1993 agreements, that is, provide for both "static" and "operational" arms control.

The second revolutionary feature of the post 1987 arms agreements, both conventional and nuclear, is that they establish transparency. That is all the countries of Europe and North America now can know what armaments all the other states have, what they are doing with them, and whether they are violating the agreed limits—and they can know this at all times. This is an important development.

Verification did not, of course, begin in 1987. "Verifiability" has been a necessary condition for almost all arms control accords into which the United States has entered since 1945. The issue of verification has been a major theme of the nuclear age. Verification would be available even without formal agreements, through what have come to be known as "national technical means"—that is, satellites.

But verification under the auspices of the later arms agreements is more comprehensive and more intrusive than what was available previously and what would be available in the absence of these agreements. And it is significant that verification is mandated by treaty. This makes violations plainly illegal, which means that it is more likely that countries that detect violations by others will act on them. The reason surprise attacks succeed, as Richard Betts has written, is not that the country being attacked lacks warning, but rather that it lacks the political will to respond. It is easier to muster the requisite political will when the violation is unambiguously illegal. Under the later series of arms control agreements, this would be the case.

To summarize: A balance of power system rests on deterrence. A world government, should it ever exist, would rest on unchallenged authority. Common security, however, the system of security now in place in Europe, rests on confidence. The entire system of security—including changes of regime, changes of borders and changes in the military balance—can be seen as one large confidence building measure. Together, these measures have generated more confidence than ever before in modern history that there will be no war in Europe, and for good reason. Where security is concerned, Europe now enjoys the best of all possible worlds.

This is surely cause for celebration: yet it is not being celebrated. Why's this so? I believe that the sweeping, comprehensive—indeed, revolutionary—arms control accords now in place have been overlooked for the same reason that made them possible in the first place.

Historically, arms control has been tied to, has depended on and has been subsumed by international politics. Arms control is, to use a term common in social science, a dependent variable, and the independent variable on which it has depended has been the status of East West relations. For most of the Cold War, East West relations were hostile and frozen. They were marked by disagreement on fundamental issues. Neither side would budge on these issues and neither dared try to budge the other, which would have been extremely dangerous.

In this context, early arms control took on a symbolic role. It was a form of reassurance. It demonstrated that both sides understood the dangers of the nuclear age and would keep their rivalry within bounds. Arms control in the 1970s and in the 1980s did not, could not, indeed was not intended to, end the East West rivalry. Because this was so, arms accords affected the instruments of that rivalry, namely, armaments—with the notable exception the ABM Treaty—only marginally.

If the effects on actual deployments were marginal, arms control was still important because the rivalry that it addressed was a real one. Arms control riveted the eyes of the world because the world needed reassurance about the rivalry between the two great nuclear powers. Peace rested on prudence, not on the absence of any reason to go to war. Arms control did not cause the prudence that preserved the peace, but it did signal that both sides would practice that prudence.

Then, with the changes set in motion by Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, the political differences at the core of the East West rivalry disappeared. They disappeared because the Soviet Union gave up the goals to which the West had been opposed. This was the meaning of 1989 and 1991. Under these new political circumstances, the role of arms control changed. It was no longer marginal to actual military deployments; it became central. It was no longer a symbolic but, rather, a substantive matter. Instead of making small adjustments to large arsenals for political effects, arms control came to involve the wholesale restructuring of armaments on both sides with sweeping military effects.

These revolutionary changes in arms control, however, were little noticed because of the absence of political conflict between East and West, which, as I've suggested, was precisely what made them possible in the first place. People turned out to be uninterested in what happens to weapons they do not expect or fear will be used against them. That, I believe, is the reason for the lack of appreciation for what is a remarkable historic achievement.

Yet, both American political parties have reason not only for interest but for pride in what has been achieved. Democrats, after all, were the champions of arms control in the 1970s and 1980s. They considered it central to East West relations. But now that they are in power, they seem to have all but forgotten about arms agreements that exceed in scope what were once their fondest wishes.

Republicans tended to be skeptical about arms control in the latter stages of the Cold War. Indeed, President Ronald Reagan entered office opposed to it, claiming that it was "bad medicine." He said that, had he been in charge in the 1970s, where negotiations with Moscow were concerned he would have done things differently. And in office he proceeded to do things differently. The current accords—the ones to which first the Soviet Union and then Russia agreed—were designed in and by his administration, based on its criticisms of what had gone wrong previously. The post 1987 arms treaties are, in effect, Republican agreements and are among the most important diplomatic achievements in the history of the United States.

If the common security regime now in place endures, the arms treaties will be the pillars of the post Cold War order, even as the Marshall Plan and NATO were the pillars of the West's Cold War policy. This is no small achievement. Yet, these agreements get less respect than they deserve. But this raises the third question I mentioned at the outset: Does this lack of interest really matter? After all, these treaties have been negotiated and signed. Those that have been implemented are doing their work. It is a historical commonplace that what once seemed miraculous quickly becomes routine. The world does not celebrate Jonas Salk's birthday, despite the importance of the Salk vaccine for polio. Every day, millions of people unthinkingly cross bridges, the construction of which was once regarded as an engineering miracle. That's progress. Isn't this true of arms control as well?

Unfortunately, it is not quite true. The significance of these achievements does matter because the achievements are not secure. They are not irreversible. Indeed, I believe they are threatened by the prospect of NATO expansion to Central Europe. They are threatened in two ways.

First, the arms treaties are threatened. For example, START II, which would reduce the number of nuclear weapons aimed at the United States and is therefore of some interest to Americans, has been held hostage in the Russian Parliament, the Duma, to the prospect of NATO expansion. In Helsinki in March, President Yeltsin promised to try to get the Duma to ratify this treaty. He's promised this before.

There is an even larger problem with NATO expansion. It puts the entire post Cold War settlement, in which the post 1987 arms agreements are embedded, in jeopardy. That settlement is extraordinarily favorable to the United States. It was tailored to our specifications. The liberation of Eastern Europe in 1989 was something we had demanded since 1945. Indeed, the liberation of Eastern Europe removed the basic cause of the Cold War. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was an event so favorable to the West that we never imagined that it was possible. And it is crucial that all of these changes were voluntary; first the Soviet Union and then Russia agreed to them. Thus, the post Cold War settlement has a certain legitimacy in Russian eyes. Because this settlement is so extraordinarily favorable to us, that legitimacy is a priceless asset for the West. But with NATO expansion we are in danger of squandering it.

The post Cold War settlement rests on three principles, all of which NATO expansion would violate. The first is the principle of consensus, according to which changes will be made with the acquiescence of everyone. NATO expansion, however, is the first major change in the security architecture of Europe to be made over the objections of Russia.

The second principle underlying the post Cold War settlement is inclusion, meaning that Russia will be welcomed into the international community in general, and into specific international organizations to the extent that it is willing and able to join them. But NATO expansion is an act of exclusion. It draws a new line of division in Europe where none existed before, and places Russia—and not only Russia—on the far side of that line.

The third principle is embedded both in the common security order as a whole and in the arms treaties that are so important to it: transparency. NATO expansion is the opposite of transparent. The American government has asserted that expansion will be open ended and that there will be further expansions after the first one, but it has refused to say where, when, or by what criteria this further expansion will take place.

What is the danger in all this? It is not that Russia will be able to stop the expansion. Russia is too weak to do so. Nor, I think, is there an immediate danger that the Russians will break out of the constraints of the arms treaties that they have signed. They're too poor to do that now. Rather, the danger that NATO expansion poses to the post Cold War settlement arises over the long term. The risk is that in the eyes of the Russian political class—and therefore ultimately in the eyes of ordinary Russians—NATO expansion will delegitimate the entire settlement, and make it a central goal of Russian foreign policy in the 21st century to overturn what has been put in place.

This is not, to say the least, a desirable outcome. If it should come to pass—if we should return to a Europe of military blocs, balances of power and political hostility—no doubt the United States and its allies could hold their own. We could once again deter Russia if we had to. But this would not necessarily be easy, it would not necessarily be cheap, and it would certainly not be free of risk. One thing, however, it certainly would be: If, 25 years from now, we look back at this period as a turning point, the moment when the common security order dissolved and Europe returned to the kind of balance of power arrangements so familiar in history, one point will be beyond dispute: this need not have happened.

 

Questions and Answers

Q: In one of the joint statements from the Helsinki summit, President Clinton cites the unprecedented progress in arms control during the past four years. Is it really unprecedented? Are we making more progress now than we made four years before?

Mandelbaum: From a historical perspective, the years from 1987 to 1993 constitute the great period of arms control. The task of this administration was and is to build on and consolidate what was achieved then. It has certainly made an effort to do so, but NATO expansion will hinder, not consolidate, it.

Q: If at one end of the spectrum you have world government, I assume that on the opposite end there is anarchy, and in between balance of power. In your remarks, you didn't mention collective security. Is there a difference between common security and collective security?

Mandelbaum: As Humpty Dumpty said, a word means what I choose it to mean; no more, no less. In The Dawn of Peace in Europe, I define collective security in such a way that it doesn't belong on that spectrum. By my definition it refers to two things: alliances, which are perfectly compatible with a balance of power and were at the core of the balance during the Cold War; and a regional or world police force, in which countries band together to deal with trouble spots. I devote a chapter to this subject in The Dawn of Peace in Europe.

Such a police force, I argue in that chapter, is undoubtedly desirable, but it is not feasible. The political will to pay a significant price to calm trouble spots around the globe is lacking in the United States and in other countries that might contribute to such a force.

Q: Administration officials are saying that NATO enlargement is a done deal, and I know you don't agree. They also say that attempts to block enlargement will destroy U.S. leadership in the world and particularly in Europe. Can you respond to both these points?

Mandelbaum: It is certainly not too late to stop NATO expansion unless the Constitution of the United States has been repealed. The Constitution provides that the Senate must ratify treaties by a two thirds majority.

As for the argument that terrible consequences would follow if expansion were stopped—an argument that will drown out all others if NATO does formally opt to invite new members this summer—this is an artifact of the Cold War. It has a certain resonance because it had a certain plausibility during the Cold War, which created a set of conditions that no longer exists.

Then, the United States was confronting a militant, militarized, hostile adversary around the world. It was reasonable to fear that pulling back in one area would invite aggression elsewhere. This was, after all, the reason the U.S. fought in Korea. The Korean Peninsula was of no strategic significance to the United States in 1950, but President Truman and his advisers believed that a failure to respond in Korea would produce trouble in Europe. This was also the reason for standing firm in West Berlin—an enclave that was militarily indefensible except by nuclear weapons. It was the reason for fighting—possibly even after 1968—in Vietnam.

