In Prague President Obama had pledged to move towards the ideal of reducing and eventually eliminating existing nuclear arsenals, an ideal enshrined in Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which envisages the cessation of the nuclear arms race “at an early date”, en route to nuclear disarmament and a Treaty on general and complete disarmament ; Eventually. Why eventually? A close reading of Article VI reveals that it only expects NPT Parties to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures” to achieve this idyllic world without nuclear weapons. No time-frame was laid down, however, for reaching this objective, which has been reinforced by the NPT Parties agreeing in 1995 to extend the NPT into perpetuity.

These painful realities provide the backdrop to the decision by the United States and Russia in Moscow on 6 July to replace the current Strategic Arms Reduction (START) Treaty-- it expires on 5 December this year-- with a new agreement to further reduce their strategic offensive arms by approximately a third to 500-1100 delivery vehicles and 1500-1675 nuclear warheads. Specific limits would be decided later after further negotiations, and the new agreement would have provisions to deal with technical problems like definitions, eliminations, inspection and verification procedures, confidence building and transparency measures and so on.

How these new ceilings would be configured has been left to the discretion of the United States and Russia in appreciation of their basic geo-strategic compulsions. The United States, with two oceans bracketing it, has favored arming its maritime delivery vehicles (submarines and surface ships); whereas Russia, a continental state, has preferentially located the deterrent on its land based missiles.  Two more significant decisions were reached in Moscow.

First, how could the problem of intercontinental range ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles being armed with non-nuclear warheads be addressed? This is a very difficult issue since verifying whether a missile warhead is nuclear or non-nuclear can only be credibly ensured by on-site inspections, which is virtually impossible to ensure on security considerations.

Second, how could strategic offensive and strategic defensive arms be interrelated and linked? This is shorthand for tackling the intrinsic strategic problems raised by missile defence in general, while the missile threats from ‘countries of concern’ like Iran and North Korea loom ahead.  Missile defence is in high controversy at present between the United States and Russia. The United States is doggedly pursuing its National Missile Defence (NMD) option to develop the technology for dominating space, which is steadily becoming the future frontier of warfare. Russia knows that its economy cannot sustain this evolving arms race, but is also greatly concerned with the consequent degradation of its nuclear deterrent. Briefly explained, if the United States succeeds in deploying a credible NMD, it will be able to launch a first strike with impunity in the secure belief that it could insulate itself from any retaliatory counterstrike, which undermines the basic fabric of nuclear deterrence.  These involved arguments may appear tortured, but make perfect sense in the arcane world of nuclear weapons. Russia objects to the United States positioning missile defences in Central Europe, ostensibly to ward off a possible missile attack by Iran, which the Russians believe is really designed against them. Nevertheless, Russia cooperated recently in the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1874 to inhibit North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.  

These decisions were endorsed by the G8, meeting immediately afterwards in L’Aquila. It welcomed the American-Russian decision to replace START with a new Treaty pledging a further reduction in strategic offensive arms. It endorsed President Obama’s announcement to ratify the CTBT and hold a Global Nuclear Security Summit in March 2010, while supporting negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty in the Conference on Disarmament.

What do these decisions and agreements portend for the future of strategic arms reduction and reaching the laudable objective of a nuclear weapon free world? Is the glass half full since nuclear warheads will be reduced by a third from their present level of 2000-2200?  Is the glass half empty, since the end point of 1500-1675 warheads is far higher than zero that can only result after all the nuclear weapons in the American and Russian arsenals are eliminated? Together they possess 95 % of the total nuclear weapons in the world. President Obama had conceded in his Prague speech that a nuclear weapon-free world was unlikely in his lifetime.

The antidote to excessive pessimism would be to ask a counterfactual question: what would have happened if the Republicans, and not the Democrats, had won the elections in 2008? Would START have lapsed in December this year? Would the CTBT have any chance of being ratified? Or, the FMCT being pursued? Or, a Global Security Summit being held?