The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty came to an end in August. The United States and Russia no longer are barred from developing and deploying land-based, intermediate-range missiles, and the Pentagon apparently aims to deploy such missiles in Europe and Asia.

The INF Treaty, signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, prohibited the United States and Soviet Union (later Russia) from testing or possessing land-based ballistic or cruise missiles with ranges between five hundred and fifty-five hundred kilometers. Unfortunately, Russia violated the treaty by testing and deploying the 9M729, a prohibited land-based, intermediate-range cruise missile.

Read the Rest at The National Interest.

This piece originally appeared in The National Interest.

Significant progress has been made in improving the defense situation in the Baltic states since 2014, but NATO can take some relatively modest steps to further enhance its deterrence and defense posture in the region, according to a report by Michael O’Hanlon and Christopher Skaluba, which was based on an Atlantic Council study visit to Lithuania. The Atlantic Council was kind enough to include me on the trek, which began in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, and included visits to troops in the field and the port of Klaipeda. I largely concur with Mike and Chris’s comments and supplement them below with several additional observations.

First, one can understand the preoccupation of Lithuania’s senior political and military leadership with the country’s security situation. Lithuania has had a difficult history with the Soviet Union and Russia. Some in Vilnius believe that Moscow regards the Baltic states as “temporarily lost territory.”

A Russian military invasion of the Baltic states is not a high probability. However, the Lithuanians cannot ignore a small probability, especially in light of the Kremlin’s recent rhetoric, the Russian military’s ongoing modernization of its conventional forces and exercise pattern of the past five years, and Russia’s use of military force to seize Crimea and conduct a conflict in Donbas.

When the Lithuanian Ministry of National Defense (MNOD) looks around its neighborhood, it can see specific reasons for concern. Russia is upgrading its military presence in the Kaliningrad exclave on Lithuania’s southwestern border. The MNOD now counts Kaliningrad as hosting some twenty thousand Russian military personnel, including a naval infantry unit and substantial anti-access, area denial capabilities, such as advanced surface-to-air missiles. The Lithuanians assess that the Russian military could mount a large ground attack from Belarus, to the east of Lithuania (the border is less than twenty miles from downtown Vilnius). These forces are backed by an additional 120,000 personnel in Russia’s Western Military District, including a tank army. Russia has substantial air assets in the region as well as warships in the Baltic Sea.

For its part, Lithuania can muster fourteen thousand soldiers and sailors (four thousand of whom are conscripts serving just nine months). They are backed up by five thousand volunteers, similar to the U.S. National Guard. Under NATO’s enhanced forward presence program, a German-led NATO battlegroup adds 1,300 troops, mainly from Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. In addition, NATO member air forces rotate small fighter squadrons into Lithuania to provide air policing for the Baltic states.

Second, Lithuania has a logical plan to enhance its defense capabilities. The MNOD is making good use of its defense dollars (Lithuania now meets NATO’s two percent of gross domestic product goal, having tripled its defense expenditures over the past six years). Eschewing shiny objects such as F-16 jets, the MNOD focuses on upgrading the capabilities of its two primary ground units, a mechanized brigade and a recently-established motorized brigade. The main procurement programs of the past three years have purchased infantry fighting vehicles, self propelled artillery and short-range surface-to-air missiles to equip the brigades.

In the event of war, the forces in Lithuania would likely fight a defensive holding action while awaiting NATO reinforcements. The MNOD and Ministry of Transport are working together to enhance the country’s ability to flow in NATO forces, including by upgrading the rollon/roll-off capacity at the port of Klaipeda and building a European standard gauge railroad line from Poland to the main base of Lithuania’s mechanized brigade. The railroad line, which o obviates the need to change the railroad gauge at the Polish-Lithuanian border, a cumbersome process involving changing out the wheels of railcars, ultimately will be extended north to Latvia and Estonia.

Third, the Lithuanians value NATO’s enhanced forward presence in the form of the NATO battlegroup. The battlegroup is fully integrated into Lithuania’s Iron Wolf Brigade, and in wartime would come under the tactical control of the brigade. The rotational NATO force is based with and trains side-by-side with major elements of that brigade.

One potential question is, if Russian forces were to cross the border and the Iron Wolf Brigade deployed, then how quickly would the NATO battlegroup take the field with it? The latter would need a NATO command to do so, and likely also national authorizations from Berlin, The Hague and Prague. Hopefully, those authorizations would be transmitted early as a crisis developed so that the NATO battlegroup could deploy immediately. It adds significantly to Lithuanian combat capabilities, including by providing the only armor unit in the country.

Fourth, as pleased as Vilnius is to have a NATO military presence, the Lithuanians very much would like to add a U.S. component to it. With a U.S. armored brigade combat team deployed in Poland on a rotational basis, the U.S. military has the assets to consider periodically rotating an armored company to Lithuania (and to Latvia and Estonia). These rotations would be useful military exercises in case there is a crisis that requires a reinforcement move from Poland to Lithuania through the Suwalki Gap.

Lithuania is moving in the right direction in bolstering its defense capabilities, with prudent steps taken over the past six years and sensible plans for the future. As Mike and Chris point out, modest steps by NATO and, I would argue, the United States could significantly add to the Alliance’s deterrence and defense posture in the Baltics.

On Tuesday [June 4], the House Subcommittee on Strategic Forces debated the draft Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.

