Last week, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) expressed concern over the U.S.-Russian Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) now before the Senate. The senator particularly questioned the treaty’s limits on America’s “ability to advance our missile defense” and its “failure to deter proliferation and future attacks on our nation and allies.” Given the consequences that New START poses for U.S. national security and the calls for its swift passage, Inhofe is right to ask questions – and the entire Senate is obligated to do so, as well. One of the Senate’s most …
Raising concerns about a new nuclear arms treaty is considered declasse. It’s about as welcome as a wedding crasher who questions the groom’s choice of a bride. Like weddings, nuclear treaties are supposedly joyous occasions. Posing questions is treated as an affront to the very nobility of the enterprise (although for some marriages and certain treaties, the prospective partners would have been better off answering questions before tying the knot). Similarly, some people can’t imagine how reducing the levels of nuclear arms in the United States and Russia could possibly …
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 …
Just hours before President Barack Obama unveiled his Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow that the Kremlin maintained the right to withdraw from the new START agreement if the United States pursued its missile defense program. Late last night, the White House responded to Lavrov’s statement, insisting: “The Russian statement does no more than give the United States fair notice that it may decide to pull out of the New START Treaty if Russia believes our missile defense system affects strategic …
The New START Treaty that Presidents Obama and Medvedev are going to sign tomorrow in Prague sets the stage for the big show, the April 12-13 non-proliferation summit in Washington. Both events are deeply flawed. Both are theater productions for Obama to push through his unrealistic agenda of “getting to zero”, i.e. attempting to achieve a world without nuclear weapons. The New START is a déjà vu: in the 1980s, the Soviets threatened to withdraw from existing arms control treaties if US deployed missile defense. Now they are doing it …
This Thursday President Barack Obama is scheduled to sign a follow on agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Prague with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Since the day agreement on the new treaty was leaked by the Kremlin, the White House has been claiming that the treaty “does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S. missile defense programs.” And from day one the Russians have been saying the opposite. Today in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov again made it clear that …
If President Obama thinks that signing his prized arms control treaty with Russia on Czech soil will repair the damage he’s done to relations with Central and Eastern Europe, he’s wrong. Cutting a deal with the Russian bear in Prague is hardly the way to tell your allies that it’s not all about Russia. Although cheering crowds greeted Obama a year ago when he told adoring Czechs of his vision for a world without nuclear weapons, Europe now is much more cautiously embracing the President’s risky and naïve agenda. The …
Later today, the Obama administration will release the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) which will set the framework for decisions on U.S. nuclear policy for the next five to 10 years. Coupled with the follow-on Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) to be signed in Prague this Thursday, these documents begin to implement the “road to zero” nuclear dream President Barack Obama outlined in Czech Republic last year. In their exclusive interview with President Obama about the NPR, David Sanger and Peter Baker report in The New York Times: Discussing his …
One year after President Obama announced his desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons, his nuclear agenda is taking center-stage in American foreign policy. This week, the president will sign a new arms control agreement with Russia in Prague before he hosts the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC. At any moment the Administration is expected to release its 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which adds to the momentum building towards the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty Review in May. As the president moves forward with his nuclear agenda, Americans need to …
