 Well, good afternoon or good evening, I guess. And welcome to this pony debate. Let me make perfectly clear that I know Clark Murdock and I'm not Clark Murdock. Clark sends his regrets, but actually he's off on vacation. I'm Barry Blackman from the Stimson Center and just here to welcome you and introduce our speakers and debaters. The subject is the future of bilateral arms control, presumably US Russia arms control. This is a subject with more than 40 year history. Some of us here probably remember the 1968 summit at Glasboro, New Jersey, between then Soviet Premier Kosigin and LPJ. It was at that meeting, it was in Glasboro because Russians weren't allowed more than a certain distance from New York City at the time to get visas or Soviets. It was at that meeting that Robert McNamara lectured to the Soviet delegation about the danger of building missile defenses and how these would be destabilizing. And apparently they learned his lessons very well because we've been hearing it back from them ever since then. The accomplishments of US Russia arms control are debatable and have been debated. Some of us have put a few kids through college debating them. But the future of US Russia arms control is more relevant and at least equally as contentious. And we're fortunate to have two extremely capable scholars and practitioners to debate this issue today. And let me introduce them briefly. Ambassador Robert Joseph has a very distinguished career in government and in academia. He's currently senior scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy. He, of course, served as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security during the second Bush term. And prior to that was special assistant to the president and senior director for proliferation strategy, counter-proliferation and homeland defense at the National Security Council. He's also spent some years at the National Defense University and was the Defense Department official for many years prior to that. He is a PhD from Columbia. Debating him will be Ambassador Steve Piper, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Center, but also a gentleman with considerable experience in government as a negotiator and in the Foreign Service. He's a retired Foreign Service officer. Spent more than 25 years at state with a specializing in US relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as arms control and security issues. He was ambassador to Ukraine, took part in many negotiations. Now, just to be sure that this is an equal playing field, I am going to now leave the podium and turn over the debate to John Warden, who will moderate it. John is a research assistant and program coordinator for this program on nuclear issues or pony. And he is an experienced debater and in fact is the CSIS recipient of the William J. Taylor debate internship. So with that, I'll turn it over to John who'll explain the ground rules. Thank you. Thanks very much. So the format we have for the debate tonight is pretty simple. We're just going to start with opening remarks from each speaker, starting with Ambassador Piper. And then we'll go into a moderator questions, where I'll ask each of the speakers one or two questions. And then open it up to the audience. So with that, Ambassador Piper. Well, first, Barry, thank you for the kind introduction. And John, thank you. And thank you to CSIS for organizing this discussion. I'm going to make the case for why another round of bilateral negotiations between the United States and Russia is in the US interest. But first, I want to make a few observations. One, if you look at nuclear threat space in the United States, I wouldn't argue that Russian nuclear weapons are the number one threat. I'd worry about nuclear proliferation. And I'd also worry about the nightmare scenario, nuclear weapons in the hands of a terrorist. But I would also say that the United States government is large enough and smart enough and capable enough to address all of these at the same time. It shouldn't be an either or decision. The second observation is that we're asking really tonight, why reduce nuclear weapons further? But you could, in fact, put that question around and say, what justifies keeping a US, Russian nuclear force posture, nuclear structures that are really much more reminiscent of the Cold War, which ended 20 years ago. And finally, my third observation is, rather than talk about arms control and abstract, let me describe what I think would be a reasonable objective for a next round of US, Russian negotiations going beyond new start. And it would have three principal limits. One, a limit of 2,500 nuclear warheads that would cover deployed strategic warheads, non-deployed strategic warheads, and non-strategic nuclear warheads. Basically everything in the inventory, except for those weapons that are retired from the dismantlement queue. There would be a second limit, a sub-sailing of 1,000 deployed strategic warheads. That would take the new start limit of 1,550 and cut it by about 35%. And then there would be a limit on deployed strategic delivery vehicles between, say, 550 and 600. So now let me make six or seven arguments why I think another round of negotiations would be in the US interest. First of all, to reduce the potential threat to the United States. I don't think there are a lot of people in the Pentagon who lay awake late at night worrying about a Russian nuclear attack. But it seems to me self-evident that the United States is more secure if Russia can point 1,000 deployed strategic warheads at us than 1,550. And the best way to achieve that is through a negotiated treaty that will be legally binding with agreed definitions, agreed counting rules, and verification measures. Now some will say that the Russians have reduced unilaterally their strategic forces over the last eight or 10 years. And that is correct. Their numbers have come down. Their systems have aged. And they've made relatively modest decisions about replacing those systems. But the fact is that there has been a policy choice and that policy choice could change. The second reason I would argue why another round of negotiations is in our interest is to promote strategic stability. Russia, according to the data that was exchanged in the new start, is actually already below the 1,550 deployed strategic warhead limit. And some Russian analysts suggest that in the next couple of years, Russia may actually go down to 1,000 to 1,100. By contrast, the United States military is going to be able to sustain itself at 1,550 deployed strategic warheads for the duration of the treaty. But what this has raised in Moscow is the question, should Russia now take steps to build back up to 1,550? And unfortunately, in the last couple of months, they've been talking about what would be, I think, a bad decision, which is to develop and deploy a new heavy intercontinental ballistic missile as a relatively quick way to get back to 1,550. That would be a bad idea for a couple of reasons. First of all, it would pose a threat to US Minuteman missiles in their silos. Now, I think that threat's different today when you only have one warhead on those missiles as opposed to three, but it would still create some anxieties here. Second, it would result in the Russians with the force structure, where they had lots of warheads on a relatively small number of aim points. That's not a stabilizing force structure. And it seems to be that one way to discourage them from this course is if we're pushing the number of deployed strategic warheads down towards 1,000, they could actually fill out 1,000 using their current SLBM, their submarine launch ballistic missile programs, and their Topol ICBM, and they would not have to make an expensive, and what I would argue would be an unwise decision to deploy a new heavy ICBM. The third reason for another round of negotiations is to get at the Russian advantage in non-strategic nuclear warheads. This seemed to be something that I think in the debate last year over New START, pretty much both sides agreed that we have to begin to get into that topic. And there's nothing to suggest that I've seen that the Russians are prepared to do anything in the unilateral sphere on this. So getting into a negotiation, again, aiming to negotiate reductions and limitations on that, and if you combine those weapons in with the strategic world, you actually may have an opportunity to create some leverage. The United States, under New START, is going to have a significant advantage in non-deployed strategic warheads. And that creates an opportunity to accept some constraints on that if the Russians are prepared to reduce and limit their non-strategic weapons. And that by getting at those non-strategic weapons is a way to address those weapons that I think are foremost concerned to a number of our allies. A fourth rationale for going down and another round of negotiations is that even with cuts, you could still maintain a U.S. deterrent force that would be robust, survivable, resilient, and agile and give the president a whole range of response options. Under the numbers I've sketched out, 2,500, 1,000 deployed strategic warheads, 550 deployed strategic delivery vehicles. The United States could, and this is just a back of the envelope projection, but the United States could have 300 single-warhead ICBMs, 192 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and 50 heavy bombers, now nuclear-capable heavy bombers. At any one time, about 300 warheads would be safely at sea on Trident submarines, and the 300 ICBMs could be launched very, very quickly. I guess the question I would ask is, who would that force not deter? There certainly may be some crazies out there, but I would argue that there's a crazy out there who will not be deterred by 1,000 deployed strategic warheads. That crazy is not gonna be deterred by 