Whatever one may think of the way this argument was applied during the Cold War, at least it had some plausibility. There was, after all, a Cold War. There was a Soviet Union. Now there is neither. So the question arises: What would be the consequences of stopping expansion now? What would be the consequences of postponing the decision, of taking another course? Is it really imaginable that the Soviet army would be in West Berlin the next day? There is no Soviet army; there is no divided Berlin. The world is now safe for the United States to admit and correct its mistakes in foreign policy. This is a mistake. We ought to admit it and then correct it.

Q: The thrust of your argument is that Russia is going to, with NATO expansion, set as its goal for the next century the overthrow of the post Cold War settlement. Assuming NATO enlargement stops short of drawing in the republics of the former Soviet Union, even in Russian eyes, won't the forces of economic growth and expansion be much more powerful forces in shaping Russia's long term views of its security and foreign policy goals?

Mandelbaum: I would hope that this would happen. But your premise is that NATO will not expand to the former Soviet republics. However, this administration has already effectively promised that expansion to some former Soviet republics—notably the Baltic states—will take place. Those former Soviet republics believe that they have been promised eventual NATO membership, in which case the danger of a nationalist backlash in Russia would be greater.

There are many powerful forces at work in Russia and on Russia, pushing Russia toward the kind of internal organization and international conduct that is desirable. NATO expansion to Central Europe would not necessarily and automatically override these forces. But expansion lends support to countervailing forces.

Q: If NATO expansion is such a bad idea, what is the right idea for including the Eastern and Western European security objectives, and what is the right future for NATO?

Mandelbaum: A number of second and third order issues in European security ought to be addressed. Further reductions in nuclear and non nuclear arms are desirable. Kaliningrad ought to be demilitarized. The independence of Belarus ought to be put on a formal basis. But the basic structure of the optimal European security order is, I believe, in place. What will improve it is something that by definition cannot be rushed: time. Over time the security order will become more normal, more deeply rooted and more legitimate.

As for the future of NATO, I believe it ought to be maintained. It is important to have an American commitment to Europe for modified versions of the original reasons: "To keep the Americans in, to keep the Russians out and to keep the Germans down." We need NATO to relieve the Germans of the need to conduct an independent security policy, something that the Germans themselves do not wish to do. In addition, NATO ought to be sustained because if things go wrong in Russia, as they might, the Atlantic alliance would form the basis of an opposing coalition, just as it did during the Cold War. But if things do go wrong in Russia, they won't go wrong in a hurry. The Russians won't be in a position to threaten anybody for years; there will be plenty of advance warning.

How many troops are now needed in Europe? That depends on the magnitude of the threat. Now it is not great. If all goes well, it will diminish further over time. In that case it would be possible to bring troop levels down further. At some point, under the best case scenario, no American troops would remain in Europe. In that case NATO would have reverted to what it was intended to be in the first place: a guarantee pact. What began simply as a treaty, only became an integrated military force on the European continent in response to the outbreak of the Korean War.

Moreover, I believe that there is enough political support in the United States to sustain the NATO we need. But I do not believe that there will be domestic political support to sustain an expanded NATO which is not needed.

Indeed, if there is a backlash in the United States against the costs of an expanded NATO—and those costs, in political and economic terms, are likely to be considerably higher than the administration is claiming—it will call into question not just simply NATO expansion but the American commitment to Europe itself.

Q: If Russia views NATO as an alliance that opposes it, would European security be vastly increased by allowing Russia also to join NATO? Why are we precluding Russia from joining NATO?

Mandelbaum: I'm lukewarm, at best, to the idea of including Russia in NATO, but the prospect now seems to me less implausible than it once did, for four reasons. First, it is a better idea than the one this administration is proposing to carry out. Second, it preserves one of the fundamental principles on which the Cold War was ended: inclusion. Third, it might give the United States some leverage on the issue that matters most to us: Russian nuclear weapons. If Russia were part of NATO, it would be easier to reduce and control weapons that can strike North America. Fourth, if NATO does expand to Central Europe, it will then face three choices: to stay where it is, thus establishing in perpetuity a "grey zone" between NATO and Russia, the countries of which—Ukraine and the three Baltic states—would thereby become vulnerable in a number of ways; to expand to include this grey zone, which the Russians have suggested they would regard as akin to an act of war; or to expand to include Russia itself. Under those circumstances, the last option might be the least worst one.

Q: If the administration were to turn around and all of the sudden say: "Fine, no more NATO expansion," or if the Madrid summit were to be canceled, what do we tell those countries that have now had false expectations of protection under the NATO umbrella?

Mandelbaum: The countries that are expecting admission aren't threatened. None has a border with Russia. So none would be in a worse position where its security is concerned.

I also think it's a myth that there is powerful sentiment in favor of joining NATO in the prospective new member states. This is true of Poland; none of the surveys of opinion that I have seen show very much public enthusiasm in the Czech Republic or in Hungary. If membership in a Western international organization is necessary for the well being of these countries, the proper organization for them to join is the European Union, not NATO.

Q: What combination of inside politics and appeal to American public opinion do you see as most likely to bring about a change in the administration's policy on NATO expansion, and in what time frame?

Mandelbaum: There are deep reservations about NATO expansion in the foreign policy community and among those few members of Congress who follow the issue closely. I also believe that, to the extent that this issue is publicly discussed, support drops away. This is one of those issues about which people, when they first hear about it, think, "Oh, that's a good idea. Let's take them in." Then, when the details and the contingencies and the dangers are probed, support plummets.

The further the debate goes, the more unease there's going to be, which is why I believe that the administration will increasingly fall back on the argument: "It's too late. Maybe we made a mistake, but you—the Congress and the public—have to back us up because if you don't the whole world will collapse." But this argument, too, is specious.

Arms Control and the Helsinki Summit: Issues and Obstacles in the Second Clinton Term

In conjunction with its March 26 annual luncheon, the Arms Control Association (ACA) held a panel discussion on the arms control issues facing President Bill Clinton following the outcome of the Helsinki summit, including NATO expansion, future strategic arms reductions and prospects for Senate approval of pending arms treaties. Panelists included:

Spurgeon M. Keeny, Jr., ACA president and executive director;
Jack Mendelsohn, ACA deputy director;
John Rhinelander, vice chairman of the ACA Board of Directors; and
John Steinbruner, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The following is an edited version of the panel's remarks.

Spurgeon M. Keeny, Jr.: Today, I am going to forgo the practice of the last several years of giving a review and grading the accomplishments of the Clinton administration during the last year, and confine myself to the comment that they have successfully graduated in the arms control area, but without great honors. They now are in the graduate program that will define for history what the accomplishments of the Clinton administration will be.

There are three major tests that the administration is going to face in the immediate future, and the outcome of these will clearly define what to expect over the next four years. One was the Helsinki summit, which we can now begin to assess. The second will be the ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention [CWC]. And the third is the Duma's action on START II ratification. These events can indicate a very successful four years or, at the other extreme, they could suggest there will be little progress during this period.

In these three tests, President Clinton shares with President Yeltsin a particular handicap: they both suffer from a situation where there is almost a disconnect between the executive and legislative branches. In the area of security and arms control and foreign policy, I think the problem is probably more serious than we have seen, certainly in recent times.

Prior to the summit, there was general concern that the proposed expansion of NATO would prevent a successful summit and prevent agreement on any measures leading to the ratification of START II. As you know, the Duma has held up START II ratification for a number of reasons, but basically the Russians felt that START II was an inequitable agreement that would force them into a major, expensive buildup that they could not afford. There were also serious concerns in the Duma about U.S. intentions in the area of ballistic missile defenses, which would affect their willingness to enter into substantial reductions. Certainly, the initial outcome of the Helsinki summit was, in view of the low expectations, very favorable. But there are some very serious questions that remain, and it's not even clear in some instances what was and wasn't agreed to at the summit.

With regard to NATO expansion, it was formally stated that the two sides disagreed on the desirability and acceptability of expansion. Yeltsin, however, either through wisdom or weakness, accepted that he, in any case, could not stop the expansion process. He sought to get some amelioration for the problems that it would cause in Russian eyes. I think he got something, but less than the Duma and Russians would have expected. He did not get a formal charter between Russia and NATO outlining the limits of expansion and Russian rights, but rather a commitment to a document that was intended to minimize the potential consequences of disagreement. This document would seek, to some extent, to compensate Russian concerns. However, it was specifically indicated that it would not be a formal treaty but rather a heads of government document constituting a political commitment. This document does not exist, and it may not be that easy to formalize it between Russia and NATO. The Duma will be very disappointed in this outcome with regard to NATO expansion.

Much will be said about the pros and cons of NATO expansion, but I believe that the biggest danger involved, certainly from the perspective of arms control, is that it places Yeltsin in a very difficult political position. Not just Yeltsin, but all of those around him who are prepared and clearly desire to make progress in arms control and reduce the military burden on Russia's economy. It creates a situation where the nationalists and the former communists can attack both the outcome of the summit and Yeltsin himself.

At the summit, the presidents agreed on a framework for START III, and it was agreed that this would be negotiated after START II entered into force. A number of us have pressed for this type of solution&emdash;to have a pre agreement on a framework that would answer some, if not all, of the Duma's understandable concerns about the treaty. The agreement went further than I expected. In addition to calling for a limit of 2,000 to 2,500 deployed strategic nuclear warheads by the end of 2007, it also calls for a variety of undefined measures to improve the transparency of the actual stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and of ways to assure that there will be elimination of the nuclear weapons themselves. Whether this will be just the beginning of a process or actually a solution of this very complex problem is not clear.

The good news is that these are necessary and very important measures for creating the circumstances where deep reductions&emdash;beyond the level of 2,000 to 2,500&emdash;are credible and can be carried out. The fact that these measures are now formally recognized is a major accomplishment. The potential bad news, however, is that it's going to be a long negotiation to encompass these measures as other than simply wished for first steps. This could defer completion of START III for a number of years.

Recognizing this, the presidents agreed on a specific proposal to immediately address the Duma's concerns, namely, a protocol to START II which would stretch out the elimination period called for under the treaty from the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2007&emdash;a deferral of five years. This deferral will be alleviated to some extent by the requirement that by the end of 2003, the systems covered by START II will have to have the warheads "deactivated," meaning, I assume, removed from the delivery systems. However, from the perspective of the Duma, this gives Russia the right to maintain the key weapons to have been eliminated under START II for an additional five years, in particular the 150 SS 18s which were the principal muscle in the Russian strategic forces. This protocol will, as I understand it, be included in the Duma's ratification process of START II and will then be submitted to the U.S. Senate as an amendment to the treaty.

