President Obama seeks Russian deal to slash nuclear weapons

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From The Times
February 4, 2009
President Obama seeks Russia deal to slash nuclear weapons


The radical new treaty would reduce the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000 each
Tim Reid in Washington

President Obama will convene the most ambitious arms reduction talks with Russia for a generation, aiming to slash each country’s stockpile of nuclear weapons by 80 per cent.

The radical treaty would cut the number of nuclear warheads to 1,000 each, The Times has learnt. Key to the initiative is a review of the Bush Administration’s plan for a US missile defence shield in Eastern Europe, a project fiercely opposed by Moscow.

Mr Obama is to establish a non-proliferation office at the White House to oversee the talks, expected to be headed by Gary Samore, a non-proliferation negotiator in the Clinton Administration. The talks will be driven by Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

No final decision on the defence shield has been taken by Mr Obama. Yet merely delaying the placement of US missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic — which if deployed would cost the US $4 billion annually — removes what has been a major impediment to Russian co-operation on arms reduction.

Any agreement would put pressure on Britain, which has 160 nuclear warheads, and other nuclear powers to reduce their stockpiles.

Mr Obama has pledged to put nuclear weapons reduction at the heart of his presidency and his first move will be to reopen talks with Moscow to replace the 1991 US-Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), which expires in December. Under that pact, the two countries have cut their respective stockpiles from roughly 10,000 to 5,000.

“We are going to re-engage Russia in a more traditional, legally binding arms reduction process,” an official from the Administration said. “We are prepared to engage in a broader dialogue with the Russians over issues of concern to them. Nobody would be surprised if the number reduced to the 1,000 mark for the post-Start treaty.”

Efforts to revive the Start talks were fitful under Mr Bush and complicated by his insistence on building a missile defence shield. “If Obama proceeds down this route, this will be a major departure,” one Republican said. “But there will be trouble in Congress.”

The plan is also complicated by the nuclear ambitions of Iran, which launched its first satellite into space yesterday, and North Korea, which is preparing to test a long-range ballistic missile capable of striking the US.

Mr Obama views the reduction of arms by the US and Russia as critical to efforts to persuade countries such as Iran not to develop the Bomb.

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Blueprint set out for nuke-free world
Tue Feb 3, 2009 11:49pm GMT

By Adrian Croft



LONDON (Reuters) - The government will set out a six point plan Wednesday for a nuclear free world, at a time when global powers fear Iran will produce a bomb and Barack Obama's inauguration has renewed interest in disarmament.

The document calls for watertight measures to stop terrorists or emerging states getting atomic weapons, deeper cuts in U.S.-Russian nuclear arsenals and the activation of a global nuclear test ban treaty.

"Although the challenges are considerable, progress on these six steps would mark a decisive break from the deadlock of the past decade," the Foreign Office said in a policy document.

Entitled "Lifting the nuclear shadow: Creating the conditions for abolishing nuclear weapons," the document is to be launched by Foreign Secretary David Miliband later on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said Britain will play a key role in efforts to speed up nuclear disarmament, though it was not immediately clear why Britain was proposing the new plan now, or what its timeframe would be.

Brown, unpopular at home because of the economy's woes but well-regarded abroad, is due to host a conference in March on cooperating with countries that want to develop a civilian nuclear energy industry.

Nevertheless, Brown's government plans to spend up to 20 billion pounds on a new fleet of nuclear weapons-armed submarines to replace the ageing current fleet. He has warned against unilateral nuclear disarmament.

The British initiative comes against the background of a meeting of world powers on Iran's nuclear program in Germany Wednesday. The West suspects Tehran is using a civilian program as a cover to make nuclear arms, which Iran denies.

Obama has backed direct diplomacy with Iran, which could involve talks, a departure from the policies of former President George W. Bush.

Obama has also said he would seek reductions in all U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, signalling an interest in arms treaties not shown by his predecessor.

(Editing by Jon Boyle)

© Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved.

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FACTBOX-Six-point British plan on nuclear disarmament

Tue Feb 3, 2009 11:40pm GMT

Feb 4 (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary David Miliband will set out a six-point plan for a nuclear-free world on Wednesday. A policy paper calls for:

* An agreement among signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on tougher measures to prevent more states getting the weapons.

* Working with the U.N. nuclear watchdog to help states which want to develop a civil nuclear energy industry to do so in safe ways.