1550 or 2,000 or 5,000. Fifth reason for going down the route of one more round of negotiations is transparency. Already we've seen as a result of the new START treaty, lots of data exchange. There've already been four U.S. inspections in Russia, and as of about two weeks ago under the treaty, the sides exchanged something like 700 notifications in compliance with the treaty. So there's a lot of information going, and the United States is now much smarter about Russian nuclear forces than might be the case otherwise. A new treaty would perpetuate that, and to the extent that it got into questions like non-strategic nuclear weapons, we would gain more transparency into an area that we don't know all that much about. And it seems to me that the more knowledge we have about Russian strategic and non-strategic nuclear forces, it makes it more likely that we will avoid worst case assumptions, and it makes it more likely that the U.S. military will make smarter decisions about how to equip and operate U.S. nuclear forces. Six reasons as cost savings. The United States is approaching the point where it needs to make decisions on a replacement for the Trident Ballistic Missile Submarine, and also for the Minuteman ICBM. Those will start going, approaching their retired dates at the end of the 2020s. Arms control can save us money. If you're talking about building a new ballistic missile submarine that has only 16 launch tubes, that's gonna be cheaper than this missile carrying submarine that has 24 launch tubes. And if you're building ICBMs to support a deployed ICBM force of 300 ICBMs, you're going to save money compared to a force of 400 to 420 ICBMs. A seven threes, and I would argue, is that if the United States is reducing nuclear weapons and can say it is abiding by its commitments under Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, that should make it easier for the United States to advance its broader non-proliferation agenda. Now I'm gonna be realistic here. That is not going to solve the problem of North Korea or Iran. There's gonna be other strategies we'll have to find to address those countries. But you've always gotta worry about country X, that next country that may move down a nuclear path. And it seems to be that if the United States is in fact reducing weapons, it can say it's in compliance with its obligations under the NPT, it's going to be easier to muster international support to raise the bar against proliferation. And if we see country X, it's going to make it easier to mobilize other countries to put pressure diplomatic, economic sanctions, and other pressure on country X to dissuade them from that course. Finally, the last reason it seems that if as a result of arms control, we reduce nuclear weapons, and if we can then reduce the role of nuclear weapons in security calculations, it seems to me that the relative weight then shifts towards conventional forces and missile defense. And those are areas that are areas of US advantage. So I think moving to that playing field would serve us well. Finally, just a couple of comments. I think when looking at the possibility of further reductions, there are two or three arguments that come up that I'd just like to comment on. One is a concern that if the United States comes down further, at some point China makes a sprint to parity to become a third nuclear superpower. I don't think that there's a lot in Chinese nuclear history to suggest that that in fact would be the case, but I would point out that under the numbers I've outlined here, US nuclear forces would still be in order of magnitude greater than China, so they wouldn't be that close to that sprint. A second concern is that if we're doing arms control, does that somehow weaken our determination result to maintain modern strategic forces? And I would argue that whether you have a treaty or not, in this world you need to have a modern strategic force and you have to pay attention to that. But it seems to me that in 2010, the paradigm kind of shifted a bit. Whereas you saw a result of the ratification debate on New START, you saw the administration committing more money for nuclear infrastructure modernization and also committing to a program to modernize the triad. And maybe the paradigm now is that in order to get Republican support for an arms control treaty, you have to be doing strategic modernization, but in order to get democratic support for strategic modernization, you have to do arms control. So I think there may be a different paradigm. And finally the last concern I think that what we've heard is that if we get down into the arms control route, we may end up limiting missile defense. Now certainly I think the Russians are going to try to persuade us to limit missile defense. But if you look at the New START treaty, it talked about a relationship between offensive defense and the preamble. It had one limit on missile defense which I would argue is meaningless in that it prevents us from doing something we would never do anyway. But in March of 2010, Barack Obama told the Russians, told Dmitry Medvedev, if you want something more on this treaty on missile defense, we don't have a treaty. And I think on the missile defense concern, I think this administration is very cognizant that any treaty that it signs in the future that has any kind of real limit on missile defense stands zero chance of being ratified in the Senate. So under those circumstances, I don't see the concern about missile defense being a reason not to engage in nuclear arms control. For those reasons, it does seem to me that if you take the rationale for that pursuing another round of US-Russian nuclear arms reductions is in the US interest, it can make us more secure and safer while still allowing us to maintain a deterrent that will protect us and our allies. Thanks. Not only for inviting me here tonight to participate in this event, but mostly for their invaluable work in promoting knowledge and understanding and awareness of nuclear issues, and especially for helping to build a better informed next generation of practitioners and scholars in the national security field. As I look out over the audience and see so many young faces, I think that's a real testament to the success of Pony. So thank you. Let me also thank Steve, who is a very capable diplomat who I've known and respected and worked with for many years, including in what was the golden age of US-Soviet arms control. Steve has always spoken with reason and with passion, and as we've already observed, he's not last his appetite for more arms control treaties. In fact, he's got the next one all worked out. But this goes to the point that reasonable people can differ. They do differ. They disagree. But they can do it with civility and I hope a bit of humor. And with the knowledge that we are all trying to seek what is in the best interests of our country. Not surprisingly, I have a much different view than Steve, which I would like to express in the form of three propositions that individually and certainly in combination, I believe challenge longstanding conventional wisdom on arms control. In thinking about what I would say tonight, I identified two additional propositions that I will just mention briefly without elaboration, given the time constraints. But first, just a word about historical context. The arms control process did play a very significant role in U.S. national security policy during the first half of the Cold War. In that environment, when we faced a determined peer adversary with thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at us and our allies, arms control offered one of the very few channels of communication and perhaps the most important means of addressing crisis stability issues. The process was also important for alliance management purposes. For example, negotiating on the INF Treaty, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Force Treaty, the two-track approach. It was the arms control side that made possible the deployment side, the deployment of ground launch cruise missiles and Pershing-2 missiles, which had in my view a real impact on the end of the Soviet Union. While it's obvious, I still think it's useful to acknowledge that today's strategic challenges threats of today, such as terrorism and proliferation and energy, are not the same as the threats that we faced in the Cold War. As for Russia, while it certainly does today possess the world's largest deployed nuclear weapons force, it is not an enemy, but a country with which we seek a normal relationship. Could things go wrong with Moscow? Well, I think if you just listened to Putin or even Medvedev or if you look back two years at Georgia, you'll find an answer. As for China, many believe that in 10 or 20 years, Beijing will represent a peer competitor for the United States, if not a direct threat to our interests, not just in the Pacific region, but beyond. Again, as with Russia, the future with China is uncertain and we need to work to the degree that we can as hard as we can to shape the outcome that is best for US interests. But even if things go wrong, neither Russia nor China is likely to resemble the threat of the Soviet Union and the means for dealing with those challenges are not those of the past. I would argue that the world has changed fundamentally, but we have been very slow to adopt new approaches to counter contemporary threats. Instead, we stick with old methods with which we are comfortable, but which simply don't fit today's circumstances. And that takes me to the first proposition and that is Cold War arms control is not appropriate for today's threats. And I'll cut right to the chase on this one. Traditional arms control approaches are outdated and ineffective in countering the real threats that we face. These are threats, as Steve mentioned, from proliferating states like