Another joint statement addressed the long standing issue on the demarcation between theater missile defense [TMD] systems and national missile defenses. The document is somewhat ambiguous, but the U.S. interpretation, which was stated in a press conference on Monday [March 24] by Bob Bell, is rather clear cut and relaxes, significantly, the constraints on theater missile defenses. According to Bell, theater missile defenses&emdash;with the exception of space based interceptors, which are explicitly prohibited by the ABM Treaty&emdash;will have no constraints on them except that they cannot be tested against targets traveling at more than 5 kilometers per second, which is equivalent to a ballistic missile with a range of 3,500 kilometers.

This statement is a major step back from the position the Russians have held for a long time, and it's certainly not a step forward from the point of view of the integrity of the ABM Treaty. It's true that it calls for consultations between the sides and transparency in whatever they are doing, but neither side can veto the outcome. It's essentially self policing within these very limited constraints as to what will actually be done. It is not clear to me, at this point, how this will favorably influence the Duma's concern about the possibly open ended nature of the U.S. interest in upgrading and extending missile defenses into an area that clearly encroaches on the prohibition against national missile defense systems.

This presumably would be more acceptable to the Senate's interest in having minimum constraints on theater missile defense programs. But, for openers, it doesn't seem to have accomplished that purpose. Newt Gingrich came forward with an extremely strong statement denouncing this agreement in purple prose. Whether this will be the standard for the Republican leadership remains to be seen. What he was objecting to were any constraints at all on theater missile defenses; that is, presumably the constraints on space based interceptors.

The Chemical Weapons Convention [CWC] will certainly be a second test of the administration. It is very important for this treaty to be ratified before the convention enters into force on April 29. Clinton and Yeltsin agreed to push for ratification&emdash;Yeltsin having submitted the convention to the Duma just prior to the summit.

As you all know, Senator [Jesse] Helms [R NC] and a small group of Republican senators have strongly opposed this bipartisan treaty, which was negotiated and signed under the Bush administration. Their approach initially was to design conditions on the resolution of advice and consent, which would prohibit the United State from submitting its instruments of ratification unless impossible conditions were met. In recent weeks, Helms has extended his attack to call for actual amendments to the treaty arguing this should be no problem, despite the fact that the convention has been signed by some 160 countries and ratified by 70 of them.

I would have said a day or two ago that the prospects for ratification by the April 29 deadline were less than 50 percent. The administration is making a very strong push, unlike its rather casual approach in 1996, and there are several high level negotiations going on, specifically between [Samuel] Berger and the principal conservative Republican senators, another one between Senator [Joseph] Biden [D DE] and Helms, and finally the efforts of Secretary of State [Madeliene] Albright to negotiate directly with Helms. Secretary Albright seems to have had a very successful exchange with Helms, who now says he thinks that he will hold hearings after the current recess and implied that the treaty will be brought to the Senate floor. On the basis of this, I would say today that the prospects are reasonably good that there will be some sort of solution to the CWC ratification problem, because once the treaty reaches the Senate floor it will probably be approved.

The thing we don't know is what this resolution of advice and consent may contain. Aside from the "killer" conditions that will have to be eliminated, some of the other reservations that are being discussed have far reaching implications that are very negative to arms control.

In addition, it's not clear what unrelated concessions Senator Helms may have obtained. He has called for the abolition of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency [ACDA] as a precondition to the CWC. He seemed very pleased with himself in the photographs of his meeting yesterday with Secretary Albright. I would suggest that term insurance rates on ACDA have probably gone up very sharply, and I don't know how many other institutions and activities may be in danger.

If the CWC fails to win Senate approval or it's kicked down the road a long way, it will certainly have a very serious, negative impact on the prospects for early Senate action on a number of even more important treaties, in particular the Comprehensive Test Ban [CTB] Treaty, signed last September, which is waiting in the wings for U.S. ratification.

Returning to the Duma, on the schedule that is implied in the Helsinki agreements, it will have to act in the not too distant future on START II; but it's hard to identify any time that is particularly auspicious for such action by the Duma. We have made a positive outcome significantly less likely by our espousal of NATO expansion. Certainly the question of how NATO expansion is going to relate, even hypothetically, to the Baltics, to Romania, to Ukraine, is going to be a very critical issue to the Duma in its action on the ratification of START II. It seems unlikely that there are any actions that could be taken at this late date that would defuse this problem from the perspective of Russian politicians. But I would hope that careful consideration is given to providing Russia significant additional assurances as to NATO intentions.

In conclusion, I believe that we have to be pleased with the Helsinki summit. It avoided an immediate impasse over NATO expansion, which would have closed off progress for years in the Clinton administration. I think we have Yeltsin to thank; whether as a reflection of his wisdom or weakness, Yeltsin was prepared to avoid a confrontation on this issue. However, I would emphasize that it's too early to tell whether Helsinki set the stage for major progress and further reductions, or simply for bitter domestic disputes both in Russia and the United States between the executive and legislative branches over next steps in arms control. If U.S. diplomacy for the next several years focuses on trying to force the NATO expansion issue against second thoughts in NATO and the United States and increasing Russian opposition, Helsinki will indeed have been a Pyrrhic victory.

Jack Mendelsohn: I'm going to try to deconstruct the summit from an arms control point of view. I submit that the purpose of this summit was to get START II ratified. Clearly, we did not change Moscow's mind on NATO expansion. And clearly, we did not resolve the ABM TMD issues. So, I think the proof of the pudding in the summit will be whether or not we get a START II ratification in the immediate future¾by Madrid or by the end of the year.

On NATO, it's quite clear what Yeltsin decided to do was to take the consolation prize and bring it back and see if it could be sold back in Moscow. Remember, there were three big issues holding up START II ratification. One of them was the emotional response to NATO expansion that's taking place in Moscow and the linkage placed on it by certain members of the Duma&emdash;if NATO expands, then we should not ratify START II. The second was problems inherent to START II; concerns that the Russians had about certain aspects of the treaty. And the third problem was getting a handle on U.S. high velocity TMD systems. Those were the three sets of problems that the summit tried to address.

The first one was a consolation prize&emdash;the charter. Whether Yeltsin can sell this as acceptable to delink NATO expansion from ratification remains to be seen. He did make an effort to point out how important it was that 16 nations would be signing it at the highest level and that this would be a binding document. And actually on some nations in Europe, it's likely to be a binding document. The distinction between politically binding and legally binding in some countries doesn't exist.

But, on the other hand, he misunderstood it. He made an explicit statement that in the charter there would be a commitment not to use Warsaw Pact infrastructure. Later, the U.S. briefers took great pains to disabuse their audience of that statement. So, it's not sure that Yeltsin actually even knows what's going to be in the charter or that it will be, again coming back to the original point, sellable in Moscow.

On START II, we did rather well on trying to deal with the inherent problems. We agreed to lower levels; 2,000 2,500, which you may remember was the original Russian position. But since they're now coincident in time, it's the START II START III levels. There isn't going to be a 3,500 level for any practical purposes, although, at some point they will get to 3,500 on the way to 2,500.

And secondly, we agreed to stretch out the time line to the end of 2007. That's also an original position. When was the treaty signed? In January of 1993. How long was it supposed to run? January of 2003. So basically, what we did is shift the 10 years to begin at the current date. It's understandable, and I think that will be a simple argument to make, when we go in front of the Senate and say: "Look, this was done in 1993. It isn't going to come into force until 1997, and it had a fixed date at the end." Clearly, it makes sense to move that fixed date.

The bottom line on the time extension is that we will deactivate to 3,500 by December 31, 2003. And we will eliminate&emdash;to 2,500&emdash;by December 31, 2007. Now, when the Russians ratify START II, they will ratify&emdash;at least as the current planning goes&emdash;an amendment or a protocol at the same time, saying, the treaty text notwithstanding, the implementation date is extended to 2007. That document, the extension document, comes back to the U.S. Senate for approval because the term of the original treaty will have been changed.

Now, I would submit that the most important thing in the summit was the time extension, not only because it relieves the mechanical financial problems related to START II, but because it gives Russia political breathing room, as well. It gives them time&emdash;and this is the argument that Yeltsin will make in front of the Duma&emdash;to evaluate the true impact of NATO expansion and the TMD programs on their own security interests.

I can't over stress this: What we have basically done is push the problems down the road in order to get START II up and running. And the Russian argument will have to be: We can do this because we've got more time.

One of the arguments that appeared constantly in the Russian debate was this double whammy scenario: "If we eliminate all of our weapons, including our SS 18s, in the year 2003&emdash;according to the original START scenario&emdash;in 2004 the U.S. begins deploying TMD. And in 2004, also, five years after the first tranche comes into NATO, the Baltics are invited to join." And that's the political breathing space, if you will, that we have given the Russians by the extension.

There will also be an effort in START III to deal with stockpiles and warhead destruction and special nuclear materials. Measures relating to the transparency of inventories, which we've been talking about with not much success in the past, are on the agenda for START III. Destruction of strategic nuclear warheads is on the agenda, as well. That's likely, again, like the transparency of inventories, to be a very, very difficult and perhaps prolonged negotiation. And one hopes that, although it's mentioned as part of START III, that if it becomes too difficult to deal with expeditiously that it could be separated from the simpler issue of START III lower levels.

Now, there's also an agreement to talk about technical and organizational measures to promote the irreversibility of deep reductions. That has to do with the Russian concern, and our concern as well, that there could be a rapid reconstitution capability. In other words, there will be a lot of empty spaces on missiles as a result of downloading under START II and START III. The Russians have said they are quite concerned that we could easily reconstitute our forces. They would like to talk about ways to make this reconstitution more difficult.

I did a piece on START II in Arms Control Today a couple of months ago that talked about some ideas of getting rid of empty spaces on missiles to deal with this reconstitution problem. Another reconstitution issue that the Russians have been concerned about is the ease with which heavy bombers can be reoriented, or oriented, if you will, from strategic missions or conventional missions, and then from conventional back to strategic, because there's no obligation in START II to remove the nuclear launch capability wiring and systems from these reoriented bombers. These are the kinds of technical measures that they probably have in mind.

One other issue for START III is making the treaties unlimited in duration. As you know, they last 15 years and may be renewed for five year periods. The first START agreement is a five party agreement, and the second and third agreement are two party agreements, so there will have to be some kind of mixing and matching to get all of this together so START I, II and III run indefinitely.

In separable negotiations, the sides have also agreed to deal with sea launched cruise missiles [SLCMs] and tactical nuclear systems in general. Under START I, we have a politically binding agreement to limit the number of nuclear SLCMs, which have actually been taken out of the force but are not banned by START I. That's a Russian concern. On tactical nuclear systems, it's a U.S. concern that we don't have a good feel for how well the unilateral commitments in 1991 to withdraw tactical nuclear weapons from the force have been implemented and carried out.

