that all components of the nalt tow's nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure, and effective. what this means is that the existing b-61 gravity bombs will undergo costly life extension programs which will upgrade the capability considerably by changing the bombs into precision guided weapons. in parallel with the disorderly disarmament is a nuclear problem as a result. the overall affect of modernization of dual capable aircraft to include jetting strike fighter on the b-61 will continue constitute a considerable upgrade, which will not go unnoticed in russia. thirdly, another huge mistake in the ddpr is that the future of nato's deterrent is made contingent on reciprocal measures. yet russia has made it clear it will not discuss until all weapons have been removed from europe.

however, as nato has removed 90% of the weapons unilaterally, the 180 or so b-61s hardly constitute a good position against the more than 2,000 russian weapons. i think nato is about to repeat the mistake of the 1980s when it let nato deployments of intermediate nuclear forces to the soviet ss 20. nato should simply ask, do we need these weapons or not, and not make it contingent on what russia does. another problem is that the ddpr is completely unclear where nato stands on the issue of negative security guarantees. it sounds like nato has adopted a policy of nato security guarantees in the document but when reading the document closely it appears that nato's acknowledging the different national positions of the three nato countries, the u.s. and the u.k. give the guarantees, france does not.

such a policy is clearly not a good foundation for coherent nato nuclear posture. and finally the ddpr completely fails to ask the crucial questions about the role of nuclear weapons, especially what nonstrategic nuclear weapons are for. as it does that, it cannot possibly provide the answer for what constitutes an appropriate mix of conventional nuclear and missile defense forces. nato still needs to ask, appropriate for what. sadly, as this was exactly what the ddpr set out to clarify, to have failed on that count is a real indictment, i think, of 18 months' work. now have i got time for -- >> a couple. a couple. >> a couple of the next sneps don't ask me about the next steps, and this is the really difficult question. because one of the aspects or one of the effects of the way the ddpr has been conducted is that the appliance has basically painted itself into a corner and it's not a very good corner.

i don't actually see any constructive next steps within the parameters left by the ddpr. it's especially problematic that the ddpr has restricted nato's me nufr by making the withdrawal contingent on russian reciprocal moves. this is unlikely to happen so we have a stalemate position. it's also problematic to identify a next step because although the official line from the ddpr shows nato unity, in my opinion the ddpr has basically divided the alliance into two camps, for and against withdrawal and bad russia/good russia. i think on doing this, which has been consolidated, it has been a position that has been consolidated over the last 18 months, is actually going to be the first next step that nato needs to address. within the parameters of ddpr i think nato's best option seems to be to return to

recommendations of the non-paper that was submitted last april by poland, germany and the netherlands. it should see increased transparency on numbers, types, locations, operational status and the level of storage security. these are questions that could usefully be addressed in the nato russia council and hopefully lead to a better atmosphere and a more constructive working environment within the council. moreover, following the american elections this year, a renewed effort at reaching an understanding with russia on corporation on missile defense would, if it could be successful, provide an environment that would be more conducive for further discussions within nato on nonstrategic nuclear weapons. but for the time being, as i said, the best thing about the ddpr is that it didn't close the process. so now that the restricted process of the ddpr process is over, nato should start a real

dialogue and proper analysis which might be able to apply a holistic approach to the over arching question, deter whom, how, and from what? and what is the role of nato's nonstrategic nuclear weapons and why exactly does nato need them? after suitable break, not too long, i hope, nato simply needs to get back into a process of talking about these issues with an educational focus that is why the new committee that i spoke about is really important. and speaking as a european, this is my very last point, i can say this. it's also time for the u.s. to take the lead and to seek to influence the position of the central europeanss on nonstrategic nuclear weapons. the united states has had a background position on this and has left it for the europeans to sort out the issues on these matters. but the european alleys will never agree on anything unless there is an existential crisis snapping at their heels or

unless there is some very clear leadership exercised by the united states. there you have it. i can say it, i'm european. so, nato needs to get back to its traditional way of dialogue and persuasion under american leadership in the committees of nato, in the nuclear panel group and in the committee that hopefully will get a name and hopefully will get a mandate. thank you. >> thank you very much. i think we have a clear message from our speakers that more needs to be done. there is reason to change our thinking about nuclear weapons. find ways to reduce the risks, but the path ahead is complex. it's not clear. and it's going to take leadership and creativity. now it is your turn to stimulate the discussion with your questions. we have a couple of microphones that will arrive if you raise your hands.

