Abstract
In its first eight months in office, the Bush Administration has shown scant regard for other nations' views on global warming, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The administration has seemed determined to torpedo any possible verification protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention. It has treated Russia with disdain and China as the next enemy. And it plans to rush deployment of a national missile defense as early as 2004.
The light dawned for a few Bush administration officials after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They realized that other countries could assist the United States in confronting terrorism–and maybe even with stemming the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, enforcing international sanctions, preventing pollution from spreading across borders, and limiting massive flows of refugees. But the light has not dawned for the president.
The November 2001 visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Washington, D.C., and Crawford, Texas, demonstrated the president's reluctance to shed his ideological baggage. In personal terms, the visit was a smashing success. The two leaders displayed a bonhomie just short of the Bill Clinton-Tony Blair lovefest. On November 15, on a high school stage in Crawford, Bush and Putin acted like fraternity brothers, joking about visiting Siberia in the winter, Bush's penchant for fuzzy math, and raising teenage daughters. Bush declared: “The more I get to know President Putin, the more I get to see his heart and soul, and the more I know we can work together in a positive way.”
Their courtship, begun at three previous meetings in Slovenia, Italy, and China, appeared headed to fruition. In a November 5 interview with Barbara Walters, Putin talked about how the two countries “could reach quite quickly mutual agreements” on reducing strategic weapons and “find common approaches to defensive systems,” despite differences over the continued relevance of the ABM Treaty. U.S. officials also hinted that agreement was forthcoming.
At the summit, Bush and Putin agreed on neither. Bush announced at a November 13 press conference that the United States would reduce what he termed “operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads” (longrange weapons capable of hitting Russia or China) from today's level of about 7,200 to between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade. Officials in Moscow had previously suggested that economic exigencies would force Russia to decrease its deployed longer-range nuclear weapons from the current 5,800 to 1,500 or fewer. But Bush refused to translate a tacit agreement to move to lower levels into a written document that included verification procedures, guidelines for carrying out the reductions, or plans for the disposal of retired nuclear weapons.
In a reversal of form from the days of President Ronald Reagan, it is the Russians who now insist on “trust, but verify.” Similarly, an accord expanding U.S. missile defense testing in return for retaining the ABM Treaty collapsed because Bush refused to commit anything to writing.
There was even less to the announcement of nuclear reductions than met the eye. Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin had agreed in 1997 to negotiate an agreement to cut strategic nuclear weapons to 2,000-2,500 each, an agreement never completed because START II got stuck on pause. Bush may be willing to go lower, but he could well stick with 2,200. In addition, his team's new counting rules permit the United States to keep a few hundred additional but uncounted nuclear weapons on delivery systems that are being overhauled. Then too, the excess nuclear warheads will be placed in storage, leaving open the option of re-mating them with launchers in the future. It was not clear why it would take 10 years simply to detach warheads from missile launchers.
In response to questions about a written agreement, Bush declared somewhat testily at the November 13 press conference that “if we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll be glad to do that.” But he continues to regard treaties as relics of the Cold War, relevant only to the old days of superpower confrontation. He fails to grasp that written agreements provide clarity about rules of the road, whether a trade agreement among nations, a contract between union and management, the purchase of a house, or a deal on weapons ceilings. A PutinBush understanding could easily be ignored by new leaders or overtaken by fresh disagreements.
Bush remains a captive of right-wing Republicans who abhor the ABM Treaty and crave immediate deployment of a national missile defense. A few days before the summit meeting, nine right-wing Republican senators, led by Majority Leader Trent Lott and North Carolina's Jesse Helms, urged the president to reject any missile defense deal. “Attempts to imbue [the ABM] treaty with flexibility, as some advocate,” they wrote on November 9, would “only give continued life to an obsolete agreement.” George W. seems determined to avoid the mistakes of his father, who lost the support of the Republican right.
Democrats who abandoned confrontation with the Bush administration over national missile defense after September 11 found their voices this time. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd said on the Senate floor on November 15: “I am shocked by the president's view that an agreement on arms reductions need not be on paper.” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden concurred the same day: “For great countries to have such fundamental decisions rest upon personal assurances between two honorable men is not sufficient, not because the men are not honorable, not because they are not intent on keeping their promises, but because they are not immortal.”
The two leaders also squandered an opportunity to reinvigorate the U.S.-Russian drive to safeguard Russian nuclear weapons and materials. During the presidential campaign, Bush promised to increase funding to help secure Russian nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons materials that are vulnerable to theft or illicit sale to terrorists. Instead, the administration has cut funds for these nonproliferation programs while cloaking the action by conducting a slow-moving Executive Branch review. The two leaders barely discussed this critical issue.
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice compounded the problem a few days later by insisting that the Bush administration had not cut the Nunn-Lugar or other nonproliferation programs. In fact, the administration proposed a $100 million decrease in funding and has resisted efforts by others to increase the funding beyond last year's level, as a blue ribbon panel proposed earlier this year.
Putin, by casting his lot with the West and against Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, has ruffled the feathers of some in important Russian military and industrial power centers. For the moment, the grumbling is muted. But a new turn of events could elevate Russian concerns.
Bush could have reinforced the Putin agreement, but instead chose to remain in his ideological prison, forfeiting a golden opportunity to wind down the nuclear arms race and move away from Cold War thinking.