It voted out, on party lines, language that prohibits deployment of a low-yield warhead on the Trident D5 submarine-launched ballistic missile.  That makes sense:  The rationale for the warhead is dubious, and the weapon likely would never be selected for use.

Read the rest at The Hill

This article originally appeared in the American Ambassadors Review (Spring 2019).

For nearly five decades, Washington and Moscow have engaged in negotiations to manage their nuclear competition. Those negotiations produced a string of acronyms—SALT, INF, START—for arms control agreements that strengthened strategic stability, reduced bloated nuclear arsenals and had a positive impact on the broader bilateral relationship.

That is changing. The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty is headed for demise. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) has less than two years to run, and the administration of Donald Trump has yet to engage on Russian suggestions to extend it. Bilateral strategic stability talks have not been held in 18 months.

On its current path, the U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control regime likely will come to an end in 2021. That will make for a strategic relationship that is less stable, less secure and less predictable and will further complicate an already troubled bilateral relationship.

Fifty Years of Arms Control

Bilateral nuclear arms control talks between Washington and Moscow began in 1969 with the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). They resulted from a growing understanding that negotiated limits on the superpowers’ nuclear arms competition served the interests of both. Over the next five decades, arms control treaties and unilateral force decisions led the sides to reduce their active arsenals to 4,000-4,500 nuclear weapons each—down from a U.S. peak of more than 30,000 in the 1960s and a Soviet/Russian peak that exceeded 40,000 in the 1970s.

Early treaties such as the 1972 Interim Offensive Agreement and the 1979 SALT II Treaty (which never entered into force but whose limits were observed into the mid-1980s) merely slowed the growth of nuclear arsenals. Later treaties had a more dramatic impact. The 1987 INF Treaty banned the entire class of U.S. and Soviet land-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. The 1991 START Treaty required the sides to reduce their accountable strategic nuclear warheads by some 40 percent while cutting strategic missile launchers and bombers by about 30 percent.

Arms control agreements often had a beneficial impact on the broader relationship. SALT helped advance détente in the early 1970s; progress on INF and START spurred an improvement in the overall U.S.-Soviet relationship in the late 1980s; and the relatively quick conclusion of New START gave a positive impulse to the Obama administration’s reset with Russia, even though the reset proved short-lived.

Today, the U.S.-Russian relationship has hit its lowest point since the end of the Cold War. Arms control, or the looming collapse of arms control, rather than helping, may contribute to a further deterioration of relations.

The Demise of the INF Treaty

The INF Treaty is on a death course. Russia violated the treaty by developing and deploying the 9M729, a prohibited intermediate-range cruise missile. Neither the Obama nor the Trump administration employed an effective strategy to persuade Moscow to return to compliance.

On October 20, 2018, President Trump announced that the United States would terminate the treaty, surprising allies and administration officials alike. NATO subsequently backed the U.S. decision, though European officials privately grumbled about a fait accompli. In early February, U.S. officials stated that they had suspended U.S. treaty obligations and given Russia the required six months’ notice of the U.S. intention to withdraw from the agreement. Russia then suspended its treaty obligations.

The United States could not remain forever in a treaty that Russia has violated. However, the way the Trump administration handled its departure amounted to diplomatic malpractice. Washington will get blamed for the treaty’s end.

There was a smarter way. First, U.S. officials should have informed their European counterparts in early 2018 that the United States would have no choice in 12–24 months but to leave the treaty if Russia did not correct its violation and urge them to apply political heat on the Kremlin, including at the highest level. Russia’s intermediate-range missiles cannot reach the United States; they threaten Europe and Asia.

Second, the U.S. military should have deployed conventionally armed air- and sea-launched cruise missiles to the European region to show that the Russian violation would not go unchallenged.

Third, NATO should have begun a study of long-term countermeasures, with one option being deployment in Europe of a conventionally armed U.S. intermediate-range ballistic missile. While the Alliance likely could not have found consensus to adopt that option, discussing it would have reminded military leaders in Moscow how much they disliked the U.S. Pershing II, whose deployment in West Germany in the 1980s proved key to securing the INF Treaty.

Fourth, U.S. officials should have indicated to their Russian counterparts that, if they addressed U.S. concerns about the 9M729 violation, the United States would consider ways to address Russian concerns that the Aegis Ashore missile defense facility in Romania could launch offensive missiles.

Would such steps have brought Russia back into compliance? Perhaps not, but they certainly would have increased the odds. Even if they did not succeed, they would have positioned Washington far better with its allies and put it in a stronger position to lay blame for the treaty’s end where it belonged—on Russia.

In the actual event, the Trump administration hardly tried. In January, Russian officials offered to exhibit the 9M729 to U.S. experts. U.S. officials could have taken that proposal and insisted on procedures for a meaningful exhibition. Instead, they flat out turned it down.

Much of the problem on the American side may lie with National Security Advisor John Bolton. He generally disdains arms control agreements as constraining U.S. capabilities and options (which is true, but they also constrain Russian capabilities and options). He had previously called for U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty.

Exhibitions of the 9M729 and Aegis Ashore facility could have opened a path to resolve each side’s compliance concerns, but Moscow and Washington have not shown the needed political will. It looks like the treaty will meet its demise in August.

Questions about the Future of New START

In contrast to the INF Treaty, Russia has complied with the limits of the 2010 New START Treaty, which required reductions by each country to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and no more than 700 deployed strategic missiles and bombers by February 2018. The United States also met the limits, though Russian officials question the adequacy of measures the U.S. military took to remove some strategic systems from treaty accountability.

