Lawmakers, Experts Warn of Potential Arms Race as New START Treaty Expires in Less Than a Year
Mel Madarang | ABC News
As the Trump administration ramps up the country’s nuclear capabilities in the latest Fiscal Year 2021 budget proposal, the clock is ticking on the only remaining arms control treaty that keeps the world’s two leading nuclear powers -- Russia and the United States -- in check. In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, ranking member Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, said the treaty’s expiration would signal for the first time in more than four decades that "there is no arms control regime in the world" -- which could potentially lead to arms proliferation. “When we combine the huge numbers of arsenals and potentially even higher numbers of arsenals as New START goes away ... that's a recipe for sort of that return to Cold War-style arms racing that I think people are worried about,” Pranay Vaddi, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace fellow, told ABC News. The White House has put off extending the 2011 Obama-Medvedev negotiated treaty in an attempt to bring China into a multilateral nuclear arms agreement.
Russia’s Lavrov, After Pompeo Meeting, Says Felt More Constructive US Approach
Reuters
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week that he had felt a more constructive approach from Washington when it came to the U.S.-Russia strategic dialogue. The two top diplomats met on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday in an encounter that neither side has so far spoken about in detail. “I felt certain small moves towards a more constructive approach by our American partners,” Lavrov said on his ministry’s website on Monday. Lavrov said the two men had spoken about issues related to strategic dialogue between Russia and the United States and about arms control. The last remaining major arms control treaty between Moscow and Washington, the New START accord, expires next year. Russia has said it is ready to extend it, but U.S. officials have called it flawed and outdated.
Podcast: Of Nightclub Bouncers and Arms Control
Ulrich Kuehn | International Crisis Group
“Policies today are geared toward power, strength and pushing back. They are not geared toward talking to each other, and that is the prerequisite for arms control”. For Ulrich Kuehn, our guest on War & Peace this week, we have entered an age of regression of predictability in the international military balance. States are gradually dismantling many of the treaties won in hard negotiations during and after the end of the Cold War, arguing that they have become obsolete. What does this mean for those countries who depend on cooperative mechanisms, but who have little say in what happens to them? And what are the implications for Europe? Does it have the political and military strength to be an autonomous arms control actor?
NATO Chief Rejects Macron Call to Put French Nukes at Center of European Strategy
RFE/RL
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg dismissed calls by French President Emmanuel Macron to put France’s nuclear deterrence at the center of European defense strategy, saying the United States and Britain already provide an effective security umbrella. “We have to remember that we have a European nuclear deterrent today -- 28 allies deliver that every day and it's not only a promise, but it's something that has been there for decades,” Stoltenberg told reporters at the Munich Security Conference on February 15. Following Brexit, France is the only EU nation with a nuclear arsenal, and Macron has pressed for European “strategic autonomy” -- the ability to defend the continent without relying on Washington, although he has stated his commitment to NATO. France is a NATO member but does not make its atomic weapons available to the alliance. It has long prided itself on its independent nuclear deterrent.
Planned W93 Warhead Will Contribute to New UK Nuke, DoD Officials Say
Defense Daily
The proposed W93 sea-launched warhead, the nuclear tip of planned next-generation U.S. submarine-launched ballistic missiles, will share technology with United Kingdom’s next nuclear weapon, Pentagon officials said Thursday. W93 will “support a parallel Replacement Warhead Program in the United Kingdom whose nuclear deterrent plays an absolutely vital role in NATO’s overall defense posture,” Adm. Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, wrote in testimony prepared for a Thursday hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which builds all U.S. nuclear weapons, will develop and build the W93. The civilian agency unveiled the designation for the planned warhead in its preliminary 2021 budget request, saying it would begin “concept and Assessment Refinement activities” for W93 in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. The United Kingdom has a purely sea-based nuclear arsenal, comprising nuclear-powered, ballistic-missile submarines.
Arab World’s First Nuclear Reactor Cleared for Startup
Mahmoud Habboush | Bloomberg
The United Arab Emirates took a final step toward switching on the Arab world’s first commercial nuclear power plant, even as the country prospers by producing and selling fossil fuels. The U.A.E.’s regulatory watchdog gave long-awaited approval on Monday to the operator of the Barakah reactor, nudging the U.A.E. to the brink of membership in an elite club of 30 countries that make power from smashing atoms. Built and run by a joint venture with Korea Electric Power Corp., the plant can now start loading fuel and ramp up to full commercial operation within several months. Other Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are also pushing into nuclear power in spite of questions about cost and safety. Barakah is the first of four civilian reactors that the government plans to fire up by 2023. The plants, located on a sparsely populated strip of desert on the Persian Gulf coast, are estimated to cost $25 billion. The U.A.E. expects them to produce as much as 5.6 gigawatts once they’re fully commissioned, or almost a fifth of the country’s current installed generating capacity.