Both sides are arguing, "Look, as we go down to lower levels of deployed systems, the non deployed and non covered systems gain in significance, and we've got to begin to take a look at the hedge, the stockpile, the tactical nukes, the nuclear SLCMs, which are not explicitly dealt with in the reduction of deployed systems." In other words, the value of these stockpiles, of non deployed systems and tactical weapons, is greater as deployed levels reduce.

Let me talk a little bit about what happened on ABM and TMD. That's the third issue. Remember, we're trying to give Yeltsin a package that he can take back to the Duma and say, "Okay, we've had three problems that have impeded your action on the treaty. Here's the solutions I can present you." Will this package be adequate to convince the Duma to move on START II? We don't know the answer.

What did we get on ABM and TMD? Well, the Russians have for some time maintained that they needed to see the color of our money on high velocity TMD systems. What is it exactly we were prepared to do? And in effect, what we said we were prepared to do was very little, and we pushed this issue down the road as well.

The Russians wanted explicit constraints on testing programs for TMD, and they wanted explicit limits, geographic and numerical, on deployments. And they also were not prepared to give an "okay" to deployments. They got none of this in the package.

Basically, what they got was a very simple second phase agreement, which allows everything, and will be, I think, if there's not more to follow, destructive of the ABM strategic force reduction relationship that we have enjoyed in the past. They agreed that the targets will have restrictions on their range and speed. They agreed to a detailed information exchange on plans and programs for TMD.

And thirdly, they got a commitment not to do something we weren't going to do anyhow, which is not deploy space based kill vehicles. I said this carefully&emdash;"kill vehicles." There isn't a limit on other space based elements. So, that's the second phase agreement that the Russians can look forward to.

Will this be useful or not, or adequate or not for ratification? We don't know. They also got a series of "no plans" statements, which deal partly with the specific limits that they were trying to negotiate. They've got: "We have no plans to test high velocity TMD before the middle of 1999." So, we've got a couple of years there before these are actually going to come on board. They got: "We have no plans for land or sea or air based TMD with interceptor velocities above 5.5. And we have no plans for sea based TMD with velocities above 4.5. We have no plans to test against MIRVs and no plans to test against strategic re entry vehicles."

So that's the ABM part of the package that Yeltsin's going to bring back. He got a package of "no plans" statements. And he got a commitment to continue discussions on high velocity TMD. We agreed that any questions or concerns either side may have regarding TMD activities, including matters related to the agreement to be completed on the high velocity systems, can be discussed with a view to precluding violation or circumvention of the ABM Treaty.

The fourth part of the package that may be useful to the Russians is a recommitment by both sides to preserve the ABM Treaty, to prevent circumvention and to enhance its viability. And there's also a commitment that the scale of deployment of TMD, in number and scope&emdash;which, remember, the Russians were trying to get explicit limits on&emdash;will be consistent with programs confronting that side.

In sum, the best the Russians got were a series of challenge points, in addition to the very, very bare bones second phase agreement. Will that be a convincing package for the Duma that they can control TMD? I think that Yeltsin will have to argue, as he will on NATO expansion, that as a result of the extension of the reductions of strategic forces under START II, Russia retains its leverage on TMD. Now, you may not find that a convincing argument, and it may not be one, but that's going to have to be the basic argument that he's going to make. Rather than having eliminated all of its strategic forces by 2003, as I have said earlier, and then at 2004 having to face the TMD deployments, they got a discussion forum, they got challenge points and they retained leverage. It's not bad leverage, because the reduction process will be ongoing and that strengthens the Russian hand there. But clearly the Russian hand is weakened at the table. They've agreed to a phase two agreement which has absolutely no explicit constraints on high velocity TMD systems.

John Rhinelander: By my count, there may be as many as eight to 10 treaties during Clinton's second term, and I am going to focus on five of them. I would say it's uncertain at best what, if anything, is going to get through; the one exception being the Chemical Weapons Convention.

I would like to offer three general observations on the U.S. treaty process. First, it's very, very difficult. It takes two thirds of the Senate to approve a treaty, and that is not easy, under even the best of circumstances, when you're dealing with a controversial subject. Second, when you're dealing in a partisan setting where the Senate and the White House are controlled by different parties, the process is not impossible, but almost impossible. The third point, which is my rule, came to me during the Carter administration when the Republicans were controlling the Senate and Howard Baker was their majority leader; it's simply that you could only get one controversial treaty through the Senate every two years, at most. In the Carter years, it was a choice between the Panama Canal and SALT II treaties. The choice was the Panama treaty, which was important to get through. Baker led the charge against SALT II, which is not what he would have done in other circumstances.

Then we get to the Russian side, which, of course, is new. In the old days, we had a rubber stamp process and it was relatively easy. Now, I would say the Duma is probably corrupt, it's incompetent and it's dominated by communists and nationalists, which isn't a good combination.

The first treaty of importance is the Chemical Weapons Convention. It will enter into force on April 29 because more than the minimum number of 65 states have already ratified it. It's not a question of whether the CWC enters into force; it's a question of whether the U.S. will be an original party when it does. I believe that if the Senate votes before then, the treaty will get the necessary votes and it will get them by a very large margin. If the vote is not held before April 29, I don't think you will get a positive vote. So, I think the deadline is going to force a positive vote.

If the Senate does vote positively, then, of course, the debate swings over to the Duma. At one point, people were saying that the Duma would have an easier time with the CWC than it would with START II. I don't know whether that's still the case. Yeltsin has now sent the CWC before the Duma.

My own sense is the Senate will give its advice and consent. I have felt this for a number of weeks, and I think that's about as clear as you can have in this uncertain town. There will be something like 21 understandings with the resolution of ratification, but these will not be reservations. The CWC prohibits reservations, which are conditions changing the treaty and which have to go to other parties. The 21 conditions will include things such as the legal right or the legal obligation on the part of the president to respond with the full panoply of our arsenal if chemical weapons are ever used against us. I haven't seen this condition in writing yet, but I don't believe that it can possibly be legally binding on a future president. It's good rhetoric domestically, but it's bad rhetoric internationally.

Second, as you know, the Senate has given its advice and consent to START II and we're waiting for the Duma to act. My personal assumption is if the Duma vote is going to be favorable, it's going to have to occur before the NATO summit in July. If there is no vote before then, it's going to get so complicated with the negotiations on the new entries to NATO that you won't get a vote.

There are four negatives as to why this Duma vote won't happen. First, Yeltsin's health, both physical and political, has to be the biggest uncertainty of all. Yeltsin has never pushed START II. He announced he was going to support it, but I'm not sure that he is physically up to it. Even if he were, I'm not sure he would have the stamina or the money to get it through. It's going to be one very expensive proposition to get START II through the Duma. Second, the major focus in Moscow, from what I understand, is the budget. Domestic issues, such as unpaid salaries and unpaid taxes, are swirling around in Moscow. Third, I think personally the ABM Treaty amendments agreed to at Helsinki regarding TMD systems will probably be viewed in Moscow by those who care about it as a negative. But all of those factors are swamped by the fourth one, which is NATO enlargement. There isn't a single member of the Duma who approves of it, and I think that could well still be the killer of START II.

At the same time, there are two positive factors in the START II debate. The first is the START III framework agreement that reduces the number of warheads; the second is the five year extension to the elimination period under the treaty. If the Duma goes forward and does it right by my way of thinking, they would not make the five year extension part and parcel of the original approval of START II. They would take note of it, but they wouldn't make it a condition. This way, they would approve the treaty and it wouldn't have to come back to the Senate, and START II then enters into force.

I think a conservative lawyer would tell them that the better way for the Duma to protect its own interests is to make this a condition to START II ratification. It would be an amendment, which would change the terms of the treaty and require that the treaty come back to the Senate for its advice and consent. In our diplomatic history, we have one example where this happened, I think it was between the U.S. and Turkey, three times. The ball bounced back and forth and each time the parties changed it. In the end, it never got through.

I don't think we're going to get there because I don't think the Duma is going to approve START II in the first place. That's my own judgment. If I'm right, it will have important consequences politically between the U.S. and Russia because this is what Helsinki was about. If it wasn't enough, I think it can lead to a deterioration in relations. Programs like Nunn Lugar are going to be in further trouble on the Hill.

The third treaty that would go to the Senate would be the two TMD amendments to the ABM Treaty dealing with lower velocity and higher velocity systems. There is also a third amendment, which adds new parties&emdash;Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan&emdash;to the ABM Treaty. It is my opinion that adding successor states of the former Soviet Union to the ABM Treaty should not be viewed as an amendment which would require advice and consent of the Senate. Unfortunately, those who are in power in the Senate see otherwise, and they're looking for all kinds of ways to make mischief.

Clinton is going to run into trouble with the Republicans on two fronts. First, some Republicans say there are no limits on TMD systems, so what you have here are basically limits that didn't exist before. Those who say this, including the Wall Street Journal editorial page, are absolutely dead wrong. Treaty Article VI was explicitly put in there by the U.S. because of our concern over Soviet surface to air missile [SAM] systems. Second, a lot of the Republicans just don't want the ABM Treaty; they don't want anything done to give a positive spin to the treaty, so anytime it's mentioned they will vote against it.

I would congratulate the administration, and Bob Bell in particular. Bob has stressed time and time again that we need these amendments for the U.S. legally to go forward with the testing, and ultimately the deployment, of most of these TMD systems. That is correct. But I predict that there is not a chance in hell that the Senate is going to give its advice and consent to these amendments. If I'm correct in this, then the question is: What happens when we begin to test and deploy, and we haven't approved the changes which would make it legal? I don't know what the time period for that is; it partly depends on the funding from Congress. To me, the good news is that because of the cost limitations, budget problems and the continuing failure of key tests, the limits on TMD systems are going to be generated back in the U.S. The funds for taking six programs forward won't be there. These are going to be the real tests, perhaps more so than the new, elastic ABM Treaty agreed upon in Moscow.

The fourth treaty I want to mention is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the CTBT, which was signed in September 1996. It needs 44 ratifications, including India, which has announced it will not ratify it. It also needs the U.S. I think it is clear that the Senate will not give its advice and consent. Look at the troubles we're having with the CWC, which was first proposed in the Reagan administration and completed under the Bush administration, where more than half of all the Bush people, including former Secretary of State James Baker, had been strong supporters of it. You don't have that situation with the CTBT, which both administrations were adamantly against. So, I don't think there's any chance of getting the CTBT through a Republican controlled Senate.

Now, that's the bad news. The good news is there is a way to get 90 or 95 percent of it and the president could do it alone. The president could state that the substantive provisions of the treaty not to test further are now legally binding on all those who signed it, as long as the treaty is pending for ratification or has been approved and it has not yet gone into effect. That is a legally compelling case and a way which would avoid the non action by the Senate. ACDA agrees with this position. John Holum, the director of ACDA, made a speech about that last September. But the administration has not yet made a decision on that because there is opposition elsewhere in the administration.