* Negotiations between the United States and Russia and agreement on substantial further reductions in their nuclear arsenals. Other states with nuclear weapons should reduce their forces to a minimum, it said.

* Bringing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force, banning all nuclear weapons test explosions. Nine states still need to ratify the treaty before it can take effect, the paper said.

* Talks on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, which would ban future production of nuclear bomb-making fissile material.

* Discussion of political, military and technical issues that would have to be resolved if nuclear weapons states were to reduce and ultimately eliminate their arsenals. Britain has proposed a conference of the five original nuclear weapon states in 2009 to discuss confidence-building.

© Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved.

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From The Times
February 4, 2009
Re-engaging Russia
The US and Russia each have much to gain from a thaw in relations. President Obama is right to have made arms control a priority



Before the fall of communism, arms control was the yardstick by which all East-West relations were measured. Soviet-US détente produced a series of agreements to cut back the huge nuclear arsenals of each superpower. But although the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nuclear stand-off remains. And the recent worsening in Russia's relations with the West, together with the expiry in December of the crucial 1991 Start pact to reduce nuclear warheads, has again made arms control a vital component of global security. It is an issue that President Obama now seems ready to tackle with an urgency not seen for two decades.

Russia and America still have 5,000 nuclear warheads each. Under the Start agreement, nuclear stockpiles were halved from the previous total 10,000 warheads. But Mr Obama now wants to negotiate a new treaty that would limit each side to around 1,000. His commitment to a new round of mutual reductions is not in doubt. In his inaugural address, he made arms reduction his third foreign policy priority, after Iraq and Afghanistan. And yesterday Hillary Clinton, his Secretary of State, and Sergei Lavrov, her Russian counterpart, began talks on fresh reductions and other key strategic issues.

Mr Obama has chosen his timing well. Vladimir Putin, Russia's powerful Prime Minister, has halted plans to deploy tactical missiles near the Polish border and recently spoke of “positive signals” from the Obama Administration. Mr Putin now wants to show a friendlier face - not because he is any less strident in his nationalism or from any softening in his determination to make Moscow's voice heard, but because Russia has suddenly found itself weak again.

Russia has been one of the great losers from the credit crunch. Its oligarchs have lost billions, the rouble has plunged precipitously, foreign reserves that were once the world's third largest have been much depleted, and the fall in the oil price has sharply cut Russian earnings. The swagger and arrogance that marked Russia's intervention in Georgia, its treatment of foreign investors and attitude to the outside world have gone. Moscow now needs better relations abroad while it deals with rising discontent at home.

Related Links

* Obama seeks Russia deal to slash nuclear weapons

Better relations between Moscow and Washington are also crucial to Mr Obama's other foreign policy priorities. US forces in Afghanistan are to be increased, but in recent months the supply chain through Pakistan has been disrupted by Taleban and Pakistani insurgents. Nato needs an alternative secure route. Bringing in supplies through Russia, however, is politically difficult as long as Nato's relations with Moscow remain fraught. There is scope, therefore, for each side to further its interests by compromise. Russia's main demand is for America to scrap its proposed missile shield to be deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic. It also wants a Nato retreat from the prospect of membership for Georgia and Ukraine. Mr Obama has already voiced scepticism about the first of these Bush policies (although Iran's launch of a missile may reinforce the call to build this shield); and Nato has recently put further expansion on ice.

Russia, however, must now modify its stance elsewhere, especially in the UN Security Council. Its obstruction of tougher sanctions against Iran and Zimbabwe has had no policy basis except that of pique and the wish to repay the West for imagined slights. Moscow has as much interest as anyone in preventing Iran developing nuclear weapons, and should now make this amply clear to Tehran. It has no need to court the dictator in Zimbabwe. Nor does an alliance with Venezuela make sense. Changes here, and talks on nuclear weapons, would do much for both Russia and America as well as advancing global security.

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03.02.2009
Gates and Chu--Will They Sink Obama's Nuclear Policy?

As Mike Crowley points out, Barack Obama has been conspicuously sluggish in appointing a nonproliferation team--something that's giving nuclear policy experts jitters. In addition, two of Obama's other decisions are unsettling from a nonproliferation perspective.

One is the appointment of Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy. While telegenic, brilliant, and exciting for the environmental lobby, Chu is untutored in nuclear-weapons policy--a conspicuous lacuna given that 80 percent of the Energy Department's funding is used to manage the U.S. nuclear-weapons complex. (Indeed, that is the department's core mission.) During his confirmation hearings, Chu focused on renewable energy and subsidies for nuclear power-the Lawrence Berkeley lab, which he ran, does not deal with nuclear arms--and a search of his past statements reveals little engagement with nuclear-weapons issues, save passive support for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1999.

