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Bush, Putin face challenges in making arms cuts
By Randall Mikkelsen
CRAWFORD, Texas, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Announcing big cuts in nuclear arms stockpiles was the easy part -- now President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin must find a way to implement the reductions and bridge gaps over U.S. missile defense ambitions.
There are already indications Bush and Putin have a tacit understanding allowing U.S. missile defense testing to proceed. But analysts said they may yet be forced to strike a grand bargain that will include an explicit deal on missile defense in order to transform intentions to cut their nuclear arms stockpiles into reality.
Bush has expressed a determination to freely proceed with missile defense testing and deployment, and an aversion to a formal arms treaty in favor of mutual trust.
Any deal over missile defense and arms cuts could include more flexibility for the United States to conduct tests of a missile defense system, coupled with a more binding commitment on arms reductions, analysts said.
"They really are two sides of the same coin," said Tom Collina, director of the global security program of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
During a three-day summit in Washington and at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, the U.S. president and his Russian counterpart this week announced they each would cut their stockpiles of deployed nuclear warheads by roughly two-thirds, bringing them to the lowest levels since the 1950s.
The cuts are similar in scale to what former Presidents Bill Clinton of the United States and Boris Yeltsin of Russia outlined as a framework for START III arms talks in 1997. But those talks were never launched and the Bush-Putin initiative has breathed new life into a the arms reduction process.
Putin, however, said he wanted the cuts enshrined in a treaty. That is something Bush said was unnecessary and, analysts said, is opposed by U.S. military planners, who do not want to lock the United States into reductions it may want to abandon in the future.
AN UNDERSTANDING ON MISSILE DEFENSE?
The two also failed to reach what the United States hoped would be an agreement on moving beyond the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow Washington to test and deploy a missile shield against attacks from "rogue" states or terrorists.
Putin said he remained opposed to abandoning the pact, which bans missile defense systems.
There are indications, however, that Bush and Putin have reached an understanding allowing the United States to proceed with pending missile defense tests for the time being, analysts said, although neither side acknowledges any such deal.
"What I understand the deal to be is that the Russians know that within the next year we are scheduled to conduct tests that would violate the fine print (of the ABM treaty banning missile defense). The deal is we won't abrogate the treaty if you just look the other way on these little tests," said Michele Flournoy, a former Defense Department strategist now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, while denying that Putin had given Bush a green light to proceed with missile defense testing, said on Thursday the issue was no longer a make-or-break one for the U.S.-Russian relationship.
"What President Putin has been saying is that this is an issue now in the context of a larger relationship that continues to be a source of disagreement between the two sides, but ... it's not going to have an effect on the relationship as a whole."
Officials said Washington has also stepped up the information it is giving Russia on the tests.
"The Russians have a much clearer understanding of what it is we're thinking of doing," Rice said.
CUTTING ARMS STOCKPILES
Bush said he would unilaterally reduce the U.S. arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 deployed warheads from about 7,000 currently over 10 years. Putin has not given a precise range, but said he would respond "in kind" by reducing the Russian arsenal of about 6,000 by two-thirds.
How they will get there is also uncertain. Bush said in Crawford on Thursday he aimed to destroy the warheads, but other administration officials have said they may merely be removed from missiles.
"What the president was referring to is we will not have these warheads near the places at which they could be deployed. In other words, they will truly not be deployable warheads," Rice said.
"Now, how you then dispose of them, how you deal with the materials, how you deal with reliability issues in the existing stockpiles ... those are all details to be worked out," she said. Pressed by reporters, she said, "a number" of the warheads would be destroyed.
Putin said the fate of the weapons -- whether they are to be destroyed or simply stored -- should be a matter of negotiations, the results of which would depend on the level of trust between the two countries.
Bush said he would proceed with the U.S. cuts regardless of Russia's response, but that "if we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll be glad to do that."
The 10-year goal outlined by Bush gives the United States plenty of opportunity to change its mind -- one reason for Putin's insistence on a treaty to cement the commitment.
"It's a glide path, not a target. There are potential off ramps here," Flournoy said. If the strategic situation changes, the cuts could be halted. A U.S. official said Bush does not envision circumstances that would force him to change course.
The U.S. president has also faced political calls to put his arms agreements in writing.
"We do not need fly-by-night arms control," Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd said on Thursday. "An informal agreement on nuclear arms and national missile defense is not worth the paper that it is, or is not, written on," he said.
He said a formal treaty, with the constitutionally mandated Senate ratification, is essential to ensure that any agreement between the two countries was politically and publicly supported.
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