[This is a condensed version of a report originally posted on the Heritage Foundation's website on September 16, 2010, and crossposted with permission. Click here for the full version detailing each of the "Twelve Flaws."]

Abstract: President Barack Obama has transmitted a deeply flawed arms control treaty to the Senate for its con­sent to ratification. While withholding consent is the sim­plest and most likely approach, the Senate may try to fix the treaty piecemeal, but this approach has inherent, serious risks. Fixing some of the serious flaws will require amend­ments to the text, and fixing others will require compelling the Administration to change some of its policies. Regard­less of what the Senate chooses, the stakes are high. As with all major arms control treaties, if New START enters into force, it could profoundly increase the likelihood of nuclear war and increase the number of weapons in the world.

....

[T]his paper identifies the 12 impor­tant flaws in or associated with New START and suggests a range of remedies that the Senate could apply to correct each flaw.

The 12 Flaws and Their Remedies

Flaw #1: New START fails to speak to the issue of protecting and defending the U.S. and its allies against strategic attack.

Flaw #2: New START imposes restrictions on U.S. missile defense options.

Flaw #3: The atrophying U.S. nuclear arsenal and weapons enterprise make reductions in the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal even more dangerous.

Flaw #4: New START counts conventional “prompt global strike” weapons against the numerical limits imposed on nuclear arms.

Flaw #5: The Obama Administration has made New START an essential part of a broader agenda that pursues the goals of nuclear nonprolifera­tion and nuclear disarmament concurrently.

Flaw #6: New START’s limits are uninformed by a targeting policy that is governed by the protect and defend strategy.

Flaw #7: New START leaves in place a large Russian advantage in nonstrategic (tactical) nuclear weapons.

Flaw #8: New START does not appear to limit rail-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

Flaw #9: The BCC’s mandate is overly broad.

Flaw #10: The New START limitations are unclear on whether they would permit the U.S. to counter future threats from a combination of states.

Flaw #11: New START is not adequately verifiable.

Flaw #12: The Obama Administration believes that Russian cheating under New START is only a marginal concern.

Conclusion

The flaws in and associated with New START are numerous, substantive, and serious. The Senate will find them difficult to fix. Essentially, the Senate has two broad choices: It can (1) defer granting its con­sent to ratification or reject the treaty outright and instruct the Obama Administration to negotiate a new treaty or series of treaties with Russia that do not have these flaws or (2) try to remedy the flaws by redrafting significant portions of the treaty and adopting a series of amendments to the resolution of ratification. If the Senate chooses the latter approach, it should be prepared for a long and com­plicated process on the Senate floor. This approach would necessarily require either Russian acceptance of the changes or additional negotiations.

The Founding Fathers intended for the Senate to serve as a quality control mechanism in treaty mak­ing. Because of its flaws, New START will present the Senate with a challenge to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities. However, this difficulty should not become an excuse for the Senate to shirk its respon­sibilities and simply rubberstamp New START. As with all major arms control treaties, if New START enters into force, it could profoundly increase the likelihood of nuclear war and increase the number of weapons in the world. The very survival of the United States may be at stake in these issues. The American people are depending on their Sena­tors to take the necessary actions to defend them against attack.

It looks like Senator Kerry's gamble has paid off, with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passing New START by a vote of 14 to 4, with three Republican votes.

Statements praised the committee and urging the full Senate to pass the treaty swiftly have already been issued by the White House and, jointly, by the Secretaries of Defense and State.

START is like the procession of Cardinals (once Senators) in medieval Rome: Yet it is a contemporary ritual marking the eternal authority of nuclear weapons in human consciousness and their embedded standing in national identity.

It should have died. We for a blissful moment thought it had died: Soviet fall and Cold War’s end promised divine dispensation in our jubilant pronouncements that the millennium had arrived — erasing all cares of what had gone before. We thought it was over: More the fool, we.

To truly understand the full hold of nuclear weapons on us we must go back to former times. We must pullback from our rapture in the zeitgeist — meaning, all the neuralgias of today’s various policy conversations.

Back then it was like this: Atomic weapons owned by their original masters — the US and the USSR — were the bedrock iconography of world authority. Only two could rule, and rule they did. They dominated and drove that authority in the pursuit of their unacknowledged co-dominion. They loved it, and we celebrated it.

Can you not see, or have you fully forgotten? Look at Rock Hudson in A Gathering of Eagles, flush with the manly manna of nuclear cran (French for guts). Both America and its Soviets co-dependents worked together to rule the world through their pact to threaten annihilation — if you, the rest of humanity, did not go along.