if you state your name and ask a question and address it to one of the speakers. why don't we start over here. with edward. >> yes, edward ift. >> georgetown university. one of the roadblocks to transparency regarding tactical nuclear weapons has been the reluctance of nato itself to acknowledge where they are and the numbers, and as a result, the u.s. government cannot confirm or deny except for germany those facts. even though everybody knows, of course, where they are. so can we conclude from what you have said that nato is now willing to acknowledge where the tactical nuclear weapons are lor nato only do it if russia adopts a certain amount of transparency as well? thank you. >> trine.

jon, maybe as well. trine, go ahead. >> well, obviously, a precondition would be that nato would be willing to give the transparency as well. it's not a one-way street. everyone knows where the nuclear weapons are. everyone knows how many are there. i think by now, so there's not really that much on those issues. but i think the issues would be much more on the storage and the site security that would be issues that would be interesting on both sides and russia would have an interest in getting to know some of those issues, particularly also on the issue of the old storage sites in what has happened to the old surrogate storage sites in central and eastern europe. i think there would be some room for maneuver there, but clearly, nato will have to move on the transparency issue as well. >> i mean, i think the challenge l in this as you well know is that russia's not really concerned about our tactical weapons in europe. we can't leverage whatever

weapons we have there against what the russians have because it's not a threat perception for them. very early on in the administration, i think there was a wlingness to say we don't need these, make some decisions and we'll deal with them on our own and very quickly, i think some of the biases came to bear both in the pentagon and in the state department unfortunately. i'm sort of an outliar here. my approach is pull them out and force the russians to justify to themselves and their own people why they need thousands of nuclear weapons themselves. >> and just to be clear what the experts estimate is that there are some 180 u.s. gravity bombs, nuclear bombs, in five european nato countries and russia is estimated to have some 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons on their territory. we have another question here in the middle. mr. kulp, thank you. >> david kulp with the friends committee on national

legislation. question for mr. wolfsthal. when the administration's budget was released a number of members of congress said that the money for the national nuclear security administration was inadequate and said that you were basically walking away from the agreements that you made in the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty. so i'm wondering if you can go through with us the thinking on the budget that you presented and is the administration living up to its commitments from the s.t.a.r.t. treaty? >> i'm just pleased you refer to me as mr. wolfsthal from time to time, david. thank you. david was a great help, as were a number of people here on the new s.t.a.r.t. process, so we got to work very closely together. i think it's a very partisan game that's being played on the administration's budget. i think it's unfortunate. the criticism are from people who know, in fact, the details but think it's good optics to argue the contrary. the facts are this, that in the

context of new s.t.a.r.t. the president submitted a plan as requested by congress, a 1251 plan which said it was our intention to pursue programs and capabilities necessary to maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal. our estimate was that those capabilities would cost about $85 billion over the next ten years. that's just for the nuclear complex part. that was separate from strategic launch vehicles, icbms; obms and so forth. after the budget control act came into force there were new restrictions on how much the president would actually be able to request. and so people wanted the president to basically break the law and say, we're going to ask for money that legally we can't ask for. the president said, we're not going to do that. in fact, we went to work very quickly saying, all right, if this is the money that's available and this is what we need, how do we ensure that we get what we need? and that was a very open process with nn srchlts a, the pentagon, the nuclear weapons council, and

