VIPS MEMO: Arms Control — Toward Lasting Peace

At the 80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe over the Nazis, the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity issue this memorandum calling for nuclear arms control leading to lasting peace.

May 8, 2025

MEMORANDUM

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Arms Control: Toward Lasting Peace

The following Memorandum is presented as a brief review, based on experience, aiming to encourage well-informed discourse between the United States and Russia on the critical issue of arms control. The experience of the past half-century has taught us much. We suggest that arms control agreements between the U.S. and Russia need to be founded upon three basic principles: security, stability, and reciprocity. 

Security recognizes the role played by the respective strategic nuclear deterrent forces of each nation in guaranteeing their survival.

Nuclear deterrence should be the exclusive role of strategic nuclear forces. Getting the U.S. and Russia in alignment on this principle, and getting this principle enshrined in the respective nuclear doctrines of the U.S. and Russia, should be a top priority.

Likewise, national security policies that have, as their core, the goal of seeking the strategic defeat of the other party or otherwise enshrine policies which encourage interference in the domestic political affairs of the other party, should be recognized as inherently destabilizing.

Priority should be given to formulating joint declaratory policy statements by both parties which formally embrace a policy direction built upon the principles of mutual peaceful co-existence free from any policy directives which may have existed seeking strategic victory over the other.

Stability recognizes the dangers inherent in any nuclear arsenal, and the need to reduce to the greatest extent possible the likelihood of such weapons ever being employed, up to and including the viability of verifiably eliminating certain categories of nuclear weapons, such had been previously done under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987. Indeed, the on-site inspection provisions of that treaty could serve as the basis of any new verification regime.

Stability must be viewed in a comprehensive manner, incorporating all factors as they relate to the other, including the nuclear weapons potential of allied states and ballistic missile defense.

While a comprehensive arms control agreement is the ideal, reality dictates that there might be interim measures that can be undertaken prior to any such agreement that serve as confidence building mechanisms which, in and of themselves, promote stability.

These measures include, but are not limited to:

• Banning the deployment of intermediate range missiles on the territory of Europe (which for Russia would be defined as west of the Ural Mountains);
• Limits on the deployment of identified hypersonic missile systems;
• Extending the New START treaty beyond its current expiration date of February 2026;
• Eliminating nuclear weapons in Europe. This could be done in stages, including exchanging the elimination of the U.S.-provided NATO nuclear deterrent for Russian-provided nuclear weapons allocated to Belarus, and/or seeking an absolute ban of all nuclear weapons in Europe, inclusive of French and British nuclear forces.
• A European-focused anti-ballistic missile treaty which would eliminate the two Aegis-ashore facilities, replacing them with a single central European missile defense structure which would protect London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin in exchange for Russia keeping its Moscow missile defense network.

Reciprocity is the principle that neither side will seek to gain an advantage over the other through the process of arms control negotiations and any subsequent agreements, and that any measures which apply to one party will likewise apply to the other in an equitable and verifiable fashion.

Both the U.S. and Russia are encouraged to initiate dialogue on this issue through whatever channels are available, including informal discussions involving private citizens and organizations operating in an unofficial capacity.

The Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity asked our VIPS colleague, Scott Ritter, to draft this Memorandum.

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FOR THE STEERING GROUP, 

VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY (VIPs)

• Bogdan Dzakovic, former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security, (ret.) (associate VIPS)
• Graham E. Fuller, Vice-Chair, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
• Philip Giraldi, C.I.A., Operations Officer (ret.)
• Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq and Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)
• Larry C. Johnson, former C.I.A. and State Department Counter Terrorism officer
• John Kiriakou, former C.I.A. Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
• Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., U.S. Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003
• Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.)
• Ray McGovern, former U.S. Army infantry/intelligence officer & C.I.A. analyst; C.I.A. Presidential briefer (ret.)
• Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & C.I.A. political analyst (ret.)
• Scott Ritter, former MAJ, USMC; former U.N. Weapons Inspector, Iraq
• Coleen Rowley, F.B.I. Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)
• Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel (USA, ret.), Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and Mary (associate VIPS)
• Sarah G. Wilton, CDR, USNR, (ret.); Defense Intelligence Agency (ret.)
• Robert Wing, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (former) (associate VIPS)
  
• Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army reserve colonel and former U.S. diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War.