Iran and North Korea, from a terrorist with a nuclear weapon, the number one threat as identified by President Obama and his successor. And from the growing concern that there may be a breakdown in the global NPT regime and a subsequent cascade of proliferation that some have feared for many years. Advocates in and out of government of more negotiations with Russia suggest that there is some type of demonstrable connection between US and Russian nuclear reductions and success in achieving our non-proliferation objectives. Last year, you heard Secretary Clinton and others in the administration claim that if we sign new start, we would have a positive outcome at the NPT review conference, which would in turn lead to effective sanctions on Iran and North Korea, which would in turn lead to a pullback of their nuclear programs. But that didn't happen. Like just about every four rail bank shot that I ever attempted, the concept was really appealing, but it just didn't work. And I think the latest IAEA report makes clear that Iran is moving forward. It's piling up more and more enriched material that with further enrichment can be used in weapons. And North Korea has revealed a modern enrichment facility to support its declared nuclear weapons program. Both countries resist any attempt to talk about their nuclear programs and instead have proposed in a very cynical fashion that we meet with them to negotiate down the US nuclear stockpile. And as for the NPT review conference, well, there was a consensus document this time around, but it is a document that criticizes Israel, not Iran, which is what you would expect if Iran has to be part of the consensus in Israel as a non-participant. Few serious people on either side of the issue claim that US reductions have any direct effect on the decisions of the leaders in Tehran or Pyongyang regarding their nuclear programs. And I can tell you from personal experience that Colonel Gaddafi did not abandon his nuclear weapons program in 2003 because of the 2002 Moscow Treaty. Rather, it was the US use of force against Iraq that changed his calculus and changed his perspective on holding onto his WMD programs. More arms, most arms control advocates do, however, rely on this false hope of making the bank shot I described. And in this, the administration is not alone. Many governments talk the same game, including and in some cases, especially our closest friends and allies. Japan, South Korea and many governments in Western Europe can't get enough of telling us to sign up to the CTBT to reduce our nuclear arms further in the name of non-proliferation. They will all publicly support yet another round of US Russian cuts. It's very easy for them to do that, just like it's very hard for us to resist. But when the chips are down, when the chips are down, we hear a much different story from our friends. Just two examples. First, within days of the October 2006, North Korea nuclear test, I accompanied Secretary Rice to the region. Our first stop was in Tokyo. And immediately upon our arrival, we were urged by both the prime minister and the foreign minister to reassure the Japanese public of the US nuclear, nuclear weapons guarantee. There was no mention of arms control. There was nothing about the need to reduce weapons. There was nothing about the CTBT. It was all about the real world threats and the deep concern that without the US commitment, Japan might have to rethink its own deeply seated nuclear policy. The second example is earlier this month, the commander of US forces, Korea, General Sharp, and responding to a question about whether Seoul should redeploy tactical nuclear weapons on its territory. Responded very forcefully that the US provides a solid nuclear deterrent for the South and is capable of controlling the nuclear threats from the North. I'm quoting now using military assets across the globe. Again, both reassurance that our nuclear weapons will be there for our allies and as such serving our non-proliferation goals. Just imagine if we couldn't reassure allies or if they perceived us in lacking the resolve or the capabilities that define credible nuclear deterrent. If that were to occur, that cascade of proliferation that many have long feared could happen, likely would happen, and that could touch off even more proliferation both horizontal and vertical. My second proposition is that by continuing the arms control business as usual with Russia, we may well be losing a historic strategic opportunity to encourage Moscow to think differently about the security threats it faces and about its requirements, including its nuclear requirements. Today, Russia relies more than ever on nuclear weapons for its defense as it states in its doctrine. It also sees its relationship with the United States largely in adversarial terms. Its leaders tell us that. Pursuing policies of the past only feeds the worst instincts of the Putin leadership. By placing once again nuclear weapons at the center of our political relationship, we make it worse. In fact, when I hear the words reset, I no longer think that we're trying to reestablish our relationship prior to the Russian invasion of Georgia. Rather, it suggests going further back, not to the Cold War, but to something retroactive and similar in form. Of course, this is an updated version of the old strategic rivalry. Unlike the Cold War, at least, the United States says we're not enemies with Russia, and I think, at least for our part, we mean it, but both parties must agree. And I'm not confident Moscow sees it the way we do. If you just listen to Russian leaders in terms of what they have to say about the United States, or if you look at Russia's focus on our missile defense and limiting that defense, if you look at Russia's rejection of any meaningful reductions in so-called theater nuclear weapons that are most prominent today in the context of Russian threats to U.S. allies. If instead of pursuing policies that reinforce Russia's desire to regain its lost superpower status through nuclear parity, if not superiority with the United States, we had sought to build our relationship on mutual interests, such as in combating nuclear terrorism. We might have achieved a different outcome, one more consistent with both our national interests. Could we change? Maybe, I hope it's not too late or irreversible, but there will always be the argument that while these types of treaties are outmoded, they do little harm, and yet provide as they always have for terrific presidential photo ops. And there will always be someone to argue for just one more treaty. Proposition three is that while the debate must not be partisan or personal, it's entirely fair to raise the question of competence and worldview, not on an individual level, but on a systemic level that can have a profound effect on U.S. national security. In my assessment, New START registers higher on the incompetence meter than any previous U.S. Russian or U.S. Soviet arms control agreement. And here I'm measuring competence by how successful the treaty is in achieving its stated objectives. New START was sold by the administration as requiring 30% reductions on both sides as strengthening predictability and as a path to reductions in the non-strategic weapons arena. But if you look at the facts, it simply doesn't deliver the goods. On reductions, we now have confirmation that only the U.S. must reduce its deployed forces. Under the treaty, only the U.S. needs to reduce forces. On one June, the State Department released the results of the initial data exchange required under the treaty. Well, one of those 700 things that Steve mentioned is that the Russian forces are already below the ceilings for both delivery vehicles and warheads. So if U.S. weapons are the problem and if limiting the U.S. is the goal, New START is quite an achievement because all of the cuts required under the agreement will be made by the U.S. which is to reduce hundreds of delivery vehicles and warheads. This is by definition unilateral disarmament. One country reducing is unilateral disarmament. And I wonder how many of the very prominent former Secretaries of State and Defense who supported ratification would have done so if they knew that the reductions would be one-sided. How many would subscribe to the position of unilateral disarmament? Does Moscow intend to reduce its forces? No. In fact, their Defense Minister recently stated publicly that it is a national priority to increase Russian forces to the New START levels. And they intend to do so with mirved ICBMs which are the very antithesis of strategic stability. Does Moscow intend to negotiate on so-called non-strategic nuclear weapons? No, they don't. This doesn't mean that we can't have another agreement. We can reach an agreement if the U.S. is willing to pay an exorbitant price, including on missile defense and pulling out our remaining deterrent from Europe and probably throwing in the kitchen sink as defined by whatever the Russians want. But I would be shocked even under those circumstances if there were any meaningful reductions on the Russian part. Let's call it New START 2.0. As for providing for transparency, well, New START by abandoning the U.S. monitoring at the Vatkin's Missile Facility and by gutting any meaningful exchange of telemetry data, sure we will exchange data, but it will be entirely meaningless. Because we've done this, we will have less insight into Russian strategic modernization than we've had for decades. Oh, but what about boots on the ground? How many times did you hear that during the ratification debate? And we certainly will have inspectors going to Russia, but who really thinks that they will find any significant violations given the restrictions on when and where they're allowed to go? To be kind, what may appear to be incompetence as I've defined it, may in fact be