Why the Senate Should Reject the New START

The American Thinker ^ | December 08, 2010 | Zbigniew Mazurak

[Scanian]

The new START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) currently under consideration by Congress is irredeemably flawed. Instead of accepting the "tax cuts for START" deal, Republican senators should reject the treaty for several reasons.

Firstly, the treaty will severely reduce America's nuclear stockpile (to just 1,550 warheads, down from 5,113) and the number of delivery systems (to no more than 700 deployed systems and 800 in total) -- i.e. to wholly insufficient levels. Vice Chairman of the JCS Gen. Cartwright (a former leader of the Strategic Command) says that the minimum number of delivery systems needed is 860. The current number on the American side is 883 (336 Trident-II SLBMs, 450 ICBMs, and 97 nuclear-capable bombers).

START will gut the U.S. military by reducing the arsenal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems to insufficient levels because that is exactly its point. The Russians have demanded that the American arsenal be reduced to the size of the Russian arsenal projected for the 2010s. Currently, it is agreed that Russia has fewer delivery systems subject to START provisions than the U.S.: 369 ICBMs, 113 (89+24) bombers, and a few hundred SLBMs. Russia's 177 (84+93) Tu-22M intercontinental bombers do not count, even though most could easily have refueling equipment installed (and some already have it).

The treaty is clearly designed to bring the U.S. strategic arsenal down to the sorry state of the Russians'. And Russia cannot afford to maintain its arsenal at its present size, let alone greatly increase it, as Putin has threatened to do.

Additionally, the treaty has unreliable, untrustworthy verification procedures, which will make it impossible for the U.S. to check that the Russians are complying. Moscow has violated SALT-I, SALT-II, and START-I, so there is no reason to believe that it will voluntarily comply with the new treaty.

[SF_Redux]

we have the 2nd amendment, they need no other reason

[Venturer]

Idiot boy made promises he couldnt keep and now the Russians want us to live up to them.

[Ben Ficklin]

There is this story going around in the foreign press that the Senate is going to reject because of the nuclear bunkerbusters.

The US is going to convert a few nuclear warheads into bunkerbusters because those are the only weapons that can take out Iran's nuclear program.

So, if the Russian inspectors are allowed in with the the New START treaty they will detect that some of the warheads are missing.