GLOBALIZING REAGAN'S INF TREATY

Abstract

When it was concluded more than a quarter century ago, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union was hailed as a disarmament watershed, eliminating entire classes of nuclear missiles from the arsenals of the arms-racing Cold War superpowers. Over the intervening decades, there have been repeated calls to convert this legacy treaty into a new international norm against nuclear and missile proliferation by broadening it into a global prohibition on ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Indeed, variations on this proposal have been knocking around for so long and with so little success that the entire concept has come to be dismissed by many knowledgeable insiders as something of a farce. Looking beyond its inauspicious pedigree, however, this viewpoint suggests that the time is opportune for Washington to give the idea a fresh look. Drawing on a detailed review of the history of “Global INF” and an analysis of the contemporary context, the author recommends that the Obama administration consider a simple declaratory approach that promises modest initial benefits, avoids previous and foreseeable pitfalls, and plausibly lays a solid foundation for achieving significant long-term progress.

Keywords:

• Nonproliferation
• disarmament
• ballistic missiles
• cruise missiles
• nuclear weapons
• Missile Technology Control Regime
• Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty

Notes

1. Kenneth Adelman, “A Long-Term Fix for Medium-Range Arms,” New York Times, September 25, 2009, p. A29.

2. Thomas Donnelly, “American Zero,” Weekly Standard, June 4, 2012, p. 11.

3. It is debatable whether INF strictly applies only to the Russian Federation as the main legal successor to the Soviet Union, or alternatively whether its obligations extend to all of the Soviet successor states. As a matter of practice, however, only these three other governments have offered political commitments to abide by the treaty and actively participated in the Special Verification Commission overseeing its implementation.

4. Kathleen C. Bailey, “Rushing to Build Missiles,” Washington Post, April 6, 1990, p. A15.

5. Kathleen C. Bailey, “Rushing to Build Missiles,” Washington Post, April 6, 1990, p. A15.

6. David A. Cooper, Competing Western Strategies Against the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Comparing the United States to a Close Ally (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishing, 2002), p. 125.

7. Kenneth Adelman, “Curing Missile Measles,” Washington Times, April 17, 1989, p. D1.

8. Bailey, “Rushing to Build Missiles,” p. A15.

9. Kenneth Adelman, “How to Limit Everybody's Missiles,” New York Times, April 7, 1991, <www.nytimes.com/1991/04/07/opinion/how-to-limit-everybody-s-missiles.html>; Kenneth Adelman, “Going Ballistic…Globally,” Washington Times, June 3, 1992, p. G1.

10. Technically Global INF would be “nondiscriminatory,” in that all of its provisions would apply equally to all state parties. However, this term is used as political shorthand by NAM states and others to convey a general expectation for fairness in leveling disparities between the major powers and others. Thus, given that INF restrictions already apply to Washington and Moscow, there is likely to be a “what have you done for me lately” dynamic at play in any multilateral Global INF negotiations under the “nondiscriminatory” banner.

11. It is unclear how this might have worked in terms of the INF Treaty's complex and intrusive verification provisions, which were facility-specific and based on a system of national inspections and bilateral reciprocity. It does not appear that proposal ever went far enough to grapple with such details.

12. Richard Speier, independent consultant and former Defense Department missile proliferation desk officer, e-mail correspondence with author, November 19, 2011.

13. James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Inventory of International Nonproliferation Organizations and Regimes, “Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty),” updated August 5, 2011, p. INF-6, <http://cns.miis.edu/inventory/pdfs/inf.pdf>.

14. The Arms Control Reporter: A Chronicle of Treaties and Negotiations, Proposals, Weapons & Policy (Cambridge, MA: Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, 1993), p. 706.B.158; Cooper, Competing Western Strategies, p. 125; James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Inventory of International Nonproliferation Organizations and Regimes, “Missile Technology Control Regime,” updated May 4, 2012, <http://cns.miis.edu/inventory/pdfs/mtcr.pdf>.

15. The Arms Control Reporter, p. 706.B.158.

16. Cooper, Competing Western Strategies, p. 125.

17. Although the Canadian proposal itself focused only on medium-range missiles, there had already been calls in the wider arms control community for a sweeping ban on all ballistic missiles. See, for example, Jerome J. Holton, Lora Lumpe, and Jeremy J. Stone, “Proposal for a Zero Ballistic Missile Regime,” in 1993 Science and International Security Anthology (Washington, DC: AAAS, 1993), pp. 379–96.