a reflection of a worldview based on a mixture of wishful thinking and, dare I say, intellectual arrogance. This is not a Republican versus Democrat view. Both parties have prominent former leaders, truly great Americans, who have adopted the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. But this is seeing the world as they would like it to be. And in this world, I think it's very easy to overlook even fundamental flaws in new treaties, especially if the administration is giving false assurances that the critics of these treaties are both wrong and operating under bad faith, which is exactly what this administration did. Moreover, much of the world sees nuclear weapons differently than we do. And this is not just in Pyongyang or Tehran, or Pakistan and India and Israel. Russia, as I noted, has greater dependence on nuclear weapons than ever before. And China is modernizing and is expanding its nuclear forces. And I believe it could be encouraged to go to even higher levels if the US were to go to very low levels and Beijing could seek to match us in 10 years or 15 years. In some leading by example in this, the real world is, in my view, both feckless and dangerous. Proposition four, I'll be very brief, is that we need to think differently about arms control. Of course we must meet our commitments under Article VI of the NPT, and we have and we will continue to do so. And of course we should reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons, and we have, especially under both of the Bush Presidencies, where major reductions were made, not for the sake of arms control, but because our requirements for deterrence changed. And there may be new forms of arms control that can contribute to meeting today's threats, something akin to the Proliferation Security Initiative, the G-8 partnership, or even the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, but nuclear deterrence remains essential. And here there are several dimensions to think through. And I would argue we haven't thought about this. There is a perception dimension. The U.S. may well have already gone from a posture of second to none in terms of nuclear capability, which is a position that we as a nation have upheld since the Kennedy administration to a posture of second to one in overall nuclear forces. What does going to that level of forces mean? What does it mean in this context? There's a capability dimension in that the U.S. requires an effective and reliable nuclear deterrent. We all say the same thing. We all say the same thing about extended deterrence. But what does it mean in this new environment? And there's an intellectual dimension. Do we really know how deterrence works at these low levels? My fifth proposition is that we need to stop delegitimizing nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence. We need to reject the false choice between either abolishing nuclear weapons or encouraging more proliferation. If we don't, I think we will encourage not only a more proliferated world, but a less stable one. A world in many ways like that of 1914 or 1939 before nuclear weapons added a new and very effective dimension to deterrence. In closing, I would stress that my argument is not simply that enough is enough. It is that pursuing traditional Cold War type arms control agreements with Russia is both inappropriate in today's circumstances and harmful to U.S. national security interests. It undercuts the foundation of a normal and cooperative relationship with Russia. It undercuts U.S. non-proliferation goals and to the extent that it is driven by a flawed vision of a world without nuclear weapons. It undermines the perceived resolve and the deterrent capabilities the United States needs to protect our nation and our friends and allies in what is still a very dangerous world. Thank you. Well, I will ask a couple of questions and then I'll open up to the audience. I'll start with Ambassador Piper. One of the arguments that we just heard against pursuing another arms control treaty is that if we have nuclear weapons and arms control with Russia at the center of our relationship, then it could continue the adversarial relationship from the Cold War. And I think there's an extension of that argument that is if you're forced to negotiate and hammer out details and it becomes a kind of win or zero-sum game, then that can actually lead to a more adversarial relationship. So is that, do you have any worry that if we pursued another arms control treaty with Russia that would be the effect? I guess I would take a different view on that and I'd make two points. First of all, if you make the argument that engaging in nuclear arms reductions negotiation with Russia perpetuates sort of this Cold War relationship, there's a bit of an irony there because you say, well, don't do that then what you are perpetuating though is in fact a Cold War relationship in terms of the nuclear force structures that the two sides have. So I think you wouldn't have a normal relationship with Russia and we want to move in that direction. I think that's going to be, and for some of these that Bob touched on, very, very hard to do. But also I think it's not really a normal relationship when you still have 1,550 nuclear weapons capable of being targeted at the other side. The second point I would make is that if you go back and you look at three years ago, I mean really it was the Russians who wanted to have as much as the United States did the nuclear arms dialogue. And in fact, I think the administration as part of the reset used that in part to its advantage. When you talk to administration officials in 2009, when they talked about reset, it was very specifically oriented at getting Russian help on issues that were important to the United States, first and foremost Afghanistan and Iran. And I think the administration was prepared to make some changes to the arms control approach compared to the previous administration which reflected some of their own arms control views, but also part of that was designed I think to improve the relationship. And I think they believe that it paid off. If you look at Iran, certainly Russia has come a lot further along in terms of applying sanctions on Iran than I would have thought was possible. And then I think I would have predicted five or six years ago. I was particularly surprised in September of last year when after some discussion of an ambiguous UN Security Council resolution, the Russians announced that they were not just suspended but they were canceling the sale of S-300 missiles to Iran and inviting to Iran to send a delegation to Moscow to negotiate a return of the advance payment. So I don't see arms control that we're pushing on the Russians. I think the Russians have wanted to engage in this. It's been important and our ability to find a successful agreement. And this would be one of the years where I think Bob and I do disagree. We have, I think, very different opinions on the New START Treaty as we testified about last year. But I think it has been something that the Russians have sought equally. And again, engaging in that kind of dialogue, well, it may be a throwback to the Cold War times, I think is worthwhile if you're trying to change what is still a Cold War nuclear relationship. Okay, to change tracks a little bit. One of the places I thought that there was an agreement between the two speeches was both you and Ambassador Joseph identified Russian-merved ICBMs as something that would be counter to strategic stability. And you identified strategic stability as one of the core goals or the second goal of what we should be seeking in an arms control treaty. And the solution that you laid out to do that was that if we bring the number of warheads down, then that creates an incentive so that the launchers that they do have will have less warheads on them. So I was another solution that was part of previous arms control, although it was never actually implemented or it was negotiated in Star 2, but not implemented was a ban on merved silo-based ICBMs. So do you think that that's something that maybe the US should revisit or might want to include in its negotiating position for the next treaty? Well, first of all, I think, and I think this was a wise decision by the US military. I mean, the United States has already decided to go to single warhead ICBMs, which I think we've addressed a big part of that destability problem by a unilateral and a smart US force structure decision. Really for about 20 years from 1974 up until the end of the 1990s, merved ICBMs was the real focus of US arms control policy. That changed actually when we were in the administration in 2002 with the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty where after signing the treaty where the administration secretary, Powell and I believe secretary Rumsfeld testified at that point, we were no longer concerned about Russian merved ICBMs, because as you may recall, the sort treaty had just a limit on deployed strategic warheads but no limits of any kind on launchers or on merved ICBMs. I think the current administration and the negotiation, when you asked them why was there no effort to go after merved ICBMs, what their response was, well, it would be hard to get that back after having given it up back in 2002, but they also said that with the kind of reductions that they're looking at, that believing in the sides have maximum freedom to choose its own force structure made a lot of sense and not trying to dictate force structures that would be nearly identical. So it might make sense to explore whether you want to go back to limitations on merved ICBMs. I kind of think we may be at a point where that may be more trouble than it's worth but again, if you push the numbers down, I think you do obviate a situation now where at 1550 the Russians are looking fairly closely at