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Posted on 05/13/2002 5:58:48 AM PDT by paulsy
Mon May 13, 8:42 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States and Russia have reached a long-sought agreement to slash their nuclear arsenals, President Bush (news - web sites) announced Monday.
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"The treaty will liquidate the legacy of the Cold War," Bush said in a surprise announcement on the White House lawn as he departed on a trip to Chicago. He said that with the treaty signing, "We will begin the new era of U.S.-Russian relations and that's important."
Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov worked in Moscow in recent days on the agreement.
The arms control agreement, as envisioned, would require each country to cut its nuclear arsenal to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads from the 6,000 now allowed by the START I treaty.
Bush and Putin agreed to those levels last fall and negotiators have been trying to work out a formal document codifying them in time for the May 23-26 summit.
"This is good news for the American people today," the president said. "It will make the world more peaceful and put behind us the Cold War once and for all."
An administration official said that in reaching terms for an agreement, Russia said it would allow the United States to store some of its nuclear weapons while others would be destroyed. The issue had been a sticking point in the talks.
To those of us with an education in logic and reasoning, the first step to negotiating a better deal is to pull out of, or refuse to extend, the old "bad" deal.
The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. The proliferation of WMD (also bio and chem weapons) is to be avoided, because the weapons get into rogue states and then to the hands of terroroists, who have no compunction about using them, and are not bound by treaties, national considerations, or common decency.
But now introduce country C. What happens when their arsenal goes to 500, to 1000, to 2000? This is neither comfortable nor stable.
By putting it in a treaty, we cannot readjust our limits unilaterally to accomodate the new facts. I cannot believe this analysis has not occurred to the administration. I can only think of three explanations: 1, I am no expert in strategic arms theory--it may be that the situation I worry about does not actually represent a problem when you run the simulations; 2, The russians gave us something big in return; or 3, Missle Defense lets us have an assured deterrent force.
Of course, number 3 requires a good deal of confidence that Bush can get past the obstructionists in congress on missle defense and that subsequent democrat administrations do not undo whatever Bush accomplishes in missle defense.
Thoughts, anyone?
New weapons in the offing? New delivery systems? Alliance with Russia? Who knows?
I will trust the President's judgement on this.
To keep a credible deterrent against Russia and another country (probably China) that develops a large missle force, we would have to be able to absorb a first strike and have a remaining credible deterrent against the agressor and against the other country (Russia or China). But the other country has not had its missle force depleted by having to institute a first strike.
At that point, we could end up with no credible deterrent against the second country unless we were willing to launch on warning (ie before the second country initiated a strike). This is a really unstable situation.
This reasoning is just based on what I have read about the theory of MAD. There are probably others on the forum who know more about the subject and can fill this out, or correct me, about the subject.
FMCDH
Yes, When you read the treaty, I am quite certain you will find that neither country would omit a clause accounting for the eventual threat from a rising third party.
To: Sawdring Simply put the what the Russians are doing is having their cake and eating it too. They already possess a more advanced nuclear strike force than the US (they have the new Topol-M that is designed to be able to dance circles against any American anti-missile defense grid), they also have limited anti-ballistic missile defenses around Moscow, plus they have been developing some new weapon systems like the S-37 and the Mig-MAPO (which are super manouevreable, and have stealth suites based on plasma technology that are better than the American F-22). Thus it is weird the US is letting them progress with this testing, especially when the are given 'aid' (as if they need it) to stop missile development. It makes you go hmmmm. 6 posted on 5/11/02 10:48 PM Pacific by spetznaz
It's not really a comfort to me knowing russia has superior nuclear weapons than the U.S. plus giving them this nice arms reduction deal. I don't trust snakes. Giving aid to the russkies to stab the U.S. in the back is ludicrious. Russia (Magog) is aligned with China (Gog)
Exactly. Thank you.
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