China overshadows nuclear treaty talks between U.S. and Russia

Russia’s lead envoy in crucial nuclear talks has told NBC News that the Kremlin does not currently believe the U.S. will extend an arms reduction treaty ratified by Barack Obama in 2011 and due to expire next year.

As the talks began in Vienna on Monday, the envoy said the Russian side had “no basis” for believing the Trump administration will agree to prolong New START — short for strategic arms reduction treaty — before it expires in early February.

And diplomats, nuclear experts and a key former architect of the existing nuclear deal have warned that President Donald Trump’s insistence that China join discussions could obstruct a renewal and might even precipitate a new nuclear arms race.

Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergey Ryabkov, told NBC News ahead of his arrival in Vienna that he rejected what he called the American position on “verification for verification’s sake.”

But he accepted that some of Russia’s more recent nuclear weapons systems that appear to concern the United States could be placed under the “umbrella” of the existing treaty, as part of a reciprocal arrangement that would cover new American weaponry, including advanced missile defense systems that have become a major bone of contention for Moscow in recent years.

Sergei Alexeyevich Ryabkov, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation has his temprature checked as he arrives for the U.S.-Russia meeting at the Palais Niederoestereich in Vienna on Monday.Joe Klamar / AFP – Getty Images

Ryabkov also said that Russia would be unable to force China to join the negotiations and was unwilling to try. He added that if Washington had concerns about Beijing’s nuclear activities then it was up to American officials to bring the Chinese on board.

“The U.S. administration currently is so obsessed with China,” he said, that it makes progress impossible. “The Chinese idea overshadows in my view, everything else.”

The U.S and Russia maintain at least 5,000 nuclear weapons in their respective stockpiles, but the terms of New START meant both nations could actively deploy no more than 1,550 active nuclear warheads, whether attached to intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines or aircraft. The agreement also allows each country to frequently inspect the other to make sure the rules are being followed.

The current treaty will expire on February 5, 2011, unless it is extended for a further five years — a process that does not require congressional approval and could be quickly implemented.

Many experts say the decision to extend could be a first step to future cooperation, including perhaps a more wide-ranging and stringent agreement in the future. But no one is expecting the talks to be easy.

“It’s really hard to understand why the Trump administration wouldn’t want to keep New START in place,” said Lynn Rusten, who coordinated between the original treaty negotiating team at the State Department and the rest of the U.S. government.

Rusten said the attempt to include China in arms control negotiations between now and New START’s February expiration date represented a “really challenging proposition,” particularly given recent U.S. criticism of China following the coronavirus outbreak in the city of Wuhan.

“It’s just an environment where, on the one hand, the relationship is deteriorating rapidly, and on the other hand, we’re insisting that they come to the table to negotiate on their nuclear weapons,” she said. “There’s a lot of kind of internal incoherence and in the messaging, as far as I can see.”

Marshall Billingslea, America’s top representative at these talks and the current presidential special envoy on arms control, said recently that China must reverse a nuclear build-up he labelled “destabilizing” and engage with the U.S. and Russia. But Monday from Vienna he tweeted that “China is a no-show.”

“If China wants to be a great power, and we know it has that self-image, it needs to behave like one,” he said on an earlier recorded video call last month, hosted by the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington D.C.

He criticized Russia as well, arguing that the country had repeatedly failed to comply with international agreements, including the Open Skies Treaty, that grants countries the freedom to photograph one another’s territories from the air. The U.S. announced it was leaving that treaty last month.

“Not extending [New START] means you don’t really know what the future is going to be,” said Alex Wellerstein, a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology who studies the history of nuclear weapons. “And that’s a lot more tricky.”

Other critics of the U.S. administration’s approach are even more pessimistic.

“We’re talking about the last foundation brick of the Cold War nuclear arms control security architecture,” said Mark Sleboda, a Moscow-based international affairs and security analyst, with dual U.S.-Russian nationality, who often commentates on Russian state-funded media.

“If this is gone, this is the Big Daddy, the one that actually limits launchers and warheads on both sides, then then there’s nothing left and we are in an open, multiple side arms race around the world.”

John Everard, a former British ambassador to North Korea, who also helped oversee nuclear disarmament in Belarus after the fall of the Soviet Union, was unsparing in his criticism of the major players.

“I don’t think the US attitude under this administration has been entirely helpful,” he said, adding that Russian and Chinese behavior has also undeniably damaged global stability and the implementation of international treaties. “It takes three not to tango.”

source: nbcnews.com