Chu's inexperience is particularly disturbing because he will be tasked with implementing the recommendations of the upcoming Nuclear Posture Review--a document scheduled for release in 2009 that will outline the role and structure of U.S. nuclear forces well into the twenty-first century. Chu's unfamiliarity with the debates around the Nuclear Posture Review is even more problematic because the man administering it will be Robert Gates. While Gates has generally toed the Obama administration's line on Iraq and Afghanistan, he has recently voiced strong opinions about the role of U.S. nuclear weapons that are at odds with the policies preferred by both Obama and the nonproliferation community. Since Chu is unschooled in the ways of nuclear policy and bureaucratic infighting, it stands to reason that the experienced Gates will steamroll him when it comes time to implement a nuclear agenda.

And Gates's agenda seems increasingly archaic. A remarkably bipartisan consensus among nuclear proliferation experts has, since 2007, emphasized the need to revitalize our commitment to the beleaguered Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty lest it collapse altogether. Serious nonproliferation gurus like Sam Nunn, conservatives like George Shultz, and realists like Brent Scowcroft and Henry Kissinger have all agreed that the United States needs to de-emphasize the salience of nuclear weapons in its arsenal and convince other states that we remain committed to Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, in which we promised to eventually eliminate our nuclear arms. (This will not, of course, directly prevent countries like Iran and North Korea from seeking nuclear arms, but it will give us additional leverage with which to isolate and pressure those states.)

Gates, however, has blasted this vision as naïve. In a speech at the Carnegie Endowment last fall, he dissed Andrew Carnegie's (conventional) arms-reduction efforts and said that nuclear disarmament is impossible "as long as the tragic arc of history continues its course." Instead, he emphasized the need to fund development of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), a technologically questionable program that Congress axed because it entails, in effect, fielding new nuclear weapons-an action that takes us the wrong way on Article VI. And last year, Gates appointed nuke-hawk James Schlesinger to chair a panel on nuclear security-a panel which, among other things, reported that it is "crucial" for the United States to maintain nuclear weapons in Europe as a deterrent (to whom, it didn't say). Obama's "most difficult challenge," the report says, "will be in persuading this nation of the abiding requirement for nuclear forces."

True, Gates's Nuclear Posture Review may yet encourage significant moves toward nuclear disarmament--and many nuclear experts would probably support the RRW if it were approved in conjunction with major steps to renew the nuclear compact, such as ratification of the nuclear test ban treaty, further cuts to the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, and a global cutoff of the production of fissile material.

Nevertheless, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that Gates is not steering our nuclear posture in the game-changing direction that nonproliferation wonks would prefer--and that Obama promised during his campaign. If the 2009 Nuclear Posture Review focuses on "the abiding requirement for nuclear forces" instead of the abiding requirement to improve our nonproliferation efforts, then the United States will miss a major opportunity to prevent the spread of nuclear arms this century--many of which will undoubtedly be aimed at us.

--Barron YoungSmith
Posted: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 11:47 AM

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From The Times
February 5, 2009
Russia unclenches fist over nuclear weapons
Tony Halpin in Moscow

Russia moved swiftly yesterday to extend a hand to President Obama over American plans for big cuts in nuclear weapons. Sergei Ivanov, the Deputy Prime Minister, said that Russia was ready to sign a new strategic missile treaty with the US.

“We welcome the statements from the new Obama Administration that they are ready to enter into talks and complete within a year, the signing of a new Russian-US treaty on the limitation of strategic attack weapons,” said Mr Ivanov, a hawkish former Defence Minister, who was once seen as a candidate to become the president of Russia.

Grigory Karasin, the deputy Foreign Minister, also hailed the initiative. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) signed by the US and the Soviet Union in 1991 expires in December. It reduced stockpiles held by the two states from 10,000 to 5,000 but there has been little progress in negotiating a successor.

Talks faltered in part over President Bush’s enthusiasm for siting a missile-defence shield in Eastern Europe, a move that infuriated Russia. A delay in the programme could ease Russian concerns and pave the way for talks.

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Russia, U.S. pledge closer cooperation under Obama

updated 4:41 a.m. CT, Tues., Feb. 3, 2009

MOSCOW - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov agreed on Tuesday to work more closely on key strategic issues, Russia's Foreign Ministry said.