the lab directors as well as omb who said, over the next ten years there's a reasonable estimate that we can provide for what this will cost us. congress chose not to fund that number. the house in particular controlled by republicans who pushed for the 1251 report chose not to fund the administration's request and shorted it by roughly $800 million. the lab directors then came to the nnsa and said, we don't think you're going to get the money that we all agree we need to build all of these facilities and we think we can save you -- this is the lab directors coming to nnsa saying we think we can save you money, perhaps an unprecedented step, and saying we think we can do plutonium work without building the cmrr in new mexico. it's a big facility. it's estimated to cost about $5 billion. what the lab directors are worried about rightly is we're going fwauld silts and not be able to fund the people that do the real work in those facilities. so they came to us with an

alternative plan. the administration asked the entire nuclear weapons council, representative from stratcom, under secretary for acquisition nnsa will this work, they said, yes. we went to congress and said, okay, here's the new plan. all of a sudden congress is screaming, you broke your promise. i think it's partisan games manship. it's trying to detract from the president's pretty impressive record on getting this done. my hope is they will do what's right for the nuclear deterrent we need. >> i wanted to ask a question from the chair's place here to general jamison and to jon about how we move forward in the next one to two years regardless of who's in the white house with russia to the next steps in reducing u.s. and russian stockpiles below the new s.t.a.r.t. levels, which are

1550 deployed strategic warheads, and that ceiling needs to be met by the year 2018. new s.t.a.r.t. creates a verification system that's going to be in place until 2021 and given the difficulties of a formal negotiation with russia and given the challenge that we'll have with the next round of negotiations, because we need to deal with not just deployed strategic weapons, but also the tactical nuclear weapons, the non-deployed weapons, are there some alternative approaches? in other words, might there be a way just as george w. bush did in the 2001-2002 period to use the existing treaty framework to provide the transparency and the verification necessary to assure both sides but to reduce the two country's deployed strategic arsenals below the s.t.a.r.t. level?

is that a path worth considering given the very difficult relationship between the u.s. and russia on various issues, missile defense, syria, other types of things? >> well, i think if there are 100 people in the room, you're probably -- if there are 100 people in the room, you probably have 100 different plans for how this could work. i think there are a couple of prerequisites. the first is i would argue we need to have a decision preferably bilateral decision which quite frankly just means us to go down to new s.t.a.r.t. numbers immediately. these are very modest reductions. i forget what the number of the just-released new s.t.a.r.t. aggregate was. i think we're roughly at 1750. we're going to 1550. you could pull 200 weapons off alert and put them out m a few days if not a few weeks. i think we should quickly go there. i think we need to get the new guidance in place so the president has direct support from strategic command and the

chairman of the joint chiefs saying, yes, we've looked at the plans. we can go lower to give him that flexibility to then order reductions. then i think you have the new s.t.a.r.t. verification framework in place to say to russia, let's go down to lower numbers more quickly. you can go below 1550. you can reach a political agreement with russia to do that. you would have the verification in place to show, in fact, that those numbers have been reached. the challenge is you don't have that in place for the nonstrategic weapons. that's where trine's numbers are helpful. i would argue, as i just did, that the u.s. should do that up front. we need to find a way to manage the alliance correctly and so that the withdrawal of those weapons don't lead to a new schism. i would argue that we should give russia a year privately and if they don't move in a year, push them to go with us. >> your thoughts, general jameson? >> the only thing i would add is

until the election, anything that even hints of doing something unilaterally is just not going to be on the table. on the other hand, the process, and i certainly agree with jon, grinds along in the pentagon, inside the belt way. things are going to happen the way the u.s. military, the pentagon, in coordination with the interagency wants it to happen. and some of those things are budget driven. they're going to try to save as much as they can realistically, but it's not going to be private agreements with russia or anything. that's just my opinion. >> all right. thank you. other questions? yes, sir, in the middle. bruce? thank you. hi. i'm bruce mcdonald with the u.s. institute of peace. i think it's safe to say that within this room there's

