Brigadier General Adams: Senate Must OK U.S.-Russia Pact on nuclear arms

By John Adams
Arizona Republic
Sept. 6, 2010

The case for U.S. Senate ratification of the New START Treaty is straightforward:

It makes us safer.

And for precisely that reason, Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared it has "the unanimous support of the U.S. military." New START would put a cap on Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal, re-establish and strengthen the verification regime that allows U.S. inspectors to keep tabs on Russia's weapons. It would also enhance cooperation to prevent nuclear terrorism and strengthen our national security.

Senior Republican and Democratic officials from the last seven administrations have testified in favor of New START. Seven former commanders of the U.S. Strategic Command urged the Senate to ratify it. Thirty high-level national-security experts - including Bush and Reagan officials like Colin Powell and Frank Carlucci - signed an open letter in support.

In short, there is an overwhelming consensus among the military and national security establishment in support of the treaty. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona has raised a number of questions about the treaty, and over the course of 21 Senate hearings and briefings over the last five months, those questions have been addressed.

His primary concern appears not to be with the treaty, which he called "benign," but rather with the separate question of whether there is enough funding to maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal in the years ahead. He claims there may be cost overruns in future years for some projects and has threatened to hold up a vote on the treaty unless he is satisfied.

On the substance, Sen. Kyl's call for even more funding runs counter to the thinking of our military leadership and those in charge of our nuclear weapons. The U.S. secretary of Defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, STRATCOM commander and NNSA director have all said the administration's proposed $80 billion plan for modernization of the nuclear-weapons infrastructure over the next decade - a significant, 10 percent increase over current levels - is more than adequate. Substance notwithstanding, the treaty should not be held hostage over this unrelated matter.

I'll tell you why. Rejection or delay of this treaty carries serious consequences. By the time the Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes in mid-September on whether to send it to the floor for ratification, it will have been more than 280 days since U.S. on-site monitoring of Russia's nuclear weapons and facilities was suspended.

Ratification of New START allows those vital verification measures to resume, whereas failure to ratify prolongs the gap in monitoring and the associated risk, a prospect the Pentagon has called "costly and destabilizing." Sen. Kyl recently acknowledged that he was unaware that inspections of Russian weapons had been suspended since last December when the original START expired. Side issues should not hold this treaty hostage, to the detriment of our national security.


Given the overwhelming bipartisan support for the treaty and the serious implications of failing to renew monitoring of the Russian arsenal, the Senate should heed the advice of those experts who command our nuclear weapons and maintain our arsenal - and promptly approve New START.

Brigadier General John Adams served as deputy United States military representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium, the highest military authority of NATO. He retired in 2007 after a 31-year career and now lives with his wife in Tucson.
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