Arms Control and International Security Papers 

Volume 11 Number 1 

April 06, 2020 

U.S. Priorities for "NextGeneration Arms Control" 

by Christopher A. Ford 

The Arms Control and International Security Papers are produced by the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control 

and International Security in order to make U.S. State Department policy analysis available in an electronically-accessible 

format compatible with "social distancing" during the COVID-19 crisis. 
in London in February 2020

Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament

 

Arms Control and International Security Papers 

U.S. Priorities for "Next-Generation Arms Control" 

Volume I, Number 1 I April 06, 2020 

U.S. Priorities for "Next-Generation Arms Control" 

by Christopher A. Ford1 

This first of a new series of papers offers thoughts on U.S. priorities for \\nextgeneration arms control 11 involving both Moscow and Beijing, which we hope 

will be able to forestall the global nuclear arms race that may otherwise be 

sparked by the ongoing nuclear build-ups by both Russia and the PRC. 

I have certainly not been shy about giving astringent 

critiques - as I did _________ - of those 

parts of the arms control and disarmament community that 

seem to have allowed themselves to become so caught up 

in ideological identity politics that they lose sight of what 

should be the common policy objective of real-world 

security. Nor is it any secret that I sometimes disagree with 

even the most reasonable members of that community 

about arms control and disarmament. 

Nevertheless, there are many serious people out there 

in the arms control and disarmament community- even 

where we disagree, which of course we often do - and it is 

vital to remain thoughtfully engaged with all who return 

that courtesy. As I hope we are demonstrating at the State 

Department by modelling and encouraging such behavior 

in our" ------------------

( C END) initiative, there is no substitute for good faith 

dialogue with those who are willing to engage in it. 

In that spirit, this paper offers some thoughts -from 

my current perspective exercising the responsibilities of the 

Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and 

International Security- about how we in the U.S. 

Government view the challenges facing us in the arms 

control environment, and how we see its future. 

I. The Sino-Russian Challenge 

Let me start by outlining the challenges that face "next 

generation arms control." The primary challenge facing 

the arms control community today is the pressing need to 

rein in the Russian and Chinese nuclear build-ups that are 

currently underway. 

I've spoken about this challenge repeatedly, but let me 

emphasize the sharp contrast that exists between the 

nuclear build-ups currently underway in Russia and China 

and the behavior of the other three members of the Psor more appropriately, "Ns" - powers. Neither the United 

States nor Britain nor France is building up its nuclear 

arsenal. 

For our part in the United States, we are modernizing 

our nuclear "Triad" to keep it relevant and effective in 

deterring aggression, but so far- despite the challenges 

that will be presented if Russian and PRC activities continue 

unabated-we are not increasing our stockpile size. Our 

program of record is based upon New START numbers, and 

it focuses upon replacing legacy systems on a more or less 

one-for-one basis before existing systems age out of 

service. 

U.S. program parameters and budgets have been clear and 

in the public record for some time. Even where we have 

decided that we need supplemental tools to provide 

tailored deterrence options for the diverse range of 

capabilities being developed and fielded by our 

competitors, we are doing so with restraint. The loweryield submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead that has 

just entered into service is accountable under the New 

START Treaty limits and does not increase the number of 

strategic nuclear weapons in our deployed force. The 

1 U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, and additionally performing the duties of the Under Secretary 

for Arms Control and International Security. 
madly reckless ‘flying Chernobyl’

Arms Control and International Security Papers 

U.S. Priorities for "Next Generation Arms Control" 

nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile we are 

developing will also be fully-compliant with our arms 

control obligations. 

We are not building up our arsenal, and indeed under 

current programming our number of operational delivery 

systems may slightly decline as we eventually transition to 

the missile submarine that is slated to replace today's Ohioclass boats. All in all, the United States is thus doing three 

critical things that all responsible nuclear weapons 

stewards should do: (1) we are exercising responsible 

nuclear restraint; (2) we are pursuing negotiations in good 

faith on effective measures to prevent an arms race in line 

with Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty 

(NPT); and (3) we are modeling exemplary practices of 

programmatic and doctrinal transparency that contribute 

to confidence-building, strategic predictability, and 

stability. 