probably a pretty broad consensus in support of further reductions, and yet -- and to date our nato allies have been extraordinarily supportive of the new s.t.a.r.t. process. my question is it comes to the fact i'm imagining going forward and seeing levels go down substantially more, i guess i want to ask particularly dr. flockhart but of course other distinguished panelists as well, is there a point at which the u.s. extended deterrent, which i recognize, of course, is more than just nuclear weapons, our substantial capabilities are an important dimension of that, is there a point at which our nato allies, obviously some sooner than others, begin to get a little bit nervous about how low -- how far down we go? because we've taken almost as a given that our allies -- again, they've been wonderful in their support. is there a point where what the perceived benefits of extended

nuclear deter rents begin to outweigh the value of further reductions? how might we address that? >> well, i think the point is very low. and residential realistically speaking, we are going to have to face up to a deployment country number of two within quite a short period of time. i don't think there's any doubt that germany will not continue to be a deployment country. once that is on the table, then i think holland and belgium are pretty certain to withdraw as well. the question then is whether the weapons that are placed in those three countries will then be transferred to turkey and italy or whether they would be withdrawn back to the united states. either i think would still mean that there would be an extended deterrent. i think you could argue that within the alliance as well. i think there would be understanding for that. i think you could go down to perhaps you mentioned 20, perhaps you could go down to five, ten weapons in europe and

still say that there is an extended deterrent. i don't really think it's the numbers, i think it is attached to those weapons. i think most nato allies, including the central and east europeans realize that they have no strategic importance and that the strategic nuclear weapons back in the united states will provide just as much protection, if i can call it that, as those that are based in europe. so i don't think it's the numbers that is the issue. i think it is zero or more than zero that is the issue. >> and just one point of clarification. the defense and posture review released in chicago states that the supreme guarantee of allied security are the strategic nuclear weapons of the three countries in nato with strategic nuclear weapons, the u.s., the uk, and france. it does not talk about the u.s.

forward deployed tactical nuclear weapons as being vital to that deterrent capability. and the last i noticed, our european allies are very supportive of further u.s./russian reductions relating to strategic nuclear weapons. jon, other points on this? >> i mean, you know, when i was really young, jack mendelssohn used to call me into his office and explain the way the world had developed. of course i remember his lecture on why we have nuclear weapons in the first place, which goes back to really outdated thinking that the europeans were worried that somehow, we were going to decouple our defense from their defense. we need to have capabilities on the ground so that when we had a nuclear exchange to block tanks from coming through the gap, that russia wouldn't then -- you know, they'd have to lunch at us, and it wouldn't just be a nuclear war in europe. all that of is just out the window and useless in terms of american strategic thought, european strategic thought. does anybody believe that somehow a tactical nuclear

weapon from europe on russian territory would not be seen as a strategic threat to russia? so, i mean, if we think we need to challenge russia in a strategic way we have lots of submarines, we have lots of icbms and the tactical nuclear weapons don't have a role. >> pardon me for interrupting. the question that overall strategic levels, their level of 300, 200, is there some level of u.s. having strategic nuclear warheads that begins to make some allies and probably some sooner than others nervous? maybe poland or turkey get nervous before germany and denmark do. >> and i think if all we were doing were maintaining everything that we had status quo and started drastically reducing our nuclear weapons, there might be an argument that the countries would start to get nervous. of course, the concern is they might start to develop nuclear capabilities of their own or the alliance would fall apart.

however, as was said, these things don't happen in isolation. right? what we need to think about is how you supplement your extended reassurance capabilities to these countries. and that is a political process. it gets to how often you engage with these countries. it gets to the question where american troops are deployed, hour you interappropriate? what sort of capabilities are being purchased on the conventional side. i think there is a whole list of things that we could do and should have done and didn't that would make it much easier for the united states to go to much lower numbers. even if that were true, wing is i think we have a long way to go before these countries really start to get nervous. >> i think we have time for one or two more questions even though we have lots of hands here. why don't we go over here to the -- to nancy here in the green. and then we'll come over here to ms. cronberg. >> nancy gallagher from the university of maryland. one of the things you mentioned that ddpr did not look at is what the effects of the european missile defense capability are,