This was our original nuclear world — but it did not last long. A desperate Britain and France on their own developed nukes to compete. They cried out: We are no has-beens of History! We can still be great!

So others then too blasted a path in the name of their sacred identities. China got “the bomb” followed by Israel and then India. But there were other national identities that also got it. Sweden made a bomb in the later 1950s. A nation of 8 million whose glorious past once made them the Lion of the North, built it and then decided against it. So too did South Africa, which actually tested their device.

We talk proliferation when we should be looking at what we have wrought.

So who wants nukes? Really: No joke. Why did Sweden and South Africa build them and then give them up?

There has been a nuclear migration over the decades from the original US-Soviet condominium. There has been a global shift in consciousness. The nukes are still here — but why?

Not to use. Certainly not to use: Never, ever. Call this the nuclear taboo. The surest sign that human consciousness has evolved since 1945 is our collective migration away from the use of a nuclear weapon — anywhere, ever again. Remember in December 1945 a Gallup poll revealed that 40% of Americans were angry (yes, angry) that we had not had more atomic bombs to drop on Japan: And this just 5 months after war ended.

Today’s humanity has come a long way, a very long way. No nation today thinks like Americans did in December 1945. To drop the big one on people anywhere today would today be a transgression beyond proscription — the unspoken greatest evil.

So how then do we think about START? Russians and Americas are both the inheritors and yet also the shrunken overlords of something we started but can neither reclaim nor control. At the same time the meaning of nuclear weapons has profoundly changed — Yet we also remain in some sense, still stewards.

Think about why Sweden and South Africa gave nukes up. Think also about why Iran might so achingly seek them. The “bomb” has become the indelible, coin-of-the-realm token-talisman-fetish of great power standing. So who now must so desperately seek such self-serving, narcissistic status?

Hence START in this spirit perhaps represents an opportunity to put children’s nightmares (and our own!) to bed. If “in a galaxy far, far away” Americans and Russians created this misbegotten nuclear world, then perhaps also we might come together to reinforce and declare a new spirit, and enunciate new rules of nuclear possession and behavior.

So far this is not the spirit of the occasion. Once again the opportunity to make bigger ritual theater is being lost in the bickering between the two of us over numbers and ratios. Instead as original stewards we need to show a shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity that will lay down the terms for others seeking possession.

For those few societies whose identity desperately requires nuclear possession, be warned: Such symbolic ownership is a gift, a sacred responsibility, and perhaps also, a curse. Abridge your solemn obligations, and all hell will rain down.

This is the bigger proscenium under which a new START begins. Are Americans and Russians up to it?

The new START Treaty has some fairly reasonable, but important, goals in the reduction of strategic warheads. They will be 30% less than those agreed to in the 2002 Moscow Treaty, yet will 75% less than the 1991 Start Treaty. Nuclear delivery vehicles will also be capped in a phased-in manner.

The START Treaties have been some of the more important foreign policy victories of President Reagan (he started the idea off), President George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Those who are thinking that the START treaties harmed US national security should consider the facts on the ground from the beginning of the START process. Some of the same people should consider the historical bipartisan nature of the START process. Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, President Carter, George Schultz, and William Perry support this treaty. Now that is bi-partisanship at a very high level.

To read the treaty, its protocol and technical annexes, in detail one could go to: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/08/new-start-treaty-and-protocol . For those who do not like to jump to conclusions about such treaties because of their titles or what they read in the press or hear amongst the normally uninformed talking heads these documents are a hard read, but a worthy one.

There are also some good analyses out there and some of the unclassified briefings and testimony can also be found for food for thought: http://lugar.senate.gov/issues/start/ could be a good start off point.

The treaty is based on some hard-nosed thinking on the Pentagon which can be found in http://www.defense.gov/npr/docs/2010%20nuclear%20posture%20review%20report.pdf . This is a document that looks into what may need to be done to reduce nuclear risks to the US, its allies, etc.

One might also consider the importance of having a rational and reasonable public debate on this treaty that the President signed with his Russian counterpart earlier this year. The US dialogue with Russia on many strategic and security issues, including Iran, security arrangements in Europe, and more could become more complex if this treaty is summarily shot down due to political infighting and bickering partisanship. However, if there are reasonable and appropriate objections they should be considered and responded to in the context of the treaty and its implications for national and worldwide security. I agree that a ratification document should be bipartisan in manner and in intent.

