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 underlying theme. And you, you outline it right away. It’s one of the few themes that I caught on, you know, five pages in. And it jumped at me and I said, “okay, this this was not what I thought it was,” which is this idea of a Russia reset. So that the treaty, the treaty is important, the treaty is strategic. It had its value just as a standalone, but it’s also underpinned by this broader strategic objective that the administration had to kind of reframe the relationship with Russia. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jones  

The Obama administration assumed office as you know, in January of 2009. President Obama had characterized the relationship as a “dangerous drift.” His exact words and what he meant by that was during the Bush administration, had been increasing tension between the United States and Russia, particularly as the Bush administration advocated for Georgia and Ukraine to enter NATO, to become NATO members.

And then there were some other aspects, such as ballistic missile defense for Europe from Iranian missiles, which the Russians did not see. So, as you said, arms control. And this decision by the two presidents to begin that in April 2009 was the centerpiece. But it was one of several other initiatives that the Obama administration wanted to present and then implement in order to reframe or reset the relationship that included sanctions on Iran because of their nuclear weapons program, the North Korea program for nuclear weapons, World Trade Organization accession for Russia, military and military cooperation, and various trade investments.

So that was this whole group of ideas that the president wanted to do. And the Russians, it’s interesting, saw reset as a American issue in the sense that it’s your fault that the relations have gone this way. Therefore, it’s up to you to reset the relationship.

Deveraux       

Yeah, I think Russia sees us at fault for a lot of things. It’s a pretty common narrative. I struggled with an aspect of this. Not because of how you framed it, but for personal reasons. And I think a lot of uniform wearers probably due, and I liked that it kept coming back as a theme because it was bigger than the book.

And we talked about that a little before we started. It was bigger than the treaty. As you look at this long term, the idea of the infinite game, of strategic competition, of war in general, you know, we have the defeated Germany and Japan, who are now some of our best allies in the world, you know, defeated in World War II, become our great allies.

I think, personally, a lot of us struggle with this. When you talk about maybe the people who fought in Vietnam, seeing Vietnam as a place that we could get along with and work with. And so when I was thinking about the Russian reset, personally, I was actually thinking about how we are going to work with Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria, knowing that there might be tensions there.

But strategically, it might make sense as the situation really changes. Right. And I think that the some of the Congress maybe struggled a little bit with the reset, especially the older folks who had lived the Cold War a little bit. And we talked earlier, that kind of lack of trust of Russia is our Cold War adversary. Russia is the nemesis. 

Jones  

But I think that part of the issue is this trust issue that you mentioned earlier. And when you have someone, when you perceive someone or another party or another country as a potential, as you put it, a strategic competitor or even adversary, there are moments where I guess there’s two ways of looking at it. There’s moments where you realize that you have to live with that tense relationship, and it becomes a transactional relationship.

We can find common ground, and I don’t want to use the word cooperate, because I think that there’s a competitive aspect. As I mentioned earlier, we also have to realize that the catastrophic aspects of nuclear war, but you are trying to bound someone to, to an agreement in order to get stability into the system, if you will, or, and the two system or the international system.

And so there’s that trade off. And I think in the Senate, as I point out in the book, over time, there’s a partisanship that has crept into it, but there’s also the idea of how the domestic politics plays into this and that politics can be partisanship, but it also can be concerns about what’s this going to do to constituents.

Are we bounding ourselves? Are we limiting our freedom of action? Are we limiting our sovereignty?

Deveraux       

And that’s the two-level game. You didn’t highlight it by term until fairly late when you hit your, you know, your kind of key objectives there. But I knew exactly having gone through, you know, courses that I’m sure you’ve taught at professional military education institutions, this idea of the two-level game that I am, as we talked about before, as the negotiator, I am working with the president’s intent for international politics, how I’m trying to get that agreement, but at the same time, back home, I have to win over whether it’s Congress or, you know, the general domestic audience. There was tension there in the book, especially when he transitioned later to the ratification process. And I think it’s important that I did see an aspect of partisanship, of course, but there was also really valid concerns, when you talked about just trust in Russia, right?

The idea of, “are we getting the bad end of a deal?” And I felt that the domestic audience really had much more of a focused look on the treaty itself, and was less concerned about the Russian reset when they were talking about the concerns about getting the best deal in the deal versus the deal as an aspect of a broader strategy.

Jones  

Right. And that would be really incumbent on the Senate as a treaty making partner under their constitutional responsibilities that they are considering the national interest. One would hope that that would be primary, and they would have to come to some understanding of the tradeoffs that are involved and whether the treaty was in the national interest. You mentioned the Senate really has it’s, has three different areas that it’s looking at.

It’s looking at the treaty and the relationship, which the Foreign Relations Committee is looking at. But it’s looking at the military aspect, which the Armed Services Committee is looking at, and it’s looking at the monitoring and verification part, which the intelligence community and the Intelligence Committee is looking at. And so you have to bring those three elements together in order to really see the full picture.

Deveraux       

To your point too, you also have to balance that a little bit with just the partisanship of this party may or may not want to support you because you’re not part of that party.

