Recommendation 1. Meet New START early – New START provides that reductions will be implemented within seven years of entry into force (February 5, 2018). The sides could implement the reductions faster and might consider announcing, as parallel steps, that they will implement the reductions prior to the 2015 NPT review conference. In addition, the United States could take off of operational status all of the strategic nuclear weapons it would be reducing.
Recommendation 2. Make progress on nonstrategic weapons – The United States and Russia could lay the groundwork for reducing non-strategic nuclear weapons, thereby expediting the process for a future treaty. To make treaty negotiations easier, the United States and Russia could work towards a shared definition of non-strategic nuclear weapons. The United States should, of course, work closely with its allies on this issue. The United States and Russia could also increase transparency and work towards verification of non-strategic stockpiles and start discussions to better understand each other’s national security challenges and interests that have led to the nonstrategic stockpiles and postures that each retain. Steps include reciprocally disclosing aggregate numbers of nonstrategic weapons - beginning with 1991 data and working toward current data. Work on verification of nonstrategic stockpiles could begin by creating pilot programs to verify the absence of nonstrategic weapons at facilities that housed them prior to implementation of the PNI. The two sides could also initiate lab-to-lab cooperation to resolve technical challenges for verifying warhead-level reductions and dismantlement.
Recommendation 3. Implement mutual reductions below New START, including non strategic weapons – The United States could communicate to Russia that the United States is prepared to go to lower levels of nuclear weapons as a matter of national policy, consistent with the strategy developed in the Nuclear Posture Review, if Russia is willing to reciprocate. This could improve stability by reducing Russia’s incentive to deploy a new heavy ICBM. Similarly, the two sides could define cooperative steps for reduction of nonstrategic weapons including appropriate verification measures. The United States, in considering whether or not to implement specific options for reducing strategic nuclear forces and nonstrategic weapons, will have to address lingering concerns over asymmetries between U.S. and Russian stockpile composition, force structures and reconstitution capabilities, particularly considering the imbalance between U.S. and Russian nonstrategic forces, which some believe will become more salient as strategic weapons are reduced. As we noted in our earlier ISAB report on “Mutual Assured Stability,”[11] the Kissinger-Scowcroft eight “key facts”[12] should be taken into account in evaluating specific options for further reductions.
