Text Only | Disarmament Diplomacy | Disarmament Documentation | ACRONYM Reports

Disarmament Documentation

US-Russia Arms Control Discussions, Washington, January 15-16

US-Russia Press Conference, January 16
Pentagon Briefing, January 16

I. US-Russia Press Conference, January 16

Press Conference with General-Colonel Yuri Nikolayevich Baluyevskiy, First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation Armed Forces, and US Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Washington, January 16; General Baluyevskiy speaking through a translator.

Under Secretary Feith: General Baluyevskiy and I have just completed two days of discussions on developing the US-Russian relationship. The talks that we've had here have continued a process that has been going on for six or seven months, discussing the way to create a US-Russian relationship that is cooperative, that is friendly, that does not have any of the hostile features that characterized the US-Soviet relationship during the Cold War. Our intention is to create a new and cooperative relationship that allows us to build on the kind of work that we've done together since September 11th in the war on terrorism.

We discussed a number of issues. We discussed our work together in the war on terrorism. We discussed the issue of offensive nuclear forces and the reductions that the United States and Russia have already announced. And we discussed the Nuclear Posture Review that the United States has done, has recently completed and sent to the Congress. And we discussed missile defense. ...

[W]e've made a decision to create a number of working groups that are going to explore aspects of our relationship and work to develop arrangements that we can make, agreements that we might want to achieve

and record in documents that we can propose to our ministers, to Secretary Rumsfeld and Minister Ivanov.

The work that we are doing is laying the groundwork for meetings at the ministerial level, and then of course the work that is being done at the ministerial level here in the defense channel will be combined with the work that's being done in the Foreign Ministry channel and help prepare the way for the meetings between President Bush and President Putin in May.

General-Colonel Baluyevskiy: I'm not going to repeat the words of Mr. Feith. I'd like to only add that our meeting, today's meeting, is the continuation of our work, which we began in August last year. The feature of today's or of nowadays' meeting is that this meeting is held in new time, in the time after December 13th, when United States unilaterally announced its unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. And of course, after this statement, there are some new specific circumstances and a specific atmosphere in which we conduct our activity. But I'd like to stress it that neither Russian nor American service members...do not make a tragedy of this fact, and we are working very hard to looking for a mutual ground on which we can keep working in the future. However, we consider that their unilateral withdrawal from the treaty is a mistake on the side of the United States, and we consider that the United States hadn't [to] do this.

As to our practical work, we've already worked out some measures, following which we'll be able...to prepare a document which would be signed during the visit of President Bush to Moscow in May or June this year. Our approach is towards this document, as I believe, very simple and understandable. These are providing equal security to both sides. There is predictability and transparency of our nuclear policy of both our sides. There is a reduction of strategic offensive weapons in connection with strategic defensive weapons. There is legal obligations over both sides while conducting reductions of their forces. We've already...submitted our opinions to our American colleagues and are, in the future, we are going to rely on these principles while prepare the...fundamental documents of our activity. ...

Question: Colonel-General, this statement you're talking about - is this a statement of principle, or are you looking to actually say, for instance, what the new ceiling on offensive weapons will be, whether you have any interest...in cooperation with the United States on defensive technology? Will you deal with specifics of curbing the arms race or reducing...nuclear dangers, or is it another statement of good will, which we've heard before?

Baluyevskiy: [O]ne of the working groups is to...[be in] the field of military technical cooperation. ... With reference to ceiling over strategic weapons, they are already defined by our president. And the Russian Federation is happy with the specific number within the region of 1,700 to 2,200 warheads. ...

Question: It is not codified. Excuse me, to follow up. It is not codified. It's an expression of intention. The US warheads will be put four feet away from the missiles. It seems to be based on trust. Will this statement you're working on for May or June be an effort to codify, to make a formal agreement with specific numbers in it?

Baluyevskiy: I'd like to make it clear, you are talking about a statement - you are talking about a statement, but I am talking about a legally binding document.

