America’s nuclear arms agreements with the USSR and then Russia have been both bad and good. Our efforts with China have not gone beyond the discussion stage. The Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet empire, but subsequent deep defense cuts and failure to sustain and enhance our deterrent has left the United States facing the prospect of two nuclear armed peer enemies in Russia and China, with combined nuclear arsenals approaching some ten thousand nuclear weapons, despite the current 90% reductions secured between the United States and Russia’s strategic (long-range) nuclear weapons .
Behind the probable reversal in nuclear reductions, lies an original erroneous set of assumptions reflected in US nuclear posture reviews. The 2023 Congressional Strategic Posture Commission’s pragmatic America’s Strategic Posture highlighted differences in “understandings of the threats” with the Biden Administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, highlighted by Keith Payne’s tightly reasoned NIPP Information Series Issue No. 577. .
The 2022 NPR assumed greater cooperation between Russia, China and the United States in addressing nuclear matters, especially preventing terror organizations or terror sponsoring states from acquiring nuclear weapons. .But Moscow nearly always cheats on treaties of all kinds, including nuclear agreements. And Beijing has a spotty record complying with what few treaties they ratify.
For example, currently Russia has not allowed the required New START inspections for the past few years. Similarly, the Outer Space Treaty (1967) prohibits nuclear weapons based in space. 136 countries are now parties or signatories, including Russia and China. The OST is threatened by Putin’s recently revealed “Sputnik,” which would base a nuclear weapon in orbit. China’s Xi’s claims hegemony over the Moon and Mars, which might also lead to China placing nuclear weapons in space, contrary to the OST’s mandatory peaceful use of space requirement.
Both nations are members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968). However, according to the late Tom Reed’s “The Nuclear Express,” China in 1982 decided to deliberately help Pakistan and North Korea secure nuclear weapons contrary to their NPT commitments, while Russia also helped North Korea with its nuclear related missile programs, again contrary to the NPT requirements.
Now the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks I (1972 and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (1972) reflected Soviet leader Brezhnev demand that all US missile defenses be limited to a small 100 interceptor force protecting Washington, DC or alternatively a US ICBM site, while codifying not nuclear reductions but an agreed upon multi-fold increase in allowable deployed strategic long range nuclear weapons. This achieved two Soviet goals: leaving the US open to coercive nuclear threats and banning effective missile defenses. By 1979, the two nations had agreed to SALT II, but the treaty was subsequently withdrawn by the Carter administration as it could not pass muster with the US Senate. It allowed the US and the USSR to further build offensive strategic forces to over 10,000 deployed warheads, albeit with some modest restrictions on the number of nuclear armed missiles that each could have multiple warheads. The first treaty that actually reduced nuclear weapons was the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty which eliminated an entire class of intermediate range ballistic missiles. The Soviets SS-20s in Europe and Asia were deployed in the 1970s as a means of created division within NATO which Moscow assumed would not be able to agree to a counter deployment. However, President Ronald Reagan was able to deploy US Pershing and GLCM missiles, surprising Moscow, and then leading to the treaty. However, over time, Russia was caught repeatedly cheating, so the U.S. officially withdrew from the agreement in 2019.
