U.S. Experts Weigh In at Senate Hearing on Post New-START Options

Feb. 12—Walter Pincus—national security reporter for the Washington Post for decades, who then retired to set up his own newsletter called the Cipher Brief—offered his own take on Feb. 10 on what the U.S. might do in the wake of the expiration of New START. He did this in the form of a review of the Feb. 3 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where Rose Gottemoeller, the principal negotiator for the U.S. side of New START and retired Adm. Charles Richard, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command, both testified.

“I do not support trying to do a trilateral negotiation. I believe that these negotiations [with Russia and China] should be done in parallel,” Gottemoeller said. “We have 50-plus years of experience limiting and reducing nuclear weapons with the Russians. We can continue that kind of process [to include tactical and hypersonic nuclear weapons] with them.”

Gottemoeller added: “And by the way, I agree that non-strategic nuclear weapons [should be included|. We did not constrain non-strategic nuclear weapons in the New START Treaty. It was not designed for that purpose. So, to fault it for not controlling those weapons is a bit bizarre, but nevertheless, I agreed with the Trump administration during the first term, when they said we need an all-warhead limit in the next negotiation. I think that is definitely the priority we need to proceed on with the Russians.”

Gottemoeller also said: “It’s been my recent experience working with them [the Chinese] in track two [non-U.S. government] settings that they seem very interested in trying to figure out ways to begin a conversation with the United States about nuclear risks … developing better communications, links with them at the strategic level, hotline arrangements, these types of things. I think they are valuable to begin a conversation about the necessity of controlling nuclear weapons at the negotiating table and [for the Chinese] not being so un-transparent about what they’re doing with their modernization. That has to be the first and foremost objective talking to them about what their intentions are.”

She added: “I’ve already spoken about the Chinese. I think they are willing to talk to us now, but it is about risk reduction and the beginning of more predictability and transparency about their nuclear objectives,” matters that up to now they have refused to discuss.

Both Gottemoeller and Richard agreed about the need for the U.S. to increase its nuclear forces.

Gottemoeller said: “I actually agree with the notion that we need to think carefully about the threat that is presented by two nuclear peers by China and by the Russian Federation going forward. And we need to make judicious choices juxtaposed against the other demands on our defense budget.”

Richard was much more specific. He said, “I think that the United States needs to immediately start taking steps, steps that are currently precluded by the New START Treaty … to include uploading [currently stored U.S. nuclear] warheads to our intercontinental ballistic missiles, removing covers off the four [launch] tubes on our Trident [strategic] submarines that are currently empty [of strategic nuclear sea-launched ballistic missiles], and several other posture steps that should be taken now, and not a year from now.”

Not discussed was the impact of the Trump-proposed Golden Dome layered missile defense system on weapons development and deployment, and hence on any new treaty. Sources report that there are some strategic planners who would like to "sucker" the Russians into massive spending to counter the system, which many experts say will never achieve its goals; in fact, these people do not want to even build the system, but merely look like they will or maybe building it, for the benefit of Russian planners. The Americans think that such massive expenditures by the Russians will bankrupt their economy and cause its regime to collapse.

This scheme, which is gaining support, supposedly is modelled on how some people used the Reagan-proposed Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), as proposed by statesmen and physical economist the late Lyndon LaRouche and the later nuclear scientist Dr. Edward Teller. The SDI was to be primarily based on the use of advanced physical principles to shoot down incoming missiles and warheads; but most importantly it was not designed a first strike enabling system, but was to be co-jointly developed with the then Soviet Union, and was offered to Soviets in back channel discussions with LaRouche and then in Ronald Reagan's March 23, 1983 world-televised speech announcing the program. The Soviet's rejected the offer, prompting LaRouche to warn them, that if they tried to spend to counter it, the Soviet economy would collapse within the decade—which forecast was precisely on target.

Many other current planners doubt that the Russians would be so stupid as to fall into a similar trap now.