the idea of a new heavy merved ICBM to get back to 1550. If the numbers come down, the Russians may well find that they don't have to go to the expense of that missile and with SLBM programs that they already planned and the Topol ICBM, which is a smaller land-based missile, it also is merved but it's mobile that with that kind of configuration they can satisfy their force needs. Okay, so a couple of questions the other way. So Ambassador Joseph, one of the concerns that you raised towards the beginning of your speech was that of allies and that you gave an example of the North Korean tests and also the redeployment of nuclear weapons to South Korea as examples of our allies really needing our assurance and the assurance that we're gonna have a strong nuclear deterrent. Whereas Ambassador Piper started his speech by saying that we really can do both of those things at the same time. So if we have a treaty in which we come down to 1,000 deployed strategic warheads that we really should be able to still pursue our non-proliferation arcs and still maintain extended deterrence, we can still modernize our delivery vehicles was his position. So can you explain or I guess respond to his claim that you can do both of those at the same time? Is that something you just think we would send the wrong signal with reductions or just add some more to that? Well, we have been providing reassurance to our allies for a good long time. And I think clearly, Stephen and I agree that we must continue to do that. I don't think we've done the intellectual homework as to what deterrence looks like and what extended deterrence looks like at a level like 1,000 total deployed warheads. We just haven't done the homework on that. Let me if I could just take a minute and also just add a couple of points going to your previous questions. The Russians, because I don't wanna be misunderstood, the Russians did wanna have a treaty with the United States. Just like in 2002, they wanted a treaty with the United States. They like things in legal form. But that doesn't mean they want another one. In fact, the Russians got everything they wanted out of this treaty and are now pushing back and saying, well, we need to do missile defense first. Constraints on missile defense. We need to address the conventional issues that they've been raising for a long time. The Russians have been celebrating in the end zone ever since the assigning of this treaty. And what is perhaps most shocking is that the Russian observers have recently said, this is our Batoff and Dvorak and to old hands in the arms control community, that the United States didn't even ask the Russians to do anything that would require a cut. As to the Russians and sanctions, I mean, the S300, I think that was a very meaningful step on the part of the Russians. But you know, the Russians have a very mixed record and have had a very mixed record on Iran for a long time. Before New START, there were three UN Security Council resolutions, each one with a little bit more in terms of sanctions on Russia. The fourth one that followed has a little bit more. But since New START, Russia has also taken some very inimical steps, I would argue, including fueling Bushir. I mean, to say that the Russians did the S300 because of New START, I mean, that's really like the rooster crowing when the sun comes up and taking credit for that. The Russians are gonna do what the Russians are gonna do. They don't want a nuclear armed Iran. And they play it much differently than we do. And on mirved ICBMs, I think we have always thought of heavy mirved ICBMs as being the most destabilizing feature of a nuclear posture. The problem is we've encouraged the Russians to go to mirved ICBMs, not that they need much encouragement. The Russians love heavy ICBMs. They don't always have. But we encourage it through the numbers. I mean, if you have 1550 and 700 deployed for your delivery vehicles, and you're looking at sort of the Russian infrastructure and the Russian defense posture, you're actually encouraging them to go to less stabilizing nuclear deployments. Okay, so one other question. At the, towards the end, when you were identifying some of the problems that you had with the new START treaty, you talked about transparency specifically and said that the US no longer, in the new negotiator, the new treaty, we no longer have monitors at Volkansk. And there's also, you said that you didn't think that the inspectors would be very effective. So that seems to imply that you think that there are benefits to us having a verification regime in place. So if it did come about that the only way that we could have a continued verification regime with Russia was if there was another arms control treaty that maybe included reductions, would you think then that it might be worth it? Well, you asked good questions. Thank you. I think it would be useful to have greater transparency into the strategic modernization of Russian nuclear forces. The Russians have denied that and we are in complicit and we are complicit in the changes that occurred that have undercut our ability to predict future modernization in Russia. As you look at yet another agreement, and I was thinking specifically of the one that Steve outlined in his prepared remarks, there's just no way to get a handle on verification of total inventories. We've been struggling with that for years. And if you really think the Russians are gonna allow you up to their nuclear forces and into their weapons storage sites, I just, it's just not gonna happen. The reason that we came up with this fiction between non-strategic and strategic way back in the golden age of arms control, when we did have thousands and thousands of weapons, so the numbers didn't matter that much, was because we couldn't figure out a way to verify short range nuclear forces. We couldn't do so-called non-strategic, we couldn't do inventories. Has something occurred that I don't know about in terms of research and development that provides us with the ability to look through sort of the walls of Russian storage sites? I just don't think so. And the Russians are very, well, let me say it, very paranoid about the United States. And they have always kept us at arms length. If we could have a renewed presence at Vatkinsk, would that be useful? It'd be very useful because it told us not only what was coming out of their final missile assembly facility, but it told us what wasn't coming out. If we had effective telemetry exchanges, would that be helpful? Sure, it'd give us more transparency. But unless you can come up with concrete approaches, these are just empty words, these are just empty concepts. And dealing with empty concepts when they directly affect our national security is a pretty dangerous thing. Okay, well, if that will open it up for questions, try to keep your questions brief. I think we have about 30 minutes and hopefully we can get to everyone. There are microphones in the back, so please wait for them before you get started. Go ahead in the middle in the back. And also, I should add, please introduce yourself and your affiliation at the beginning. Hi, my name is Abe Schreyer, Indiana University, and I also work at the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. You mentioned briefly missile defense. What are the strategic implications of the continued impassee between Russia and U.S. NATO over missile defense and Russian threats to leave the START Treaty and start a new Cold War, or arms race? Thank you. Whichever one of you wants. Could you repeat the first part? The question's over the impasse between NATO and Russia. What are the strategic implications of the continued impassee, like the deadlock over missile defense? Well, first of all, I think that the Russians made a unilateral statement regarding conditions in which they might consider withdrawing from the new START Treaty. They're trying to influence decisions here in Washington about missile defense. I think that there's pretty clear indications that Washington does not intend to take that other than a statement by the Russians, a unilateral statement of Russian concern. But I don't think it's going to affect U.S. missile defense plans. I do think that from the Russian perspective, and this goes back to the discussion that took place back in Glassboro in the late 1960s, there is this offense-defense relationship. The Russians expressed concern about American missile defense plans. I think a lot of that is baseless. I think if you look at the phased adaptive approach plans, those systems, at least for the next 10 years, pose zero threat to Russian ballistic missiles. I also think that there's a certain Russian paranoia, however, that missile defense, at some point, could pose a challenge. And that, at some point, if the Russians insist that there have to be limitations on missile defense, that, to my mind, probably is a block on a future arms control agreement. Because as I said in my opening comments, I see no chance that any agreement that has limits on missile defense would ever be ratified by the US Senate. So it goes back to the point that you made about the NATO-Russia impasse. I mean, so far NATO and Russia have not yet agreed on the idea of cooperation. But it's been interesting to me that, even after the NATO-Russia ministers of defense met about three weeks ago, both sides seem to leave the door open. My own hope, and we'll see whether or not it's realized, is that in fact, if NATO and Russia could work out a system of missile defense cooperation. Because I think if you could have things like NATO and Russian military officers working together, manning a joint data exchange center, thinking about how they might cooperate in the future, that would be one of the best ways imaginable to be transparent about American and NATO missile defense plans, and then hopefully help