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Summary

The United States and Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991; it entered into force in December 1994 and is due to expire in December 2009. The United States and Russia have held several meetings to discuss options for continuing their arms control relationship, but have not agreed on whether to extend START or how to replace it. START counts each deployed ICBM, SLBM, bomber as a single delivery vehicle under the Treaty limit of 1,600 delivery vehicles and attributes an agreed number of warheads to each deployed delivery vehicle. This attribution rule provides the total number of warheads that count under the 6,000 warhead limit in the Treaty. To verify compliance with START, each side monitors the numbers and locations of ballistic missiles, launchers and heavy bombers deployed by the other country. The parties use a wide variety of means to collect information—or monitor—these forces and activities. Some of these monitoring systems, such as overhead satellites, operate outside the territories of the treaty parties. They also have also been required to exchange copious amounts of data on locations, operations, and technical characteristics of the treaty-limited items. This verification regime has allowed the parties to remain confident in each other's compliance with the Treaty. The United States and Russia began to discuss their options for arms control after START expired in mid-2006. They have, however been unable to agree on a path forward. Neither side wants to extend START in its current form, as some of the Treaty's provisions have begun to interfere with some military programs on both sides. Russia wants to replace START with a new Treaty that would further reduce deployed forces while using many of the same definitions and counting rules in START. The United States initially did not want to negotiate a new treaty, but, under the Bush Administration, would have been willing to extend, informally, some of START's monitoring provisions. In 2008, the Bush Administration agreed to conclude a new Treaty, with monitoring provisions attached, but this Treaty would resemble the far less formal Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty that the two sides signed in 2002. In December 2008, the two sides agreed that they wanted to replace START before it expired, but acknowledged that this task would have to be left to negotiations between Russia and the Obama Administration. President Obama and President Medvedev agreed at their meeting on April 2, 2009, to pursue "new and verifiable reductions" in their strategic offensive arms and pledged to begin negotiations immediately on a Treaty that would replace START. The United States and Russia could choose from a number of options for the future of their arms control relationship. They could allow START to lapse or they could extend START for five years. They could extend START, then amend it to ease some of the outdated provisions. They could negotiate a new Treaty, or they could pursue less formal arrangements to manage their nuclear forces. Moreover, if a new treaty included further reductions in nuclear weapons, it could use some START definitions and counting rules or the less formal Moscow Treaty declarations. This report will be updated as needed.

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