The fifth treaty I would mention involves NATO enlargement. If you talk to people in the administration, expansion is a done deal and it's going to go sailing through the Senate. I think that is wrong. The United States and the other members of NATO will be negotiating between July and December the protocols and agreements with the new members. This will turn 1998 into the year of ratification. The fact that [Senate Majority Leader] Trent Lott [R MS] has now come out publicly in favor of expansion clearly improves the chances for Senate action. But my own sense is that it's still very uncertain whether the Senate will give its advice and consent when it comes to that point in time.

There are at least four factors to consider. The first, of course, will be the cost. Cost figures are all over the lot. The administration is trying to low ball it, saying the new entries and the European allies will pick up much of the cost. I think that won't prove to be the case. Secondly, most members of the Senate don't have a clue as to what the NATO treaty is really about. They wouldn't know what Article V states if they had to answer a multiple choice question. When they understand what is there, I think it will raise some concerns. I can see opposition coming from both the left and the right, particularly if everything is not peaceful in Europe. If we have our forces out of Bosnia by then and Bosnia goes back to where it was earlier, I think it will chill the view of some as to whether we want to keep enlarging NATO and have the automaticity of Article V, as it is presently stated. Finally, you've got the fact that some people are going to be left out, particularly the Baltics, which is a big political issue in this country. I'm not sure that's going to help the process of getting the first stage&emdash;and maybe the only stage&emdash;of NATO enlargement through.

There are four or five other treaties that will probably come up during the second Clinton administration, and I think they have no chance of getting through the Senate. These include two nuclear free zone treaties. They're important in the non proliferation world, but I don't see them moving. Then we may have a follow on [Conventional Armed Forces in Europe] CFE Treaty. The map is already agreed upon but CFE II is going to take further negotiations. It's not clear to me how long that will take. It could be done by this summer, as some have suggested, but I think that's probably going to overload the system.

START III is another one. Obviously, you don't get to START III unless you get START II into effect. If you do get START II into effect, START III is not going to be a simple adjustment of the numbers. So, I don't think it's going to be negotiated within this period of time, and even if it were, remember we weren't very fast getting the advice and consent to START II.

Finally, you have the so called compliance protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention [BWC]. This is not yet negotiated. When the BWC was signed in 1972, it was done without any kind of on site inspection or enforcement regime. It is absolutely necessary to do. If, in fact, that is done in time, it's going to be controversial because the industry there is not going to be onboard as the chemical industry is with the CWC.

In summary, if we don't get the CWC and START II, then we will have arms control really going into a deep freeze, and that is going to adversely affect relations. I think we will get the CWC, and how it will play if we don't get START II is anybody's guess. In terms of new initiatives, we have to go by means other than formal agreement. George Bunn wrote back in 1969, "by agreement or otherwise." I think we have to be going by "otherwise," that is, parallel unilateral actions of one kind or another. It's been done in the past, as with the Bush Gorbachev arrangements on tactical nuclear weapons. We simply have to go that way with imagination, and not bring any more formal agreements before the Senate or the Duma because I just don't think we're going to get action.

John Steinbruner: Over the longer term, the most important fact to keep in mind is that the Russian military is not in a viable position. They can't sustain the burdens that are imposed upon them with the financing available in the security circumstances they face. They can't perform any of their basic missions to anything like historical standards. That is a core problem of security in Europe. We don't have that problem in sight yet, and therein lies the issue of the longer term.

NATO expansion promises at the moment, under the current formula, to seriously aggravate that problem. In the first instance, I would argue, because expansion really does embody a principle of discrimination. That is big trouble for the Russians. It's saying we will incorporate into our security arrangements those people who are culturally most similar to us, as we define that. We made it very clear that the Russians are not about to qualify any time soon. I don't think we can overemphasize the importance of that.

I would compare that formula to the separate but equal formula for the education system in the United States in the pre civil rights era. Everybody thought this was defensible. Many people defended it. In retrospect, we can see that wasn't destined to make it. I don't think the principles we're currently using for security in Europe are going to make it, either, for the same reason&emdash;they're fundamentally discriminatory. And the reason is that the Russians need quite the opposite under the conditions there.

But there's a less philosophical issue related to the situation I just described: The process of NATO expansion is predictably putting some very serious and dangerous pressures on Russian nuclear weapons operations, and we have to worry about their reactions. What they've been telling us&emdash;and we should listen carefully&emdash;is that this is driving them into broad reliance on nuclear weapons to cover virtually all the primary missions. And we should note that from the perspective of the Russian military, the forward expansion of NATO potential&emdash;and that is what's going on, despite the rhetoric&emdash;is very bad news indeed because it brings U.S. tactical war operations that much closer to the full array of sensitive targets that, in principle, we might take on.

That means that their nuclear weapons operations, which are already basically on a hair trigger policy, get all the more committed to that. They have to react very quickly, in principle, if there's ever any trouble, and they basically don't have the assets to do that safely. They don't have the early warning system or defense system that would enable them to manage such a situation. So, we're driving them down a very dangerous track: broad reliance on nuclear weapons configured for very rapid reaction because of the pressure they feel potentially from Western operations.

Now, I don't want to exaggerate at the moment how dangerous this is, yet they're talking this way. They haven't done very much of what would actually be involved in implementing such a policy. But this is, to put it mildly, the wrong track to be driving them down, and we ought to realize that is the track that we're driving them down.

The third element of the situation that is troublesome is the reason why they are relying on, or saying that they have to rely on, nuclear weapons is that their conventional force establishment is basically in shambles. They cannot finance it; they are not financing it. In order to preserve internal coherence and standards of operational safety, they badly need to cut the size of their forces to levels that they can finance. The chances of their doing so under current conditions are as close to zero as anything gets, because they're telling themselves that, ultimately, they have to aspire to the full requirements of providing for their own security. It's very hard to believe that a planning system will tell itself you can do with less than 1.5 million people&emdash;which is their current aspiration&emdash;and do all the missions that they traditionally say they can do, particularly in the Far East. It's a big problem in that regard. And that, of course, is not even on the table in the CFE Treaty discussions.

The bottom line is that the planning system is very likely to hold for this 1.5 million person aspiration, and not be able to take on the more realistic program of cutting their forces to sizes that they might actually be able to finance and sustain, which is probably closer to 500,000 people. In this context, they're not going to do what they need to do, and that means we're embedding this increasingly burdensome and reactive nuclear weapons operation into a deteriorating force structure. And, to put it mildly, that's not a good thing to be doing. To put it more strongly, we're not going to survive this for two decades&emdash;unless we get onto a better track&emdash;without having a very, very bad experience.

Can we turn this situation into an opportunity? Can we bring these underlying issues to the surface and begin to deal with them? Can this process of NATO expansion, which is having a direct perverse effect, be turned into an opportunity to goad us into dealing with this underlying problem? Well, I might note that the problems I just mentioned would be virtually as serious if, magically, the whole process of NATO expansion disappeared. The problem simply is that it's exacerbating on the margin a deep, underlying problem and potentially obscuring our view of the problem. However, our opportunity may be that precisely because it is making it worse. This process might lead us to discover the problem and do something about it.

What do we need in order to do that? First of all, it sounds philosophical but it's extremely important, we need to project a constructive principle of engagement here that the Russians believe in. Believe me, we have not yet done that. The Russian military system does not believe, and I think we can forgive them for this, that we have truly benign intentions and that we do not intend to put them into a permanent position of inferiority and hold them there. We need to reassure them in that regard, and to present and develop a full scope policy of engagement. We have not yet done that.

Even if you imagine that we made some more systematic effort than we have currently done, however, rhetoric is not going to get us through this, even the most forthcoming and benign rhetoric. So, we have to have concrete measures to back that rhetoric up. What are the most important measures?

If we're trying to project an image that says: "We're not trying to isolate you, force you into deterioration or subordinate you. We are trying to help you solve your own security problems. We do have benign intentions," then probably the single most important thing we need to do is to respond to their currently intractable air defense problem. That is the thing that they probably worry about the most, in particular when they look at the European theater.

The way to do that is to integrate them into military air traffic control arrangements throughout all of Europe. This would have the effect of reassuring them, on a daily basis, that we aren't running any nefarious maneuver against them, and that they would have to be kicked out of the system for us to do that. Otherwise, there's no way of reassuring them, because they cannot create the capacities that such a system would require on their own anytime soon. So, I would say that provision is extremely important, and it has the virtue that at least the government, at the moment, has not ruled it out of bounds. They haven't yet done it, but they've been thinking about it.

Related to that, I think we ought to realize that we've got an agenda with regard to nuclear weapons that goes far beyond the scheduled reductions that are being talked about in START III. We have got to back the Russians out of the reactive posture that they're in, in order to achieve higher standards of operational safety, and there's no way of telling how much time we have to do this before it gets to be dangerous. But I would say it is a lot more urgent than the decade long implementation of START III that's now being talked about.

It is unwise for us to count on being able to get through a decade without improving the standards of safety within the Russian nuclear weapons operation. We're going to need much broader scope engagement in order to deal with that. Reducing the number of nuclear weapons is, in essence, a marginal matter from this point of view. We have not recognized as yet the urgency of that agenda. There is no way that the Russians are going to back off their current configuration, unless they do it in tandem with us under a very explicit discussion. That is a whole agenda that hasn't even been taken on.

The START III provisions under discussion do provide some seeds here. The sides are now discussing provisions to promote irreversibility, to directly control warheads and to enhance transparency. That is a good part of the agenda that will have to be developed to get at these underlying issues. So, you can see in the official discussion the small glimmerings, if you will, of the right sort of things to expand the talks. The bottom line is that we really need to enhance or advance or upgrade the prominence given to these provisions, and to begin to articulate their importance and develop them on a much more rapid schedule.

Similarly, the CFE discussion is potentially extremely significant, in that the Russians are not going to be able to solve their fundamental problem&emdash;which is they have a force structure too large to finance—unless there are general arrangements for reducing the size to levels that they can sustain. So, the good news is that the CFE talks go in that direction. The not so good news is that the CFE adaptation process has no hope of actually accomplishing this until Asia is included in the picture. Obviously, that's a big bite. It would require a fundamental reconceptualization of the whole thing, and more initiative conceptually and politically, than it's easy to believe in at the moment.

So, while struggling to be positive, let me say I think we're in fairly serious trouble here, and hopefully, the trouble will be the cause of our digging out of the hole. But we don't have the problem very fully in view here. We're not doing the sort of things that will be required to get hold of it, and we don't have anything like the 10 years scheduled under START to begin to deal with it. We've got to start hustling.