Russia and the People's Republic of China (PRC) are an 

entirely different story: they are doing none of these three 

things. Indeed, even leaving aside Russia's ongoing 

aggression in invading and occupying portions of its 

neighbors since 2008, and the PRC's huge conventional 

military build-up and moves to occupy and militarize areas 

of the Southeast Asian littoral claimed by its neighbors -

provocative choices that increase the risk of conflict and 

escalation, worsen tensions, and increase regional 

proliferation pressures - Moscow and Beijing are in the 

process of catalyzing a new nuclear arms race by expanding 

their arsenals in destabilizing ways. 

No reader needs reminding that Russia is building a 

new generation of "exotic" strategic nuclear delivery 

systems that include a new super-heavy intercontinental 

ballistic missile (ICBM), a hypersonic delivery system 

carried by an ICBM booster, an air-launched ballistic missile 

(ALBM), a nuclear-powered underwater drone, and what I 

have termed the" ____________ " of 

Russia's accident-prone cruise missile powered by an 

unshielded nuclear reactor. Significantly, only two of these 

new systems will potentially be accountable under the New 

START agreement, whereas the others, dangerous new 

technological fronts the Kremlin is trying to open in a 

strategic arms race, plainly fall outside the agreement 

altogether. 

It is also important to remember that the problem is 

much greater than just these new strategic systems. 

Moscow also possesses a huge stockpile of non-strategic 

nuclear weapons (NSNW) with which it threatens both 

Volume I, Number 1 I April 06, 2020 

NATO and the PRC. Russia has up to 2,000 such systems at 

present- including the SSC-8/9M729 system it built and 

deployed in violation of the Intermediate-range Nuclear 

Forces (INF) Treaty, thus destroying that treaty- and it is 

likely to expand this non-strategic arsenal considerably in 

the coming years. Ever since ratification of New START in 

2010, the United States has put a priority on including 

Russia's NSNW holdings in the next arms control 

framework, but the Kremlin is making the problem worse 

by building more and more of them. Why does Russia need 

so many nonstrategic nuclear weapons when it already 

possesses strategic forces comparable to those of the 

United States? Is Russia seeking such arms with the 

purpose of using them on a battlefield? Is it looking for 

some limited way to gain an advantage or to stave off a 

loss? This is a challenge that U.S. arms control and 

deterrence policies must address. 

As for the PRC, it currently has a smaller nuclear 

arsenal than either the United States or Russia, but both 

qualitatively and quantitatively it is expanding this arsenal 

rapidly- being likely to at least double its size in the years 

ahead, along the road to what Xi Jinping has described as 

his "Strong Military Dream" in which Beijing intends to 

develop the most advanced military capabilities by 2049. 

The PRC is building a vast new range of both strategic and 

non-strategic delivery systems, including new heavy 

ICBMs, hypersonic delivery vehicles, a new ballistic missile 

submarine, an air-launched ballistic missile, and a whole 

quiver full of missiles that can interchangeably carry either 

nuclear or conventional warheads. 

Beijing's build-up is occurring even as the PRC recycles 

unbelievable talking points about how China "will never 

join any form of arms race," and while continuing to resist 

calls to behave as a responsible major military power and 

engage on trilateral arms control. Indeed, for the past four 

months, we have been awaiting a formal response from the 

PRC on the U.S. invitation to begin a bilateral strategic 

security dialogue on nuclear risk reduction and arms 

control, and their future. 

The United States is not building up its nuclear 

capabilities, though Russia and the PRC are. But President 

Trump has made clear that the United States will not allow 

ourselves to fall behind. If forced to do so by developments 

in our competitors' threat systems and their numerical 

build-ups, we will re-examine our force posture planning 

and make any changes needed to prevent overmatch. It is 

our hope at the Department of State, however, that we can 

meet these threats through diplomacy: by engaging Russia 

2 
Arms Control and International Security Papers 

U.S. Priorities for "Next Generation Arms Control" 

and the PRC in a trilateral arms control framework that will 

forestall the costly arms race that choices in both Moscow 

and Beijing presently threaten to create. 

