A glimmer of hope for mankind- START II

Today is an important date in the history of mankind provided Russia’s Duma ratifies the START II treaty as it was done by the United States’ Senate on November 24 2010. The treaty, if ratified can be considered as a feather in the cap of U.S. President Mr. Barak Obama who has been putting in all out efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons and to make the world a nuclear free world. Of course, even Mr. Obama has admitted that it is only a distant dream and may not be achieved even after successive lifetime. Nuclear weapons have become the greatest threat for man’s survival. By chance one of the nations which is in possession of this monster of a weapon uses it against it’s enemy in a war, that will be the beginning of the end of mankind.

One cannot forget what President Truman who had a different vision of the world when the Atom Bomb was dropped over Hiroshima. He said that “We have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces” He further added that “it was made possible only because the United States had the large number of scientists of distinction in the many needed areas of knowledge. It had the tremendous industrial and financial resources necessary for the project…. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world.” But within a short span of time, he was proved to be wrong because in 1949 Russia tested it’s nuclear devise and in the years following Britain and France and later China joined the nuclear club.

Truman’s view of the power of nuclear weapons and the hegemony the United States of America could achieve in the global arena was short lived because of the stock piling of nuclear weapons by the above countries and hence in September 1961, John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States warned the world in his address to the United Nations that “ a nuclear sword of Damocles is hanging over everyone by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness”. and hence he declared that “ the weapons of mass destruction should be abolished before they abolish the humanity” and suggested a steady reduction in force, both nuclear and conventional,” until it has abolished all armies and all weapons except those needed for internal order He initiated the negotiation process with the Soviet Union. The actual negotiations commenced in Helsinki, Finland, in 1969. It continued till 1972 and on May 26, 1972 in Moscow Richard Nixon and Leonid Breznev signed the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Interim Agreement between The United States of America and The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Certain Measures With Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. Which is also called as SALT I. Thereafter negotiations continued between U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev from 1977 to 1979 and resulted in an agreement called SALT II. . It was a continuation of the progress made during the SALT I talks. SALT II was the first nuclear arms treaty which assumed real reductions in strategic forces to curtail manufacture of strategic nuclear weapons. Although SALT II resulted in an agreement, the United States chose not to ratify the treaty in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which took place later that year. Even the United States also exceeded the limits set by SALT II when a US B – 52 Bomber equipped with cruise missiles which fly at low altitudes entered active service. Further Ronald Reagan proposed what is called Strategic Defense Initiative ( a space based missile Defense system) as an alternative to Mutual Assured Destruction or MAD. These were all in violation of the terms of SALT II Treaty. The US eventually withdrew from SALT II in 1986. President Reagan, who was then the President of the United States of America was of the view that the Soviet Union had violated its “political commitments” to observe SALT II treaty. Compliance became a contentious issue. However, he said that he would not undercut the SALT agreements so long Soviet Union showed restraint and added that “ in the future, the United States must base decisions regarding its strategic force structure on the nature and magnitude of the threat posed by Soviet strategic forces and not on standards contained in the SALT structure”.

However when Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union, the relations between U.S. and Soviet Union improved and in 1987, President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, another major step in arms control.

After the INF Treaty, both United States and Soviet Union continued to try to work out a strategic arms reduction treaty that would cut the number of long-range missiles by 50 percent. By that time the superpowers each had nuclear arsenals that could destroy the other many times over, and a 50 percent reduction would still leave nuclear deterrence well intact. This led to START talks which Ronald Reagan himself had first called as SALT III. However the nomenclature was changed to START After five years of negotiations on 31 July 1991, Presidents Bush and Gorbachev signed the “Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms” (START I), which called for the United States and the Soviet Union to reduce their strategic nuclear forces over seven years to 1,600 SNDVs ( Strategic Nuclear Delivery Vehicles) and 6,000 “accountable” warheads, of which no more than 4,900 may be on ballistic missiles. The intention was to reduce or cut in strategic warheads of 25 to 35 percent. Five months later, the Soviet Union was dissolved, leaving four independent states in possession of strategic nuclear weapons: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. On May 23, 1992, the United States and the four nuclear-capable successor states to the Soviet Union signed the “Lisbon Protocol,” which made all five nations party to the START I agreement. START I entered into force on December 5, 1994, when the five treaty parties exchanged instruments of ratification in Budapest. All treaty parties met the agreement’s December 5, 2001 implementation deadline. START I expired on December 5, 2009. In the meanwhile one more treaty called as SORT Treaty or Moscow treaty was entered into between the United States and Russia on 24th May 2002 when both parties agreed to limit their nuclear arsenals to 1700 to 2200 operationally deployed warheads each and it came into force in June 2003. It was a lose treaty in which both parties had an option to withdraw from the treaty. This treat would expire on 31 December 2012.
The present START II is a follow-up to the 1991 START I treaty and SORT Treaty. Prolonged talks were conducted by the US and Russian delegations in Geneva, and they announced on 26 March 2010 that they had reached an agreement. The new treaty was signed on 8 April 2010 in Prague by Obama and Dmitry Medvedev. As stated above American Senate has ratified it on 24 November 2010 This will limit the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, which is down nearly two-thirds from the original START Treaty, as well as 30 percent lower than the deployed strategic warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty. It will also limit the number of deployed and non-deployed inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers, submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments to 800. Also, it will limit the number of deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments to 700. These obligations must be met within seven years from the date the new treaty enters into force. The treaty will last ten years, with an option to renew it for up to five years upon agreement of both parties. The Treaty has been introduced today in the Russian Duma for reatification Once that is ratified, the treaty will enter into force on the date of the exchange of instruments of ratification.

The successful ratification will provide the U.S. with a strong argument while dealing with alleged rogue states in possession of nuclear weapons, such as Iran and North Korea. Thus the START treaty is perceived by many experts as the first step towards complete nuclear disarmament, not only for the U.S. and Russia, but for the world at large.

It is true that while a complete disarmament is impossible in the near future, every effort should be made to reduce the risk of the use of weapons of mass destruction .It is hoped that the mankind will have enough perseverance, faith and reason, to completely abandon this type of weapons or dramatically reduce their quantity. We have only to wait and see.