An Independent Assessment of New START Treaty

A very interesting post from http://33-minutes.com about the new nuclear weapons treaty. This follows this post about Louisiana's new law against Sharia (like Arizona's immigration law?) and this article about the recent news about offshore drilling to encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran and Venezuela. For more posts like this click here.

An Independent Assessment of New START Treaty
An excerpt of a backgrounder on the New START at Heritage.org:
Proponents of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) suggest that the new Treaty not be judged against the standards of Cold War strategic arms treaties because contemporary conditions no longer require the treaty characteristics that Cold War conditions demanded of those earlier treaties. Even accepting that point, New START may be evaluated against other sets of standards. Those used in this brief assessment include the specific claims made on its behalf by the Obama Administration, in addition to comparisons to the post–Cold War 2002 Moscow Treaty and the 1994 START I Treaty (both treaties ran concurrently through December 2009).
The Claimed 30 Percent Reduction of Strategic Warheads
The Obama Administration has made claims on behalf of New START that are based on comparisons to the Bush Administration’s Moscow Treaty or to START I. For example, the Obama Administration claims that New START will reduce by 30 percent the number of deployed strategic warheads now permitted by the Moscow Treaty. If ratified by the U.S. Senate, New START would limit deployed strategic warheads to 1,550, while the Moscow Treaty limits the number of operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons to the range of 1,700–2,200. Despite the superficial comparison (1,550 to 2,200 warheads) suggesting that New START reduces the number of deployed strategic warheads by 30 percent, such a comparison is deceiving, as will be discussed below. In general, the Moscow Treaty limitations running concurrently with the original START I Treaty required deeper reductions and were more restrictive than those contained in the New START treaty. (New START, if ratified, will supersede the Moscow Treaty.)[1]
In fact, despite Obama Administration claims to the contrary, New START’s counting rules and apparent lapses will permit increases in Russian strategic force levels above the 1,700–2,200 deployed warhead limit of the Moscow Treaty. RIA Novosti, an official news agency of the Russian Federation, already has reported that given New START’s counting rules, Russia will be able to retain 2,100 strategic nuclear warheads under New START, not 1,550.[2] Russia will be able to deploy even higher numbers under New START if it follows through on announced modernization programs, particularly the new heavy bomber. In addition Russia could deploy strategic nuclear systems that were limited or prohibited under START I, but appear not to be limited whatsoever under New START.
If Russia exploits the legal lapses in New START, there is no actual limit in the new Treaty on the number of strategic nuclear warheads that can be deployed. The number of Russia’s strategic nuclear warheads would be limited only by the financial resources it is able to devote to strategic forces, not by New START warhead ceilings—which would be the case without this new Treaty.
One of the biggest of these lapses is the bomber weapon counting rule. It is much more permissive than under the Moscow Treaty. Unlike the Moscow Treaty, which counts all nuclear warheads present at heavy bomber bases,[3] New START has a counting or attribution rule of one warhead per bomber.[4] That is, regardless of the actual number of weapons carried by a bomber or deployed at each base, each bomber will be counted as having a single weapon under New START’s 1,550 ceiling. This allows the deployment of a large number of uncounted bomber warheads. Even with existing bombers, as RIA Novosti reported, “Under the Treaty, one nuclear warhead will be counted for each deployed heavy bomber which can carry 12-24 missiles or bombs, depending on its type.”[5] There is no limit to the number of bomber weapons that may be carried by a bomber under New START because it omits the START I limit of 16–20 long-range nuclear air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) per bomber.[6] It also omits the START prohibition on arsenal aircraft that can carry very large numbers of nuclear long-range cruise missiles.[7] This New START counting rule alone would permit Russia legally to deploy hundreds of nuclear warheads over New START’s supposed ceiling of 1,550 deployed warheads, and the number could be much higher if a new bomber is deployed. The repeated claims of a 30 percent reduction in the number of permitted warheads under New START are false.
New START’s Launcher Limits
In addition, several dozen prohibitions and limits in START I’s Article V are completely gone (replaced by two limits on ballistic missile defense).[8] For example, unlike START I, there are no prohibitions on placing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) on bombers, a delivery mode tested by the United States decades ago, and the START I limits on the maximum number of warheads that a ballistic missile can carry do not appear in New START.[9] Consequently, for the count of one warhead and one delivery vehicle, Russia could deploy aircraft loaded with MIRVed ICBMs (i.e., missiles with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles).[10] This should not be considered far-fetched. During the negotiation of New START a Moscow publication suggested Russia should procure air-launched nuclear missiles based on Russian submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).[11] This action was prohibited under START I; it would be legal under New START.
The Administration’s rationale for New START’s undercounting of bomber weapons as presented in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review is the traditional point that bombers are recallable and slow to target and thus they are not “first strike” weapons.[12] However, if aircraft are armed with MIRVed ICBMs, they immediately lose these stabilizing characteristics. Under New START, aircraft could simply become another ICBM basing mode with greatly discounted warhead limits. This is one reason why New START’s permissive counting rule for bomber weapons combined with the absence of limitations on air-launched ICBM launchers may be regarded as a serious lapse.
New START also appears not to limit rail-mobile ICBMs whatsoever. While the Administration might be tempted to argue that at least deployed rail-mobile ICBMs, as distinct from launchers, are limited by the ceiling of 700 deployed delivery vehicles in Article II, that would require New START to include a definition of a deployed rail-mobile ICBM in the Treaty’s Protocol. In fact, New START contains not a single word about rail-mobile launchers or rail-mobile ICBMs.
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Read the full memo here.