11 new proposals of start in

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Emporium Current Essays

At a press talk in Washington on February 7, US vicepresident announced that the United

States was planning to start negotiations with Russia on yet another Strategic ArmsReduction Treaty, START In. The announcement came after Al Gore's meeting with

Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin who was on an official visit to the United

States, START In will now be on US President Bili Clinton's agenda for his next month'ssummit with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Helsinki.

American's latest arms control proposal has come in the wake of years-long US failure to

secure START II ratification from the Russian State Duma. Signed in 1993, START IIwas ratified in January last year by the US Senate. There are three reasons why the

Russian Duma has not ratified this treaty. First, the Duma's nationalist members

consider the treaty "discriminatory and unequal." In their opinion, START II allows

the United States to retain key components, of its strategic arms while it denies the sameto Russia. Due to this, they belie, the United Stated will gain strategic superiority over

Russia if reductions proposed under START II are implemented, as scheduled, by 2003.The treaty proposed no more than 3,000 strategic arms for Russia and no more than 3,500

strategic arms for the United States.

Secondly, after downgrading much of its conventional arms strength in view of Jhe endof the Cold War, Russia now considers nuclear weapons as the only remaining pillar of its

national security. On February 12, Kremlin Security Council Secretary Ivan Rybkin in an

interview with an official Russian newspaper stated categorically that Russia could usenuclear weapons first if under sufficient threat from a conventional army. "If an aggressor

unleashes a conflict against us with conventional armaments, then, as part of our decisivereply, we can use nuclear weapons," he said.

And, the third reason why the Russian parliament has not ratified START II are the

officially expressed Russian concerned about American attempts to expand NATO. Forsome years, the United States has been floating the idea of expanding NATO by including

Central and East European states like Poland and the Chech Republic. This initiative is

commonly known as the US


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Partnership for Peace initiative. But Russia looks at it as an American-led Western move

to bring into the Western sphere of influence a region which not long ago formed part ofthe Soviet bloc. One obvious American motive behind the START In proposal is that,

once negotiations on further cuts in strategic arms between the leaders of the two

countries begin, the Russian parliament will find little or no justification for hedging on

the START II agreement. So, in a way, the US arms control proposal aims at securing the


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implementation of START II instead of initiating a new process of drastic reduction in

US-Russian strategic arms.

Russian hard-liners are quite justified in pointing out anomalies in START II. The treaty

was negotiated and signed at a time when Russia's international position was weak and,

internally as well, its situation was troublesome. And when START I was concluded, bothdomestically and globally, Russia stood on a much weaker footing, as it was facing the

negative fail-out of the Soviet collapse. In such circumstances, its leader Mikhail

Gorbachev could not bargain effectively in the strategic arms reduction talks. Thus theoutcome of the talks was not in favour of Russia. The Americans succeeded in retaining a

considerable portion of their sea-based strategic force, particularly the Submarine-

Launched Ballistic Missiles and long-range bombers. Traditionally, in both areas, the

United States had a clear-cut advantage over the former Soviet Union, whose mainstrategic strength rested on the heavy, landbased ballistic missiles, the SS- 18s and the

land-based mobile ballistic missiles, the SS-24s and SS-25s.

' Traditionally, the land-based heavy Inter-Continental

Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) haA-e formed the core of the Russian strategic capability. It isin this area that START II discriminates. It aims at eliminating the entire Russian arsenal

of heavy and mobile ICBM as either by simply depriving Russia of this capability or by

reducing the number of warheads these missiles carry. Given the fact that the United

States has a clear-cut advantage over Russian sea-and air-based forces, the downsizing ofthe Russian land-based arsenal means that if START II is implemented, the United States

will be in a position to strike first against Russian in a crisis situation.

Considering these anomalies in START II, the US proposal for starting talks on another

START agreement does not make any sense. Now that Russia is much more stable than

before, it would have been better for the American leaders to first try to remove Russiangrievances about START II and only then make an offer for another treaty for drastically

reducing the two nations' strategic ajrim.

Clinton-Yeltsin's last sum48


himself proposed the negotiations on Strategic Stability and Nuclear Security which,

besides Russia and the United States, should also involve the three other declared nuclear

powers - China, Great Britain and France. That was quite a sound idea since, in thepostCold War period, the question of nuclear arms control is not limited to Russia and the

US only; rather, the participation in the process of arms reduction by the other three

nuclear states is also necessary. One development that has taken place in this period isthat, at least in global politics, nuclear weapons do not retain as much value a they did in

the Cold War days.


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There is another area which is very much linked to the process of arms reduction by the

declared nuclear states. That is the issue of nuclear proliferation, which has become quite

risky after the break up of the Soviet Union. Nuclear powers cannot address nuclear armswhile ignoring nuclear proliferation. They have to take the threshold nuclear states, India,

Israel and Pakistan, along with them in order to make the arms control process credible.

This is the only way the world can be freed from the grayest danger it is facing from thenuclear arms possessed publicly or privately by some members of the international

community.

Nuclear disarmament is still a dream. What, however, is possible today is the gradual

reduction in nuclear arsenal of countries which posses them. And, in this reduction

process, what matters the most is the security concern of every negotiating state. Through

START I and II, the American ensured their security at the expense of the Russians.While the Russians are asserting themselves now, they realise the mistakes they made in

negotiating the two treaties from a position of weakness.

Thus, when Mr. Clinton meets the Russian President, it will be better on his part no toinsist unreasonably on a new treaty. The best option is to tackle Russian concerns about

the START II treaty and, at the same time, remove their misgivings arising from theAmerican initiative on NATO expansion. If that is not done, not only will the ratification

of START II by the Duma become a dream as nuclear disarmament has been for the last

half century, the nationalist feelings in Russia will gain much more momentum. And, one

day, the wor!d may find even Gorbachev becoming Brezhnev. Finally, in their suwuit, thetwo world leaders must also take into account the fact that the issue of nuclear

proliferation, especially in South Asia, cannot be settled by propagating about dangers but

by involving the threshold states in the arms cont rol process.mit meeting took place inWashington in December 1995, and, during it, Mr. Yeltsin had

11 new proposals of start in

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