For more information please contact:

Spurgeon M. Keeny Jr. or Jack Mendelsohn

Joint Statements of the Helsinki Summit

Joint Statement on Parameters On Future Reductions In Nuclear Forces

Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin underscore that, with the end of the Cold War, major progress has been achieved with regard to strengthening strategic stability and nuclear security. Both the United States and Russia are significantly reducing their nuclear forces. Important steps have been taken to detarget strategic missiles. The Start I Treaty has entered into force, and its implementation is ahead of schedule. Belarus, Kazakstan and Ukraine are nuclear weapon free. The Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty was indefinitely extended on May 11, 1995 and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed by both the United States and Russia on September 24, 1996.

In another historic step to promote international peace and security, President Clinton and President Yeltsin hereby reaffirm their commitment to take further concrete steps to reduce the nuclear danger and strengthen strategic stability and nuclear security. The Presidents have reached an understanding on further reductions in and limitations on strategic offensive arms that will substantially reduce the roles and risks of nuclear weapons as we move forward into the next century. Recognizing the fundamental significance of the ABM Treaty for these objectives, the Presidents have, in a separate joint statement, given instructions on demarcation between ABM systems and theater missile defense systems, which will allow for deployment of effective theater missile defenses and prevent circumvention of the ABM Treaty.

With the foregoing in mind, President Clinton and President Yeltsin have reached the following understandings.

Once Start II enters into force, the United States and Russia will immediately begin negotiations on a Start III agreement, which will include, among other things, the following basic components:

Establishment, by December 31, 2007, of lower aggregate levels of 2,000 2,500 strategic nuclear warheads for each of the parties.

Measures relating to the transparency of strategic nuclear warhead inventories and the destruction of strategic nuclear warheads and any other jointly agreed technical and organizational measures, to promote the irreversibility of deep reductions including prevention of a rapid increase in the number of warheads.

Resolving issues related to the goal of making the current START treaties unlimited in duration.

Placement in a deactivated status of all strategic nuclear delivery vehicles which will be eliminated under START II by December 31, 2003, by removing their nuclear warheads or taking other jointly agreed steps. The United States is providing assistance through the Nunn Lugar program to facilitate early deactivation.

The Presidents have reached an understanding that the deadline for the elimination of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles under the START II Treaty will be extended to December 31, 2007. The sides will agree on specific language to be submitted to the Duma and, following Duma approval of START II, to be submitted to the United States Senate.

In this context, the Presidents underscore the importance of prompt ratification of the START II Treaty by the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

The Presidents also agreed that in the context of START III negotiations their experts will explore, as separate issues, possible measures relating to nuclear long range sea launched cruise missiles and tactical nuclear systems, to include appropriate confidence building and transparency measures.

Taking into account all the understandings outlined above, and recalling their statement of May 10, 1995, the Presidents agreed the sides will also consider the issues related to transparency in nuclear materials.


Joint Statement Concerning The Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty

President Clinton and President Yeltsin, expressing their commitment to strengthening strategic stability and international security, emphasizing the importance of further reductions in strategic offensive arms, and recognizing the fundamental significance of the Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty for these objectives as well as the necessity for effective theater missile defense (TMD) systems, consider it their common task to preserve the ABM Treaty, prevent circumvention of it, and enhance its viability.

The Presidents reaffirm the principles of their May 10, 1995 Joint Statement, which will serve as a basis for reaching agreement on demarcation between ABM systems and theater missile defense systems, including:

The United States and Russia are each committed to the ABM Treaty, a cornerstone of strategic stability.

Both sides must have the option to establish and to deploy effective theater missile defense systems. Such activity must not lead to violation or circumvention of the ABM Treaty.

Theater missile defense systems may be deployed by each side which (1) will not pose a realistic threat to the strategic nuclear force of the other side and (2) will not be tested to give such systems that capability.

Theater missile defense systems will not be deployed by the sides for use against each other.

The scale of deployment—in number and geographic scope—of theater missile defense systems by either side will be consistent with theater ballistic missile programs confronting that side.

In this connection, the United States and Russia have recently devoted special attention to developing measures aimed at assuring confidence of the Parties that their ballistic missile defense activities will not lead to circumvention of the ABM Treaty, to which the Parties have repeatedly reaffirmed their adherence.

The efforts undertaken by the Parties in this regard are reflected in the Joint Statement of the Presidents of the United States and Russia issued on September 28, 1994, as well as in that of May 10, 1995. Important decisions were made at the United States Russia summit meeting on April 23, 1996.

In order to fulfill one of the primary obligations under the ABM Treaty¾the obligation not to give non ABM systems capabilities to counter strategic ballistic missiles and not to test them in an ABM mode¾the Presidents have instructed their respective delegations to complete the preparation of an agreement to ensure fulfillment of this requirement.

In Standing Consultative Commission (SCC) negotiations on the problem of demarcation between TMD systems and ABM systems, the United States and Russia, together with Belarus, Kazakstan and Ukraine, successfully finished negotiations on demarcation with respect to lower velocity TMD systems. The Presidents note that agreements were also reached in 1996 with respect to confidence building measures and ABM Treaty succession. The Presidents have instructed their experts to complete an agreement as soon as possible for prompt signature on higher velocity TMD systems.

Neither side has plans before April 1999 to flight test, against a ballistic target missile, TMD interceptor missiles subject to the agreement on demarcation with respect to higher velocity TMD systems. Neither side has plans for TMD systems with interceptor missiles faster than 5.5 km/sec for land based and air based systems or 4.5 km/sec for sea based systems. Neither side has plans to test TMD systems against target missiles with MIRVs or against reentry vehicles deployed or planned to be deployed on strategic ballistic missiles.

The elements for the agreement on higher velocity TMD systems are:

The velocity of the ballistic target missiles will not exceed 5 km/sec.

The flight range of the ballistic target missiles will not exceed 3500 km.

The sides will not develop, test, or deploy space based TMD interceptor missiles or components based on other physical principles that are capable of substituting for such interceptor missiles.

The sides will exchange detailed information annually on TMD plans and programs.

The Presidents noted that TMD technology is in its early stages and continues to evolve. They agreed that developing effective TMD while maintaining a viable ABM Treaty will require continued consultations. To this end, they reaffirm that their representatives to the Standing Consultative Commission will discuss, as foreseen under the ABM Treaty, any questions or concerns either side may have regarding TMD activities, including matters related to the agreement to be completed on higher velocity systems, which will be based on this joint statement by the two Presidents, with a view to precluding violation or circumvention of the ABM Treaty. These consultations will be facilitated by the agreed detailed annual information exchange on TMD plans and programs.

The Presidents also agreed that there is considerable scope for cooperation in theater missile defense. They are prepared to explore integrated cooperative defense efforts, inter alia, in the provision of early warning support for TMD activities, technology cooperation in areas related to TMD, and expansion of the ongoing program of cooperation in TMD exercises.

In resolving the tasks facing them, the Parties will act in a spirit of cooperation, mutual openness, and commitment to the ABM Treaty.


Joint U.S. Russian Statement On European Security

Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin discussed the present security situation in the Euro Atlantic region. They reaffirmed their commitment to the shared goal of building a stable, secure, integrated and undivided democratic Europe. The roles of the United States and Russia as powers with worldwide responsibilities place upon them a special requirement to cooperate closely to this end. They confirmed that this cooperation will be guided by the spirit of openness and pragmatism which has increasingly come to characterize the U.S. Russian relationship in recent years.

Recalling their May 1995 Joint Statement on European Security, the Presidents noted that lasting peace in Europe should be based on the integration of all of the continent into a series of mutually supporting institutions and relationships that ensure that there will be no return to division or confrontation. No institution by itself can ensure security. The Presidents agreed that the evolution of security structures should be managed in a way that threatens no state and that advances the goal of building a more stable and integrated Europe. This evolution should be based on a broad commitment to the principles of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe [OSCE] as enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act, the Budapest Code of Conduct and other OSCE documents, including respect for human rights, democracy and political pluralism, the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, and their inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security.

The Presidents are convinced that strengthening the OSCE, whose potential has yet to be fully realized, meets the interests of the United States and Russia. The Presidents expressed their satisfaction with the outcome of the Lisbon Summit of the OSCE and agreed on the importance of implementing its decisions, both to define further the goals of security cooperation and to continue to devise innovative methods for carrying out the growing number of tasks the OSCE has assumed.

They underscored their commitment to enhance the operational capability of the OSCE as the only framework for European security cooperation providing for full and equal participation of all states. The rule of consensus should remain an inviolable basis for OSCE decision making. The Presidents reaffirmed their commitment to work together in the ongoing OSCE effort to develop a model for security in Europe which takes account of the radically changed situation on the eve of the 21st century and the decisions of the Lisbon Summit concerning a charter on European security. The OSCE's essential role in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its ability to develop new forms of peacekeeping and conflict prevention should also be actively pursued.

In their talks in Helsinki, the two Presidents paid special attention to the question of relations between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Russian Federation. They continued to disagree on the issue of NATO enlargement. In order to minimize the potential consequences of this disagreement, the Presidents agreed that they should work, both together and with others, on a document that will establish cooperation between NATO and Russia as an important element of a new comprehensive European security system. Signed by the leaders of the NATO countries and Russia, this document would be an enduring commitment at the highest political level. They further agreed that the NATO Russia relationship, as defined in this document, should provide for consultation, coordination and, to the maximum extent possible where appropriate, joint decision making and action on security issues of common concern.

The Presidents noted that the NATO Russia document would reflect and contribute both to the profound transformation of NATO, including its political and peacekeeping dimension, and to the new realities of Russia as it builds a democratic society. It will also reflect the shared commitment of both NATO and Russia to develop their relations in a manner that enhances mutual security.

The Presidents recalled the historic significance of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe [CFE] in establishing the trust necessary to build a common security space on the continent in the interest of all states in Europe, whether or not they belong to a military or political alliance, and to continue to preclude any destabilizing build up of forces in different regions of Europe.

The Presidents stressed the importance of adapting the CFE Treaty. They agreed on the need to accelerate negotiations among CFE parties with a view to concluding by late spring or early summer of 1997 a framework agreement setting forth the basic elements of an adapted CFE Treaty, in accordance with the objectives and principles of the Document on Scope and Parameters agreed at Lisbon in December 1996.

President Yeltsin underscored Russian concerns that NATO enlargement will lead to a potentially threatening build up of permanently stationed combat forces of NATO near to Russia. President Clinton stressed that the Alliance contemplates nothing of the kind.

President Yeltsin welcomed President Clinton's statements and affirmed that Russia would exercise similar restraint in its conventional force deployments in Europe.