New START by its terms will expire in February 2021, though the treaty allows extension for up to five years. Russian officials have proposed discussion of extension. In 2017, Trump administration officials said they would first have to complete the new nuclear posture review and see whether Russia met the February 2018 limits. Both of those boxes were checked more than a year ago. U.S. officials now say they are studying the question and see no rush.

New START extension should be a no-brainer. First, it would extend to 2026 the limits on Russian strategic forces and provide a mechanism to address new nuclear systems that the Russian military has under development. Second, extension would not affect U.S. strategic modernization plans, which the Pentagon designed to fit within New START’s limits. Third, extension would continue the flow of information that the U.S. military and intelligence community receive about Russian strategic forces from data exchanges, notifications and on-site inspections. That information lets the U.S. military make smarter decisions about how to equip and operate U.S. strategic forces.

When asked about extension, however, Bolton has raised two alternatives: renegotiation of New START or a treaty modeled on the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT). Neither holds much promise.

Renegotiation would allow Washington to try to improve New START, perhaps with additional verification measures or expanded limits to capture nuclear weapons not now covered by the treaty. But Moscow would seek changes as well, starting with limits on missile defense and conventional strike systems, both of which are anathema to the Trump administration. Renegotiation would take a long time and have, at best, an uncertain prospect of success.

As for the SORT model, SORT limited just warheads (though with no verification measures); it did not constrain strategic missiles and bombers. While Moscow accepted such an agreement in 2002, Russian officials since 2008 have made clear that a strategic arms control agreement must limit missiles and bombers, as does New START.

Bolton opposed New START when the Senate discussed its ratification back in 2010. Neither Secretary of State Mike Pompeo nor Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan seem to be advocates for the treaty. Although extension would be very much in the U.S. interest, the Trump administration appears inclined to let it expire.

No Strategic Stability Talks

U.S. and Russian officials in the past have held strategic stability talks to take a broad look at developments that affect their strategic relationship. Such talks are useful, particularly when new developments, such as those in the cyber and space domains, emerge and when Russian nuclear doctrine has provoked concern in Washington and led to changes in the U.S. nuclear posture. Even if strategic stability talks do not spin off specific negotiations, they provide a venue for the sides to exchange views and better understand the concerns of the other.

During the Trump administration, a one-day session of strategic stability talks took place in September 2017. As of March 2019, it has not agreed to a second meeting.

An Unsettling Future

For most of the five decades of U.S.-Soviet/Russian arms control negotiations, the American side took the lead. Moscow often struck a pose not of disinterest, but of less interest—likely for bargaining purposes. That is no longer the case. The Kremlin now faces a White House that attaches as little priority to reducing arms as it does—perhaps less. The U.S. President evinces no understanding of arms control, while his national security advisor apparently seeks to end it.

With the INF Treaty all but dead, New START’s fate uncertain after 2021 and no sign of new initiatives on either side, arms control as practiced for some 50 years may be coming to an end or, at a minimum, to a pause. That occurs at a time when Russia and the United States have significant nuclear modernization programs underway. While the bulk of those programs aim primarily to replace old weapons with new ones, the sides are also developing nuclear capabilities that neither previously had in its arsenal. Economic constraints may limit an all-out arms race, but the strategic nuclear relationship seems headed for uncharted territory.

The end of the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control regime would have wider impacts. If the two nuclear superpowers no longer are reducing—and no longer limiting—their nuclear arms, what credibility will they have to insist that other countries, such as North Korea, forgo nuclear weapons or that third countries sanction proliferating states? Will China decide to adjust its nuclear posture and move from its current modest stockpile of under 300 weapons toward a larger and more diverse arsenal?

The current course will lead to a less stable and secure world. The United States and Russia will be less able to predict future developments on the other side and thus will have to make expensive worst-case assumptions. It will make for a more complex and dangerous relationship. Perhaps then they will recall the lessons of the 1960s and 1980s that arms control, however imperfect, can offer a useful tool for managing great power competition.

This article originally appeared at Brookings.

March 18 marks the fifth anniversary of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, which capped the most blatant land grab in Europe since World War II. While the simmering conflict in Donbas now dominates the headlines, it is possible to see a path to resolution there. It is much more difficult with Crimea, which will remain a problem between Kyiv and Moscow, and between the West and Russia, for years—if not decades—to come.

THE TAKING OF CRIMEA

In late February 2014, just days after the end of the Maidan Revolution and Victor Yanukovych’s flight from Kyiv, “little green men”—a term coined by Ukrainians—began seizing key facilities on the Crimean peninsula. The little green men were clearly professional soldiers by their bearing, carried Russian weapons, and wore Russian combat fatigues, but they had no identifying insignia. Vladimir Putin originally denied they were Russian soldiers; that April, he confirmed they were.

By early March, the Russian military had control of Crimea. Crimean authorities then proposed a referendum, which was held on March 16. It proved an illegitimate sham. To begin with, the referendum was illegal under Ukrainian law. Moreover, it offered voters two choices: to join Russia, or to restore Crimea’s 1992 constitution, which would have entailed significantly greater autonomy from Kyiv. Those on the peninsula who favored Crimea remaining a part of Ukraine under the current constitutional arrangements found no box to check.

