New START: Long on Trust, Short on Verification

Jim Weidman / July 09, 2010

Congress must ratify the New START pact quickly, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) asserts in The Washington Post. Why? Because “Every day without its verification regime is a day without a clear view of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.”

But if Sen. Kerry wants to keep tabs on what Russia’s doing with its nuclear arsenal, he needs to come up with something other than the New START. As Paula A. DeSutter, the former U.S. assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance and implementation, noted in a July 6 Heritage Foundation lecture on the treaty: “An assessment that says it is effectively verifiable would be incorrect.”

Indeed, DeSutter observed, the New START treaty’s verification measures “add nothing to what was there before in the original START treaty.” (more…)