THE nuclear arms cuts announced by Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin
last week were hailed around the world as historic. But the promises are no
better than commitments made four years ago by Bill Clinton and Boris
Yeltsin鈥攁nd in some respects they are worse.
The reductions are 鈥渓ess than meets the eye鈥�, says Matthew Bunn, a nuclear
policy adviser to Clinton. Although Bush鈥檚 offer to reduce the number of US
鈥渙perationally deployed鈥� weapons from around 7000 to below 2200 may look
substantial, it is a cut of only 300 more than Clinton agreed to in Helsinki in
1997.
But because the rules on how to count the weapons have been changed, even
this advance turns out to be 鈥渁n illusion鈥�, argues Bunn, who is at the Belfer
Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. While
Clinton included warheads that were undergoing refurbishment, Bush will not.
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What鈥檚 more, Clinton鈥檚 commitment, made under a proposed arms-control treaty
known as START III, might have included a verification regime so Russia could
confirm the destruction of weapons. But START III was killed off by Bush.
He hasn鈥檛 proposed any verification system. Instead Bush wants Putin to take
his word for it. 鈥淎 new relationship based on trust doesn鈥檛 need endless hours
of arms-control discussions,鈥� Bush said last week. Though verification might not
count for much in this case, since Bush is planning merely to detach the
warheads from their missiles rather than dismantle them. This process can be
reversed within months.
In the end, Bush鈥檚 announcement is no more than 鈥渁 tweak鈥�, says Michael Levi
of the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC. It is still founded
on the Pentagon鈥檚 count of military targets in Russia, he says, so it fails to
move beyond the 鈥渃ounterforce鈥� doctrine of the cold war.
Keeping 2200 American warheads trained on Russia obliges Putin to keep an
equal number of warheads on hair-trigger alert so they can be launched before
they are destroyed. But the Russian command-and-control system is now in a very
poor state, says Levi, increasing the risk that missiles could be fired by
mistake.
Bush鈥檚 pledge also does nothing to limit the manufacture of more warheads. In
fact the US has plans to relaunch in 2018 large-scale production of the hollow
plutonium spheres known as 鈥減its鈥� that form the core of nuclear bombs.