Obama Administration Is Bringing Nuclear Arms Control Back

Washington Post ^ | May 8, 2009 | Mary Beth Sheridan

[La Lydia]

Suddenly, arms control is back.

"Our leadership in the area of arms control and nonproliferation is of such profound global concern that that is at the top of the list" in U.S.-Russian relations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said after meeting yesterday with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

In New York, senior U.S. and Russian negotiators sat down to start work on renewing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the 1991 pact that cut in half the superpowers' stockpiles of nuclear warheads. The talks are the first step in the administration's effort to seek "a world without nuclear weapons," as President Obama vowed...

The U.S. team negotiating the treaty renewal, led by arms-control expert Rose Gottemoeller, reflects the experience of a different era, when armies of bureaucrats from each side met in Geneva in an atmosphere bristling with suspicion.

...in addition to launching talks on the U.S.-Russian strategic-arms treaty, known as START, Obama has pledged to make progress on three other fronts: pushing for Senate ratification of an international treaty banning nuclear testing; reaching an agreement on halting production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium; and strengthening the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, the grand global bargain in which most nations pledged not to seek nuclear arms....

Skeptics question whether Russia and China can be persuaded to approve harsher sanctions against Iran, which those countries consider a strategic and economic partner. Iran says its rapidly expanding nuclear program is aimed only at producing energy.

"This is a sucker move by us," Bolton said, adding that "it's not in [the Russians'] interest to help us on Iran."... The administration of President George W. Bush was wary of complex arms-control agreements, viewing them as unreliable and crimping U.S. flexibility...

[La Lydia]

Gottemoeller has demanded that Israel sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (but not Iran). She has told the Russians that the US is open to a significant compromise on the US missile defence scheme. She has spent the last several years in Moscow. So just who is going to represent the United States in these talks?

[a fool in paradise]

Obama has stated he wants to dismantle our missiles and end research on weapons programs.

[GraceG]

But but, you can't hug a child with Nuclear arms.... But you can use Nuclear power to keep them warm in the winter, keep their food from spoiling, give them hot water for their baths, Keep their house cool in the summer, keep their drinking water potable, etc etc etc.....

[Red Steel]

No, Obama is bringing unilateral disarmament.

[La Lydia]

It is so obvious, isn’t it?

[Question_Assumptions]

What was that paper he did at Columbia about, again?