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The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT). Both the United
States and Russia declared in 2002 their intention to greatly reduce their
nuclear forces. On May 24, 2002,
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush signed
SORT, also known as the Moscow Treaty, under which the two sides agreed to reduce operationally
deployed strategic warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 each over the next 10
years. Although the treaty does not provide a timetable nor benchmarks to guide
the rate of warhead reductions during this period, it does establish a
Bilateral Implementation Commission, scheduled to meet at least twice a year,
to discuss and review the treaty's implementation. The treaty will remain in
force until December 31, 2012, at which
time the parties have the option of extending or terminating the agreement.
Each side may at any time cite its national sovereignty and withdraw from the
Treaty after giving three months notice.
Verification measures, based on
provisions found in the 1991
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), will remain in
force until 2009 to help ensure that warheads have been removed from launchers.
However, like START I and other strategic arms control treaties,
SORT does not specify what is to be done with the removed
warheads. The SORT treaty also does not address
tactical nuclear warheads that are part of the U.S. and Russian
arsenals. A
Joint Statement, also issued on May 24, 2002,
establishes a Consultative Group for Strategic Security to discuss
confidence-building measures and transparency issues, as well as
other nuclear weapons issues not addressed by SORT.
In contrast to the START I treaty
and the unimplemented START II treaty, SORT does not require the
elimination of any strategic missiles, submarines, or
bombers. Thus, it allows each country to keep its MIRVed ICBMs, as long as
its overall total of operationally deployed strategic warheads is
below 2,200 at the end of the treaty's 10-year period. Russia has
indicated that it plans to retain its largest multiple-warhead ICBM,
the 10-warhead SS-18 "Satan." The United States
has announced plans to eliminate its largest multiple-warhead ICBM,
the 10-warhead MX "Peacekeeper."
On March 6, 2003, the U.S. Senate
approved the SORT treaty for ratification by a
vote of 95-0. Prior to the vote, the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee had unanimously approved the accord. The
Committee also added two conditions to guide U.S. compliance,
which were both accepted by President
Bush. These conditions require the
president to provide Congress with annual reports on U.S.
reductions of strategic arms, and on ways in which the
Cooperative Threat Reduction program can help achieve
Russian reductions. Furthermore, the FY2004 Defense Authorization
Act included a section requiring the Director of Central
Intelligence to submit to Congress an annual report concerning
nuclear weapons dismantled by Russia during the prior fiscal year as
well as the director’s projections for Russia’s compliance during
the current year and the following year.
The Russian Duma, the lower house
of the Russian parliament, ratified the
SORT treaty on May 14, 2003, by a vote
of 294-134; and the Federation Council, the upper house, approved
the treaty on May 29. Much like the ratification in the U.S. Senate, the Duma
ratification of SORT was accompanied by two additional provisions.
The first requires the Russian president to submit annual reports
on the U.S. strategic reductions. The
second requires annual reports on
the status of missile defense programs of the United States and
other countries.
Following the ratification by the
U.S. Senate and the Russian Duma, Presidents Bush and Putin
exchanged instruments of ratification at a 45-minute ceremony in St.
Petersburg, Russia on June 1,
2003.
The treaty went into effect immediately. |
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Further Reading:
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U.S. State Department,
"START I Inspection Protocol";
"Annexes to Inspection Protocol" |
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U.S.
State Department,
"Text of SORT Treaty" |
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CRS, Amy
Woolf,
"Nuclear Arms Control: The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty" |
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NTI, Victor Mizin,
"The
Treaty of Moscow" |
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DTIRP,
The Moscow Treaty (SORT) |
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Center for Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation,
"Briefing Book on the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty" |
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Arms Control Association,
"U.S., Russia Still SORTing Out Nuclear Reductions" |
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CRS, Amy Woolf,
"Nuclear Arms Control: The U.S.-Russian Agenda" |
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CNS, Inventory of International
Nonproliferation Organizations and Regimes,
"Moscow Treaty" |
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