Billingslea's Farcical 'Negotiations'

The farce that is U.S.-Russian arms control “negotiations” has reached new lows this week:

The Trump administration is threatening Russia that they could increase the cost of extending the one remaining nuclear weapons treaty between the two countries if Moscow does not commit to meeting US demands, including agreeing to stronger verification measures, before the American presidential election in November.

It has been obvious for the last year that the Trump administration has no intention of extending New START. This is why they have made their wish list of demands so long and unrealistic that Russia would never go along with it. Now they are threatening that their wish list will grow even longer and become even more unrealistic if Russia does not give in before November:

"What we have suggested to the Russians in terms of the way ahead is -- in our view precisely that the Russians have a choice to make," Marshall Billingslea, the top Trump administration nuclear negotiator, told CNN. "But they may find the price of admission goes up after November."

The Trump administration assesses that Russia is "desperate" to uphold New START, and that they will be willing to make concessions in order to keep it in place. While the US has already made significant asks of Moscow, Billingslea said "there is a lot more we could demand." He added that the US could begin "including a lot of the other bad behavior that the Russians are engaged in around the world" into the nuclear negotiations. He didn't say what Russian behavior he was referring to.

Hard-liners have a strange understanding of leverage. They imagine that they are increasing their leverage with the Russians by withholding U.S. agreement on extending New START, and they think that they can keep raising the “price” as more time passes, but all they are doing is demonstrating their bad faith and their unwillingness to negotiate seriously. Like a bad salesman, they keep jacking up the price to cajole a reluctant customer to buy the goods, and every so often they tell the customer, “You have a choice to make!” It will come as no surprise that the customer chooses to leave after buying nothing.

Russia prefers that New START survive, but their commitment to maintaining the treaty is not limitless. They will not pay any price to keep it alive, and by trying to extort more concessions out of them at the eleventh hour the administration has achieved nothing. The more foot-dragging that the U.S. engages in, the weaker its position becomes as the Russian government sees that there is no point in discussing anything with our representatives.

The administration thinks that it can pressure Russia into giving up far more than it has ever given up in any arms control agreement, but they are unwilling to make even the most minimal gesture by keeping the current treaty alive for a few more years. Far from forcing Russia into making more concessions, this approach guarantees that the U.S. will come away with less than what it already has now. The strategic stability that comes with New START will vanish in less than five months if nothing is done, and there will be nothing to replace it.

A couple weeks ago, it was supposed to be a big “concession” on the part of the U.S. that our negotiators were no longer requiring Chinese participation in the talks as a condition of extending the existing treaty, but then this week Billingslea insisted that Russia could compel China to take part if they really wanted to:

When asked what kind of leverage Russia could use to pressure China to be part of the next treaty Billingslea spoke in broad terms.

"It's Vladimir Putin. He's got all kinds of leverage. If they really wanted to help they could," he said, adding he has not seen an effort by them on that front so far.

Billingslea had to speak in “broad terms” here because there is nothing he could have cited as an example of the leverage that Putin supposedly has over the Chinese government. Russia is not in a position to force China to join these talks, and there is no reason why they would agree to try it even if they could. Not only does China have no interest in participating in these talks, but their participation makes absolutely no sense.

New START caps the U.S. and Russian arsenals at 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 deployed delivery vehicles. The best estimates of the size of China’s arsenal put it around 200-300 warheads total. Our government’s own assessment puts the number of warheads at the lower end of that estimate. Even if China were rapidly expanding its arsenal (and it is not at all clear that they are), they would have to quintuple or sextuple it to reach parity with the U.S. and Russia under New START limits. It is doubtful that that they have the fissile material to build so many weapons, and they seem to have no desire to go on such a weapon-building spree.

Worrying about China’s much smaller arsenal while refusing to extend the treaty that keeps Russia’s arsenal capped is a perfect illustration of the recklessness of the hard-liners in the Trump administration on arms control. They feign concern about a Chinese buildup that may not even be happening while failing to preserve the gains made by generations of arms control negotiators. They make outlandish demands as the price of keeping a treaty that benefits the U.S., Russia, and the rest of the world.

Russia may not agree to more restrictions under a future arms control treaty for their own reasons, but it isn’t possible to discuss it with them when our officials are working overtime to kill the only remaining agreement that limits the size and deployment of our respective arsenals. Since Biden has committed to extending the treaty, Moscow has every reason to wait and see what the outcome of the election will be. New START may ultimately survive, but it will be in spite of the farcical “negotiations” that Billingslea has been conducting.