Obama and the Bomb: New START, Russia and the Politics of Post-Cold War Arms Control

Abstract: This lecture describes how President Barack Obama and his administration used the negotiation and ratification of an arms control treaty, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), as a vehicle for advancing one of the president’s primary foreign policy objectives, a reset of U.S. relations with Russia. Specifically, it examines the administration’s efforts to move from the president’s strategic vision for arms control to defining that vision as a policy priority and ultimately, successfully negotiating what the president deemed the first and most important element of the reset agenda. In examining the treaty process, it offers an analytical framework that identifies four factors that contributed to this political victory within three critical settings: U.S.-Russian relations, domestic U.S. politics, and NATO alliance concerns. In addition, the process had to contend with competing issues involving the nuclear arsenal. They were the 2009 Nuclear Posture Review and modernization of the U.S. nuclear triad and enterprise, but also avoidance of both a domestic and NATO alliance political third rail—European ballistic missile defense.

Dr. Frank Leith Jones is a distinguished fellow and professor emeritus of security studies at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he taught in the Department of National Security and Strategy, for more than fourteen years. Previously, he retired from the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy as a career member of the Senior Executive Service after more than thirty years of federal service, including as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army.

His research focuses on the formation and implementation of U.S. national security policy and strategy in the Cold War and post-Cold War eras within the context of political institutions, especially, the presidency, the Congress, and the national security enterprise. He is the author and editor of four books, and has published numerous book chapters in addition to scholarly articles in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Parameters, Joint Force Quarterly, and International Journal, among others. He earned his Ph.D. from the School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia.

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