President Obama had hoped to announce a deal with Russia this week to extend the 1991 nuclear arms treaty known as Start and make some modest additional cuts in both sides’ arsenals. On Friday, negotiators were still stuck on how to verify the agreement, and American officials are now saying it won’t be done at least until January.
They need to conclude this work as soon as possible so the two sides can move on to a far more ambitious agreement. The Times reported on Friday that Washington and Moscow are already quietly working on a new deal that would make even deeper cuts in the number of deployed weapons and for the first time reduce both the number of stored warheads and tactical nuclear weapons — the thousands of smaller bombs that are terrifyingly vulnerable to clandestine sale or theft.
It is easy to dismiss arms control negotiations as a cold war anachronism. Former President George W. Bush did it for eight years. But two decades after the Berlin Wall fell, the United States and Russia still have some 20,000 nuclear weapons — a fact the Iranians and North Koreans eagerly raise when the United States and other powers try to curb their nuclear ambitions.
That is yet another reason why it is so important for President Obama and President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia to move these negotiations ahead.
The Start treaty officially expired two weeks ago. Few details have emerged, but we are told that the Russians want to keep secret data on their development of a new generation of missiles. And there are disagreements over how often each side can inspect the other’s nuclear forces, plus when and what facilities will be covered.
The Obama administration should fight hard for a credible verification regime. Republicans, predictably, are already accusing the president of being too willing to make concessions. There is no evidence of that. But it is a reminder to the White House that after their tough negotiations with Moscow are completed, they will have to work at least as hard to win Senate ratification.
Their work can’t stop there. Mr. Obama also needs to start pressing the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996). The treaty is essential for curbing nuclear proliferation — it is nearly impossible for countries to build weapons without testing them. And there are few agreements more in this country’s favor — the United States has already tested its weapons thousands of times.
The White House had high hopes of winning ratification before this May’s review conference for the Nonproliferation Treaty. It should keep pushing. Ratification would give a big boost to Mr. Obama’s efforts to rally global support for new nonproliferation efforts and, if necessary (and all evidence suggests it will be), for tougher sanctions on Iran.
Twenty years later, the horrors of nuclear war haven’t gone away. President Obama is right to push hard on all of these fronts.