Jones  

Right. And there’s one can cloak that in various ways, right? One can be very honest about that. Or one can say, “well, no, it’s because we didn’t get a very good deal here.” Well, Putnam, as you pointed out, has this model, there is that two level, the international and domestic. I’m not denying the validity of the model in terms of a level of analysis.

What I’m looking at is that particular article that he published in 1988. It’s rooted in economic and trade agreements and not arms control. And I believe that when you start to look at arms control and ratification of what he calls win sets, then it’s very narrow. The constituency is different than farmers or labor or whatever you would find in a trade agreement, as example.

Putnam quotes Robert Strauss about his experience in the Tokyo round, for the negotiations, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. And he says, quote, “during my tenure as a special trade representative, I spent as much time negotiating with domestic constituents, both industry and labor, and members of the US Congress, as I did negotiating with our foreign partners,” end quote.

Well, that’s not exactly what happens here. You don’t find Rose Gottemoeller, the chief US negotiator, going out and working with constituents. She may give a speech, she may give a press conference, whatever. But she’s negotiating with the Russians. And one of the things that she and her Russian counterpart said is “we’re not negotiating through the press or through the media.”

I think it’s also important. And John Maurer says this in his in his article in the Texas National Security Review, “The Purposes of Arms Control.” He says, “you know, it would do well if scholars would consider the practical world of statecraft.” And I think that’s an important point. And as I mentioned earlier, it’s that trade off they have to do between security and transparency that Andrew Coe and Jane Weinman talk about.

It’s also about this competitive antagonism and cooperative coordination that Philip Gallagher mentioned. And it’s also about the ratification premium that Sarah Kreps, Elizabeth Saunders, and Catherine Schultz talked about. That is how do you get, give concessions to doubters, to skeptics. So they support something that originally they disfavored, namely an arms control treaty.

Deveraux       

You definitely highlighted the practicality of the statecraft of the book. If there’s one thing I pulled out, it was, it’s a process. Right. And you talked, I mean, the initial goal was we’re going to get this resolved before START expires, and they missed the mark dramatically. Right. I mean, it was, but it didn’t mean they couldn’t move forward. But I thought that was really eye opening for the process. 

Jones  

It is. I mean, the START Treaty negotiators started in 1982, and then President George Herbert Walker Bush signs it in 1991 and doesn’t go into force until 1994. So there’s a stretch. They’re very technical. They require a lot of preparatory work. They are difficult to, difficult because they’re conflicting interests that people have with the parties have.

So it takes time to do this. And it is a process, as I pointed out in the book, which interventions by the president and in this particular place, the chairman of the joint chiefs plays a major role in intervening at various points to move the process forward with their counterparts.

Deveraux       

Can we talk to the military aspect more? I know a lot of our listeners are uniform wearers or former uniform wearers or just work, you know, for the joint force. You highlighted the military role throughout the book. It, kind of different aspects of it. You’ve already kind of alluded to, you know, bringing in that expertise for the treaty.

I also had noted the coordination with the US Strategic Command. You know, who we’re talking to about, you know, “what does this mean for National security.” And then the administration using that as almost a tool to say, “I respect your concern about national security. I’ve talked to US STRATCOM. Here’s what they’re saying.” Kind of. Can you talk a little bit about the military role there.

Jones  

The military involvement and the implication for it are really go back to the 1960s, and perhaps we don’t think of that. But Morton Halperin and Thomas Schelling, the Nobel laureate in economics, wrote a book called Strategy and Arms Control. And they said, and I’ll quote them because I think it’s and I quote him in the book because I think it’s important to the frame this, quote, “we believe that arms control is a promising, but still only dimly perceived, enlargement on the scope of military strategy,” end quote.

So, as other scholars have said, the very essence, as Colin Gray said, the very essence of strategic arms control is the strategic utility of nuclear weapons for deterrence and defense. And I would add, because you’re dealing with NATO Allies here, which I bring out in the book, it’s also reassurance. And reassurance is the commitment, but also the capability.

General [Kevin] Chilton, who was the STRATCOM US Strategic Command commander at the time, indicated in testimony between the Senate that he said and I again, I want to quote him because it’s a very important piece of discussion that he has with the Senate members during the ratification process. He said, quote, “by reestablishing limits on strategic nuclear forces and continuing monitoring verification procedures, the treaty also establishes predictability so that each party can base its military planning on reliable data regarding the other’s strategic offensive weapons, and avoid estimates based on guesses that lead them to destabilizing strategic competition,” end quote. You need to be able to plan what it is your adversary or competitor have for nuclear force structure and weapons. What do we have? And taking that technical understanding and being sure that you don’t over invest or under invest either way is, as General Chilton says, it’s a bad answer.

Deveraux       

I really like the aspect of the military component, because when I think of any treaty, but even arms control, where it’s directly tied to military capabilities, whether those are current systems or the idea of future systems, I look at emerging technologies. I don’t think about the military’s role. I don’t think about the military weighing in. I think I have a bias from being a young lieutenant thinking about just getting our hands tied behind our back because the politicians are taking something away.