The referendum unsurprisingly produced a Soviet-style result: 97 percent allegedly voted to join Russia with a turnout of 83 percent. A true referendum, fairly conducted, might have shown a significant number of Crimean voters in favor of joining Russia. Some 60 percent were ethnic Russians, and many might have concluded their economic situation would be better as a part Russia.

It was not, however, a fair referendum. It was conducted in polling places under armed guard, with no credible international observers, and with Russian journalists reporting that they had been allowed to vote. Two months later, a member of Putin’s Human Rights Council let slip that turnout had been more like 30 percent, with only half voting to join Russia.

Regardless, Moscow wasted no time. Crimean and Russian officials signed a “treaty of accession” just two days later, on March 18. Spurred by a fiery Putin speech, ratification by Russia’s rubberstamp Federation Assembly and Federation Council was finished by March 21.

ATTEMPTS TO JUSTIFY

Moscow’s actions violated the agreement among the post-Soviet states in 1991 to accept the then-existing republic borders. Those actions also violated commitments to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence that Russia made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances for Ukraine and 1997 Ukrainian-Russian Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership.

In late March 2014, Russia had to use its veto to block a U.N. Security Council resolution that, among other things, expressed support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity (there were 13 yes votes and one abstention). The Russians could not, however, veto a resolution in the U.N. General Assembly. It passed 100-11, affirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity and terming the Crimean referendum invalid.

Russian officials sought to justify the referendum as an act of self-determination. It was not an easy argument for the Kremlin to make, given the history of the two bloody wars that Russia waged in the 1990s and early 2000s to prevent Chechnya from exercising a right of self-determination.

Russian officials also cited Western recognition of Kosovo as justification. But that did not provide a particularly good model. Serbia subjected hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians to ethnic-cleansing in 1999; by contrast, no ethnic-cleansing occurred in Crimea. Kosovo negotiated with Serbia to reach an amicable separation for years before declaring independence unilaterally. There were no negotiations with Kyiv over Crimea’s fate, and it took less than a month from the appearance of the little green men to Crimea’s annexation.

The military seizure of Crimea provoked a storm of criticism. The United States and European Union applied visa and financial sanctions, as well as prohibited their ships and aircraft from traveling to Crimea without Ukrainian permission. Those sanctions were minor, however, compared to those applied on Russia after it launched a proxy conflict in Donbas in April 2014, and particularly after a Russian-provided surface-to-air missile downed a Malaysian Air airliner carrying some 300 passengers.

Whereas Ukrainian forces on Crimea did not resist the Russian invasion (in part at the urging of the West), Kyiv resisted the appearance of little green men in Donbas. Before long, the Ukrainians found themselves fighting Russian troops as well as “separatist” forces. That conflict is now about to enter its sixth year.

Finding a settlement in Donbas has taken higher priority over resolving the status of Crimea—understandable given that some 13,000 have died and two million been displaced in the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Moscow seems to see the simmering conflict as a useful means to pressure and distract Kyiv, both to make instituting domestic reform more difficult and to hinder the deepening of ties between Ukraine and Europe.

Resolving the Donbas conflict will not prove easy. For example, the Kremlin may not be prepared to settle until it has some idea of where Ukraine fits in the broader European order, that is, its relationship with the European Union and NATO. But Russia has expressed no interest in annexing Donbas. While the seizure of Crimea proved very popular with the broader Russia public, the quagmire in Donbas has not. The most biting Western economic sanctions would come off of Russia if it left Donbas. At some point, the Kremlin may calculate that the costs outweigh the benefits and consent to a settlement that would allow restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty there.

Moscow will not, on the other hand, willingly give up Crimea. Russians assert a historical claim to the peninsula; Catherine the Great annexed the peninsula in 1783 following a war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. (That said, Crimea was transferred from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954, and, as noted above, the republics that emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union in 1991 agreed to accept the borders as then drawn.)

Retaining Crimea is especially important to Putin, who can offer the Russian people no real prospect of anything other than a stagnant economy and thus plays the nationalism and Russia-as-a-great-power cards. He gained a significant boost in public popularity (much of which has now dissipated) from the rapid and relatively bloodless takeover of the peninsula. Moreover, it offers a vehicle for Russia to maintain a festering border dispute with Ukraine, which the Kremlin may see as discouraging NATO members from getting too close to Ukraine.

Kyiv at present lacks the political, economic, and military leverage to force a return. Perhaps the most plausible route would require that Ukraine get its economic act together, dramatically rein in corruption, draw in large amounts of foreign investment, and realize its full economic potential, and then let the people in Crimea—who have seen no dramatic economic boom after becoming part of Russia—conclude that their economic lot would be better off back as a part of Ukraine.

For the West, Russia’s seizure and annexation of Crimea pose a fundamental challenge to the European order and the norms established by the 1975 Helsinki Final Act. The United States and Europe should continue their policy of non-recognition of Crimea’s illegal incorporation. They should also maintain Crimea-related sanctions on Russia, if for no other reason than to signal that such land grabs have no place in 21st-century Europe.

Following the abrupt ending of the highly anticipated second bilateral summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, APARC and CISAC scholars evaluate the result of the summit, its implications for regional relations in Northeast Asia, and the opportunities moving forward towards the goal of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

This Q&A with Noa Ronkin features Andray Abrahamian, the 2018-19 Koret Fellow in Korean Studies at APARC, whose work with the nonprofit Choson Exchange has taken him to the DPRK nearly 30 times; Siegfried S. Hecker, top nuclear security expert, former Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Research Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus, and Senior Fellow at CISAC/FSI, Emeritus; and Gi-Wook Shin, Professor of Sociology, William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea, Director of APARC, and founding Director of the Korea Program.

