SSI Live Podcast – Ep 123 – Obama and the Bomb

In this episode of SSI Live, Major Brennan Deveraux interviews Dr. Frank Jones, a distinguished fellow of the US Army War College, on his recently published book Obama and the Bomb: New START, Russia, and the Politics of post-Cold War Arms Control. The conversation explores the historical significance of this now expired bi-lateral treaty and Frank’s assessment of the conditions required to achieve this type of great-power cooperation.

Brennan Deveraux

Welcome back to SSI Live. I’m your host, Brennan Deveraux, still filling in for John Deni. I’m joined today by Dr. Frank Jones, a distinguished fellow of the US Army War College, where he taught in the Department of National Security and Strategy. Previously, Frank had retired from the Office of the Secretary of Defense as a senior executive. He’s the author or editor of four books and numerous articles on US national security.

For this conversation, we’ll be discussing Frank’s recently published book, Obama and the Bomb: New START, Russia, and the Politics of post-Cold War Arms Control. Thanks for joining me today, Frank.

Frank Jones

Well, thank you for the invitation.

Deveraux

Obama and the Bomb is a detailed account of the administration’s efforts to negotiate a new version of one of the last remnants of the Cold War, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Or START. I guess, in this case, New START. The book follows the steps from concept through negotiation and eventually ratification, dropping readers behind the scenes of the frustrating bureaucratic process of debate and compromise required to formalize a treaty.

So, Frank, I’ll just jump right in. This is a pretty specific topic. I’m curious why you chose it.

Frank Jones

Yeah, it’s a combination of interests. Really. The first aspect of it was I was just interested in international negotiations. I’d been doing some work on the Korean armistice, and I became fascinated with how negotiations occur. The second aspect was that I just published a few years earlier, a book on Senator Sam Nunn, who had been on the Armed Services Committee in the Senate. Chairman of that. He was very interested in arms control issues. And then the third reason really is I used to be in charge of a course here at the War College called “The Theory of War and Strategy.” I reintroduced or introduced into the curriculum nuclear strategy as a lesson. I felt that that had, in the post-Cold War era, had gone out of people’s mind.

But at the same time, Iran was looking to build a nuclear arsenal. And also, North Korea was in the news. So, I thought students in joint PME, professional military education, had to be aware of nuclear weapons again and the strategy and the theories of deterrence.

Deveraux

It’s an interesting time for the conversation. I know over the past few years some of these treaties have gone away naturally. Some of them we’ve chose to walk out of. As a rocket guy, the INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] Treaty, was a big one for me when we walked out of it. So I found this really interesting, which is why I kind of jumped on this opportunity.

So I appreciate you writing it. I really enjoyed the book. Thanks for sharing it with me. If you can, for listeners who are maybe a little less familiar with the treaty itself, can you just talk about the START Treaty? What it, what it is, what it was, what the New START is? And then today, being a pretty significant day, the treaty ended. So it expired. So now it’s a little bit more historical than the application.

Jones

The New START Treaty, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, is a response by the Obama administration in 2009 through when the treaty went into effect in 2011, it was because a previous treaty, the START treaty, START One it’s often called, was going to expire in December 2009. And so that would have been an event that the Obama administration, President Obama himself, did not want to occur.

And so, through a convergence of interests between the United States and Russia, a decision was made by President Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev that they would go ahead and do a follow-on treaty to START, and that became the New START Treaty.

Deveraux

This had been tried before. So in the 90s, there were a couple attempts to kind of maybe adjust the treaty or add to it, that didn’t get across the finish line?

Jones

Well, yes. I mean, there was START Two and there were, as you mentioned, during the Clinton administration, some attempts as well. And then in the George W. Bush administration, there was a SORT treaty Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty, which was really for the reduction in terms of the number of warheads and missiles. One aspect of that treaty that was not addressed specifically was because it relied on the verification protocol or regime in the START Treaty, because that was robust.

And that was the other concern that everyone had in the United States. When your treaty expires, what insights do you have into the monitoring of the treaty and to your other party? And what also transparency do you have in terms of whether or not they actually are complying with the treaty?

Deveraux

It’s the old “trust but verify” we tell all our young officers.

Jones

Absolutely. And that that term, which comes from Ronald Reagan, is echoed in the Obama administration.

Deveraux

I found that interesting. And we’ll get to it in a little bit. But there is an aspect of trust being a huge component of the challenge of making a treaty with someone like Russia. And we’ll talk about that later. But the inherent lack of trust that we might have for an adversary or competitor or however you view it, especially coming out of the Cold War.

Jones

As you pointed out, part of the issue is how far do you trust someone to balance the tension between being transparent in a in a treaty and security at the same time, and attaining some type of strategic advantage? And then there’s also this whole idea that an anthropologist by the name of Phillip Gulliver talked about, which is that your, there’s a competitive antagonism. You don’t want to give away your national interests, but on the other hand, you have to cooperate to some extent and coordinate in order to achieve an agreement. And so that tensions or those two types of tensions are still in play.

Deveraux

And reading about it, I can sense the frustration, kind of working through the process with all the players at the table, having to make some of those compromises, knowing which ones you can or can’t make, while looking at the other side, being like, “I know you can make a compromise.” “Oh, no, I don’t know, let me take this back home first.”

Jones

The negotiations are never linear. You know, it’s not like A leads to B leads to C. No, there’s stops, starts, agreements. People were going back on that agreement, what they thought was a concession or whatever, and trying to sometimes figure out because there’s an audience, if you will, of, your the negotiators are there negotiating, but there’s an audience for them in a sense back in Washington or in Moscow that’s telling them and giving them guidance.

And, so they’re working within these parameters that they were given. But at the same time, they’re across the table for someone. And the difficulty of engaging with that.

Deveraux

One of the aspects of success is finding this expert who can navigate these frustrating bureaucratic situations. And it’s more than just, and we’ll get to the table in front of you and the table behind you, it’s more than that. When there’s something as simple as understanding the cultural differences, the barriers, how we look at problems. For me, what might be seen as willing to compromise, to you might be seen as a weakness for you to pounce upon.

So even just understanding that dynamic makes the conversation more difficult.

Jones

That was part of the analytical framework that I was working toward with this book, was to examine what are the real factors that may be, maybe, I use that word, maybe lead to success and one of them, as you mentioned, is that expertise and expertise in political culture, military culture, and the ability in this particular case, you had some Russian speakers on the American side which helped with the dialogue.

And, but you need that technical expertise not only at the table, if you will, in Geneva, where most of the negotiation took place. But you have to rely on experts back in Washington DC or elsewhere that have answers to questions you need to know about.

Deveraux

And this was a very technical, treaty. When we start talking about the nuance of what is categorized as this type of weapon, if it’s on a system versus if it’s off a system, that shelf life. And as we looked at some of those things. So you definitely need a large variance of expertise. It’s not one person who’s just that superstar representing the team.

Jones

No, I think in the book I talk about 70 or 80 people that are involved in this and the expertise is critical. Linton Brooks, who was one, the final chief US negotiators for the START Treaty. He talked about the necessity of technical expertise. And in particular, he said service personnel, Navy and Air Force were primarily involved in this, having them on hand in the delegation with you is critical because they understand the weapons systems, they understand the training involved, they understand the operational tempo issues, etc.

Deveraux

No, that’s interesting. And we’re going to come back to the military aspect, when we kind of shift back to the narrative back home. But real quick, before we do that, there’s an un...