The two foreign ministers spoke by telephone at the request of Washington, the ministry said in a statement.

"In the course of the discussion, the accent was given to the mutual interest of building a positive agenda for our relations after the arrival of the new U.S. administration."

"Especially noted was the importance of strengthening bilateral cooperation, including questions of strategic dialogue and economic cooperation, as well as current international problems such as the resolution of (the situation in) Afghanistan," the statement said.

Moscow's ties with Washington sank to a post-Soviet low in August over the war in Georgia, but some diplomats hope relations could thaw under the new administration of U.S. President Barack Obama.

Russia's powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has cautiously noted positive signals from the new administration and a Russian news agency reported last month that Russia had halted plans to deploy tactical missiles near the Polish border.

Though unconfirmed, the report has raised hopes the Kremlin could be indicating it wished to boost cooperation after rows over a U.S. missile defense system in Europe, the expansion of NATO and the war in Iraq.

Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are set to meet for the first time on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in London in April.

Both countries want to boost nuclear cooperation and discuss how to replace a key Cold War strategic arms control pact.

Russian and U.S. diplomats say they are confident Moscow could find a deal with the new U.S. administration on replacing the START-1 pact, which expires at the end of this year.

The START treaty, signed by Moscow and Washington in 1991, committed both to cutting their numbers of missiles and strategic bombers to 1,600 each. Both sides met limits set by the treaty by December 2001.

Copyright 2009 Reuters.

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Obama seeking deep nuke cuts with Russia




Published: Feb. 4, 2009 at 10:36 AM

• Obama to face nuclear weapons decision
• Putin sees promise in Obama presidency
• Russia delays Euro missile deployment
• Lee, Obama discuss 6-way talks on N. Korea

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama is seeking to slash the nuclear stockpiles of the United States and Russia by as much as 80 percent, sources say. Obama is intent on re-engaging with Russia on the kind of arms reduction talks that resulted in the 1991 START treaty, which expires at the end of this year, and envisions as few as 1,000 nuclear warheads for each country, The Times of London quoted unnamed administration sources saying Wednesday.

Negotiations on such a new arms treaty would include a review of the Bush administration's plans for an Eastern European missile defense shield, which the Bush administration said was meant to protect against "rogue states" -- but which Moscow sees as part of a NATO expansionist push, the newspaper said.

The talks will be overseen by U.S. Secretary State Hillary Clinton, the sources said.

"We are going to re-engage Russia in a more traditional, legally binding arms reduction process," The Times quoted a White House official saying. "We are prepared to engage in a broader dialogue with the Russians over issues of concern to them. Nobody would be surprised if the number reduced to the 1,000 mark for the post-START treaty."

© 2009 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Cold warrior Henry Kissinger woos Russia for Barack Obama

Henry Kissinger, the pioneer of Cold War detente during the Nixon era, has made a return to frontline politics after President Barack Obama reportedly sent him to Moscow to win backing from Vladimir Putin's government for a nuclear disarmament initiative.



By Adrian Blomfield, Moscow Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:14AM GMT 06 Feb 2009

The Daily Telegraph has learned that the 85-year-old former US secretary of state met President Dmitry Medvedev for secret negotiations in December. According to Western diplomats, during two days of talks the octogenarian courted Russian officials to win their support for Mr Obama's initiative, which could see Russia and the United States each slashing their nuclear warheads to 1,000 warheads.

The decision to send Mr Kissinger to Moscow, taken by Mr Obama when he was still president-elect, is part of a plan to overcome probable Republican objections in Congress.

Mr Kissinger is believed to have won a verbal rather than written undertaking for the deal. Tom Graham, a senior associate at Kissinger Associates and a former member of the national security council in the White House, on Thursday confirmed that Mr Kissinger had met Mr Medvedev but denied that any negotiations had taken place and said he had not met with Mr Putin.

However, a diplomatic source said that Mr Kissinger held two days of talks with Mr Putin at his country house near Moscow.

While the details of the ambitious initiative are yet to be revealed, the proposal to return to the negotiating table after eight years of reluctance in Washington has been welcomed in Britain and elsewhere.

Mr Obama apparently chose Mr Kissinger for his consummate diplomatic skills and his popularity in Moscow, an affection earned by his open acknowledgment of Russia's international resurgence.