This piece originally appeared at Brookings.

The Trump administration has finished off the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a treaty mortally wounded by Russia’s deployment of a banned intermediate-range missile. That leaves the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) as the sole agreement limiting U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.

New START has less than two years to run. At the February 15-16 Munich Security Conference, a senior Russian official reiterated Moscow’s readiness to extend the treaty. The administration, however, continues its odd reluctance to take up that offer. House Democrats should use their power of the purse on the issue.

WHY EXTENSION MAKES SENSE

Signed in 2010, New START limits the United States and Russia each to no more than 700 strategic ballistic missiles and bombers, and no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads. Those limits took full effect in February 2018. Both sides have complied, although technical questions have arisen. Russian officials question the way in which the U.S. military converted some launchers so that they would not count.

By its terms, New START runs until February 5, 2021. It can be extended for up to five years by simple agreement between the U.S. and Russian presidents.

When asked about extension in 2017, administration officials said they would wait to complete the nuclear posture review and to see if the Russians met the New START limits. Both of those boxes were checked more than a year ago. Administration officials now say they are studying extension but see no need to rush.

New START extension is in the U.S. interest.

First, extension would constrain Russian strategic nuclear forces until 2026. It makes little sense to let the treaty lapse in 2021, when Russia has hot production lines churning out new missiles, submarines, and bombers.

Second, New START extension would not impact U.S. strategic modernization plans. They are sized to fit within New START’s limits. Moreover, the United States will not start producing significant numbers of replacement missiles, submarines, and bombers until the second half of the 2020s.

Third, extension would continue the flow of information that the sides share with each other about their strategic forces. That comes from data exchanges, notifications, on-site inspections and other verification measures, all of which end if New START lapses. Making up for that loss of information would require a costly investment in new national technical means such as reconnaissance satellites.

WHY WE SHOULD WORRY

Extension should be a no-brainer. However, in a White House that operates on its own facts and at times with an indecipherable logic, extension is not a given.

President Trump does not seem to understand much about nuclear arms control. During his first telephone conversation with President Putin, Trump reportedly dismissed New START as a bad deal done by his predecessor. He has taken delight in undoing the accomplishments of President Obama (witness the Iran nuclear accord).

National Security Advisor Bolton shows disdain for arms control and has criticized New START. One of its faults, according to Mr. Bolton: It provides for equal limits on the United States and Russia. He felt the treaty should allow the U.S. military to have more. (U.S. diplomats would have had an interesting time trying to negotiate that.) Asked about New START extension, Mr. Bolton notes two alternatives: renegotiation and a new treaty modeled on the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).

Renegotiation would allow U.S. officials to try to improve New START, perhaps with more intrusive verification measures, or even broadening the agreement to cover non-strategic nuclear weapons. Moscow, however, would seek changes as well, such as constraints on missile defenses—anathema to Washington.

Renegotiation would prove difficult, take considerable time, and have at best uncertain prospects for success. A wiser course would extend New START and then seek a renegotiation or a new follow-on treaty.

As for SORT, negotiated by Mr. Bolton, it limited deployed warheads only. Mr. Putin accepted that in 2002, but Russian officials have long since made clear that limits should apply to warheads and delivery vehicles, as they do in New START.

SORT, moreover, was “sort of” arms control. Lacking agreed definitions, counting rules or monitoring measures, it was unverifiable. In doing their own counts on the honor system, the U.S. and Russian militaries may not have even counted the same things.

Neither Secretary of State Pompeo nor Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan has shown interest in championing New START. The uniformed military leadership argued the treaty’s value in the past, but Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Joseph Dunford recently has hedged.

While ratification of a treaty requires consent from two-thirds of the Senate, the president alone can decide to leave a treaty. The Trump administration did not consult with either Congress or allies on withdrawal before Trump announced his intention to pull out of the treaty last October.

HOUSE DEMOCRATS TO THE RESCUE?

While the Trump administration shows little interest in arms control, it does want funding to modernize U.S. strategic forces. Democrats should recognize that and force the White House’s hand.

The U.S. strategic triad is aging. Ballistic missile submarines are the leg of the triad most in need of urgent replacement. They should be funded. Replacing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or building the B-21 bomber, however, are less urgent needs. As they work on the appropriations for the 2020 defense budget, House Democrats should make clear to the White House and the Pentagon that money for ICBM modernization or the B-21 would need to be paired with extension of New START. That will get attention.

Retaining a strategic triad makes sense (though the need for 400 deployed ICBMs is debatable). Retaining New START makes sense as well. House Democrats should simply insist on a trade.

In May 2018, Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) scholars Siegfried Hecker, Robert Carlin, and Elliot Serbin released an in-depth report analyzing the nuclear history of North Korea between 1992 and 2017 alongside a historical research-based “roadmap” for denuclearization.

Since then, tensions between North Korea and South Korea have thawed. United States President Trump met with Kim Jong-un in Singapore in June, and another U.S.-North Korea summit is planned for later this month.

Today, the CISAC researchers release a 2018 update to their report, chronicling and analyzing historic developments in North Korea over the past year. In this Q&A with Katy Gabel Chui, CISAC Senior Fellow and former Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Siegfried Hecker shares what the team learned:

Your research demonstrates that South Korean, North Korean, and U.S. efforts in 2018 were able to lower tensions and the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula. How? What actions were most effective toward this end?

