May 2024
During an era when nuclear weapons threats are growing, Assistant Secretary of State Mallory Stewart is among the top U.S. officials working to increase stability, prevent conflict, and preserve and advance effective arms control and disarmament measures. The office that she leads, recently renamed the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability, is charged with implementing and ensuring compliance with existing arms control agreements and negotiating new ones. A current focus is pressuring Russia to return to compliance with and identify a follow-on agreement to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which expires in 2026 and is the last remaining treaty limiting the two largest nuclear arsenals. So far, Russia has refused to engage until the United States withdraws its support for Ukraine, where Russia has waged an all-out war since 2022. Stewart’s bureau also is working to jump-start nuclear risk reduction consultations with China, which has a fraction of the nuclear weapons possessed by Russia and the United States but has greatly accelerated its nuclear weapons program. Working bilaterally and in multilateral forums, the bureau also has a goal of promoting responsible behavior with emerging military technologies, including artificial intelligence. Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, and Carol Giacomo, editor of Arms Control Today, explored these issues in an interview with Stewart on April 4. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
ARMS CONTROL TODAY: Russia has rejected the U.S. proposal for talks to identify an arms control framework after New START expires in February 2026. What is realistically possible before the next administration takes office?
Assistant Secretary Mallory Stewart: Certainly, we’ll continue to reinforce what National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said last June, which is that we’re willing to engage with Russia and China without preconditions. But he was very clear to point out that engagement without preconditions doesn’t mean engagement without accountability. We have made good faith efforts toward this end, including in our September 2023 diplomatic note to the Russians suggesting possible paths forward toward this post-New START era. The Russians rejected it three months later, tying it specifically to U.S. support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s illegal and continuing invasion.
This refusal to engage on arms control is deeply irresponsible of Russia, which has a commitment to the international community, just as the United States does, to not only fulfill its Article VI obligations of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) but also pursue risk reduction, global stability, strategic stability, and all of the requirements that the international community expects of us as the two largest nuclear-weapon states under the NPT. We’ve tried to make clear to Russia that these are responsibilities that we share, regardless of Putin’s ambitions to take over Ukraine. We understand that we can’t force them into an arms control discussion, but what we can do is try to work with the rest of the multilateral and international community to make the case for pursuing risk reduction measures and building an increased appreciation for why it is in Russia’s interest to engage in arms control conversations.
We’ve been trying to take a twofold approach in that endeavor. First, we are working to combat the disinformation that Russia persists in purveying and, unfortunately, that some countries agree with, that somehow the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was justified. That narrative is factually incorrect and doesn’t reflect how we were very actively engaged with Russia prior to the invasion of Ukraine. We addressed every element of their proposed treaties to the United States and NATO and explained why it wasn’t realistic to suggest the United States was going to be able to turn back…
This article was originally published by a www.armscontrol.org . Read the Original article here. .