Senator Kit Bond: Scrap New START

From The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation:

November 23, 2010, 2:14 PM ET.Kit Bond: Scrap New START.Text By Jonathan Weisman

Sen. Kit Bond (R., Mo.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the Obama White House should scrap its new nuclear arms control treaty with Russia and push Moscow to reinstate the expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.





Sen. Kit Bond (R., Mo.) (AP Photo/Kelley McCall)Republicans, stung by the charge that their opposition to President Barack Obama’s New START accord is purely political, are more aggressively attacking the treaty on substance. Mr. Bond, who is retiring this year, is leading the charge, and while other senior Republicans have merely suggested a delay in a ratification vote, the Missouri senator said in an interview that the New START is a bad deal.



First, he said, it forces the U.S. to cut its strategic nuclear forces to get to the cap of 1,550 deployed warheads, while Russia is allowed to build up its usable nuclear arsenal to that level.



Second, its verification measures are “much weaker” than the original START, signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1991 but which expired last December. That means the Russia could secretly build up its nuclear arsenal, then “break out” of the treaty in a rush of new nuclear warhead deployments.



“I’d like to see renewal of the first START,” he said. “The Obama administration fell for [the Kremlin’s] negotiating tactic of giving them a treaty that enabled them to do anything they wanted.”



Administration officials, U.S. military leaders and U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have demanded ratification of the treaty this year, and they say the Bond critique is wrong. The treaty does allow for fewer inspections of U.S. and Russian nuclear facilities than the expired START, but with a cap of 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 warhead delivery systems, there would be about one-third fewer weapons to inspect in consolidated locations, military leaders say. Besides, right now there are no inspections at all and will be none unless and until New START is ratified.



Because of deterioration, the Russians may have fewer warheads to destroy, arms control experts say, but 1,550 warheads for each side is still enough to obliterate much of Earth.