At the end of 2017, the Moon Jae-in administration in South Korea made secret overtures to the Kim Jong-un regime. Kim Jong-un responded positively in his 2018 New Year Speech, proposing to send North Korean athletes to the South as part of a joint delegation for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Seoul.  He also initiated serious diplomatic overtures to Washington. These efforts led to the North/South Summit in April and the historic Singapore Summit in June.

Yet, in spite of these positive initiatives, you did not rate U.S. and North Korean diplomacy at your highest level, why is that?

We stopped one level short for both (a G2 instead of a G3) because progress in talks that followed the summit quickly hit a wall when the US side called for the North to produce a full declaration of its nuclear weapons program, to which Pyongyang responded angrily. The rest of the year was up and down. Nevertheless, the Singapore Summit took the critical step away from the brink of war. The North and South also continued to make remarkable progress toward reconciliation with two more presidential summits.

Most of the focus in the U.S. has been on an apparent failure of North Korea to denuclearize. But you note in your research that the Singapore summit pledged normalization and denuclearization. Why has progress stalled?

First, denuclearization is a poorly defined concept. We should focus on the elimination of the North’s nuclear weapons, the means of production and means of delivery. Second, Washington has so far not taken steps toward normalization. It has insisted on maintaining maximum pressure and sanctions, which Pyongyang considers incompatible with normalization.

Nevertheless, you claim that the threat posed by North Korea was substantially reduced. What about the North’s nuclear capabilities – were these reduced in 2018?

The diplomatic initiatives have greatly reduced the threat. Our study, which looks at the details of how the capabilities have changed in 2018, concludes that the rapid escalation of overall capabilities in 2017 and prior years was halted and in some cases rolled back.

But your research also shows North Korea continued to operate its nuclear weapons complex in 2018, and that it is still producing plutonium and highly enriched uranium.

We are not surprised that North Korea has not halted its fissile materials production in absence of formal negotiations. Our analysis of open-source satellite imagery of the Yongbyon complex led us to estimate they may have added sufficient plutonium and highly enriched uranium for an additional 5 to 7 nuclear weapons on top of our 2017 estimate of approximately 30 weapons.

There have also been reports that it has continued to maintain, produce, and deploy its land-based ballistic missiles. These activities don’t look like the North is denuclearizing.

In our study, we look at the three requisites for a nuclear arsenal – fissile materials, weaponization (that is design, build, and test), and delivery. The North did continue to produce fissile materials. But it took the remarkable step to end nuclear testing and long-range missile testing at a time during which North Korea had been rapidly increasing the sophistication of its nuclear weapons and missiles and their destructive power and reach. Therefore, we conclude that the North not only halted that rapid advance but also rolled back the threat we judged the North’s nuclear and missile programs to pose in 2017.

It sounds like there is a long way to go to denuclearize. In May of last year, you released a framework for denuclearization of North Korea based around a “halt, roll back and eliminate” process. Where does North Korea stand, if anywhere, in that process today?

Our color charts track the progress. Contrary to what we have heard in the media, North Korea has actually halted and rolled back some nuclear activities, with the most important being the end of nuclear and missile testing, which in turn, has significant consequences. In fact, in 2018 it did not flight test missiles of any range. However, the road to final elimination will be long and difficult, especially because of the serious trust deficit between Washington and Pyongyang. We suggested a 10-year time frame last year.

Haven’t you also suggested a way to speed up that process?

Yes, we propose that North Korea, South Korea, and the U.S. explore cooperative efforts to demilitarize North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and convert them to civilian nuclear and space programs. Such cooperation has the potential of accelerating the elimination of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons program. It will, in the long term, also greatly improve the prospects of adequate verification.

How do you get North Korea to go along with any of these ideas?

That’s the job of our negotiators. When Special Representative Stephen Biegun was here at Stanford recently, he showed a lot of flexibility to have the U.S. phase denuclearization with normalization. I think that’s what it will take. But a lot of hard work lies ahead.

Full Report: A Comprehensive History of North Korea's Nuclear Program: 2018 Update

Today, January 14, marks the 25^th anniversary of the Trilateral Statement.  Signed in Moscow by President Bill Clinton, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, the statement set out the terms under which Ukraine agreed to eliminate the large arsenal of former Soviet strategic nuclear weapons that remained on its territory following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Among other things, the Trilateral Statement specified the security assurances that the United States, Russia and Britain would provide to Ukraine eleven months later in the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.  Unfortunately, Russia grossly violated those assurances in 2014 when it used military force against Ukraine.

Soon after regaining independence, Ukraine’s leadership indicated its intention to be a non-nuclear weapons state.  Indeed, the July 16, 1990 declaration of state sovereignty adopted by the Rada (parliament) adopted that goal.  Kyiv had questions, however, about the terms of the elimination of the strategic weapons.

First, eliminating the intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), bombers, ICBM silos and nuclear infrastructure would cost money.  Ukraine’s economic future in the early 1990s was uncertain (the economy ended up declining for most of the decade).  Who would pay for the expensive elimination process?

Second, the strategic nuclear warheads had economic value as they contained highly enriched uranium.  That could be blended down into low enriched uranium to fabricate fuel rods to power nuclear reactors.  If Ukraine shipped warheads to Russia for dismantlement, how would it be compensated for the value of the highly enriched uranium they contained?