Feith: I just want to say, General Baluyevskiy reviewed for you a number of the principles that he proposed. We discussed them. We find that a number of those principles conform with ideas that we have about developing. We are going to be having discussions to see where we can find agreement and develop arrangements for practical cooperation in these areas. When we talk about transparency and predictability, we're talking about building up the confidence of the United States and Russia that we know what the forces are that each side has and that we have a degree of confidence about what the plans are with regard to those force. ...

Baluyevskiy: I'd like to add, we are for transparency. We are for predictability. But also we are for irreversibility of the reduction of the nuclear forces.

Question: Can I follow up on that? You said irreversibility. Were you surprised, disappointed, or what was your reaction to the US nuclear posture proposal not to destroy the warheads, but rather to store them?

Baluyevskiy: Have you read this posture?

Questioner: We had a briefing on it, yes.

Baluyevskiy: That is the point of our further talks.

Question: Do you think it would be necessary for United States and Russia to sign some kind of new formal agreement concerning their mutual plans to cut back their strategic arsenals?

Feith: The approach that we're taking is we are looking for areas where we can cooperate and areas where we can agree. And we have the working group structure set up to explore that. There are going to be a number of working groups. We've begun to name the leaders of the working groups and start talking about schedules. We're going to approach this very practically. And if we can achieve agreement, then we will be pleased to record that agreement. We will decide on what the appropriate form for that is, depending on what it is we agree to. We're open to any kind of document that is appropriate for the subject matter that we can reach agreement on. ...

Question: General, is it Russia's intention to also keep the removed warheads in ready reserve, or is it your preference to destroy them? And if it is your preference to destroy them, will you nevertheless keep them in reserve if the United States does the same thing?

Baluyevskiy: We are following the principle that...the whole nuclear weapons should be destroyed. But we clearly understand that it's not a matter of a day or a matter of a year, or a matter even of decades. So our principle...[is] that the warheads dismounted...from the carriers should be destroyed and eliminated. ...

Source: US Department of Defense transcript, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2002/t01162002_t0116fba.html.

Note: in an interview with the Interfax news agency in Russia on January 21, General-Colonel Baluyevskiy gave more details of the US-Russia Working Groups mentioned above. There are to be three Working Groups, on Strategic Arms Reduction and Missile Defence, Military and Technical Cooperation, and Anti-Terrorism. All three groups will be directed on the Russian side by General-Colonel Baluyevskiy, and on the US side by Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith. Baluyevskiy also told Interfax that he used the January 15-16 talks to set out six principles Russia would apply as the basis of discussions on nuclear reductions: 1) equal security; 2) transparency; 3) interdependence between strategic offensive and defensive weapons reductions; 4) irreversibility of offensive reductions; 5) control over the reduction process; and 6) cooperation in decision-making and adequate funding for the elimination of reduced offensive weapons. Baluyevskiy added: “The basic disagreement about the process of reducing strategic offensive weapons is that the US intends to keep the nuclear weapons that are removed from delivery means in storage, and not to eliminate them. Attempts are being made to change the process of radical reduction to a simple lowering of nuclear weapons readiness. I think that neither we nor the world public will understand such cuts.” (See US-Russia: Working Groups to be Created, Global Security Newswire, January 22, .

II. Pentagon Briefing, January 16

US Defense Department special briefing on the visit by First Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff General-Colonel Yuriy Nikolayevich Baluyevskiy, Washington, January 16.

Question: Your reference [in your press conference with General-Colonel Baluyevskiy] to transparency and all that there sounds like provisions of START I. So...is it likely that you might just take those provisions and duplicate them in some form to cover new arrangements? ...

Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith: The ideas about predictability and transparency are going to draw on established arrangements like START I, as you suggested. But we're not confining ourselves to START I. ... [T]here's a willingness to look at everything afresh, and there are ideas, I think, that we're going to be developing, that don't exist in any previous arrangements, any previous arms control agreements. We are not thinking of what we're doing as an exercise in arms control. We're - we think of the Cold War-style arms control as related, as institutionalizing the kind of hostile relationship that the United States and the Soviet Union had in the Cold War. And we're not looking to get echoes of that, and we're not looking to recreate arms control-style negotiations or agreements. We do think that there are useful things that we can do so that the possibilities of misunderstanding about each other's force structures are reduced, and that's what we are driving at when we talk about transparency and predictability.