President Clinton also noted NATO's policy on nuclear weapons deployments, as articulated by the North Atlantic Council on December 10, 1996, that NATO members have "no intention, no plan and no reason" to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of states that are not now members of the Alliance, nor do they foresee any future need to do so. President Clinton noted NATO's willingness to include specific reference to this policy in the NATO Russia document. President Yeltsin spoke in favor of including such a reference in the document.

The Presidents agreed that the United States, Russia and all their partners in Europe face many common security challenges that can best be addressed through cooperation among all the states of the Euro Atlantic area. They pledged to intensify their efforts to build on the common ground identified in their meetings in Helsinki to improve the effectiveness of European security institutions, including by concluding the agreements and arrangements outlined in this statement.


Joint U.S Russian Statement On Chemical Weapons

President Clinton and President Yeltsin discussed issues relating to the entry into force of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction. They stressed the commitment of the United States and Russia to full and effective accomplishment of the tasks and objectives of the convention.

The Presidents reaffirmed their intention to take the steps necessary to expedite ratification in each of the two countries. President Clinton expressed his determination that the United States be a party when the Convention enters into force in April of this year, and is strongly urging prompt Senate action. President Yeltsin noted that the Convention had been submitted to the Duma with his strong recommendation for prompt ratification.

Mindful of their special role and responsibility in the matter of chemical disarmament, the United States and Russia understand that their participation in the Convention is important to its effective implementation and universality.

The Presidents noted that cooperation between the two countries in the prohibition of chemical weapons has enabled both countries to enhance openness regarding their military chemical potential and to gain experience with procedures and measures for verifying compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention. The Parties will continue cooperation between them in chemical disarmament.

The United States will seek appropriation of necessary funds to build a facility for the destruction of neuroparalytic toxins in Russia as previously agreed.

For more information contact Spurgeon M. Keeny Jr. or Jack Mendelsohn

March 1997 Arms Control In Print

February 15 - March 15, 1997

Compiled by Sami Fournier

OF SPECIAL INTEREST

  • An American Legacy: Building a Nuclear Weapon Free World, Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 1997, 16pp. Ph. (202) 223 5956.
  • Hartung, William D. and Jennifer Washburn. U.S. Arms Transfers to Indonesia 1975 1997: Who's Influencing Whom? New York: World Policy Institute, Arms Trade Resource Center, March 1997, 31pp. Ph. (212) 229 5808.
  • Pierre, Andrew J. and Dmitri Trenin. "Developing NATO Russian Relations," Survival, Spring 1997, pp.5 18.
  • Steinbruner, John. "Russia Faces an Unsafe Reliance on Nukes," The Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1997, p.11.

I. ARMS CONTROL—GENERAL

  • Arms Control Briefing Book, Washington, DC: Council for a Livable World Education Fund, March 1997, 66pp.
  • Khripunov, Igor. "New Environment Demands Fresh Vision for Arms Control," Defense News, February 3 9, 1997, p.19.
  • "The New Horizon for Arms Cuts," The New York Times, March 11, 1997, p.A28.
  • Plesch, Daniel and Natalie Goldring. "From Dumdums to Nerve Gas," The Christian Science Monitor, March 5, 1997, p.20.
THEORY AND POLICY
  • Plesch, Daniel and Stephen Young. "A Look at U.S. Arms Control Policy," CDS Bulletin of Arms Control, March 1997, pp.2 7.
  • Woolf, Amy F. "Arms Control and Disarmament Activities: A Catalog of Recent Events," CRS Report for Congress, January 24, 1997, 77pp.
VERIFICATION AND COMPLIANCE
  • International Affairs—Function 150 Summary and Highlights Fiscal 1998 Budget Request, Washington, DC: Office of Resources, Plans and Policy, U.S. Department of State, February 1997, 40pp. Ph. (202) 647 3434.
  • Verification, Compliance and Confidence Building: The Global and Regional Interface, J. Marshall Beier and Steven Mataija, Eds., North York, Ontario: York University Centre for International and Security Studies, 1996, 174pp. Ph. (416) 736 5156.

II. STRATEGIC ARMS CONTROL

  • Gordon, Michael. "U.S. Proposes Deeper Cuts in Atom Arms," The New York Times, March 9, 1997, p.A9.
  • Mendelsohn, Jack. "Crossing the Finnish' Line," Arms Control Today, January/February 1997, p.2.
  • Smith, Jeffrey. "U.S. Studies Deeper Nuclear Warhead Cuts," The Washington Post, January 23, 1997, p.A4.
  • Starr, Barbara. "Yeltsin's Unclear Future Stalls Arms Negotiations," Jane's Defense Weekly, March 12, 1997, p.3.
  • Zimmerman, Tim. "Just When you Thought You Were Safe" U.S. News and World Report, February 18, 1997, pp.38 39.

III. BALLISTIC MISSILE PROLIFERATION

  • Diamond, Howard. "UNSCOM Head Says Iraq Has 'Operational' Missile Force," Arms Control Today, January/February 1997, p.25.
  • "Missile Deal in Cypriot Budget Angers Turkey," Jane's Defence Weekly, February 26, 1997, p.15.
  • Wolf, Jim. "Missiles from China Pose Threat, Lake Says," The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 14, 1997, p.32.

IV. BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE

  • Cerniello, Craig. "Panel Upholds NIE Assessment of Ballistic Missile Threat to U.S.," Arms Control Today, January/February 1997, p.22.
  • Cerniello, Craig. "NMD Debate in Congress Heats Up As Lott, Lugar Introduce New Bills," Arms Control Today, January/February 1997, p.21.
  • Cirincione, Joseph. "Why the Right Lost the Missile Defense Debate," Foreign Policy, Spring 1997, pp.39 55.
  • Donnelly, John. "Pentagon Programs $17.9 Billion for Missile Defense," Defense Week Special, February 5, 1997, p.2.
  • Scott, William B. "Commanders Demand Effective Missile Defense," Aviation Week and Space Technology, March 3, 1997, pp.42 43.
ANTI BALLISTIC MISSILE TREATY
  • Gertz, Bill. "Service Chiefs Fear for Missile Defense," The Washington Times, March 10, 1997, p.A4.
  • Mann, Paul. "ABM Treaty at 25: Relic or Rebirth?" Aviation Week and Space Technology, February 24, 1997, pp.50 53.
THEATER MISSILE DEFENSE
  • Dornheim, Michael A. "THAAD Program Future Tied to Test Results," Aviation Week and Space Technology, March 3, 1997, pp.64 65.
  • Dupont, Daniel G. "Pentagon Review of Latest THAAD Failure, State of Technology' Under Way," Inside Missile Defense, March 12, 1997, p.1.
  • Erlich, Jeff. "Pentagon Seeks to Boost Missile Defense Fund," Defense News, February 17 23, 1997, p.18.
  • Guilbeaux Jr., Lt. Col. Wilson. "Boost Phase Intercept: Implications for Theater Missile Defense," Urbana Champaign IL: ACDIS Occasional Paper, December 1996, 16pp.
  • Mintz, John. "Missile Defense System Fails Fourth Test," The Washington Post, March 7, 1997, p.G1.
  • "No Quid Pro Quo on TMD," Defense News, March 10 16, 1997, p.38.

V. NUCLEAR NON PROLIFERATION

  • Anselmo, Joseph C. "Russian Threat Still Massive," Aviation Week and Space Technology, February 24, 1997, pp.48 49.
  • Guldin, Robert. "A Farewell to Arms," GWlawschool, November 1996, pp.27 29.
NUCLEAR NON PROLIFERATION TREATY
  • Müller, Harald, Alexander Kelle, Katja Frank, Sylvia Meier and Annette Schaper, Nuclear Disarmament: With What End in View?, Frankfurt, Germany: Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, December, 1996, p.49.
NON PROLIFERATION REGIMES
  • Hoadley, Steve. The 1995 NPT Conference: An Application of Zartman's Multilateral Negotiation Theory, Canberra: Australian National University, Peace Research Centre, 1996, 25pp. Ph. (06) 249 3098.
  • Multilateral Approaches to Non Proliferation, Andrew Latham, Ed., North York, Ontario: York University Centre for International and Security Studies, 1995, 152pp. Ph. (416) 736 5156.
  • Ranger, Robin and David Weincek. The Devil's Brews II: Weapons of Mass Destruction and International Security, Lancashire, UK: Centre for Defense and International Security, Lancaster University, 1997, 74pp. Ph. (44) 171 256 0704.
  • Weapons of Mass Destruction: Are the Nonproliferation Regimes Falling Behind? Report of the 37th Strategy for Peace, US Foreign Policy Conference, Muscatine, Iowa: The Stanley Foundation, October 1996, 16pp.
REGIONAL ISSUES
  • Bajpai, Kanti. Nuclear Weapons and the Security of India: Giving Up the Bomb, Canberra: Australian National University, Peace Research Centre, 1996, 26pp. Ph. 06 249 3098.
  • Diamond, Howard. "Nuclear Deal With North Korea Back on Track After Sub Incident," Arms Control Today, January/February 1997, p.23.
  • Feldman, Shai. Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in the Middle East, Cambridge, Massachusetts: CSIA Studies in International Security, 1997, Ph. (617) 495 1400.
  • Koch, Andrew. "Pakistan Persists With Nuclear Procurement," Jane's Intelligence Review, March 1997, p.131 133.
  • Korea and East Asia, Seoul, Korea: Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, December 1996, 25 pp.
  • Manning, Robert A. "PACATOM: Nuclear Cooperation in Asia," The Washington Quarterly, Spring 1997, pp.217 232.
  • "Striking a Balance in Pursuit of Progress," Jane's Defence Weekly, February 12, 1997, pp.23 24.
  • Yumin, Hu. "Preliminary Analysis of U.S. Counterproliferation Strategy," International Strategic Studies, China Institute for International Strategic Studies, 1996, pp.34 39. Ph.(010) 62 021 048

VI. NUCLEAR WEAPONS MATERIAL CONTROL

  • Albright, David, Frans Berkhout and William Walker. Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996 World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies, New York: Oxford University Press, SIPRI, 1997, 502pp.
  • Ellis, Jason. "Nunn Lugar's Mid Life Crisis," Survival, Spring 1997, pp.84 110.
  • Japan's Nuclear Future: The Plutonium Debate and East Asian Security, Selig S. Harrison, ed.Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1996, 120pp.
  • Weapons of Mass Destruction: DOD Reporting on Cooperative Threat Reduction Assistance Has Improved, US GAO, February 1997, 6pp. Ph. (202) 512 6000.

VII. NUCLEAR TESTING

  • Gibbs, W. Wayt. "In Focus: Computer Bombs," Scientific American, March 1997, pp.14 16.
  • McNally, James. "No Bluffing About Nuclear Arms," The Washington Times, March 11, 1997, p.A21.