Third, nuclear weapons were seen to confer security benefits.  What security guarantees or assurances would Kyiv receive as it gave up the nuclear arms on its territory?

These questions were reasonable, and Kyiv deserved good answers.  In 1992 and the first half of 1993, Ukrainian and Russian officials met in bilateral channels to discuss them, along with other issues such as a schedule for moving warheads to Russia.  In parallel, U.S. officials discussed similar issues with their Ukrainian and Russian counterparts.

However, in September 1993, a Ukrainian-Russian agreement dealing with the nuclear issues fell apart.  Washington decided to become more directly involved out of fear that a resolution might otherwise not prove possible, giving birth to the “trilateral process.”  Discussions over the course of the autumn led U.S. negotiators in mid-December to believe that the pieces of a solution were ready.

In a negotiation in Washington in early January 1994, U.S. Ambassador-at-large Strobe Talbott, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Shmarov and Deputy Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk, and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgiy Mamedov and their teams finalized answers to Kyiv’s three questions, and wrote them into what became the Trilateral Statement and an accompanying annex.

The United States agreed to provide Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction funds to finance the elimination of the strategic delivery systems and infrastructure in Ukraine.  Specifically, $175 million would be made available as a start.

The three sides agreed that Russia would compensate Ukraine for the value of the highly enriched uranium in the nuclear warheads transferred to Russia for elimination by providing Ukraine fuel rods containing an equivalent amount of low enriched uranium for its nuclear reactors.  In the first ten months, Ukraine would transfer at least 200 warheads, and Russia would provide fuel rods containing 100 tons of low enriched uranium.

The sides laid out in the Trilateral Statement the specific language of the security assurances that Ukraine would receive once it had acceded to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapons state.  Although Kyiv had sought security guarantees, Washington was not prepared to extend what would have been a military commitment similar to what NATO allies have; the assurances were the best that was on offer.

Two issues—the date for transfer of the last nuclear warheads out of Ukraine and compensation for the highly enriched uranium that had been in tactical nuclear warheads removed from Ukraine to Russia by May 1992—nearly derailed the Trilateral Statement.  The sides, however, agreed to address those in private letters.

Presidents Clinton, Yeltsin and Kravchuk met briefly in Moscow on January 14, 1994 and signed the Trilateral Statement.  That set in motion the transfer of nuclear warheads to Russia, accompanied by parallel shipments of fuel rods to Ukraine.  The deactivation and dismantlement of missiles, bombers and missile silos in Ukraine began in earnest with Cooperative Threat Reduction funding.

In December 1994, Ukraine acceded to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and received security assurances from the United States, Russia and Britain in the Budapest Memorandum.  France and China subsequently provided Kyiv similar assurances.

Ukraine fully met its commitments under the Trilateral Statement.  The last nuclear warheads were transferred out of Ukraine in May 1996.

The other signatories met their commitments—with one glaring exception.  In 2014, Russia used military force to illegally seize Crimea, in violation of its Budapest Memorandum commitments “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine,” and “to refrain from the threat or use of force” against Ukraine.  Russian security and military forces then instigated a conflict in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, a conflict that has claimed more than 10,000 lives and continues to simmer.

At the time, the Trilateral Statement was seen as a major achievement in Washington, as it eliminated hundreds of ICBMs and bombers and nearly 2,000 strategic nuclear warheads that had been designed and built to strike the United States.  Not surprisingly, in light of Russia’s aggression, many in Ukraine now question the value of the Trilateral Statement and Budapest Memorandum.  They argue that, had Ukraine held on to at least some nuclear weapons, Russia would never have dared move on Crimea and Donbas.

That argument is understandable and perhaps correct (although alternative histories are not always easy to envisage).  However, had Ukraine tried to keep nuclear weapons, it would have faced political and economic costs, including:

·      Kyiv would have had limited relations, at best, with the United States and European countries (witness the virtual pariah status that a nuclear North Korea suffers).  In particular, there would have been no strategic relationship with the United States.

·      NATO would not have concluded a distinctive partnership relationship with Ukraine, and the European Union would not have signed a partnership and cooperation agreement, to say nothing of an association agreement.

·      Kyiv would have received little in the way of reform, technical or financial assistance from the United States and European Union.

·      Western executive directors would have blocked low interest credits to Ukraine from the IMF, World Bank and European Bank of Reconstruction and Development.

To be sure, one can debate the value of these benefits.  But those who now assert that Ukraine should have kept nuclear arms should recognize that keeping them would have come at a steep price.  Moreover, in any confrontation or crisis with Russia, Ukraine would have found itself alone.

This article originally appeared at Brookings.

On December 21, the United Nations General Assembly voted down a Russian-proposed resolution calling for support for the INF Treaty. That Moscow gambit failed, in large part because Russia is violating the treaty by deploying prohibited missiles.

This bit of diplomatic show came one week after Russian officials said they would like to discuss INF Treaty compliance concerns. That could be—not is, but could be—significant. Washington should test whether those suggestions represent just more Kremlin posturing or a serious effort to save the treaty.

THE INF TREATY

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty in 1987. It resulted in the elimination of some 2,700 U.S. and Soviet missiles. The treaty continues to ban the United States and Russia from having ground-launched missiles of intermediate range (500-5,500 kilometers) as well as from having launchers for such missiles.

In 2014, the U.S. government publicly charged that Russia had violated the treaty by developing and testing a ground-launched intermediate-range cruise missile. In early 2017, U.S. officials said the Russian military had begun deploying it.

