New START: Significant Reductions, Modest Pace

On the radar: Charting START data; Gates says Iran strike would “prove catastrophic”; Iran’s currency crisis; Sanctions and the role of flexibility; South Korean missiles; and Catch 22 for UK atomic veterans.

October 4, 2012 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke

Slow START - The recent data exchange between the U.S. and Russia on reductions under New START showed two trends: 1) Both countries are on track to slip below treaty ceilings; and 2) Neither country is in any hurry to do so before the deadline of 2018. Greg Thielmann at Arms Control Now graphs the trends and asks “Why so long?” http://bit.ly/SFo7g1

--”Forces slated for retirement should be removed from service now and the reserve of upload warheads should be trimmed. Doing so is good planning. Not only is it expensive (and stupid) to keep more nuclear forces than needed. But a bloated force structure provides unhelpful justification for those in the Russian establishment who argue for increasing missile production and deploying new missiles,” argues Hans Kristensen at FAS Strategic Security. http://bit.ly/O7KFtB

Gates on Iran - “The results of an American or Israeli military strike on Iran could, in my view, prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world,” said former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in a talk yesterday. The Virginian-Pilot has the story. http://bit.ly/VzzQ4U

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Careful how you count - The State Department’s recent numbers on New START show both sides trending toward treaty compliance, but the data is not perfectly representative of actual reductions. “Parts of those numbers are fluctuations due to delivery platforms entering or leaving maintenance,” notes Hans Kristensen in his analysis of the report. http://bit.ly/O7KFtB

Tweet - @Cirincione: "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad s Finale at the United Nations," and the costs of war. @NewYorker http://nyr.kr/UhTip3

The Bazaar and the regime - “The bazaar is a critical pillar of support for the Iranian regime. The loss of confidence among Iran's merchant and business classes could shake the foundations of the Islamic Republic,” writes Alireza Nader in US News on the consequences of unrest in Tehran. http://bit.ly/UHgrfd

Macroeconomics 201 - “Sanctions have played a part in this story, but for the Rial to plummet this much and this quickly, talented mismanagement had to be in the leading role,” writes Siamak Namazi in a prescient analysis of the causes of Iran’s currency crisis.

--The author explains how liquidity in the Iranian economy was on the rise as the regime lowered interest rates. This sent Iranians scrambling for other investment vehicles, causing prices to surge and inflation to spike. Posted at The Iran Primer. http://bit.ly/O7K37h

Seminar on diplomacy - “[Iran has] made their own government decisions - having nothing to do with the sanctions - that have had an impact on the economic conditions inside of the country,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the recent unrest in Iran.

--”Of course the sanctions have had an impact as well, but those could be remedied in short order if the Iranian government were willing to work with the P5+1 and the rest of the international community in a sincere manner.” Reuters has the story. http://reut.rs/SFhASr

Sanctions 101 - “There is a contradiction in any attempt to use the same policy instruments (in this case sanctions) both to influence a regime's policies and to try to topple it. The inflexible application of pressure in pursuit of the toppling objective renders unusable the same sort of pressure as leverage—which requires flexibility—to elicit changes in policy,” writes Paul Pillar at The National Interest.

--”To the extent inflexible application continues to be the case with the approach toward Iran, the resulting stalemate will of course be interpreted as an indication of Iranian obduracy—whereas in fact it is an indication of confusion in the use of our own policy instruments.” http://bit.ly/O7H4eS

South Korean missile ranges - Rumors are swirling that the U.S. and South Korea could be striking a bargain that would permit South Korea to build ballistic missiles with ranges up to 497 miles - up from the current agreed limit of 186 miles. Global Security Newswire has the story. http://bit.ly/RDCxAJ

Atomic veterans - The UK Supreme Court just dismissed a class action lawsuit by veterans of the UK nuclear weapons program on statute-of-limitation grounds.

--The atomic veterans did not sue within the required three-year window because they did not have enough documentation to prove radiation exposure caused their illnesses. The documentation did not exist, in part, because the government failed to create or preserve it. Sue Roff at The Bulletin explains the catch 22. http://bit.ly/QJAhbp