VIII. CONVENTIONAL ARMS CONTROL AND ARMS TRANSFERS

  • Blank, Stephen J. The Dynamics of Russian Weapon Sales to China, March 4, 1997, Washington, DC: U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 40pp. Ph. (717) 245 4133.
  • Crawford, Dorn. Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE): A Review of Key Treaty Elements, Washington, DC: Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, December 1996, 53pp.
  • Eikenberry, Karl W. Explaining and Influencing Chinese Arms Transfers, Washington, DC: INSS, National Defense University, February 1995, 65pp.
  • Harahan, Joseph P. and John C. Kuhn. On Site Inspections Under the CFE Treaty, A History of the On Site Inspection Agency and CFE Implementation, 1990 1996. Washington, DC: On Site Inspection Agency, 1996, 369pp.
  • Hartung, William D. Peddling Arms, Peddling Influence: Exposing the Arms Export Lobby, New York, NY: World Policy Institute, October 1996, 23pp. (212) 229 5808.
  • Hull, Andrew and David Markov. "A Changing Market in the Arms Bazaar," Jane's Intelligence Review, March 1997, pp.140 142.
  • Leklem, Erik and Sarah Walkling. "CFE Treaty Modernization," Jane's Intelligence Review, February 1997, p.3.
  • Sharp, Jane M.O. "Update on the Dayton Arms Control Arrangements," CDS Bulletin of Arms Control, March 1997, pp.8 13.
  • Turner, Craig. "U.S. Led Push for Land Mine Ban Is Stymied," The Los Angeles Times, March 7, 1997, p.2.
  • Walkling, Sarah. "U.S. Favors CD Negotiations To Achieve Ban on Landmines," Arms Control Today, January/February 1997, p.20.
  • Walkling, Sarah. "Wassenaar Members End Plenary, First Data Exchange Falls Short," Arms Control Today, January/February 1997, p.24.
  • "Wassenaar's Weakness," Defense News, January 20 27, p.18.

IX. CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL ARMS CONTROL

  • Cooper, Mary H. "Chemical and Biological Weapons," CQ Researcher, January 31, 1997, pp.75 90.
  • Deans, Bob. "U.S. Disarms Without Pact," The Washington Times, March 10, 1997, p.A14.
  • "Here Come the Spies," The Wall Street Journal, March 7, 1997, p.1.
  • "Iraq Produced Nerve Agent; U.N. Doubts it was Destroyed," The Baltimore Sun, March 4, 1997, p.1.
  • Leklem, Erik. "Administration, Senate Republicans Draw Battle Lines Over CWC," Arms Control Today, January/February 1997, p.19.
  • Towell, Pat. "Clinton Pressures GOP to Act on Chemical Arms Ban," Congressional Quarterly, March 1, 1997, pp.545 550.
  • The Utility of Sampling and Analysis for Compliance Monitoring of the Biological Weapons Convention, Jonathan B. Tucker, Ed. Livermore, CA: Center for Global Security Research, February 1997, 68pp. Ph. (510) 422 6141.

X. REGIONAL SECURITY ALLIANCES AND ISSUES

FORMER SOVIET UNION

  • Drozdiak, William. "Russia, NATO Near Agreement on Structure of New Partnership," The Washington Post, March 12, 1997, p.A23. "NATO Goes A wooing," The Economist, January 25 31, 1997. pp.15 16.
  • Rubinstein, Alvin. "America's Stake in Russia Today," Orbis, Winter 1997, pp.31 38.
  • Sneider, Daniel. "Of Supercomputers and National Security," The Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 1997, p.3.
  • Tigner, Brooks. "Critics Blast Brigade Idea," Defense News, February 24 March 2, 1997, p.1.
EUROPE AND NATO
  • Abshire, David M. "A Debate for 16 Parliaments," The Washington Post, February 19, 1997, p.A21.
  • Aristotelous, Aristos. Greece, Turkey and Cyprus: The Military Balance, 1995 1996. Cyprus: Cyprus Center for Strategic Studies, 1995, 168pp. Ph. (202) 232 8993.
  • Drozdiak, William. "NATO Expansion on the Cheap' May Have Surcharge," The Washington Post, March 12, 1997, p.A1.
  • Fitchett, Joseph. "NATO Expansion Wins Ukrainian Endorsement," International Herald Tribune, February 26, 1997, p.5.
  • Grant, Robert P. "Transatlantic Armament Relations Under Strain," Survival, Spring 1997, pp.111 137.
  • Le Gloannec, Anne Marie. "Europe by Other Means?," International Affairs, January 1997, pp.83 98.
  • Nunn, Senator Sam. "The Course for NATO," Washington, DC: The Atlantic Council, January 13, 1997, 5pp.
  • "Public Indifferent About NATO Expansion," Washington, DC: Pew Research Center News Release, January 24, 1997, 13pp. Ph. (202) 293 3126.
  • Rogers, Mark. "Test of Strength as NATO Looks to Grow," Jane's Defence Weekly, February 26, 1997, p.25 27.
  • Shulte, Gregory L. "Former Yugoslavia and the New NATO," Survival, Spring 1997, pp.19 42.
  • Starr, Barbara. "U.S. Worry over Russia and Expansion Costs," Jane's Defence Weekly, February 25, 1997, p.28 31.
  • Talbott, Strobe. "Russia Has Nothing to Fear," The New York Times, February 18, 1997, p.A25.
  • Tigner, Brooks. "Crisis in Albania Challenges PfP Viability," Defense News, March 10 16, p.3.
  • Whitney, Craig R. "NATO, in Concession to Russia, Won't Base New Forces in East," The New York Times, March 15, 1997, p.7.
  • "Why Bigger is Better," The Economist, February 15, 1997, p.21.
MIDDLE EAST
  • Building for Security and Peace in the Middle East, Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1997, 88pp. Ph. (202) 452 0650.
  • Groom, A.J.R., Edward Newman and Paul Taylor. Burdensome Victory: The United Nations and Iraq, Canberra: Australian National University, Peace Research Centre, 1996, 34pp. Ph. (06) 249 3098.
  • "Iraq to ship scrap missile motors for UN analysis," Jane's Defence Weekly, March 5, 1997, p.16.
ASIA
  • Bedi, Rahul and Nikolai Novichkov. "India Matches Regional Build up with Kilo' Buy," Jane's Defence Weekly, February 19, 1997, p.3.
  • Goodstein, Laurie. "North, South Korea Hold Positive' Talks," The Washington Post, March 6, 1997, p.A26.
  • Harrison, Selig S. "Promoting a Soft Landing in Korea," Foreign Policy, Spring 1997, pp.57 75.
  • Raghuvanshi, Vivek. "India to Deploy Prithvi Despite Pakistani Concerns," Defense News, March 10 16, 1997, p.34.
  • Shin, Dong Ik and Gerald Segal. "Getting Serious About Asia Europe Security Cooperation," Survival, Spring 1997.
OTHER REGIONS
  • Confidence and Security Building Measures in the Americas: A Reference Book of Hemispheric Documents, ACDA, December 1996, 372pp.
  • Conca, Ken. Manufacturing Insecurity: The Rise and Fall of Brazil's Military Industrial Complex. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997, 283pp.

XI. DEFENSE BUDGET AND CONVERSION

  • "A Quick Look at the Clinton Administration's FY 1998 Defense Budget Request," Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, February 6, 1997, 3pp. Ph. (202) 331 7990.

XII. MILITARY STRATEGY AND THEORY

  • Erlich, Jeff. "Bunker Busting Bomb Prompts U.S. Discord," Defense News, February 24 March 2, 1997, p.1.
  • "The Future of Warfare," The Economist, March 8, 1997, pp.21 24.
  • Robb, Charles S. "Challenging the Assumptions of U.S. Military Strategy," The Washington Quarterly, Spring 1997, pp.115 131.

XIII. OTHER TOPICS

  • Strategic Assessment 1997, Washington, DC: Institute for National Strategic Studies, 1997, 300pp. Ph. (202) 685 3838.
  • Stremlau, John. "Sharpening International Sanctions," Washington, DC: Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, November, 1996, 78pp. Ph. (202) 429 7979.
  • Zawels, Estanislao Angel et. al. Managing Arms in Peace Processes: The Issues, New York and Geneva: UNIDIR Disarmament and Conflict Resolution Project, 1996, 234pp. Ph. (41 22) 917 26 12.
For more information, please contact Sami Fournier

CD Ends First Session of 1997 Without Mandates for Negotiations

By Howard Diamond

The 61 nation UN Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva ended its first 1997 session on March 27 without achieving agreed mandates for negotiations or establishing the necessary bodies in which to conduct them.

Beginning its work on January 21, the world's principal multilateral arms control forum was unable to set an agenda beyond the eight basic items first promulgated in 1978, now considered a formality. Many countries hoped that the CD would keep up the momentum of last year's Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and make rapid progress on a global fissile material cutoff treaty and on an anti personnel landmines ban. However, competing priorities of the Western nations on the one hand and the non aligned movement (NAM) states on the other compounded by the CD requirement to work only by consensus have prevented formation of any ad hoc committees in which negotiations could begin.

The United States and most other Western countries want the CD to focus on what they believe is a more pragmatic agenda, in particular, negotiating a fissile material production ban and a global landmine ban (see ACT, January/February 1996). The NAM, led by India, insists that the immediate aim of the CD should be establishing a timebound framework for nuclear disarmament which would include the fissile material ban.

According to one U.S. official familiar with the CD negotiations, "The countries blocking the fissile material cutoff treaty by linking it to a timebound framework are the same ones trying to protect their own [nuclear weapons] programs." The United States maintains that the CD is the wrong place to negotiate nuclear reductions, arguing that agreements such as START I and II, among nuclear weapon states, are the best way to make large reductions in nuclear arsenals.

Attempting to bridge the gap between supporters of immediate fissile ban negotiations (such as the United States, Russia, Britain and France) and the non aligned, which wants to subsume a fissile cutoff within a timebound framework for nuclear disarmament, Japan proposed establishing a special coordinator to identify the nuclear disarmament issues with the greatest potential for fruitful negotiations and to report back to the conference before the end of the final 1997 session. New Zealand suggested establishing a nuclear disarmament committee that would immediately begin with the fissile material cutoff negotiations, while also considering longer term issues. However, both sides are unwilling to make compromises that look like concessions, and these proposals received little support.

The CD will hold two more sessions in 1997, the first from May 12 to June 27 and the second from July 28 to September 10. A U.S. official suggested little progress was likely in the second session, but movement was possible in the third. According to the official, "There's a waiting game to see which side will crack." In the absence of a major breakthrough or change in position, the CD may accomplish little this year.

CD Ends First Session of 1997 Without Mandates for Negotiations

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