Disarmament Diplomacy

Documents & Sources

Rumsfeld Visit to Moscow

Remarks by President Putin

'Remarks by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin, August 13, 2001,' US Department of Defense transcript.

"I am pleased to note that the arrangement we made with Mr. Bush in Ljubljana and Genoa is being implemented, and our dialogue has reached quite a high level. ... And, of course, one of the most important areas of our interaction are the issues of security and defense. I would like to thank you for the warm reception recently accorded to the Russian delegation led by the deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, Mr. Baluevsky. We very much hope that the high level of the dialogue achieved recently will lead us to an agreement in the field of offensive weapons and defensive systems. You know what our attitude is to the ABM Treaty of 1972. And to us it is undoubtedly linked to START II and START I treaties and I would like to stress this. So we would like to get the military and technical parameters of the proposals being prepared and formulated today in your agency. Finally, regarding offensive weapons. We agreed with President Bush in Geneva to consider the issue of possible reductions of offensive weapons, and I confirm this agreement. And in this context, it's very important for us to receive answers to several questions: thresholds of reductions, the timeframe of reductions, verification and confidence measures and transparency measures."

Rumsfeld-Ivanov Press Conference

Press briefing by US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, Moscow, August 13.

"Minister Ivanov: '... We did discuss many of the issues related to cooperation in the area of strategic stability. I do have to say, however, that the existing multi-layered system of strategic security which exists today in the world fully meets the needs of Russia today, and we feel no compunction to leave one or any other treaty or accord which we currently have signed. We listened very intently and we hear very well the kinds of arguments and conclusions that the US side is setting forth on a number of different accords, among which is the ABM Treaty. And our two presidents have agreed that we will absolutely pursue our discussions with the very tightest of linkage between offensive and defensive systems in discussing strategic stability issues. Discussions of this particular issue are now being held in a conceptual way. Now, we are discussing all this very conceptually, but prior to setting on a course of detailed negotiations, what both sides really have to understand very clearly are the parameters for these negotiations, namely the thresholds and limits both in offensive and defensive systems that will be discussed prior to getting down to actually beginning negotiations. ... [T]he two sides are much closer today to understanding that any system of strategic stability, whatever it might look like, will require ways of controlling it and providing verification.'

Question: 'Mr. Secretary, the Minister just made it very clear that Russia has no intention of abandoning treaties such as the ABM Treaty, but the United States still intends to proceed with research and deployment of missile defense even if it breaks that treaty.'

Secretary Rumsfeld: 'We had...missile defense in that treaty as one part of a much broader relationship. We agreed that it is perfectly appropriate to discuss offensive and defensive capabilities together. And, of course, as we've indicated, the ABM Treaty inhibits the kinds of research and development and testing that the United States is engaged in and finds constraining, and as a result we will continue to discuss with them ways that we can move beyond the ABM Treaty so that the kinds of defenses against ballistic missiles, which the President feels are desirable and necessary in this world of extensive proliferation, can go forward.'

Question: 'President Putin today mentioned...that on the Russian side we'd like to hear from the US more details about the threshold and limits of offensive systems, about the time it would take to come up with some answers, about confidence-building measures, about the need for verification and the like. Can the US side tell us when approximately it will be prepared to come forward to answers to these kinds of parameters? And then what will the Russian side do, and how long will it take them to come back with some of their parameters?'

Minister Ivanov: '... We used to live in a system of the so-called MAD... What we need now is a controllable restraint, a system of controllable restraints. So what we need are a series of limits. ... What we're trying to do is create a change, you know a whole, completely new configuration. But if you reduce nuclear confrontation and you start reducing nuclear warheads, you will need verification, and verification becomes that much more important. However, beyond that, we now have to also look at how we limit offensive systems and how we link it very carefully to defensive systems. And this becomes a very, very complicated algorithm. To do that then in just a couple of months, I don't see any possible way that we can take something that complicated and do it only in a couple of months. We need to talk about it, and as you can see, we are talking about it. We're talking very energetically, very actively about it. ... But, yes, we do need criteria. We do need thresholds. We await as soon as possible from the United States some answers of what these criteria and thresholds should be for the United States, and we anticipate giving our response back as well. ...'

Question: 'Mr. Secretary, the Minister has said that these are consultations that will lead to negotiations in the future on linking defensive and offensive weapons, but I was wondering, is the United States even prepared to enter into negotiations, detailed negotiations, that would link defensive and offensive weapons and control and retrain them?'

Secretary Rumsfeld: 'Let me respond to two or three things that have come up. One, the United States, as we've indicated, is in the process of a nuclear posture review. We had, in fact, begun the process of reducing some offensive nuclear weapons with the announcement with respect to the Peacekeeper missile and some Trident submarines, and it is expected that the nuclear posture review will be completed - and has to be completed - by the end of the year. I have every reason to believe it will be completed sometime before that, and I would assume in late September or sometime in October. With respect to the Minister's comment about verification and monitoring, we agree completely that transparency is highly desirable, and we have had over the decades a number of arrangements with the old Soviet Union that involve monitoring and verification, and we quite agree that it's desirable going forward. ... With respect to how these discussions or consultations will evolve, I think that's another question. And my impression is that they're moving along well and that we'll just take them step by step. ...'"

