Arms treaty supporters push for OK

Gen. Kevin Chilton said he knows some question whether the nuclear arms reduction treaty signed by President Barack Obama provides adequate ability to ensure Russian compliance.

But the U.S. Strategic Command's top leader, speaking Wednesday in Omaha, said those skeptics also recognize the current context of that issue: The old arms treaty has expired, and the United States is left with no ability to inspect Russian nuclear facilities at all.

“I'm not comfortable with that,'' Chilton said. “Transparency is important, and I'm satisfied we will be in a position to sustain our nuclear deterrent and the security of the United States under the treaty.''

Chilton spoke of his support for the New START arms control treaty during a strategic deterrence conference hosted Wednesday by StratCom.

U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., used the conference as an opportunity to announce his support for ratification of the treaty. During the day, Chilton and other prominent names in U.S. national security repeated their previously voiced support for the accord.

The treaty, signed in April by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, ultimately would bring each side's deployed nuclear weapons down to 1,550, below the current target of 2,200.

Nelson said it's important that StratCom, based at Offutt Air Force Base, played a key role in negotiating terms of the treaty. Along with Chilton, six other previous commanders of StratCom or its predecessor have endorsed the pact.

Both Nelson and Chilton said they think the new treaty provides the inspections needed to assure Russian compliance. “America will be stronger if we can continue to look under Russia's hood, and they under ours,'' Nelson said.

Former U.S. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, who served in the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, said concerns about the treaty are exaggerated. The U.S. arms reductions under it are modest ones, he said, and they won't happen “unless the Russians cut at the same time.''

Because of political considerations and limited time, Nelson said he doesn't expect the Senate to vote on ratification until after the November elections.

While there was much support for the New START at the conference, whether the treaty could be a step toward a nuclear-free world was the subject of more debate.

The latest national nuclear posture review, completed by the Obama administration last year, concluded there would need to be “a fundamental transformation of the world political order'' before all nuclear weapons could be eliminated.

Richard Burt, a former U.S. arms control negotiator who now serves as chairman of Global Zero USA, said he thinks that transformation is already under way.

There has been major progress in reducing the world's nuclear stockpile in the last four decades, he said. And there would be universal world condemnation of any state that used such a weapon.

“We no longer fear a disarming, out-of-the-blue nuclear strike,'' he said.

But Schlesinger was more doubtful, for several reasons.

Russia now sees its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent against the stronger conventional forces of the United States, a reverse of the situation at the start of the Cold War. Israel sees nuclear weapons as “the ultimate protection in a tough neighborhood,'' he said. And the knowledge of how to build the bomb will never be expunged from the memory of man.

For the base that's been home to the U.S. nuclear command for more than half a century, that should ensure an important place in national security for years to come, Schlesinger said.

“The deterrence offered by StratCom is essential to the avoidance of major war,'' he said.

Contact the writer:

444-1130, henry.cordes@owh.com

« Nation/World

Share