Despite his pariah status with many Left-wingers in Mr Obama's Democratic Party, the president forged relations with Mr Kissinger during his campaign.
The compliment was returned when the 85-year-old veteran of the Nixon and Ford administrations said last month that the young president was in a position to create a "new world order" by shifting US foreign policy away from the hostile stance of the Bush administration.

He publicly supported Mr Obama's notion of unconditional talks with Iran, though not at the presidential level.

Further demonstrating his willingness to work with his opponents on foreign policy issues, Mr Obama turned to two veteran Republicans steeped in Cold War experience to press home his plans.

Shortly after Mr Kissinger's trip, Richard Lugar, a Republican senator from Indiana who has worked on nuclear disarmament issues for 30 years, also visited Moscow. George Schultz, another former secretary of state, has also played a vital role.

Observers say signs of progress towards a new treaty could come as early as this weekend, when senior government officials meet at a security conference in Munich.

Joe Biden, the US vice president, is expected to address the conference and diplomats hinted he could announce the suspension of plans to erect a missile defence shield in central Europe, a project that has been frequently denounced in Moscow.

Despite widespread praise for the proposals, many European officials are privately urging the United States to be cautious, aware that Kremlin policy towards the West in recent years has been characterized by reversals.

Apart from worries over Russia's increasingly belligerent international policies, there is also little doubt a disarmament deal would benefit Moscow more than Washington -- even if the Kremlin has threatened to stall talks on a new treaty in the past.

Russia has long called for a new agreement to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expires on Dec 5. Under START, the two Cold War adversaries agreed to halve their stockpiles to 5,000 warheads apiece. An addendum negotiated in 2002 under the START framework saw both sides agree to cut the number of warheads in service to between 1,700 and 2,200 each.

Despite pressure from Moscow, the Bush Administration was reluctant to begin negotiations on a successor to START because it feared losing the flexibility needed to respond to potential challenges from rising nuclear powers such as China.

The Kremlin, on the other hand, has been desperate for a new treaty because Russia's dilapidated nuclear stockpile is no longer sustainable either financially or practically.

Despite developing a new class of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the bulk of Russia's arsenal has passed its sell-by date. Even though many warheads have been kept alive artificially, Russia has long been aware that most of its missiles will have to be decommissioned much faster than they can be replaced.

Nuclear parity, the crux of Moscow's defence policy, is therefore fiction in all but name. A new treaty, however, would allow Russia to compete and free up money for other armament programmes.

In return for a new disarmament deal, Mr Putin has demanded that the United States delay Nato membership for Ukraine and Georgia as well as shelving the missile shield, which Moscow believes is directed at Russia rather than Iran.

The United States is reportedly ready to accept those demands after Mr Kissinger, who is deeply respected for his recognition of Russia's resurgence, may have won concessions of his own, a diplomatic source said.

Frequent visits by Mr Kissinger to Russia since 2000 have largely gone unreported in the Western press. But in 2007, the Russian news agency Novosti reported that Mr Kissinger and Yevgeny Primakov, a former KGB master, were appointed by Mr Putin to co-chair a bilateral "working group" of Russian and American political insiders to tackle issues such as global terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear threats.

Mr Putin is understood to have signalled his willingness to drop Russian objections over tougher sanctions against Iran and could also suspend the sale of sophisticated air defence missiles to Teheran which Washington fears could hamper a military strike against the country's nuclear installations.

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Top-secret document reveals Trident was set up to kill half of Moscow’s citizens


By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor
The UK deployed Trident nuclear missiles because they could cause the total breakdown of Russian cities by killing half their inhabitants, according to a top-secret document passed to the Sunday Herald.

THE UK DEPLOYED TRIDENT NUCLEAR missiles because they could cause the total breakdown of Russian cities by killing half their inhabitants, according to a top-secret document passed to the Sunday Herald.

To ensure that the warheads inflicted "unacceptable damage" on Moscow and St Petersburg, the government was prepared to explode them at ground level to maximise lethal levels of radioactive contamination.

These revelations are considered so sensitive that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has tried to cover them up in case they hamper current plans to replace Trident. Senior officials are still carrying out the same kind of "Dr Strangelove arithmetic", critics say.

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Russia: Nukes may come in handy

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:28:21 GMT

Russia's Topol-M nuclear-capable ballistic missile

A senior Russian military official has said that nuclear warfare could be the only appropriate response against likely 'new threats'.

"New threats may emerge that could only be averted with the threat of nuclear weapons," said the head of the Russian General Staff on Monday, Russian information agency RBC reported.