However, timing is an issue. It is important to have a treaty mechanism to support functioning verification and inspection of nuclear weapons and sites. This can be found in the new START treaty. With the new treaty we would be allowed 18 inspections, including warhead counts and verification inspections, data sharing, etc. related to these and other aspects of the now suspended START process.

There are no constraints in the treaty in the development of missile defense programs or conventional weapons defense postures and strategies. Modernization and improvements in the U.S. nuclear weapons systems will continue even if there will be certain caps in the treaty.

The NNSA, National Nuclear Safety Administration, http://nnsa.energy.gov/, is a vital part of the process of ensuring our national security on nuclear issues and deserves a significant amount of support in its efforts, possibly even more than it is getting at the moment and is planned in the near future.

The nuclear issue is a complex one. We still seem to be in some sort of transition from the Cold War of the past to something else in our relations with Russia. Surely we need to be careful and thoughtful. It remains a dangerous world. However, this is a delicate time in US-Russian relations. US-Russian relations have effects on many of our other national security strategies and goals.

The President and his staff had the national security of the US in mind when they developed and negotiated this treaty. This is not a give-away treaty. It is one that has been thought through. It is an important one. Speaking as a US citizen and as a person who is concerned with US security and global security issues I support the President in his efforts and hope that our elected leaders can go forward towards helping develop a more secure, prosperous and hopeful America.

When I lived in Russia in 1992, I was offered the chance to purchase a nuclear submarine. The Soviet Union was collapsing, and the Russian-American theater troupe I was with were some of the only Americans in St. Petersburg. The theater was above the largest mafia casino in town, and the mafiosos were looking for new ways to make money off Soviet detritus. Hence: their offer to sell a nuclear-powered submarine to a bunch of American actors with hard cash.

Fast forward to today. President Obama -- as well as Henry Kissinger and Reagan's Secretary of State George Schulz (hardly bleeding heart liberals) -- understands that nuclear war against Russia is now highly unlikely. But al Qaeda has already pledged that it is a religious obligation for its terrorists to get their hands on a nuclear bomb. If our motley crew of thespians could buy a nuclear submarine in 1993, you can bet that terrorists can find one member of the corrupt Russian bureaucracy willing to sell off a spare nuke, for the right price.

That is why Obama is so right to have pushed the new START treaty. Russia and America own more than 90% of the world's nukes -- so reducing our stockpiles means better safeguarding, verification, and locking down of those that exist. That makes it harder for loose nukes to fall into terrorist hands.

The fact that Senators like McCain and Kyl are fighting Republican statesmen like Senator Lugar, who served as head of the Foreign Relations Committee for years -- is testament to how their partisanship has become more important to them than the security of our country.

It was Ronald Reagan who began the nuclear arms reduction process with the Soviet Union. He would be turning over in his grave to see Senator Kyl's hijinks with our national security. Kyl is single-handedly -- but with the acquiescence of Republican leadership -- reducing the power of the American presidency abroad. By making it look as if the President's word can't be trusted they are harming American power itself. It's a grave mistake, with long term consequences that will last long after the partisan point scoring has finished.

The New START agreement, signed by US President Obama and Russian President Medvedev, is not a major leap forward toward nuclear disarmament. Its goals are far more modest than needed, but they are still crucial. For the Senate to turn down ratification of the treaty would be a disaster for the country and the world, opening the door to new arms races and to new justifications for nuclear proliferation.

The treaty will reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads on each side to 1,550 and the number of deployed delivery vehicles to 700 for each country. The treaty will also provide for verification procedures to assure compliance. Since the expiration of the START I agreement in December 2009, there has been no agreement on verification procedures between the two countries.

President Obama has preemptively sought to buy off the Republicans in the Senate by promising an additional $80 billion for nuclear weapons over the next decade and another $100 billion for nuclear weapons delivery systems. This commitment by the President is unfortunate as it will send a message to other countries that the United States continues to seek improvement of its nuclear weapons for its security. This will encourage other countries to pursue or expand their nuclear weapons programs, which in turn will increase the likelihood of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups. Nuclear proliferation and increased likelihood of nuclear terrorism will further undermine US national security.

Nuclear deterrence does not make the US more secure. There are too many ways in which nuclear deterrence can fail. In fact, it has come perilously close to failing on many occasions during the Nuclear Age. We can certainly deduce that a terrorist group that cannot be located and whose members are suicidal is not subject to being deterred. No matter how large the US nuclear arsenal, it will be ineffective in deterring nuclear terrorists should they obtain a nuclear device.