persuade the Russians that it's not a threat to Russia. Good question. I agree with some of what Steve said, and I disagree, I think fundamentally with his bottom line. I think our arms control position and our desire and our appetite for an arms control agreement with Russia has already affected missile defense. We canceled third site deployment of 10 interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic in order to negotiate an arms control treaty with Russia. Now, I know you'll hear a different story. We were doing the phased adaptive approach. That's a much smarter way to do it, much more, much less expensive, et cetera, et cetera. But if you pull apart the phased adaptive approach, you find that in phases three and four, when you start to acquire capabilities against what is called a rudimentary ICBMs, and remember, this is all about Iran. Shouldn't be about Russia. We always talk about it in a Russian context. What does that tell you about the arms control context? But if you look at those phases, particularly this notion of an SM3-2B, if there was ever an interceptor that was not to be, it's the 2B, it's the standard missile 3-2B. It's a view graph capability, that's all it is. And do you think that if we were willing to cancel the third site and abandon our allies to get new start, we not gonna be willing to give in to the Russian pressure on missile defense? There's a record of this. I mean, even the limitation in new start, Steve said, well, it limits something we would never do. Well, we may never do it in the future, particularly now that we have a treaty obligation not to do it, but we did do it. We did convert ICBM silos in Vandenberg to launch ballistic missile defense interceptors. I mean, when we think about missile defense, we should be thinking about, not Russia, but about the new threats that we face. Iran is pursuing very aggressively, not only a nuclear weapons program, but a ballistic missile defense program with longer and increasingly sophisticated ballistic missiles. Now, it's not going to be this type of first strike, second strike scenario that you found in the Cold War. That's not what this is about. That's why a limited missile defense, which I think is very technologically capable, is what we need to pursue. And I think the Russians are gonna play us like they've played us in the past, and they know how to do it, and they'll make us make a false choice. And I'm just afraid that if it's this administration, it will make the wrong choice. Thank you, and thank you both, Ambassador Joseph, and Ambassador Pfeiffer, for really great presentations and well-reasoned arguments. I'm Chris Bidwell from DITRA, and my question is more directed to Ambassador Joseph's. You mentioned that one of the real threats are the threats that are different today than they were before as proliferation, and you suggested that arms control and non-proliferation treaty really don't calculate well into Iran's and North Korea's calculus. And I think most people could buy off on that. But the commitment to Article 6 of the NPT and where we went with arms control, just like the really committed criminal isn't dissuaded by a 10% increase in the DC police force, the pieces and parts that go to these programs in Iran and North Korea or the next ex-country come from other countries, many Western, many others. And does our commitment to Article 6 and our commitment to the NPT, does that not have an effect on those countries, which in turn ends up being a positive effect? And I would surmise or suggest, on Iran and North Korea's ability to get those nuclear weapons that they're looking to have. Thank you. Again, good question, it's a hard one to answer, but I would say that when North Korea or Iran acquires technology, it does that normally through very illicit channels, okay? And we had the AQCon network, a new phenomenon one-stop shopping capability for proliferators. What we do in the US-Russia arms control or how we look in terms of the racking and stacking of our nuclear weapons deployment against Article 6 of the NPT is not gonna have an effect on that, okay? That's why I say I think we need to think differently about arms control and that arms control very well may provide a way forward, but it's a different type of arms control. It's not the Cold War arms control. I mean, when the Bush administration took office in January of 2001, I remember that there was one document that was left behind for me and that was the Clinton administration's policy, national policy, presidential guidance on non-proliferation. And it was about three things. It was about strengthening the NPT, supporting the IAEA, seeking universal membership meaning we gotta get Pakistan and India and Israel to sign up. It was about export controls, both sort of working with other countries as well as in the multilateral context. And it was about CTR, the cooperative threat reduction, which was sort of a new tool that had been added to non-proliferation. Well, that wasn't enough. That was all focused on prevention, but we knew from Iran, we knew at the time from North Korea that we had to do more. We had to think differently about this. And you have to think multilaterally about it, I would argue. And that's why we came up with sort of new approaches on sort of the protection side. How do we protect ourselves against the threat? Missile defense was one of those. And it wasn't just U.S. missile defense, it was defense in Europe, it was defense in Asia, where the threats are. But it was also getting other countries to be more responsible in enforcing their own laws, their own jurisdiction about trafficking in sensitive materials, which goes to your point. That's part of what the Proliferation Security Initiative is all about. It's thinking creatively. It's thinking about the threats that we have today, how they're evolving, not about Russia. And it's interesting that when Russia was a partner from the outset of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, they were great to work with. It wasn't the Russia in Geneva sitting across the table in arms control negotiations. It wasn't the Russia talking about restrictions on U.S. missile defense. Russia understands nuclear terrorism is a real threat to their interests. And they wanted to work with us. And they brought to the table countries like China and other countries that we had difficulty bringing into the Proliferation Security Initiative. I mean, you can break through with Russia if you do it on mutual interests. Let me just add, I mean, I think I agree with Bob that you have to find new ways to tackle some of these proliferation problems. And Bob really was the driving force behind the Proliferation Security Initiative, which I think is a very good, useful tool. But at the same point, I would say that there is still a place to be played when you look at, is the United States able to argue that it is abiding by its requirements under Article Six of the Non-Proliferation Treaty? And that if the United States is seen as moving in the direction of fulfilling those obligations, it will be easier to generate and muster support to pressure country X to raise the bar. Certainly the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference was a far from ideal outcome. But it was a much better outcome than we achieved in 2005 and 2000 in part because of as a result of the New START Treaty, the United States was not seen as part of the problem. It was making a commitment to work in that areas. And so we did get some things and some outcomes, naming Israel and not Iran was a real problem, but you did get things like consensus agreement on universal adherence to the universal protocol, which would give the International Atomic Energy Agency expanded rights to inspect in countries of concern. So I think that there are some new ways to tackle the problem, but you can also look and use some of these old ways as well to come at the problem from lots of different directions. Someone over here have a question or something? My name is Zachary LaPorte, I'm from ISIS and I have a question for either of the speakers. So to Stephen Piper, I'd ask, you suggested that, oops, sorry, I have it written down. And you can probably hear from my voice, I'm a little bit nervous. Yeah, so you mentioned that decreasing reliance on nuclear weapons was a reason why having a second round of talks with Russia was in the national interest. Now, I see that a decreasing reliance on nuclear weapons in national security policy is synonymous to weakening America's nuclear deterrent. And so my question to you would be under what circumstances is that in the national interest? Now, to Robert Joseph, in your discussion of proposition number two, and this touches on the end of the answers to the last question, you suggested that a relationship with the Russians built on the issue of nuclear disarmament precludes a relationship built on national interest. And I just, I'd like you to elaborate on that. Let me, no, I think the United States, Abe should have an effective and reliable nuclear deterrent because that's the fundamental basis for American security and also for the security umbrella that we extend to our allies and partners. And I guess this is actually a point where I agree with Bob is that we need to understand how deterrence works against a whole variety of threats and what it means in a world when there's increasing proliferation. I think that's a perfectly valid argument. I guess though, where I guess what I'd separate from Bob is I think you have to go a step further and say, okay, who is not deterred by the current posture or a posture of say going down to 2,500 total nuclear weapons? And I can agree with the theory, but I think when you move to the theory of the practice and ask who out there is not going to be deterred by that, I don't see a good answer. But