That’s, I think, a narrative, you know, people who are unfamiliar with how this process works probably see it. But it was really nice to see, like if we’re talking about something that impacts the force, let’s bring in the subject matter experts right to say, “here’s how it impacts the force.” And as we get away from very large strategic type of treaty like New START to some smaller conversations about maybe dud munitions, landmines, lethal autonomous weapons, anything like that, I’m going to be thinking about them differently now, knowing that there’s someone who has the expertise, not the scientist, he’ll probably be there, too. But there’s someone who understands what it means to take this stuff off the battlefield or, you know, the inverse, allowing it to be on the battlefield.

Jones  

I agree with you. I would not dismiss the political aspect of this. It is a political issue. Ultimately, a president has a policy and decides to formulate that policy and then implement it and uses arms control as a mechanism or means to attain that.  

Deveraux       

And at the end of the day, we give advice, right? The best military advice is still just advice.    

Jones  

Right. It would be unwise. I’ll just say that, unwise for a president to dismiss that advice out of hand, or without fully grasping the really seriousness of this. I wanted to point out, and this is goes back to the joint PME [professional military education] aspect of this, that, yes, the Defense Department, civilians and military have a role in this, a very large role.

They have a role in the, as I mentioned in the book, the Nuclear Posture Review is occurring at the same time, which is setting out what the policy and some of the other military issues will be for the next 5 to 10 years. They’re doing nuclear force structure analysis. They’re looking at budget decisions, tradeoffs between investments in nuclear and or conventional systems and weapons.

They’re assessing the strategic environment. They’re looking at the actual central limits. The limits on the missiles and heavy bombers and launchers and delivery vehicles that are in this treaty come about because rigorous analysis conducted by DoD (Department of Defense) and the targeting guidance comes from the Secretary. So, there’s that whole analytical piece, and then there’s the negotiations themselves, as you mentioned, the technical expertise.

And then in the ratification, I mentioned General Chilton testifying, but you have the secretary of defense, you have the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, you have other people from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, really the defense infrastructure there supporting this effort.

Deveraux       

I found that really interesting. And it was eye opening for me. Like I said, who, and I think probably most people, so I look at some treaties, I’m interested in some of these treaties, but really it’s more the implications of their employment or I like to joke, more recently it’s been the implications of their expiration or termination because that’s kind of the environment we’ve been in.

Jones  

Right. And you’ve written on the on the INF system. And so the question then becomes when you have a, the end of a particular treaty, when the United States and, and Russia, you know, say, indicates that Russia’s cheating and they’re developing new kinds, what’s called new kinds of weapons, hypersonics, some of the other nuclear powered systems, etc.. Then this treaty, what looked good in 2010, is not with the world we live in today. And so there’s technological changes.

Deveraux       

I think there’s also strategic changes as we talk about. I could be wrong, but I think this is the last bilateral nuclear treaty the United States and Russia had. And as we joked at the beginning, it’s just expired. An aspect of that, you know, might be tension, might be technology. It also might be China. There’s another big power out there.

How much do we limit ourselves tied directly to one power when there’s a looming power, who could take advantage? And we talk the INF treaty. The United States and Russia really held to what they could do missile development wise, while China booms in the technology and says, “great, you guys just hold on to that restriction. We’re going to keep becoming, you know, a lead actor in this.”

Jones  

It’s a different world when that treaty goes away, when it expired, what it portends is, you know, would be pure speculation on my part. But as President Trump has said, sometimes you will reach a point. He said, “I want a better, maybe a better agreement.” What that better agreement will look like remains to be seen. But again, I would be loath to say that it’s the end of arms control, because there may be a point where that becomes necessary to have a new treaty.

Whether that’ll be a multi-party or trilateral treaty remains to be seen, but they probably will be some type of constraints on weapons because of concerns about the damage they can do.

Deveraux       

Yeah. When you start talking about weapons that could really change the world, not just change the battlefield, people stay concerned. I think the book was really interesting, really well written. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to give it a read and kind of talk with me about it. Shifting gears, as we kind of get ready to close up here, first, I’d encourage, readers to check out the book, Obama and the Bomb New START, Russia, and the Politics of post-Cold War Arms Control.

But, moving forward, what’s next for you, Frank? Any other big projects? What’s the next thing you’re diving into?

Jones  

I’m working on completing a study of US intelligence sharing. I had started as a book chapter project looking at the future of intelligence sharing. And then I’m looking at it more broadly over the last several years. So, I’m trying to come to that. And I’m also interested in looking at leadership, military leadership, is another area that I plan to spend some time on.

Deveraux       

I have a friend I know will be interested in the intelligence sharing. He’s working his dissertation on some of that stuff right now. So when you get to completion, I’ll definitely point in your direction. I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate the talk, and I hope the readers get a chance, or the listeners, get a chance to become readers.

And check out the book.

Jones  

Thank you very much.  

Deveraux       

Listeners. For more Army War College podcasts, check out Decisive Point, Conversations on Strategy, CLSC Dialogues, and A Better Peace.