From 2013 to late 2017, Russian officials claimed that they did not know what missile Washington had in mind. After a U.S. official revealed that the Russian designator for the offending missile was 9M729, Russian officials conceded that the 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile existed but asserted that its range did not exceed 500 kilometers.

On December 4, NATO foreign ministers stated that the development and deployment of the 9M729 constituted a material breach of the INF Treaty. Secretary of State Pompeo the same day said that, if Russia did not return to compliance within 60 days, the United States would suspend its obligations under the treaty, meaning that it would face no treaty bar to testing and deploying its own intermediate-range missile. U.S. suspension of its obligations would relieve Russia of the requirement to observe its obligations.

The treaty seemed fixed on a path for demise.

SIGNS OF POSSIBLE LIFE?

Then, on December 14, Reuters reported that a Russian foreign ministry official had said Moscow envisaged the possibility of mutual inspections to resolve the sides’ compliance concerns. The next day, the Associated Press and TASS said Defense Minister Shoygu had sent Secretary of Defense Mattis a message proposing “open and specific” talks on compliance issues.

As with the failed U.N. resolution, these statements could just represent posturing. Indeed, given the lack of serious engagement for nearly five years, it likely is part of Moscow’s effort to ensure that blame for the INF Treaty’s end falls on Washington.

There is, however, a small chance that the Russians seek a settlement. U.S. officials should explore this, if for no other reason than that a failure to do so would increase the prospects that Washington bears the responsibility for the agreement’s collapse in the eyes of publics and allies.

The big question: Are the Russians willing to exhibit the 9M729 and provide a technical briefing to American experts on why the missile’s range does not exceed 500 kilometers? That invariably would entail questions about the capacity of the missile’s fuel tanks and power of its engine. U.S. experts might also ask why, if the 9M729 can fly no further than 500 kilometers, Russia built the missile when it already deploys the modern 9M728, a ground-launched cruise missile whose range is also less than 500 kilometers.

Working out the details for this kind of exhibit and briefing would require some patience and delicacy. It would require agreeing to procedures not specified in the INF Treaty. It would also require steps to ensure that U.S. experts had the opportunity to view a 9M729, not something else. But the State Department, Defense Department, and intelligence community have bright people who could figure out how to make this work.

Of course, if the 9M729’s range exceeds 500 kilometers, the treaty requires its elimination. Senior American officials, however, have allowed for the possibility that Russia might satisfy U.S. concerns by modifying the missile so that it could not fly to intermediate ranges.

WOULD HAVE TO BE MUTUAL

Russian readiness to conduct the exhibit poses one test. A second test is for the American side. While denying that they have violated the INF Treaty, Russian officials charge that the United States has committed three violations. Two of the charges lack any real foundation, and Russians themselves seem to be setting them aside.

They continue, however, to press a third charge. The Russians assert that the Mk-41 launcher used by the Aegis Ashore missile defense facility in Romania can hold and launch offensive cruise missiles of intermediate range in addition to the Mk-41’s stated purpose of containing and launching SM-3 missile interceptors.

U.S. officials respond that the Mk-41 launcher used in Romania (and soon to be deployed at an Aegis Ashore site in Poland) has not been tested with a ground-launched missile. They argue that it thus is not a prohibited intermediate-range missile launcher.

Technically, U.S. officials may be correct. Moreover, nothing suggests that the Aegis Ashore facility hosts anything but SM-3 missile interceptors.

However, the Mk-41 launcher is standard on U.S. Navy warships. On board warships, the Mk-41 holds a variety of weapons in addition to SM-3 interceptors, including the BGM-109C Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile. The Tomahawk has a range of about 1,500 kilometers. Other than that it is launched from the sea rather than land, it shares many similarities with the BGM-109G ground-launched cruise missiles eliminated under the INF Treaty.

Were the Russians instead of the Americans using something like the Mk-41 launcher on land, the U.S. side might well have questions about its compliance with the treaty.

Speaking in mid December, a Russian foreign ministry official ruled out a unilateral demonstration of the 9M729 but seemed to leave open the possibility for mutual measures. If Russian officials were prepared to allow an exhibit and provide a technical briefing on the 9M729, U.S. officials should be prepared to demonstrate the Mk-41 launcher in Romania to Russian experts and explain why it cannot hold cruise missiles. If it can do so, there should be ways to address Moscow’s concerns, either by modifying the shore-based Mk-41 or allowing periodic visits by Russian experts to show that the launchers contain SM-3 missile interceptors only.

Again, working out the details for such a demonstration would take some time, but the sides have experts with the expertise to do so.

AN OPPORTUNITY?

Some may object that this kind of proposal equates Russia’s material breach of the INF Treaty with a question of technical compliance on the American side. Perhaps, but U.S. officials—and European officials, since the treaty affects their security—should ask whether offering to address Russian questions about the Aegis Ashore’s Mk-41 launcher is worth the chance to resolve the 9M729 issue and preserve the INF Treaty.

At worst, if Russia is merely posturing, U.S. officials will be able to cite their effort and finger Moscow’s lack of seriousness. At best, they could preserve a treaty that has made a substantial contribution to U.S., European, and global security.

Washington should take up Moscow’s offer for dialogue. It can do so while allowing the 60-day clock to run, though it might consider allowing more time if technical talks get underway and make progress.

The INF Treaty may still have a glimmer of hope, but someone still needs to act to save it.