by Miles Pomper, Willilam Potter and Nikolai Sokov
Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 52, no. 1, February–March 2010, pp. 75–96
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US and Russian leaders have indicated that the next round of US–Russian strategic arms negotiations, after a START follow-on treaty is agreed and ratified, is likely to tackle non-strategic, or ‘tactical’, nuclear weapons. Control of such weapons has remained elusive, despite the fact that they are particularly attractive to terrorists and present a greater risk than strategic weapons of early or accidental use. In 1991, US President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev made parallel, but unilateral, pledges – collectively known as the presidential nuclear initiatives – to reduce the numbers of their tactical nuclear weapons and store the larger part of their arsenals in central storage (which was not defined). Washington, however, did not accept a Soviet proposal made that autumn to negotiate a legally binding, verifiable treaty. The two countries have made much progress towards meeting their initiative commitments, but there have been no further serious negotiations on the issue despite many rounds of strategic arms reduction talks. The intention of US and Russian officials to finally tackle the issue of tactical nuclear weapons is welcome, yet linking the two classes of nuclear weapons at an early stage in the next round of post-START negotiations might result in more problems than it can solve.
Russian weapons and policy
Divining the current size of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons arsenal, and how fully Moscow has implemented the presidential initiatives, is difficult. Lack of a formal treaty has meant that hard data on the number of warheads that Russia would need to destroy or to put in central storage, and those that it could continue to deploy, to comply with the initiativesare unavailable. The initiatives only indicated the proportion of warheads to be eliminated.
For some time the United States and Russia updated each other, and other countries, on the progress of reductions. But the Russian attitude toward the presidential initiatives has changed. The last time Moscow formally reported on their status was at an April 2004 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee meeting: the Russian representative mentioned that his country had ‘practically implemented’ its ‘initiatives’ except for warheads assigned to ground forces, and that the pace of elimination was constrained by the technological capability of the Russian nuclear industry and available funding. Six months later, a Russian Foreign Ministry representative declared that Moscow was not bound by the initiatives, which he characterised as goodwill gestures rather than obligations. Russian officials have since been reluctant to confirm that the initiatives currently remain in force.
Nonetheless, the Russian arsenal has continued to be reduced. In a report distributed at the 2005 NPT Review Conference, Russia declared that it had reduced its tactical nuclear weapons to one-fourth of 1991 numbers. The chief of the Ministry of Defence’s 12th Main Directorate (responsible for handling nuclear weapons), Igor Valynkin, confirmed the reductions and asserted that they exceeded the 1991 commitment of 64%. In 2007, his successor, General Vladimir Verkhovtsev, declared that the promised reductions in warheads assigned to ground forces had been completed. One…
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Miles Pomper is a Senior Research Associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) of the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS). From 2003 to 2009 he was Editor-in-Chief of Arms Control Today, and previously he was the lead foreign-policy reporter for CQ Weekly. William Potter is the Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar Professor of Nonproliferation Studies and Director of CNS. He also directs the MIIS Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and is the author of many books, including Chinese and Russian Perspectives on Achieving Nuclear Zero (2009). Nikolai Sokov is a Senior Research Associate at CNS. From 1987–92 he worked at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union and later Russia, and participated in START I and START II negotiations as well as a number of summit and ministerial meetings.
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