The US Senate approved the ratification of the New START Treaty at a lame duck session on 22 December 2010. The President signed it the following day. This successful ratification was the major foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration’s first two years. Arguably, this may even be a small step in justification of the Nobel Peace committee’s anticipatory decision in 2009 to award him this Prize. The US ratification has allowed the Russian Duma to commence its deliberations and hopefully ratify it by January 2011, paving the way for an early entry into force of an important arms control treaty.

The Treaty commits both sides, within seven years of ratification, to make significant reductions in their strategic nuclear arsenals. Each side will reduce nuclear warheads to a maximum of 1550 and the number of launchers to 700. Due to complex counting rules, the reduction, though significant, is not major. Yet, it has other advantages, the most notable is that both sides have shown their willingness to remain engaged in nuclear arms control and will be able to continue with verification inspections, which otherwise would have halted. 
 
The US Senate deal came at a high cost. President Obama had to commit to spending $185 billion over the next decade for "modernizing" the U.S. nuclear weapons production complex and nuclear weapons delivery vehicles. Also, a commitment that the missile defence project in Europe to which Russia has strong objections will continue to be pursued. Given these realities and the Republican majority in Congress from 2011, further disarmament measures, such as ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, seem remote.

It may be argued that the approximate 30 per cent reduction of strategic arms over seven years is not enough given the changed scenario so many years after the end of the Cold War. It is not sufficient for example to persuade the UK, France or China to seriously engage in negotiations for reducing their arsenals. This will require bringing US and Russian arsenals down to 1,000 warheads or less. Yet, there may be other possibilities. 
 
An immediate potential impact will be that with this pending issue out of the way, both the US and Russia will be able to pursue other arms control initiatives, such as eliminating smaller tactical nuclear weapons, which continue to remain deployed in Europe. Tactical or short-range nuclear weapons have been defined as those that have a delivery range of below 500 kms.  This is a category where Russia has an advantage in numbers and it is said to have somewhere around 3,000 to 8,000 deployed and the US between 500-1200. There can be no conceivable requirement or justification for these weapons today.

Actually short range nuclear weapons are the most destabilizing in today’s world for a number of reasons on which we need not dwell at much length here. Besides, due to the numbers available these are likely to be also the ones to fall into the hands of terrorists. Therefore, deterrence - the only conceivable reason for still maintaining nuclear arsenals - is best provided through a limited number of strategic weapons; the actual range of delivery systems depending on specific requirements. 
 
This approach has worked earlier. Through a landmark arms control negotiation in the 1980s, the US and the Soviet Union had signed in December 1988 an Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. This eliminated at one stroke all nuclear weapons of an intermediate range, which are defined as between 500-5,500 kms. The Treaty came in to force from 1 June 1989. This was, however, not a universal treaty. At that time China and probably Israel both had nuclear weapons and delivery means that came under this category and neither was affected by it. China today has a very large range and sophistication of missiles capable of nuclear weapons delivery in the intermediate-range. Later, when India and Pakistan developed their nuclear arsenals, they were meant for delivery by both short and intermediate-range delivery systems.

It is in this context that serious negotiation should begin to eliminate short and medium-range nuclear weapons. There will be several related questions that will arise as the history of arms control negotiations in the Cold War had shown. Should it first address weapons deployed on land or air? When should it address submarine launched missiles, considered so vital by strategists because of their comparative invulnerability?  How about aircraft delivered weapons and what would be their counting procedures? In the past these issues were linked to weaponization of space and we have not made much progress there either. 

These are not easy questions and there are no easy answers. The strategic environment in recent years has changed and not for the better. Nuclear weapons in North Korea, a possible weaponization of the Middle East, two ongoing wars and terrorism still the global challenge it is today.  There have been some advances in 2010; such as the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington DC and a NPT that had a final document. The New START at the end of the first decade of the twenty first century may provide some satisfaction.