I would think that within the context of having an effective and reliable deterrent to the extent that we can shift emphasis a little bit away from the nuclear to the conventional area to missile defenses, those seem to be areas of huge American advantage. So why would we not want to make that adjustment in the playing field? I just love hearing Steve say positive things about missile defense. I tried for years to get them to that position in the old days. Let me first say article six. We have demonstrated our commitment to article six and you look at the number of weapons that we have taken down. You look at any category, whether it's launchers or warheads, throw weight. I mean, and if you look at non-strategic, we've gone from thousands of weapons to just literally handfuls of weapons, couple hundred. We've demonstrated that commitment to article six and we'll continue to do so in part by continuing to decrease our reliance on nuclear weapons. I'm all for that. But we don't do that because we want another arms control treaty with the Russians. We do that because we don't need thousands of nuclear weapons anymore. But we continue to need that number of weapons that meets our deterrent requirements and we've always thought about deterrence with many adjustments over time as you would expect. But we've thought about it basically at holding at risk targets that are of value to a potential enemy. Now, the administration is undertaking a 90 day study of our nuclear requirements. But they've already said what the outcome is going to be. The outcome will support further reductions. And that confuses me because I don't know, I don't know intellectually, what they're thinking in terms of deterrence. If you just reach into the planning and you take out categories, let's say, okay, well, we no longer want to hold Russian silos at risk. You can cut the numbers, but what's your thinking about deterrence? Okay, I mean, that's why we have nuclear weapons. We don't have nuclear weapons to negotiate them away. If we want to get rid of nuclear weapons, we can just take them down ourselves and we're much better at that than going through the arms control route. In terms of basing our relationship on arms control or nuclear weapons with Russia. I didn't say it precludes dealing with the Russians on mutual interests. It just makes it harder because what do the Russians want to talk about now? Well, they want to talk about missile defense. Okay, and now they think they have leverage over us in terms of the new start agreement. I don't think there's, I agree with Steve, I don't think there's much there there, but that's the focus of the Russian attention. It just makes it harder to have a more normal relationship, to wean them off of this sort of cold war, we're a superpower because we have lots of nuclear weapons mindset in Russia. Believe me, they have fundamental problems as many of you in the audience know better than I. I mean, just look at the demographics of Russia. But they're a potential partner. There's their real opportunities there that I think we lose because of the focus of our policy. Thanks. Ben Lurkey with Pleasures Fund, Ambassador Joseph Ambassador Piper. Thank you for the great talk today. As Ambassador Piper said in his introductory remarks, he mentioned that arms control can be in the United States national security interests because it can contribute to crisis and arms race stability between the two powers. Ambassador Joseph, you didn't touch on that in your talks. I was wondering if you don't support an X-Round and bilateral arms control between the US and Russia, how do you uphold that stability? Thanks. Well, I think I did touch upon it, maybe not as directly as I should, both in one of my answers and also in my introductory comments. I think we have encouraged the Russians to go to a force that emphasizes mirved ICBMs. And when you think about in the context of arms control, crisis stability, this was always about mirved ICBMs. And in start two, as John mentioned, we negotiated a ban on mirved ICBMs. And that was a really positive outcome for the United States. Maybe that's why the Russians didn't ratify the treaty. But we do need to think about crisis stability. But I don't think you do it in an arms control dialogue. I think you have to work with Russians to build confidence, to build trust, to build faith in each other and develop over time. And it's gonna take time. There's no magic silver bullet here. There's no negotiated outcome that's gonna give the Russians confidence. It's going to take time and it's going to take a normal relationship. The Russians say they want a normal relationship. We're a far away, far cry from having one. But we just need to encourage a change in their outlook on their security requirements. Yeah, let me just say that I guess on the new start, come this is one point where I think Bob and I would disagree. I don't think numbers of 1550 deployed strategic warheads and 700 deployed strategic war vehicles forced Russia towards mirved ICBMs. In fact, that two to one warhead ratio is a better ratio than you had under the start one treaty which had basically a four to one ratio of warheads to launchers. In terms of crisis stability, again, it seems to me that the United States has made decisions fundamentally by demirving the ICBM force. So you're now in a situation where if you ever get, and I think this is an extreme hypothetical, into a nuclear exchange calculation between the United States and the Russia, six or seven years ago, one or two Russian warheads on a Minuteman silo took out three of our warheads. Today, one or two Russian warheads on a Minuteman silo takes out one US warhead. So the calculation, I think, is very different down. And we've done things within the context of new start to have a force that I think is very stable in crisis stability terms. One of the things we want to do is hope that the Russians would follow suit and move away from heavy ICBMs and mirved ICBMs as they retire their SS-19s and their SS-18s and not go forward with a replacement that would be problematic in stability terms. Again, I think a lower number would give the Russians an incentive to avoid that choice. Let me just follow up, because Steve has mentioned the number 1550 a number of times. And as you all know, new start sets a limit at 1550 in terms of operationally deployed strategic warheads. But how many of you have read the fine print of the treaty? It's not 1550, okay? It's 1550 accountable, okay? We changed the rules. We changed how we count the bomber force. And this is why I get so frustrated with arms control. We now have a treaty that the administration says cuts both sides by 30%, I've already addressed that. But in actuality, it allows the parties to move up, not just up beyond 1550, but up beyond the 2100 level of the Treaty of Moscow, because we changed how we count the number of weapons in a bomber. So if the Russians wanted to, they could have lots of ICBM warheads on relatively few launchers, which is the direction that they're headed. And they could well exceed the 1550 level by uploading the bombers with gravity bombs and alcobs. I mean, only in the world of arms control can you think of these things. Let me respond to two points. One is on the bomber leg, I mean, if you traditionally look at the last 45 years, the bomber leg has actually traditionally been an area of American advantage. So to the extent that the rule in New START, and I personally would have preferred to see another rule other than the attribution in New START, which says each heavy bomber, deployed heavy bomber counts as one weapon. I would have said that there should be a discount rule, I would have given it say three to four weapons maybe. But that rule benefits both sides equally. Second, in terms of changing rules, and Bob used the comparison to the Treaty of Moscow, I'm not sure that's a good comparison, Bob, because as you know, the Treaty of Moscow had no agreed definitions, no counting rules, no verification measures. As for bombers, a number of analysts argue that we use the term operationally deployed. A number of analysts have made the argument, and I don't know, because I don't think we ever had this conversation with the Russians to figure it out, is that when the Russians were counting weapons under the Treaty of Moscow, they were counting weapons on ICBMs and SLBMs, weapons that were operationally deployed, but the Russians, because they did not keep weapons on bombers, like the US Air Force does not, did not count any of their bomber weapons, whereas the United States was counting bomber weapons in its mix. So I'm not sure the Treaty of Moscow comparison is the best one. Well, let's have one more question, and then I'll give you all some time for closing remarks as well. Yes, Burgess Laird from, I suppose I'm from Johns Hopkins this evening. A question for Ambassador Joseph. You mentioned that, and made a passionate case, that in fact, what does Russia want to talk about? They want to talk about missile defense. And to be sure, that is in fact the case, but they also want to talk about other things. They want to talk about conventional prompt global strike. And the similarity between both CBGS and missile defense is that that which worries them the most still lies far in the future. Because there's one other item that you didn't mention that Russia also does like to talk about now in the current that worries them a great deal, and that's US upload potential. And that brings me to the question on upload potential. Upload potential, as you well know, is driven by our reserves or our non-deployed strategic weapons that we can upload back on to the demurved ICBMs or the downloaded SLBMs. Is that not a, and now I'm gonna go back to what Stephen said. There may be a deal worth making, a deal worth talking about, a real deal that