This understanding should dictate US leadership toward achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. President Obama has said that the US is committed to this goal. The way to that goal lies through the New START agreement with the Russians. Should the New START agreement be defeated in the Senate, it will not be only a stinging defeat for the President. It will be a deeply troubling setback for the security of the American people and the people of the world.

In considering the New START agreement, the American people should keep in mind that nuclear weapons cannot provide physical protection for them. All that policymakers are capable of doing with nuclear weapons is threatening retaliation, carrying out the act of retaliation, or striking preventively with them. Nuclear arms are devices of mass annihilation. They are capable of destroying civilization and most complex forms of life, including the human species.

The New START agreement is a step toward nuclear sanity. The members of the Senate who would vote against the treaty are still basing national security on Mutually Assured Destruction, which is truly MAD. We are in need of a shift in thinking that moves us toward Planetary Assured Security and Survival (PASS), which will allow us to pass the world on intact to new generations.

Proponents of the President’s arms control treaty are addicted to arguing that any concerns about New Start are motivated by politics and nothing more. They brush aside any notion that there might be any defects in the treaty. This attitude is reflected in Senator Kerry’s (D–MA) attempt to fast-track the treaty for approval with Potemkin Village hearings packed with treaty-friendly witnesses—hearings that have poisoned consideration of New Start from the beginning.

In fact, fault for the ground swell of opposition to the treaty largely rests with the Administration and Senator Kerry. From the outset the Administration refused to release the treaty negotiating record, even though there is plenty of precedent for granting the Senate access to that material. A review of the record would have ended once and for all the dispute between U.S. and Russian officials over the meaning of the preamble discussion on missile defense.

Likewise, Senator Kerry could have resolved many concerns with the treaty by allowing for the drafting of a truly bipartisan resolution of ratification that would have addressed the many concerns raised about verification and the impact on conventional weapons.

There are few issues that require greater scrutiny, serious discussion, informed analysis, and non-partisan debate than the role of nuclear weapons in national security. The Administration and the leadership of the Senate couldn’t have been more cavalier in their treatment of the treaty.

Rubber stamps are for paperwork—not treaties that impact on the sovereignty, security, and safety of all Americans.

Kerry and other treaty cheerleaders are only throwing gasoline on the fire when they accuse others of playing politics with New Start.

[Our second guest post on this topic comes from Peter Huessy of GeoStrategic Analysis.]

The START treaty neither guarantees nor undermines our nuclear deterrent. That will be largely determined by the extent to which we as a nation commit ourselves to maintaining our deterrent. Maintaining our deterrent may mean very different things to many people, but we should be clear what it does and does not mean. First, it does mean being realistic that, as General Kevin Chilton, the Commander of the US Strategic Command warned this morning, the nuclear deterrent of the US is the bedrock of our defense. Second, it means supporting the people that maintain our nuclear enterprise, rather than appearing to treat them somehow as corporate or government welfare recipients. Third, it means addressing the vexing issue of how, without testing nuclear weapons, our military and civilian leaders can guarantee to the US President that our deterrent is credible, even though they must caveat such a response more and more each year. Fourth, it means being explicit about what future we have in mind for our triad of nuclear deterrent platforms upon which rests our deterrent. And again as General Chilton explained September 13th at a luncheon I hosted, to sustain the Minuteman missile force requires the US to begin the process of research and development this year to have in place a system in 2025 that would be the Minuteman force of the future. Fifth, it also means being explicit about the requirements of our future bomber and SLBM force, and recognizing that such a force probably cannot be modernized simultaneously. Thus future plans should be coordinated and carefully sequenced.

In the context of the debate over New Start, the proposals to go to Global Zero are simply not serious or relevant--they are deflecting our attention from real problems with our nuclear enterprise that have been neglected since the end of the Cold War. That neglect has been bipartisan in its nature. Even more problematic are the proposals to negotiate a follow-on START treaty beyond the one now before the Senate, reducing US nuclear weapons to 500-1000, including tactical nuclear weapons and those in reserve. That force level is fraught with danger and uncertainty. In addition, these proposals have been paired with proposed limits on US missile defenses. More broadly, the New Start Treaty is in a sense a house built on the foundation of our nuclear deterrent posture. That foundation consists of our nuclear weapons labs, force structure, command and control, and warning and surveillance capabilities. That foundation is not as strong as it should be, calling into question the soundness of our plans for arms reductions. That is the fundamental question. Is New Start built on a sound foundation, or instead guided by fanciful visions of Global Zero?