but i'm wondering whether you think the nato allies agree on what the actual missile defense capability is now and in the near future vis-a-vis the threats we face, and whether you see it as performing primarily a military role or a political role. and if it's really the latter, what are the effects of building up a missile defense capability to perform the same kind of political role that tactical nuclear weapons have in the past. are we just replicating the same problems we currently have with russia over an issue that is primarily politically symbolic? >> okay. i think the -- you can look at the role of missile defense in two ways. i think it does have a military role, but it's not a military role that is directed at russia. it is a military role that is directed at iran. and that's why they're there. but they could gain the missile

defense capability it could gain a very important political role internally in the alliance if it was to become the push, for example, for changes the deterrence posture from one that is based almost completely on punishment to one that is based more on denial. i mean it's going back to very bizarre, very old-fashioned debates that i thought i had seen the back of in 1990, but never's -- nevertheless, those are the interest kinds of things that are being talked about. so if you have a different deterrence posture that has moved from deterrence by denial -- no, from punishment to denial, then clearly you have a completely different position within the alliance to discuss what is going to be the deterrence posture in the alliance. so that's the first thing that wasn't discussed in the ddpr, which i think is a great shame. but i think it was not discussed in the ddpr because of the way the whole process was run, that it was divided into three different committees. it was not an overall discussion that was looking at a conceptual understanding of what the

deterrence and the posture of the alliance should be. now what the other role of the missile defense would be much more political, because there would be a possibility to say all right, well, we don't have the nonstrategic nuclear weapons anymore. they were not needed anyway with it, this new deterrence posture. but we can use missile defense as another form of showing commitment in the alliance that is completely the same as what has been happening with the nonstrategic nuclear weapons. it's like this wedding ring that you show your commitment. you could do the same with the missile defense. that is what i meant about the missile defense sharing. >> all right. any others on this? all right. we have a question over here. thank you. >> thank you. i'll continue on the missile defense question. at the recent summit of nato, there was this great feeling of friendship with russia, and

russia was not even in chicago. what happened in between? and the next question deals with the economics of the plan to finance the missile defense. europe is in economic difficulties. we are in the defense committee and we're talking about pooling and sharing. and actually, no country is increasing its defense budget at this time. so how -- how do you plan to finance the missile defense in europe? thank you. >> jon -- trina? >> well, the relationship with russia as i'm sure you know is worse than it was at lisbon, but it's better than it was in 2008. so i think how long is a piece of string? it's difficult to say the relationship with what the relationship with russia is. and i think we also have to take

into account that all the negative developments are not completely without reason. i think that the offer that was given at lisbon for missile defense cooperation sounded much better than what it actually is. i have great difficulty in seeing what russia can actually gain from what is being offered from nato. so perhaps it's not surprising that there has been a downturn in the relationship, and then on top of that, a russian presidential election, which has also been important for that relationship, because nato is perceived in russia as the enemy. in the public, it's very difficult to go out and say, well, now we're friends with nato. nato has been painted as the big devil and it will continue to be the big devil in russian publics for a long time to come. so there are some quite severe restrictions. so the relationship with russia i think will probably get better. that's my hope, anyway. on the cost with the missile defense, well, i think the europeans think that the americans are going to pay most of it. and that is the main benefit of it.

and then there is the option for different europeans to contribute towards it. but that is only an option. and this is where my argument is that the option would then to be to show commitment by actually buying into the missile defense system. it may be a complete waste of money. i can't judge the technical details of it. but i think that is the thinking that is going on. >> i would just say -- i think trine is exactly right on missile defense. we placed it within a nato context at the time which we viewed of a great step forward since this is a missile defense program to protect europe more than it is to protect the united states, versus the old plan. but i think where the economics really come downs is down as trine said on the delivery capabilities. the idea that multiple european countries are going to spend a lot of money on the most expensive fighter plane system ever developed in this budget environment is nonsensical. and the fact that the united states is going to be in position where we're arguing on one hand, get your economies in order, but on the other hand saying no, you have to buy this plan i think is unsustainable.