could be stabilizing. That is, if and to the extent that the US are concerned about Russian theater or non-strategic weapons why should we not talk and put on the table US non-deployed strategics where we enjoy an advantage, especially given the fact that we have an $85 billion 10-year program which is going to modernize the complex, going to take us from 20 pits per year up to 80 pits per year. And that's at a steady state that's not at a surge. And that will enable us to keep a good, strong, robust complex in place. Thank you. So I'll give you some more time to both answer that question and any other points that you feel you want to address from earlier and then we'll give Steve a few minutes to close as well. Okay. Well, on the bomber rule, I think that's one of the few potentially good things about New START. But it's only a good thing if we take advantage of it. I'm confident the Russians will take advantage of it. I'm not so sure we will. In fact, I think the way we look at arms control and I've got a long career in this is we are very strict in our interpretation. And if it's only Russia that takes advantage, and Russia has announced that they're going to pursue a new strategic bomber. If it's only Russia that takes advantage, it makes it worse. I don't know the outcome. I don't know whether we will be able to take advantage of that or not. I hope so. As for the treaty at Moscow, not having verification measures, et cetera, et cetera. Well, we didn't want, as an administration, an arms control treaty in 2002. We were going down by the thousands, conducted a review, said we don't need these weapons. It was the Russians. It was Putin to Bush directly, time after time after time. Please give us a treaty for this, and so we did. And it wasn't as though there wasn't verification under the Treaty of Moscow, because we said, okay, we will use the start counting rules. We will use the start verification provisions. And it was the Obama administration that negotiated the current verification package, which I've already talked about. In terms of conventional prompt global strike, the Russians are concerned about that. And the Russians aren't alone. There's a lot of concern in the Senate and elsewhere about the possible destabilizing implications, particularly over ambiguity, and whether the Russians would know whether this was a very limited use of a conventional capability. How would they know? Well, the National Academy of Sciences looked at that and said, well, that issue of ambiguity was overblown, but it's real. It's out there. And it's not just Senator Levin. I mean, one of the very difficult things that I had to do was try to convince Senate Condi Rice that we should go forward with this. And I think I only partially succeeded because as soon as I walked out the door at the State Department, the State Department had a different view on that. That's a complicated issue. My sense is now that we've moved away from conventional trident, and we're pursuing the Boost Glide vehicle. It becomes very expensive. And in this budget environment, it's going to be a really difficult one too. I hope it does survive because I think it's not just a niche capability. It's a capability that we really, really wish we would have in certain circumstances. And currently, we only have a nuclear option. And I think any president, Republican or Democrat, would want to have that option. I just, again, don't know what that outcome is going to be. On upload, I keep hearing that we have an advantage on upload, and clearly we could upload, and we could probably do it rapidly. I don't know how much of an advantage that is, but if you're talking about a new agreement that deals with overall inventories, with overall numbers, you're gonna have to have new verification provisions that we have never conceptualized, let alone gotten approval or agreement with the Russians. And one final point, and I think it's a point on which Steve and I agree. We've talked about non-strategic tactical theater weapons. There is no such thing as a non-strategic nuclear weapon. Again, this is an artificiality of the old arms control days. Any weapon, if it goes off in Hamburg, if it goes off in Tokyo, if it goes off in an American city, is going to be strategic. And we do need to think differently about nuclear weapons. And when I think about nuclear weapons, I think about the overall force. And when I think about the overall force, I look at how far the United States has gone in taking down its capability to a point where Russia now has an advantage. Now, if you ask any military leader, does Russia or any defense intellectual, almost anyone, does the United States still have a superior capability to Russia in nuclear? They'll say, yes, yes we do. We're still superior. And we're still gonna have 700 launchers and the Russians are gonna have less than that. And we've got more warheads that we can upload. But if you look at the total inventory, if you look at all nuclear deployed forces, we are second to one. And I think that's fundamental. I really do, I think it's fundamental in the eyes of our allies over time. And I think that it's only gonna get worse. You mentioned this commitment to modernization. Part of Newstart ratification was to get commitments that we would modernize the infrastructure. Well, you know, I'm hearing a lot of voices up on the hill saying, well, you know, that was a different budget environment. Now, things are really tough now. So, you know, yeah, it may have been a commitment of the administration, but administrations can't tie Congress's hands. Just watch that space, just watch it. And I think you'll probably become not as cynical as I am about this, but maybe a little bit more cynical. Great, well, now let me start by saying that. It's been fun appearing here with Bob. I think we actually do agree on quite a bit. We agree, I think, on the importance of making deterrence work. We agree on the importance of the United States has a reliable effective deterrent. We agree on the need to assure allies. We even agree, I think, I mean, I would agree that we have to have, having some and we would probably disagree on how much some long range conventional strike thing capable would be a good thing. And I think we also agree that the distinction between strategic nuclear and tactical nuclear is becoming blurred. You know, if it goes off near you, it's gonna be strategic. We disagree, I mean, I actually, I don't think US nuclear forces are number two and I think if you ask people in the Pentagon who do these things, they would not be prepared to swap forces with the Russians. On looking at further negotiations, and Bob's made the very correct point that if we go much further into the questions of limiting warheads per se and particularly non-strategic nuclear weapons, verification gets a whole lot harder. I've sometimes described as I foresee if you get into this agreement maybe a two tiered verification system. I believe the US military and the intelligence community judgment which is that they can monitor with high confidence the limits on deployed strategic warheads in the New START Treaty. And I think that that will continue with the sorts of verification measures that you have in New START. I think when you begin to talk about non-deployed strategic warheads or non-strategic nuclear weapons, it gets a whole lot harder. And you're going to have to do things that have been very difficult for both militaries to date. Are we prepared to let Russians go into storage bunkers and count weapons? Are we prepared to let somebody put a machine up against that weapon to say, yeah, that's really a nuclear weapon and not a conventional weapon because if you just go look at a B61 bomb, it may not look that much different from a conventional weapon. And you may end up getting into a situation where ultimately you have to make a judgment and say, we can have high confidence in our ability to monitor limits on deployed strategic warheads. On everything else, here's the trade-off. Either we have some reductions and some verification measures and some transparency, but a question mark, how high is our monitoring confidence? As opposed to the current situation where there is no limitations, the Russians could deploy 100,000 things, there's no verification measures and there's no transparency. And that's a judgment you can't make in the hypothetical. You have to actually begin to look and see what agreement looks like. The third point I would make is I think where we do differ is I do believe that you can do at least one more round of U.S.-Russian negotiations and reduce Russian nuclear forces in a way that will make the United States safer and more secure. And I guess my sense, and I apologize if I'm reading too much into it, but I think some of your comments are not against arms control per se, but against a fear that maybe this administration will do bad arms control. And at the end of the day I guess I have a bit more confidence that I think the diplomats and the military people who work these things are very serious about U.S. national security. And certainly there's a certain drive to get these things done. It's nice to have a treaty to sign, but at the end of the day, I think there's a sense of responsibility on the people who do these to come up with the agreement that in fact leads the United States in a safer and more secure situation. And finally, just the last point, I do acknowledge that if you're doing these sorts of negotiations, it's kind of Cold War-like when you have the delegation sit down at the table in Geneva, but it seems to me that the alternative is to leave in place nuclear force structures that are Cold War-like. All right, thank you very much. I'd like to thank all of you for coming and for your great questions, and please join me in taking the speakers who are great. Thank you.