Arms treaty weak

The agreement President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed five years ago to slash their nuclear arsenals has yielded little.

The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, penned into existence by the two leaders on May 24, 2002, and later ratified by the legislatures of both countries, mandates a cutback in nukes from approximately 6,000 to roughly 2,000 warheads each by 2012.

At the end of 2005, the Bush administration said the United States had more than 3,800 operationally deployed strategic warheads. By comparison, at the beginning of 2007, Russia is estimated to have 3,300 strategic warheads in its arsenal, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The treaty has numerous flaws, however, in spite of these impressive-sounding reductions. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has called it “as flimsy a treaty as the Senate has ever considered.”

The weakest aspect of the treaty is that none of these nuclear warheads has to be destroyed under the treaty, just kept in storage. This means that these warheads could eventually be deployed again, returning the arsenals to their pre-treaty levels.

The treaty also lacks a strong verification mechanism. Instead, a Bilateral Implementation Commission was set up to meet confidentially twice a year to assess progress.

Poor verification doesn’t inspire confidence, especially as relations between Russia and the United States deteriorate.

Russia recently withdrew from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe in protest of a Bush administration expansion of a missile shield to Eastern Europe. And Putin compared the United States to the Third Reich.

Another huge shortcoming in the treaty is that the cuts aren’t required to be completed until Dec. 31, 2012, the very date the treaty expires, unless both sides agree to extend it. The present U.S.-Russian relationship makes it far from certain this will happen.

Also, unlike most other arms-control treaties, either side can withdraw with only three months’ notice, without giving any reason whatsoever.

The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty is nothing to celebrate. The United States and Russia need instead to take concrete steps toward nuclear disarmament.