Biden
administration to seek five-year extension on key nuclear arms treaty in first
foray with Russia
The Biden administration is preparing to impose new costs on Russia pending
an intelligence assessment of its recent activities. (Jabin Botsford/The
Washington Post)
By
Jan. 21, 2021 at 8:00 p.m. GMT+3
President Biden is seeking a five-year extension with Russia on the only
remaining treaty limiting the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals just days
before it expires, said two senior U.S. officials.
At the same time, his administration is preparing to impose new costs on
Russia pending a newly requested intelligence assessment of its recent
activities. The officials said Biden is ruling out a “reset” in bilateral
relations with Moscow as many U.S. presidents have done since the end of the
Cold War.
“As we work with Russia, so, too, will we work to hold Russia accountable
for their reckless and aggressive actions that we’ve seen in recent months and
years,” said a senior U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of
anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter.
The decision to seek a five-year treaty extension, which Russia supports but the Biden
administration hadn’t settled on until now, reflects the rapidly approaching
deadline for Washington to renew the New START pact Feb. 5, the officials said.
Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s envoy to international organizations in Vienna,
said Friday that Biden’s five-year New START extension was “an encouraging
step.”
“The extension will give the two sides more time to consider possible
additional measures aimed at strengthening strategic stability and global
security,” he said.
President Donald Trump tried to conclude a shorter extension with
Moscow in the final months of his presidency, but he failed to reach an
agreement after his nuclear envoy spent months trying to persuade China to join
the accord before dropping that demand.
Letting the treaty expire would allow Moscow and Washington to deploy an
unlimited number of nuclear-armed submarines, bombers and missiles in what many
experts fear could spark a nuclear arms race and further exacerbate U.S.-Russia
relations.
“New START is manifestly in the national security interest of the United
States and makes even more sense when the relationship with Russia is
adversarial,” the senior U.S. official said.
As the Biden administration informs Moscow of its terms for an extension,
the president will order Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to
provide him a full intelligence assessment of Russia’s alleged interference in
the 2020 election, use of chemical weapons against opposition leader Alexei
Navalny and bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, officials said.
Biden is also asking Haines for an assessment of the massive cyberattack on
federal agencies and departments related to the SolarWinds software breach,
which many analysts and government officials have blamed on Russia. The request
for the intelligence assessments will go out this week, said the officials.
“We will use these assessments to inform our response to Russian aggression
in the coming weeks,” another senior official said.
Biden’s plans for potential punitive actions toward Russia at the outset of
the administration is unique among his recent predecessors, all of whom
attempted to turn a new page with the Kremlin in the hopes of encouraging a
more productive relationship.
“This will be the first post-Soviet U.S. administration that has not come
into office vowing to forge a warmer relationship with Russia,” said Angela
Stent, a senior intelligence official on Russia during the George W. Bush
administration.
The skeptical posture follows four years of growing animus toward the
Kremlin within the Democratic Party for its interference in the 2016 election
against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump came into office
seeking a rapprochement with Russia, but opposition from his party and
congressional Democrats stymied that effort.
Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told lawmakers
Tuesday that sanctions passed by Congress to target Moscow will be “extremely
helpful in being able to impose . . . costs and consequences” on Russia.
Blinken said New START, which restricts the number of deployed strategic
nuclear warheads to 1,550 and deployed strategic delivery systems to 700, gives
the United States “tremendous access to data and inspections” and is “certainly
in the national interest to extend.”
Not all of Biden’s aides have supported the idea of a five-year extension
for the treaty.
Victoria Nuland, a longtime Russia hawk whom Biden will nominate to be the
No. 3 official at the State Department, wrote
in Foreign Affairs over
the summer that the United States should seek only a one- or two-year renewal
in the hopes of retaining leverage over the Kremlin.
“Washington should not grant Moscow what it wants most: a free rollover of
New START without any negotiations to address Russia’s recent investments in
short- and medium-range nuclear weapons systems and new conventional weapons,”
she wrote.
In responses to Biden’s decision to seek a five-year extension, Trump’s
former special envoy for nuclear negotiations, Marshall Billingslea,
criticized the move, saying it “shows stunning lack of negotiating skill.”
“Took just 24 hours for Biden team to squander most significant leverage we
have over Russia,” he tweeted.
But U.S. officials noted that Billingslea himself tried to secure a shorter
extension with his Russian counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov,
but failed to make a deal, leaving a critical agreement dangerously close to
expiration.
“We’re aware that the last administration engaged in negotiations on an
extension of a New START for months but was unable to come with an agreement,”
the first senior U.S. official said. “We also understand there have been
various proposals exchanged during those negations, but we’ve not seen anything
to suggest that at any point an agreement on the terms that have been reported
was in place.”
Arms control advocates have also opposed holding out for a shorter
extension.
“There is no evidence that Russia is desperate to extend the treaty or that
a shorter-term extension would make Russia more likely to negotiate a follow-on
agreement,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control
Association.
“A straightforward five-year extension would provide the new president with
an early win and positive momentum, help restore U.S. credibility on arms
control issues, and create the potential for more ambitious steps to reduce the
nuclear danger and move us closer to a world without nuclear weapons.”
U.S. officials said they hoped a quick renewal of New START could provide a
foundation for new arms control arrangements, potentially including China.
“We believe it’s absolutely urgent for China to take on greater
responsibility, transparency and restraint for its nuclear weapons arsenal,”
the U.S. official said.
The Biden administration is not interested in holding an extension of New
START hostage to China, however, the official said, especially given that
Moscow’s arsenal “is at least 10 times the size of China’s.”
In October, Russia expressed a willingness to freeze its
overall number of nuclear warheads during talks with Billingslea — a move Biden
officials said was a “positive development” they hoped to build on, even though
details on verification had not been hammered out.
The Biden administration’s ability to work with Russia on arms control
while confronting it on a range of other issues will be tested almost immediately.
On Sunday, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called for the
immediate release of Navalny, the Russian opposition leader detained in Moscow.
Navalny had just returned home after receiving medical treatment in Germany
following a poisoning attack this summer. Russian authorities put out a warrant
for his arrest, claiming he had violated the terms of a previous sentence
related to embezzlement charges.
“Mr. Navalny should be immediately released, and the perpetrators of the
outrageous attack on his life must be held accountable,” Sullivan wrote on
Twitter. “The Kremlin’s attacks on Mr. Navalny are not just a violation of
human rights, but an affront to the Russian people who want their voices
heard.”
Robyn Dixon in Moscow contributed to this
report.
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