I used to teach nuclear strategy at Georgetown University, and before that I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the subject. After years of writing and teaching, I came to the conclusion that policymakers greatly over-estimate the durability of nuclear deterrence. I don't want to sound like a radical deconstructionist, but the evidence is pretty strong that our adversaries frequently misconstrue U.S. intentions and fail to notice cues that we send. In addition, accidents happen. With the number of nuclear actors gradually increasing, it is probably just a matter of time before nuclear weapons are used somewhere by somebody (Washington being the most likely target).

You'd think that the political system would exhibit some greater sense of urgency about reducing nuclear dangers, but instead -- as in the case on New START -- the treaty ratification process tends to be impeded by partisan posturing. I don't think that occurs because members of the two national parties have strong convictions about our nuclear posture. Just the opposite: most legislators give nuclear matters little thought, and simply assume that whatever happens use of nuclear weapons is very unlikely. The fact that any such assumption is unprovable doesn't phase them, because the weapons have gone unused for so long. It's sort of like the terrorist threat nine years after 9-11, except that nuclear dangers are far more serious.

There are important analytic objections to New START, beginning with the fact that most nuclear powers are not subject to its restrictions. But something like 90% of all the world's warheads are owned by the two signatories, and Russia is one of only two countries that pose a major nuclear threat to America. At the arsenal levels envisioned in the proposed treaty, there is little danger the United States would ever be vulnerable to a disarming first strike. But there is a much greater danger that by failing to preserve some strategic arms control regime, we will end up dismantling the framework of expectations and understandings that has minimized the likelihood of misunderstandings between the world's two leading nuclear powers.

Deterrence is a fragile basis for our security, but until some breakthrough occurs in active defenses, it is the best we can do. Politicians and policymakers need to exhibit more urgency about finding an alternative to relying on the good behavior of our adversaries, but that alternative does not exist today -- at least, not in the case of countries possessing as many strategic weapons as Russia does. Therefore, I hope New START is ratified, and I worry about the instabilities that could emerge if we let two generations of work on strategic arms control slip away simply because we are distracted by our domestic polical debates.

[From time to time, we invite guest comments from experts who are not in our regular stable of contributors but who are particularly knowledgeable or influential on the topic of the week. Below is a guest comment from John Isaacs of the Center for Arms Control & Nonproliferation.]

John Isaacs, Executive Director, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

This week, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry and Ranking Republican Richard Lugar are bringing the New START Treaty to a vote in committee. It is time to move to the treaty to the end game.

Senators like nothing better than avoiding a potentially difficult vote. A careful vote count indicates that 36 of 41 Republican Senators have yet to declare a position on the treaty. This situation is much better than that faced the health care bill, financial reform or the recently-proposed $50 million infrastructure program, where Republicans were overwhelmingly opposed from the beginning.

Kerry and Lugar are correct to move to a vote, and then work for a unanimous consent agreement for a floor vote. Most of the GOP Senators’ questions about the treaty relate to issues not within the four corners of the treaty: the pace of U.S. nuclear modernization and our commitment to missile defense, to name two. These are issues that can be dealt with through the resolution of ratification and White House negotiations with key Republicans. Even Arizona Senator Jon Kyl has called the treaty “benign.”

The treaty clearly enhances U.S. national security. It is overwhelmingly supported by our military leadership and past high ranking national security officials of both parties, including Republicans such as James Schlesinger, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and Colin Powell. Only when the treaty enters into effect, the U.S. can resume onsite inspection of Russian nuclear weapons and facilities – suspended about 280 days ago.

When will the Senate floor vote be scheduled in the next few weeks or in a lame duck session? As usual, that depends on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell coming to a unanimous consent agreement. Difficult path ahead? Sure. But so many recognize the value of the treaty and the danger of defeating the it or letting it vegetate. Which is why former Defense Secretary Schlesinger said: “I think that it is obligatory for the United States to ratify [New START].”

Assuming the Senate Democratic leadership and the Obama Administration are willing to play ball, it’s doubtful that opponents of the New START agreement will block passage of the treaty. On the other hand, the prospects of New START leading to other arms control agreements any time soon are slim to grim.