18. Cooper, Competing Western Strategies, p. 124.

19. Brian G. Chow, Emerging National Space Launch Programs: Economics and Safeguards (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1993).

20. Arms Control Reporter, 1994, p. 603.B225.

21. Arms Control Reporter, 1994, p. 403.B.770.

22. This peculiar arrangement of hosting a meeting in someone else's country was probably intended to stir interest within the nearby CD while preserving a fig leaf of not straying beyond the MTCR, and in fact many of the MTCR delegations to the “Montreaux Seminar” were led or reinforced by diplomats working at the CD.

23. Cooper, Competing Western Strategies, pp. 125–26. In addition to this prior research employing extensive interviews and declassified documents, the author is drawing here on first-hand experience on the US Delegation to the “MTCR Montreux Seminar” (August 31–September 1, 1995).

24. Yuri Nazarkin, Implementation of Multilateral Arms Control Agreements: Questions of Compliance: The Case of the Missile Technology Control Regime (Geneva: Geneva Center for Security Policy, 2000).

25. Mathew Rice, “Russia Proposes Global Regime on Missile Proliferation,” Arms Control Today, May 2000, <www.armscontrol.org/act/2000_05/ru3ma00>.

26. Cooper, Competing Western Strategies, p. 126.

27. Mark Smith, “Verifiable Control of Ballistic Missile Proliferation,” Trust and Verify 95 (January/February 2001), pp. 1–3.

28. UN General Assembly, A/57/299, “The Issue of Missiles in All its Aspects: Report of the Secretary General,” 57th Session, July 23, 2002; UN General Assembly, A/63/176, “The Issue of Missiles in All its Aspects: Report of the Secretary General,” 63rd Session, July 28, 2008. Because the second panel that convened in 2004 did not produce a consensus report, the author is drawing here on firsthand experience as the US representative to that panel.

29. “Russia Eyes Withdrawal from Key Treaty to Cut Missiles,” Financial Times, March 9, 2005, p. 8.

30. “Russian Threat to Quit Nuclear Treaty Over US Shield Plans,” Financial Times, February 16, 2007, p. 1.

31. “Russia Missile Forces Ready to Quit INF Treaty,” RIA Novosti, February 19, 2007, <http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070219/60957640.html>.

32. Stephen J. Blank, Russia and Arms Control: Are There Opportunities for the Obama Administration? (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, 2009), p. 54.

33. Office of the Spokesman, “Joint U.S.-Russian Statement on the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles at the 62nd Session of the UN General Assembly (October 25, 2007),” U.S. Department of State Archive, <http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/oct/94141.htm>.

34. Blank, Russia and Arms Control, p. 53.

35. Blank, Russia and Arms Control, p. 59.

36. Adelman, “A Long-Term Fix for Medium-Range Arms,” p. A29. A reference to the availability of verification measures is ellipted from this quote because most verification measures have expired by the terms of the treaty.

37. Ken Adelman, “Why a Staunch Conservative Like Me Endorsed Obama,” Huffington Post, October 24, 2008, <www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-adelman/why-a-staunch-conservativ_b_137749.html>.

38. For a good example of this confluence of ideological equivocation about modest disarmament proposals, consider the bland reaction to the 2002 “Moscow Treaty” on Strategic Offensive Reductions. Although this modest treaty did nothing more than codify reductions that President Bush had already announced, conservative voices within the administration had initially resisted agreeing to a legally-binding treaty. At the same time, after a formal treaty was eventually concluded, it was disparaged within the liberal arms control community as being only “SORT” of a treaty (using an acronym that the Bush administration had seemingly sought to avoid with the “Moscow Treaty” moniker) that should have gone further in requiring deeper reductions and associated verification mechanisms.

39. For an excellent recent analysis of the many challenges that the United States would face in Global INF negotiations, see David W. Kearn, Jr., Facing the Missile Challenge: U.S. Strategy and the Future of the INF Treaty (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation), pp. 122–26. For a succinct review of the longstanding arguments against Global INF, see Richard H. Speier, “A Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty for Missiles?,” in Henry Sokolski, ed., Fighting Proliferation (Maxwell Air Force Base: Air University Press, 1996), <www.fas.org/isp/threat/fp/index.html>.

