New START, Russia’s Security, and a Critical Arms Control Treaty with the U.S. — Putin Revisited
Putin also said that he was suspending Russia’s participation in a critical arms control treaty, New START, with the U.S., though he stressed that Russia is not withdrawing from the treaty.
“We’re not in a nuclear arms race today,” Rusten said. “But it’s very concerning that we soon will be, because the bottom line is, this is the last nuclear treaty governing nuclear weapons of the United States and Russia that is in force. It is potentially unraveling, and is under incredible strain. It’s set to expire in three years, and there’s no dialogue going on between the U.S. and Russia about what would come after that.”
Regular inspections under the agreement, to make sure neither side is cheating, were put on hold in March 2020 during the pandemic. Russia had been talking to restart those inspections, but they were put on hold because of the worsening relations between Moscow and Washington.
Before Mr. Putin dismissed the treaty’s required inspections as nonsense, it was already in trouble. The State Department had announced last month that the Russians were out of compliance with their treaty obligations.
The Secretary of State indicated after Mr. Putin spoke that he would be willing to negotiate a new treaty with the US that would benefit both countries.
In the event that Russia does do something that poses a security threat to our own country and our allies, we need to make sure that we are posturing appropriately for that. It is important that we continue to act in a responsible way, because it is something the world expects of us.
“The State Department’s 2023 New START annual implementation report found that Russia was not in compliance with the treaty because it would not permit the United States to conduct on-site inspections, and it did not convene a meeting of the Bilateral Consultative Commission, or BCC, within the set timeline,” Bidgood said.
“If Russia halts data exchanges and notifications as required by the treaty in addition to on-site inspections and meetings of the BCC, it would make it much more difficult to verify Russia’s compliance with the treaty limits,” Bidgood said. “It would also eliminate important sources of transparency, predictability, and regular communication between Washington and Moscow, which are arguably more necessary now than ever.”
Putin and his government are accusing the U.S. of conducting a hybrid war against Russia and maliciously escalating the Ukraine conflict, alleging that the U.S. has fundamentally altered the security environment.
“Nuclear powers do not lose major conflicts on which their fate depends,” Medvedev wrote in a Telegram post. “This should be obvious to anyone. Even to a Western politician who has retained at least some trace of intelligence.”
But he made clear that the United States would not be inspecting Russian nuclear sites, a central element of verifying compliance with the treaty. He sounded like a leader who had stopped with his arms control at a time when the US and NATO were threatening each other.
When the treaty expires in a few hundred days, someone who is sitting in the Oval Office could face a world similar to one of half a century ago, when arms races were in full swing.
The U.S. and NATO both say they want to see Russia defeated. And then, as if nothing happened, they say they’re prepared to visit our military bases, including our newest,” said the Russian leader.
He said that he wouldn’t allow inspectors to look at those facilities because they could send their findings to the Ukrainians for more attacks. He said that it was a theater of the absurd. “We know that the West is directly involved in the attempts of the Kyiv regime to strike at the bases.”
There is little or no trust between the two countries. Mr. Putin and Mr. Biden haven’t spoken in a year. The Russian leader has been characterized as a war criminal by the American president in the ensuing time. It wouldn’t be possible to imagine the Senate approving a treaty under these circumstances, even if the American officials were to negotiate it.
Putin called on the people present to stand for a moment of silence to honor Russia’s losses in the war. The Russian leader promised support packages for the families of the fallen.
Missing from Putin’s address was any discussion of Russia’s significant setbacks on the battlefield and its evident failure in the early days of the war to occupy Kyiv and remove Ukraine’s democratically elected government.
Biden’s address follows his surprise visit to Ukraine’s capital Kyiv Monday — a move seen in Moscow as both provocative and proof that, in Ukraine, Russia is fundamentally fighting a proxy war with the United States.
Putin presented a now-familiar list of grievances against the West, including what he described as its moral and spiritual collapse whose values, he said, threaten the children of Russia. The Moscow Orthodox Church head, Kirill, was seated in the front row in the hall.
The Russian leader again equated Ukraine’s “neo Nazi” government with Nazi Germany, and said Russia was defending itself just as the Soviet Union defended its territory during World War II.
The Kremlin repeatedly delayed and then canceled the address last year because of news from the battlefield in Ukraine, and Putin’s speech in effect made up for that.
Putin will address a crowd at Moscow’s largest stadium when he addresses the Russian lawmakers on Wednesday.
One year ago, Russian leader called for the formal recognition of two pro-Moscow republics in eastern Ukraine in order to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
Putin then assembled his National Security Council for a televised session to discuss the independence issue — now famous for the image of the Russian leader holding court across a vast hallway to consult with, in theory, his closest advisors.
Why do Russians want the nuclear war to stop, and why do they want it to end? The nuclear threat initiative in Russia and the United States
In 1985, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan made a breakthrough when they jointly declared, “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
The leaders of both countries evoke that phrase. Russia, China, France, and the UK all have nuclear weapons and have permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council, which is why it was affirmed as recently as January 2022, by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia launched an invasion ofUkraine and then used nuclear threats in an attempt to intimidate other nations from intervening.
The NPT comes into effect in 1970 and includes inspections. But it lacks the mutual connections New START provides between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers.
We talked to Lynn Rusten and Sarah Bidgood, who worked at the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, to find out how Putin and Russia hope to gain by this move.
Russia said it will inform the US about any missile launches, but it doesn’t clarify whether it will continue sending notifications about strategic military assets.
“Every time a strategic item that’s subject to the treaty, like a bomber or a submarine, moves, you send a notification,” Rusten said. Those are very important, and they’ve been going on smoothly even though they were not inspected.
“I think it’s more tied to the fact that the United States, two weeks ago, formally called out Russia as being in violation of the treaty,” Rusten said. The Russians are justifying their decision not to host on-site inspections under the New START treaty, because they are a very legalistic bunch. I don’t think the thing had anything to do with Biden’s visit.
“A suspension is a term of art meaning it has a particular legal meaning,” Rusten said. One of the options available to the dissatisfied party is noncompliance with a treaty. Now the problem with this is, for arms control treaties, that should only be used if the U.S. were violating New START.
“Russia is linking it more broadly to our support of Ukraine. I don’t think the U.S. State Department lawyers would say that’s a legitimate use of that sort of right under international law.”
It is thought that the Russian leadership does not want the arms control with the US to be separated from the larger ups and downs of bilateral relations.
“Not of which I am aware,” Bidgood said. The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research points out that suspending participation is a political decision that can be reversed. We don’t know what the circumstances would be for that to happen.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158529106/nuclear-treaty-new-start-putin
The Significance of the 21st Day of the U.S. Decree to Nuclear Warfare and the Determination of its Consequences
“I think its significance really depends on how states behave,” Bidgood said. “If you affirm, as Putin has, that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, but then also engage in nuclear saber-rattling, then it seems to me that these words ring pretty hollow.”
“In January of 2022, for the first time, the leaders of the U.S., Russia, China, France and the U.K. made that statement jointly in writing,” Rusten said.
She said that it is really significant. That should be a platform on which to build, and to step back from the brink, so that a nuclear war doesn’t happen, because that can’t be won. It can’t help Putin’s war aims in either Ukraine or the world.
The nonproliferative and disarmament regime is essential to it, said Bidgood. The treaty states that the states that possess nuclear weapons must pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures for the cessation of the arms race at an early date and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament.
“It creates a mandate to engage in negotiations,” Bidgood said, “which is really important in this environment. But what we need are the outcomes of those negotiations.”