Question: Does that mean, then, that the agreements you're talking about...[are] closer to being joint communiqués rather than legally binding documents? And would one of those agreements deal with actual numbers of operationally deployed offensive weapons, the size of the responsive force, very specific things like that?

Feith: We had discussions about what kind of form an agreement might take, and there's a long list of forms that agreements that the United States has entered into with other countries has taken, from the most formal, like treaties, down through executive agreements and memoranda of understanding and joint communiqués and joint statements and the like. Our view is, we are interested in exploring what it is we can agree on that would be useful, that would contribute to the interests of both countries. Once we decide what it is that we've agreed on, we will pick the appropriate forum for it. We're completely open-minded on the subject, and we're not ruling anything in, we're not ruling anything out. We're taking a very pragmatic approach. ...

Question: Can we say that you and Mr. Baluyevskiy agreed to disagree on this issue of American plans not to destroy but to stockpile some portion of American strategic nuclear warheads?

Feith: No, I wouldn't say that. We didn't get to the point of even agreeing to disagree. What we did was we laid out a concept of how we could work and set up a structure for exploring areas of cooperation and agreement in a number of fields.

Question: Would one of these working groups be working on this issue?

Feith: The issue of offensive nuclear force reductions? ... What I was referring to before on promoting transparency and predictability would relate to the offensive nuclear force reductions.

Question: Does this mean that a bilateral nuclear arms reduction agreement is on the table? Is this something you're considering or would consider?

Feith: As I said, we would consider an agreement that would deal with the subject of the offensive force reductions from the point of view of making sure that we understand each other's force structure and our plans for our force structure. And if we can come up with measures that will promote that understanding, reduce the dangers of misunderstanding or miscalculation about that, we'd be willing to consider an agreement on that.

Question: The areas in which we don't agree, these issues seem to be very important for the Russians. How will you keep those from getting in the way of the relationship?

Feith: We have been building a relationship with the Russians on a very practical basis. We have a number of areas where we are working together. Clearly, the...attack on September 11th has accelerated the process of Americans and Russians working together to deal with threats that face both countries. And what we have been cultivating with the Russians is a new way of looking at international strategic stability. ... We are not hostile. And the threats that we face are not primarily each other - I mean, arguably, they're not each other at all. The threats that we face are threats from terrorist organizations or from third parties that - some of them are actual, like the terrorist threat that we're dealing with right now, and some of them are potential and will depend on how the world develops. What we are looking to do with the Russians is develop a view of security that allows us to work together to deal with threats that face both of us and not be thinking of each other as the enemy. And it's a process. The - there is an enormous investment that people have made over decades in Cold War thinking. And there is, as you all know, a 'priesthood' that has focused on arms control notions and strategic stability concepts during the Cold War. And it is very hard for people who have invested decades of intellectual energy and, for that matter, emotional energy, in these kinds of strategic concepts, to abandon them and think about these issues in a new way. But the world has changed, and the old way of thinking about strategic stability is just not applicable anymore. And if there was much of a debate of - about that six or seven months ago, there shouldn't be much now, since September 11th. And yet we find in the United States and in Russia there's a certain amount of 'old' thinking that needs to be either addressed or navigated around in order to create the kind of cooperative new relationship that I think many people on the Russian side and on the American side want to achieve.

Question: What's the status of START II now? And also, could you give some examples of the kinds of measures that you're thinking of that could lead to predictability and transparency?

Feith: Well, why don't I let Dr. Crouch address those?