Source: Transcript - Rumsfeld, Ivanov Hold Intensive Talks August 13, Washington File, August 14.

Rumsfeld Press Conference

'Secretary Rumsfeld media availability with Russian Journalists, Moscow, August 13, 2001', US Department of Defense transcript.

"Question: ' ...[C]ould you say what specific proposals you brought to Russia for the Russian side, and what response are you expecting? The reason why I'm asking this question is that after the last two consultations, the Russian side says that they never really learned...what the US does not like about the ABM Treaty.'

Secretary Rumsfeld: '... [T]o answer your question directly - "What is it that we don't like about the ABM Treaty?" It's quite simple. The ABM Treaty is designed to limit the ability of the United States and Russia to have ballistic missile defense capabilities, except in one location. Russia has decided that they'd like to have ballistic missile defense around Moscow, and they do. The United States has decided almost 30 years later that the world has changed dramatically and that what we need to do is to develop the capability to defend against ballistic missiles not just with respect to the United States, but also with respect to our friends and allies and deployed forces. ... It is a different world in the 21^st century, and an awful lot of people in government, in the press, who spent their lives living 50 years of the Cold War are having a terribly difficult time getting over it. We've got a whole set of agreements, have a mindset, a set of words and phrases that we've lived with for 50 years, and they keep being mouthed over and over and over, notwithstanding the fact that the world has gone on. ... [T]he world divides pretty neatly into countries that are doing well and countries that aren't doing well, and if you look down from Mars on this globe, you'll see that the countries that have relatively free political systems and relatively free economic systems and behave in a way that's rational with respect to their neighbors and don't try to impose their will on their neighbors, and have a reasonable degree of transparency and a reasonable degree of certainty with respect to a return on investment, those are the nations that are doing well, and they're the nations where people want to invest and where there's growth and there's opportunity and civility. And it seems to me that, when you think of the relationships between countries like that, you find that they don't worry about attacking each other, they don't worry about nuclear exchanges with each other, they don't have treaties with each other trying to control behavior so that it's not hostile. I mean, we don't have treaties with Mexico that keep each other from bombing each other or attacking each other, and they're our neighbors. Or with Canada. Or with England. ...'

Question: '... Your explanation is very moral and very interesting, but maybe politics change much more quickly and some day you can be afraid of a new Russia. ...'

Secretary Rumsfeld: '...You're right. One of the problems I'm having, as I've been referring to our offensive nuclear weapons, is [that] you have to look at them from the...standpoint of mid- to longer-term and what kinds of arrangements among other countries might occur. Countries that were more friendly may be somewhat less friendly, or countries may be combined in a way that makes [matters] more complex... The other problem you have is weapons can become unsafe and unreliable, as we know - classes of weapons. And both Russia and the United States is faced with that problem. Particularly in the United States we don't have people who make weapons these days really. They're mostly retired, and we're many years away from being capable of actually producing nuclear weapons if we were told today that a category of our weapons were unreliable and unsafe. So that's a problem in terms of reconstitution... I personally think that your country has moved well down the road over the last 10 years. It's not for me to say how it should move or when it should move or what its steps should be. That's for Russia. But the argument that it is in so much in the interests of the United States of America that Russia turn to the West and have freer systems and do better for their people and create more jobs and more opportunity and a more energetic economic situation, that's in our interest just as it's, in my view, in the interests of the Russian people.'

Question: 'Maybe not in the interests of the nuclear lobby in Russia.'

Secretary Rumsfeld: 'That may be. And those decisions are going to be decided here. All we can do in the United States is say, "Look, we can reduce our nuclear weapons." We're going to. We've started. ... President Bush has announced that he wants to reduce our offensive forces to the lowest possible number. We're going to do. We're going to do it regardless of what Russia does.' ...

Question: 'So what is your position? Is it necessary to change the ABM Treaty? Or is it necessary to forget about it? If it's necessary to change it, what would you like to change in it? If it's necessary to forget about it, what are you going to do with the documents which are based on this treaty?'

Secretary Rumsfeld: 'Well, it's awfully hard to...test and develop and deploy a limited ballistic missile system while the ABM Treaty is in force. Its purpose was to prevent testing, developing, and deploying a ballistic missile defense. ... [I]t seems to me that anyone who suggests that the ABM Treaty has a value today I think misunderstands the situation. It just doesn't. ...'

Question: 'Mr. Rumsfeld, do you consider your trip rather as a bargaining trip or a negotiating process, or just an explanation mission just to explain to Russians what is your vision about the ABM Treaty future and so on and so forth?'

Secretary Rumsfeld: 'I must say I'm a simple soul, and I look at it as two countries that have gone from a relationship that was hostile to a relationship that isn't. And we need to get rearranged. We need to get rearranged in many respects: politically, economically, and from a security standpoint. And that treaty is among the least important pieces of that new relationship. It is one small element of the security portion of the relationship between the United States and Russia. ...'"

© 2001 The Acronym Institute.