BASIC NOTES

17 March 1997

An Agenda for START III

Agreement on a framework for START III should be a high priority for the Clinton-Yeltsin summit scheduled for 20-21 March. Properly worked out, such an agreement could:

• Facilitate Russian ratification of START II;
• Reduce Russian concerns about NATO expansion;
• Further shrink nuclear arsenals while ensuring the irreversibility of earlier reductions;
• Bring the nuclear-weapon states into compliance with their obligations in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament agreed at the 1995 NPT Conference.
• Increase confidence in the control of Russia's nuclear arsenal and fissile material

To achieve these goals, START III should:

• Incorporate immediate steps for taking weapons off alert and removing warheads from delivery vehicles;
• Set a level of 1,000 total warheads each - strategic and nonstrategic - for Russia and the United States;
• Include all five declared nuclear-weapon states, with China, France, and the United Kingdom participating as observers and pledging not to increase their arsenals;
• Allow each side to choose its own distribution of warheads on platforms, while maintaining the elimination of land-based multi-warhead missiles achieved in START II;
• Include verified destruction of warheads and monitoring of fissile materials. A warhead would not be counted as destroyed until its issile material was under international monitoring;
• Require verified elimination of reserve warheads the Russian and the United States have set aside as a "hedge" and of weapons already "destroyed" under START I and II.

In its ratification of START II, the Senate called on the President "to seek further strategic offensive arms reductions" and called on "other nuclear weapon states to give careful and early consideration to corresponding reductions of their own nuclear arsenals." START III provides the opportunity to pursue those goals.

A framework for START II was agreed in 1992, before START I was ratified by the United States or Russia.

The announcement of an agreed START III framework would substantially improve the atmosphere and potential for progress at the April NPT Preparatory Committee meeting, the first under the strengthened review process agreed at the 1995 NPT Conference.

Related documents are available from BASIC, including "No Nukes? Not Yet", by Ashton Carter and John M. Deutch, Wall Street Journal, 4 March 1997, and Next START by CART:  Breaking the Disarmament Deadlock by Oliver Meier and Otfried Nassauer, Berlin Information-center for Transatlantic Security, February 1997.

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