Assistant Secretary of Defense J.D. Crouch: Well, as you know, START II is not in force. And I think that...that's a position that's recognized on both the American side and the Russian side. And our Nuclear Posture Review was conducted in the context of START II not being in force, and the nuclear levels to which we are going to be reducing go far below the levels that would have been required under START II. So in that context, I mean, I think we have sort of moved beyond START II, is probably the best way to [describe the situation] - setting it aside and [we] have moved beyond it. In terms of transparency and predictability, we start with the foundation of the START I verification regime, and we're going to try to build on that in a series of additional arrangements and agreements, things that could include more detailed exchanges of information, visits to particular sites, additional kinds of inspections, additional kinds of activities at sites that would be able to give more confidence, and particularly that are more applicable to the approach of verifying reductions of operationally deployed systems. We're now - we are now, you know, looking at sort of a truth-in-advertising approach here, which is that the number of weapons we're trying to verify, if you will, are the exact numbers of weapons that will be on these systems. Now we're not going to be able to do that within - in extremely specific ways. But I think that we're going to be able to provide confidence to the Russians - and they will be able to provide confidence to us - that our forces are in this range of 1,700 to 2,200 operationally deployed systems. We envision regularized data exchanges. We envision cooperative - what we call in the business 'cooperative measures,' things that we might be able to do that they could observe with their national technical means and things they could do that we could observe with our national technical means - so essentially expanding the range of these activities in a way where both sides can have greater confidence as we move forward. But you know, the key distinction here, from our standpoint, is that we don't see this as verifying limits of an arms control treaty. What we're trying to do here is develop a more cooperative relationship, where we on a regular basis are exchanging information on these things in the way that we exchange information with other friends and allies.

Question: Would the predictability part of it include measures or agreements on a schedule for reducing nuclear weapons?

Feith: We - yes, we would intend to have a general understanding - we've begun the process by developing the Nuclear Posture Review, and we briefed the Russians on it. We would expect to have a general understanding of where we're going to be going with our force posture and making sure that the Russians understand it. But the key point is - and it's - it can't be emphasized enough - the premise of this exercise is different from the premise of arms control exercises in the Cold War. The premise of this exercise is not that we have to balance our forces or categories of our forces against corresponding categories of forces on the Russian side. That's not what we're doing. It's - we do not believe that our security hinges on having these numbers balanced against those numbers of this type of system or their type of system. That's just not the concept. If we are not enemies and if we are not threatening each other and - even better - if we are cooperating, then we are moving toward a situation where we do not view their forces as a threat to us. There are other countries in the world that have substantial military forces, and nobody dreams of saying that the United States should be balancing our forces against those of Country A, Country B, or Country C. And our hope is that we can create a normal relationship with Russia, the kind of relationship that we have with countries all around the world, where they have conventional and in some cases nuclear capabilities, but we have the kind of quality of relationship with them that we don't think that our security requires us to balance our forces against theirs. That's the goal. And that's why, when we talk about measures of predictability or cooperation or transparency with the Russians, we're doing it based on this new concept, not based on the old balance-of-nuclear-terror ideas from the Cold War.

Question: It seems, though, that you might be...alone in that. From what we heard from the Russian General...they do want those nuclear weapons to be permanently eliminated, and they do seem to want the precepts of the NPR codified somehow in something that's legally binding. So what's keeping you from doing that, if this is what they want and you have such a cooperative relationship?

Feith: I'm glad you used the term 'permanently eliminated,' because there is a big misunderstanding about this point. There were arms control agreements during the Cold War that were praised enthusiastically for having reduced nuclear arms. SALT I, START I, the INF - well, the INF treaty is, I guess, is another example where none of those agreements required the destruction of warheads. And there's been a lot of talk that what we're proposing in reducing operationally deployed weapons is somehow not as thorough-going a reduction as what was accomplished by arms control agreements in past decades. It's not so. And I think it is important that people be straight on this. People are now focused on a new issue, and they're criticizing the reductions that we're talking about even though that same criticism could have been leveled against various people's favorite arms control agreements in the past. We are doing something significant in reducing operationally deployed warheads - operationally deployed systems. And this issue about permanent reduction is, I think, a red herring.

Question: But that's what he said he wanted. I mean - "We are following the principle that all nuclear weapons should be destroyed" is a direct quote from what he said. So if you have this new cooperative relationship, why not give them what they want?

Feith: We have discussions with the Russians on a range of issues. There are some things that they're interested in, and principles that they want to promulgate, and there are other things that we're interested in and principles that we want to promulgate, and some of the things we disagree with and some of the things we agree with. And we're going to be trying to develop a clearer understanding of the things that we agree on and move forward from there. ...

Source: US Department of Defense transcript, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2002/t01162002_t0116fcb.html.