WASHINGTON: A US-Russia nuclear arms treaty is being hailed as burying the Cold War and opening a bright new era in bilateral ties, but it is not the panacea some suggest.
While the deal was initially welcomed with enthusiasm, critics have expressed increasing concern that the minimalist four-page pact has been oversold and does not go far enough.
They also fear it is drawing attention away from the danger that for President George W. Bush looms largest after the Sept 11 attacks on the United States — the possible acquisition and use of nuclear, biological and chemical arms by terrorists.
The treaty Bush and President Vladimir Putin will sign is aimed at reducing US and Russian deployed strategic warheads over 10 years to 1,700-2,200 each from current levels of 5,000-6,000.
The two major powers, still wedded to a nuclear deterrent, have much work left to do on security, like securing Russia’s nuclear stocks and resolving a long-standing row over Moscow’s cooperation with Iran, officials and analysts say.
The new pact “simply formalizes what each leader previously announced he planned to do unilaterally,” according to Graham Allison of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Writing in the Boston Globe, he argued that at current levels, strategic warhead numbers are essentially symbolic. What really mattered was the likelihood each side would use a nuclear weapon, and factors like early-warning systems, command and control systems and the decision time available to each president in a crisis, he said.
“Unfortunately, both sides appear to have agreed to avoid these difficult issues,” Allison added.
Joe Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace also took issue with the administration’s description of the accord, asserting, “The treaty will not liquidate the legacy of the Cold War as President Bush has claimed.
“Ten years from now, the US will still field a large dispersed force of strategic weapons whose only justification is to target and destroy Russian military, industrial and political sites,” he said.
PACT GIVES FLEXIBILITY: Like Russia, arms control advocates worry that the pact gives the United States too much flexibility, allowing it to store rather than dismantle warheads removed from delivery vehicles. Bush is expected to keep at least 2,400 of the warheads in a so-called responsive force, meaning the weapons could be redeployed within weeks or months.
Under this scenario, the United States would have 4,600 warheads available for deployment up to three years after the pact expires, according to the Arms Control Association.
The treaty does not even attempt to deal with thousands of short-range tactical nuclear weapons that are still part of the US and Russian arsenals.
For many analysts, talk of slashing nuclear arms is also undercut by a multibillion-dollar increase in new US defence spending and a Pentagon policy review that raises the possibility of developing new types of nuclear weapons.
Since Sept 11, Bush has stressed the need to keep weapons of mass destruction away from terrorists as well as from Iran, Iraq and North Korea — countries that he has judged to form an “axis of evil” for developing those weapons and having links with terrorists.
Until Thursday, when he addressed the issue in answer to a reporter’s question, Bush and his aides had largely played down the Russia-Iran link, focusing instead on America’s evolving new relationship with its former Cold War enemy.
Russia, in the long-held US view, is a major supplier to Iran, providing vital assistance to Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes as well as conventional arms.
It is expected that Bush will raise the Iran issue with Putin and that a new US-Russia strategic framework document due for release at the summit will commit the two sides to cooperate generally against nuclear and arms proliferation.
While there are signs of new thinking that could eventually see the United States offer economic incentives in return for Russia ending its cooperation with Iran, officials said it was unlikely the summit would produce a breakthrough.
Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Ashton Carter, a former Clinton administration official, said Bush and Putin should exploit improving ties to “declare a new front” against terrorism.
“The goal would be the formation of a coalition to safeguard nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their component materials and technology so they do not fall into the wrong hands,” they wrote in the Financial Times.
The heaviest concentration of these materials is in Russia, but weapons-grade uranium exists in research reactors in scores of countries around the world, they said.—Reuters