II. A New Arms Control Discourse 

The problems faced in finding a future for arms control 

in this challenging environment aren't limited merely to the 

concrete threats increasingly presented by Moscow and 

Beijing. Finding a future for arms control also means 

building a constituency for serious arms limitation efforts in 

the policy community, so that high standards will be 

expected from agreements negotiated, so that treaties 

that meet these standards will be swiftly ratified, and so 

that the U.S. Government can keep a strong and consistent 

focus upon verifying and enforcing compliance and 

otherwise ensuring that arms control meets U.S. and Allied 

security needs in the years ahead. 

Some worry today about the supposed "dismantling" 

of arms control - a phenomenon blamed by Russian and 

Chinese propagandists upon the United States for having 

the temerity to insist upon Russia's compliance with 

agreements. To find a genuinely constructive way forward 

to prevent the arms race that would otherwise be sparked 

by ongoing nuclear build-ups in Russia and China, we need 

to do more to build support in the broader policy 

community for effective approaches. 

Some of this constituency-building will require relearning old lessons about arms control, and countering 

bad ideas seemingly inherited from an earlier era. In this 

respect, it may be that the initial post-Cold War 

environment of United States geopolitical power 

encouraged bad habits of thinking about arms control and 

disarmament issues, on both the Left and the Right, that 

were untethered from any perceived need to 

accommodate challenging geopolitical realities. 

That post-Cold War "singularity" - in which it may 

briefly have seemed that the United States could make 

policy choices entirely in a vacuum, seeking and actually 

having a chance to achieve all of what one's heart most 

desired - encouraged on the Left the idea that 

disarmament hopes could safely be indulged without 

reference to things such as security. This led both to 

unfulfillable expectations, and to a sort of amnesia about 

the role arms control can play in reducing risks and helping 

manage the most dangerous aspects of competitive 

behavior even where actual disarmament progress is 

impeded by worsening strategic circumstances. In its more 

Volume I, Number 1 I April 06, 2020 

extreme forms, this led to the pathology described in my 

remarks in February: the degeneration of what should have 

been a security-focused disarmament policy discourse into 

moralistic, identity-political policy focus. 

At the same time, some on the opposite side of the 

community turned against arms control entirely, 

apparently seeing no reason to accept constraints at all in 

an early post-Cold War environment in which the United 

States' competitive potential seemed unlimited against any 

conceivable adversary. In this conceptualization, too, arms 

control and disarmament policy wasn't really about 

complex balances and negotiated answers in search of 

security: it was just a tool with which Lilliputians sought to 

tie down our Gulliver, and was thus generally to be 

distrusted and avoided. 

Both of these polar viewpoints were thus, in some 

sense, imperial perspectives. During the post-Cold War 

singularity, it almost seemed that nuclear weapons and 

arms control issues could be decided in a vacuum, while the 

difficult choice-within-constraint dynamics of real 

policymaking were only needed with matters around the 

figurative periphery of the strategic environment (e.g., 

terrorism, human rights abuses in far-flung countries, and 

rogue state proliferation). All in all, therefore, for too many 

people at the nuclear policy community asymptotes, 

Aristotelean virtue went out of fashion and the effort 

became one simply of enthusiastic maximization. 

Both of those extremes are wrong, or at the very least, 

both conceptions are highly maladaptive in modern 

circumstances. It's now part of our job to transcend both of 

these mirror-image pathologies by building a solid 

consensus in favor of the sort of security-focused program 

that the world actually needs right now. 

Under President Trump's leadership, we are making 

great progress on the Right, which is again interested in 

arms control thanks to the steps this Administration has 

been taking. We have, for instance, made it clear: 

a) that the United States has reawakened to the need for 

competitive strategy against our great-power 

challengers; 

b) that we don't want agreements simply for the sake of 

having them, but rather to advance U.S. and Allied 

interests and promote international peace and 

security; 

3 
Arms Control and International Security Papers 

U.S. Priorities for "Next Generation Arms Control" 

c) that we take arms control verification and compliance 

enforcement seriously enough that we will not play a 

game of make-believe, pretending that treaties remain 

relevant that the other side flagrantly violates; 

d) that we are working to restructure global disarmament 

discourse in a more constructive, security-informed 

direction with our CEND Initiative, in order to help 

disarmament policy break out of the sterile eddies 

created by a conventional wisdom that is at least a 

generation out of date, as well as to bring to a close a 

sometimes uncritical acceptance of hypocritical 

Russian and PRC propaganda narratives and 

disingenuous proposals in the arms control arena; 

e) that we are genuinely focused upon finding diplomatic 

solutions to the threats presented by our competitors, 

as illustrated by the President's call for trilateral arms 

control to constrain Russian and Chinese arms racing; 

and 

f) that we are giving Moscow and Beijing incentives to 

negotiate seriously with us by being prepared to 

compete ruthlessly and effectively with them - and to 

win that competition - if they will not talk. 

