Russia’s nuclear warheads stockpile has grown over the past year and a half, causing alarm in Congress even though the State Department remains confident that a weapons reduction treaty will be implemented on schedule.
“The United States and Russia continue to fully implement the New START Treaty,” Blake Narendra, spokesperson in the Arms Control, Verification and Compliance Bureau, told the Washington Examiner. “The treaty does not prescribe interim limits. We fully expect Russia to meet the treaty’s central limits by February 2018.”
Russia reported having 1,796 nuclear warheads on hand this year, 214 more than they possessed in March of last year, according to data released under the terms of the New Start Treaty.
The announcement came in the midst of deepening foreign policy disagreements between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the United States, punctuated by the Russian government’s decision to hold an evacuation drill for 40 million people.
The State Department countered that the increase in warheads for this year isn’t particularly surprising; under the terms of the treaty, Russia and the United States need to cap their warhead stockpile at 1,550 by February of 2018.
“Fluctuations in the number of deployed warheads is an expected process as the Russians replace older missiles dating from the 1980s that are being retired and eliminated,” Narendra said.
The fact that the U.S. cache of warheads dropped from 1,597 in March 2015 to 1,367 in September 2016 prompted a senior House Republican to denounce former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s famous attempt to “reset” the relationship with Russia.
“This latest development is further evidence of what this ‘reset’ actually is — a mistake and a failure,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said Tuesday.
“The numbers are clear: While we cut our U.S. nuclear forces, the Russians have built more. This is on top of Russia’s massive 10-to-1 advantage in tactical nuclear weapons, multiple violations of the INF Treaty, continued aggression in Syria and Ukraine and its suspension of the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA).”
But the broader “tensions” with Russia only serve to vindicate the importance of the nuclear arms reduction treaty, which is scheduled to be implemented fully by February 2018, according to the State Department.
“Current tensions with Russia highlight the importance of both the verification and confidence provided by data exchanges and on-site inspections under the treaty, and the security and predictability provided by verifiable mutual limits on strategic weapons,” Narendra said.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this post misstated the deadline for implementation of the NEW START Treaty.