40. This is precisely the scenario that played out in Geneva in the 1990s during negotiations on a new verification protocol for the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, and that is still in the process of playing out in long-stalemated CD efforts to negotiate a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty.

41. Moscow might not prefer this approach, having previously looked to the CD, and would doubtless seek to obtain some advantage in return for its support. However, it would be difficult for President Putin to back away from his personal demands to globalize INF in the face of enthusiastic support from his newly reelected US counterpart who heretofore had ignored the issue. As a purely legal matter, it is debatable whether the other Soviet successor states (which agreed to abide by the treaty as part of a political arrangement) would also need to accede to this, but this is probably a moot point since, in practice, it is nearly inconceivable that they would block a joint US-Russian initiative.

42. John R. Bolton and Paula A. DeSutter, “A Cold War Missile Treaty That's Doing Us Harm: The US-Soviet INF Pact Doesn't Address the Iranian Threat,” Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2011, p. 11.

43. Kearn, Jr., Facing the Missile Challenge: U.S. Strategy and the Future of the INF Treaty, p. xv.

44. Kearn, Jr., Facing the Missile Challenge: U.S. Strategy and the Future of the INF Treaty, pp. 94–99, 115–17. It is largely for this very reason that INF and START, although ostensibly “nuclear” treaties, focus on delivery platforms rather than harder to monitor warheads or fissile material.

45. Michael Elleman, “Containing Iran's Missile Threat,” Survival 54 (February-March 2012), pp. 119–26.

46. Ann M. Florini and William C. Potter, “Goodwill Missions for Castoff Missiles,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1990, p. 25.

47. France still retains a relatively large nuclear force of just under 300 warheads, but has phased out its obsolete land-based missiles in favor of a strategic dyad of SLBMs and nuclear-capable aircraft. Arms Control Association, “Worldwide Ballistic Missile Inventories (updated January 2012),”<www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/missiles>; International Institute of Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2011 (London: Routledge), Table 26, p. 469.

48. Chico Harlan, “South Korea Extends Missile Range Under New Deal with U.S.,” Washington Post, October 7, 2012, <www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/under-new-deal-with-the-us-s-korea-extends-missile-range/2012/10/07/77f2104c-1077-11e2-9a39-1f5a7f6fe945_story.html>.

49. Arms Control Association, “Worldwide Ballistic Missile Inventories (updated January 2012),” <www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/missiles>; Claremont Institute, “Ballistic Missiles of the World,” <www.missilethreat.com/missilesoftheworld/pageID.134/default.asp>; Claremont Institute, “Cruise Missiles of the World,” <www.missilethreat.com/cruise/>; Andrew Feickert, Missile Survey: Ballistic and Cruise Missiles of Foreign Countries (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2004).

50. It is important to note that Table 1 represents a conservative estimate of likely INF systems based on open-source data. It is possible that additional systems have greater range capability than what is acknowledged via open sources. Likewise, non-ground-launch variants could also be captured given that INF stipulates that “If a GLBM [Ground Launched Ballistic Missile] or GLCM [Ground Launched Cruise Missile] is an intermediate-range missile, all GLBMs or GLCMs of that type shall be considered to be intermediate-range missiles.”

51. Daniel Verdier, “Multilateralism, Bilateralism, and Exclusion in the Nuclear Proliferation Regime,” International Organization 62 (July 2008), pp. 439–76.

52. Taiwan also fits this category, although its status would preclude it from acceding to INF as a state party.

53. See, for example, Mark A. Stokes and Ian Easton, “Evolving Aerospace Trends in the Asia-Pacific Region: Implications for Stability in the Taiwan Straight and Beyond,” Project 2049 Institute, May 27, 2010.

54. Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Barack Obama,” Prague, April 5, 2009, <www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered>.

55. James E. Doyle, “U.S.–Russia Nuclear Arms Reductions The Next Round,” FAS Public Interest Report blog, June 25, 2012, <www.fas.org/blog/pir/2012/06/25/u-s-russia-nuclear-arms-reductions-the-next-round/>.