More work is needed on the Left, though only a 

minority there is pursuing ideological disarmament goals 

without concern for the complexities of security, thinks one 

should remain bound by treaties that the other side 

violates, feels disarmament only counts if it actually harms 

security, thinks that a disarmament agenda item that 

makes sense in one geopolitical context will necessarily 

make sense in very different future circumstances, and 

doesn't care if civil-society advocacy tends to encourage 

free sovereign democracies to disarm themselves in the 

face of authoritarian predation. 

I have faith that most arms control thinkers on the Left 

don't hold such views. I hope that they will rally to support 

the United States' nuclear arms limitation efforts as we 

focus upon heading off the arms race that might otherwise 

result from the ongoing Russian and Chinese nuclear buildups. I hope, for instance, that the arms control and 

disarmament community will join us with one voice in 

demanding that the PRC live up to its NPT Article VI 

obligation to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective 

measures on nuclear disarmament, and as a minimal 

prerequisite to avoid an arms race. There is much we can 

do together. 

Volume I, Number 1 I April 06, 2020 

Ill. Getting There From Here 

So what do we need arms control to try to do? In our 

engagements with Russian counterparts as part of our 

ongoing Strategic Security Dialogue (SSD)-which in 

January 2020 included a new agenda item on the future of 

arms control -we've made it quite clear that we hope that 

the next generation of arms control will answer four key 

challenges. 

• First, some answer will need to be found for controlling 

the types of Russian systems presently accountable 

under New START limits -that is, the traditional sorts 

of ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles 

(SLBMs), and strategic bombers. This is an imperative 

irrespective of what decision is made about New 

START extension, since New START by its terms can 

only be extended by up to a total of five additional 

years. So whether it is a problem for next year or six 

years from now, "next generation arms control" needs 

to cover these types of delivery systems. 

• Second, a future arms control framework will need to 

address the challenge presented by Russia's large -

and growing - arsenal of non-strategic weapons. 

• Third, an answer needs to be found to address the 

sorts of "exotic" new strategic delivery systems being 

developed by Russia that fall outside traditional New 

START-style accountability. 

• Fourth, arms control needs to rein in the destabilizing 

nuclear build-up in which the PRC is currently engaged 

as it expands its arsenal and develops an ever-broader 

range of nuclear and dual-capable weapons systems. 

4 
Arms Control and International Security Papers 

U.S. Priorities for "Next Generation Arms Control" 

I am sure that our Russian colleagues have their own 

list of things that "next-gen" arms control needs to do, and 

I expect that comparing these objectives - and exploring 

how the range of potential arms control "tools," including 

transparency and confidence-building measures (TCBMs), 

might be able to help achieve them without imperiling the 

security of either party-will be a critical piece of our 

future SSD engagements. And if and when Beijing decides 

to choose nuclear dialogue over nuclear build-up, we look 

forward to having such discussions with Chinese 

counterparts too. 

As President Trump has made clear, it is imperative 

that both Russia and the PRC engage with us on such 

topics: this is the central thrust of his trilateral arms control 

initiative. We hope that this engagement will soon begin, 

and that it will lead to a path-breaking new arms control 

agreement. We look forward to making the President's 

vision into a reality. 

* * 

Arms Control and International Security Papers 

Volume I, Number 1 I April 06, 2020 

IV. Conclusion 

I hope readers will agree upon the importance of this 

endeavor. If so, I very much hope we can work together 

with the broader arms control and disarmament 

community in ensuring that al/the U.S. policy community 

pulls together to make this work. 

* 

The Arms Control and International Security Papers are produced by the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control 

and International Security in order to make U.S. State Department policy analysis available in an electronically-accessible 

format compatible with "social distancing" during the COVID-19 crisis.