Yes, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry ruffled Senate procedural feathers by trying to report the New START agreement out of his committee before receiving the traditional letter from Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) passing on its findings on the treaty. But this letter won’t be coming soon: Despite summer recess and Secretary Clinton’s claim that passage New START is her top priority, the Administration has still not bothered to answer SASC’s questions for the record. This, the Senate’s urgent need to address tax issues, and Senator Kerry’s past difficulties in cutting a deal on the resolution of ratification with his critics on the Committee, make the prospects for Senate passage of New START before the bi-election recess in early October iffy at best.

Presumably, after the election, passage should be easier. Even this, though, made be difficult to pull off in a lame duck session, which could be mercifully short. That could force the Senate to have to take up the treaty early next year, as Majority Leader Reid predicted earlier this summer. In any case, at some point, the required deals on missiles defenses and offenses, nuclear modernization, and the precise authority of the Standing Consultative Commission, etc. will be cut along with the language of any treaty declarations, understandings or reservations.

Far less clear, however, is what, if anything, ratification of New START might lead to. Some in the Obama Administration have suggested that Washington should immediately engage Moscow on talks to limit Russia’s shorter range nuclear systems, which number in the thousands. American negotiating leverage here, however, is lacking: Short of giving up massive numbers of surplus non-deployed U.S. nuclear weapons, making drastic cuts in NATO conventional defenses, or curbing America’s missile defense efforts significantly (all of which would be politically perilous) such talks are unlikely to lead anywhere fast.

As for getting the U.S. Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Obama Administration will almost certainly try by resubmitting the treaty sometime in 2011. The question, though, is whether or not this move will constitute anything more than a political maneuver to brand Republican opponents as reactionary hawks and Democratic supporters as peace-loving progressives in the lead up to the presidential elections in 2012. Certainly, if it even smacks of anything like this, don’t expect an early vote.

What’s possibly more worrisome, though, is how substantively pyrrhic any victory here might be. Even if the Obama Administration succeeds in convincing 67 Senators to ratify the CTBT, little would change with its passage. The U.S. and other major, declared nuclear weapons states would continue to eschew nuclear testing as they have for nearly 20 years. But others -- e.g., North Korea, India, Pakistan, and Iran -- might yet test, and the CTBT, which requires the ratification of all these states plus Egypt and many more, would still be unlikely to ever come into force.

All of this suggests why both the Obama Administration and its critics would do well to think through what more useful forms of arms and nuclear restraints our government ought to consider in addition to or other than the ones it is pursuing. Earlier this year, The Council on Foreign Relations asked my center to sketch a general outline of such alternatives. Instead of prioritizing the reduction of nuclear threats between the U.S. and Russia, which have declined significantly, the study focused on emerging strategic threats. One such peril, which I subsequently detailed elsewhere, is the growing number of Chinese ground-based, long-range nonnuclear missiles aimed at against U.S. Pacific forces and America’s Asian allies. A possible approach to this problem would be to develop a dual-track approach similar to that successfully pursued by Presidents Carter and Reagan in Europe during the late l970s and l980s with intermediate-range, ground-launched, nuclear-capable missiles.

Another budding security headache is the prospect of China and Russia being able to knock out U.S. and allied military space missions with anti-satellite systems and maneuvering satellites that they are now developing. Here, it might be useful to negotiate space keep out zones – a practical kind of rules of road for space.

Finally, another future nuclear threat that the U.S. and other key states are underestimating is how the spread of civilian nuclear programs to 10 to 30 more states before 2030 may help catalyze nuclear weapons proliferation. A key problem in this regard is that as more nuclear supplier states compete to corner nuclear power markets in dangerous areas, such as the Middle East, the first casualty is any semblance of restraint. One suggestion my center has briefed members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee would be to leverage the interest of a growing number of nuclear supplier states in expanding their civilian nuclear business in the U.S. (which is by far the largest nuclear market) to get them to agree to back far tougher international nonproliferation conditions similar to those the U.S. got in the nuclear cooperative agreement it reached last year with the United Arab Emirates.

These, of course, are only suggestions. The key point is that there currently is a target-rich environment for arms and nuclear restraint innovation. There also are increasingly clear political incentives to develop such new ideas. For Democrats, if Obama gets reelected, the prospect of politicking his current, limited (and likely failing) arms control agenda for six more years ought to be a worry. Also, at some point, Republicans, who covet the White House and are currently critiquing Obama’s arms control agenda, will want to offer a sounder set of ideas of their own. For very partisan reasons, then, there is room for both sides to conduct a review. Given what is otherwise likely after the New START agreement is finally approved, we can only hope this begins soon.