The White House plans to submit the April 8, 2010, the Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (New START) between the Russian Federation and the United States of America to the Senate for ratification today. The Senate should focus less on the text of the Treaty, its Protocol and Annexes because these documents were made available to the Senate and the public earlier. Instead, the Senate should focus more on the two documents that will accompany today’s submission and that have so far not …
This past tuesday, Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) spoke at The Heritage Foundation’s annual spring President’s Club meeting, noting: Now should be the time for America to rededicate itself to the strategy of: 1) peace through strength, and 2) recommitting ourselves to standing up for democratic and peaceful allies. Why is now the time? Because total defense spending is projected to decrease from about 4.9 percent this current fiscal year to roughly 3.5 percent in 2015; and unless entitlement spending is reined in, it will consume all federal revenue in …
President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor James Jones has sought to counter an April 17th Wall Street Journal editorial criticizing the New START arms control agreement with Russia for limiting U.S. missile defense options with an April 20th letter to the editor. General Jones acknowledges that there is a specific restriction in Article V of New START, but chose to ignore the editorial’s point that language in New START’s preamble also constitutes a limitation on missile defense. The language in the preamble, which the United States has agreed to as …
At the close of this week’s nuclear summit, President Barack Obama told a press conference: “Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them.” Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) responded to these comments, calling President Obama’s remark a “direct contradiction to everything America believes in.” McCain went on to tell Fox News: That’s one of the more incredible statements I’ve ever heard a president of the United States make in modern times. We …
President Obama’s nuclear-weapons policy is finally taking shape. We now have the text of his “New START” treaty with Russia, the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and statements on fissile materials at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. But as the policy picture comes into focus, most of what we see is troubling. For starters, there is this irritating habit of wanting moral credit for wishful thinking. Mr. Obama has said his ultimate goal is “a world without nuclear weapons.” Nobody seriously believes this will happen, yet his administration solemnly links …
Americans always deserve a fully transparent and deliberative legislative process. The current Congress has thoroughly abused Senate and House rules. Furthermore, Congress breached the trust of the American people by passing Obamacare, which the American people vigorously opposed. Let us all hope that the ratification of the new START treaty follows a different path. Americans ought to have an opportunity to participate in the ratification debate, including open Congressional hearings, amendments and extended debate. Many Americans are rightly concerned the new START treaty will undermine our national security and, in …
Leaders from 46 nations, the most gathered together since the United Nations was formed in San Francisco in 1945, will meet over the next two days in Washington, DC. The stated goal of this Obama administration-hosted summit is laudable: keeping nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands. Who could argue with that? And this Nuclear Security Summit comes less than a week after President Barack Obama released a Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and just days after he signed a New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. As many …
Section 1251 of the fiscal year 2010 Defense Authorization Bill Congress warned President Barack Obama not to include any “limitations” on U.S. advanced conventional weapons in New START. Now that New START has been signed, the State Department is putting out fact sheets on the agreement. An April 8th fact sheet from the State Department is entitled: “Key Point: The New START Treaty does not contain any constraints on current or planned U.S. conventional prompt global strike capability.” So it would appear that President Obama listened to Congress’s concern regarding …
The Obama Administration, while acknowledging that there would be language in the preamble of New START alluding to a link between strategic offensive arms and missile defenses, asserted flatly that it would not impose any restrictions on U.S. missile defense options. The assertions have turned out to be misrepresentations. The language in the preamble is much more substantive than just an allusion to an undefined link between offensive strategic arms and missile defenses. Basically, the language asserts that missile defense capabilities must come down as the numbers of strategic nuclear …
Shortly after Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev signed the New START agreement this morning, the Kremlin released the following statement: The Treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms signed in Prague on April 8, 2010, can operate and be viable only if the United States of America refrains from developing its missile defence capabilities quantitatively or qualitatively. Consequently, the exceptional circumstances referred to in Article 14 of the Treaty include increasing the capabilities of the United …