The official, Nikolai Makarov added that possible materialization of the threats necessitate that Russia keep open the option of upgrading its nuclear firepower.

He made the remarks commenting on the country's plans to renovate its armed forces which are expected to yield a 'more compact, more mobile and better equipped' military.

The reforms were ordered by the Russian Commander-in-Chief Dmitry Medvedev last year in view of the August confrontation with Georgia.

The enhancement was continuously brought forward as the United States would not to revise its missile plans in eastern Europe.

"We are planning to complete a reform of the military within the next three or four years. The established time frame has not been revised," Makarov concluded.

HN/MMA

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Avoiding Another Cold War

Posted on Feb 17, 2009

AP pool photo / Alexei Druzhinin

By Scott Ritter
“If it’s not just words, if they are transformed into practical policy, we will respond accordingly, and our American partners will immediately feel that.”
These are the words of Russia’s strongman prime minister, Vladimir Putin, spoken during a program nationally televised in Russia shortly after Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election. Putin was responding to a question about whether he thought U.S.-Russian tensions would ease under new American leadership. Putin, and his successor as Russia’s president, Dmitri Medvedev, had spent the past few years in an increasingly harsh verbal sparring match with the administration of George W. Bush.

Although President Bush had once famously stated that when he looked into Putin’s eyes he could “see his soul,” the warm personal relationship between the two men froze over as the United States undertook actions Russia perceived as strategic maneuvering. Russia itself appeared to deviate from the path of Western-style democracy and free trade, which hard-liners in the Bush administration had touted as the most compelling evidence that the United States had in fact won the Cold War. Putin’s incremental return to authoritarianism was reminiscent of the former Soviet Union, complete with an increasingly centralized economy.

Russia felt threatened by what it saw as moves designed to contain Moscow: the withdrawal of the United States from the anti-ballistic missile treaty; an increased focus on the need for a missile defense shield deployed in Europe (ostensibly to counter any missile threat emerging from Iran); the aggressive expansion of NATO right up to the borders of Russia (absorbing all of the former Warsaw Pact nations, as well as several former Soviet republics in the Baltic). These actions, coupled with the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the U.S.-NATO occupation of Afghanistan, which gave the U.S. military access to bases in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, created an image of an expanding NATO led by an increasingly hegemonic and militaristic America.

In an effort to stop the expansion of U.S. power and influence in regions close to Russia, Moscow got together with its old arch-rival, China, and entered into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). In cooperation with four former Soviet Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), Russia and China put in place the mechanism for Eurasian geopolitical coordination, with a strong military component, which would keep in check not only the forces of Islamic terrorism but also America and NATO. The Bush administration at first played scant attention to this new organization, but starting in 2006 had no choice but to stand up and take notice when the SCO held a meeting with India, Pakistan and Iran in attendance as observers. Since that time, the SCO has become a major regional force which has attracted the attention of nations such as Afghanistan (even under a U.S.-led occupation) and New Zealand, a longtime U.S.-NATO ally. Central Asian nations such as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, which had previously agreed to allow the U.S. military access to its air bases, are no longer laying out the welcoming mat, and all U.S. forces are expected to leave these bases soon.

Rather than re-examining the cause-effect nature of U.S. actions and Russian counteractions, and formulating a new strategy to deal with a resurgent Russia in a manner that would reduce friction, the Bush administration instead announced its intention to deploy a ballistic missile shield, operating out of the territory of former Warsaw Pact members Poland and the Czech Republic. Ostensibly intended to deal with the emerging threat of long-range Iranian missiles targeting Europe, the missile defense shield was viewed by Russia as a dangerous escalation of the military threat posed by NATO. With a missile shield in place to defend against any surviving retaliatory capability, the United States and NATO could theoretically conduct a pre-emptive military strike against Russian targets. Russia’s protestations over this planned deployment fell on deaf ears.

In August 2008 the situation between the U.S., together with its NATO allies, and Russia worsened when Russia and the Republic of Georgia engaged in a sharp regional conflict in the Caucasus which rapidly assumed global consequences. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had promised his people that he would unify Georgia by reoccupying the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In early August, Saakashvili ordered Georgian troops into South Ossetia in response to what he believed was Russian provocation. Russia responded with a massive counterattack, which not only drove the Georgian troops from South Ossetia, but carried on into Georgia proper, with Russian forces occupying the Georgian port city of Poti and threatening the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. Prior to the Russia-Georgia conflict, NATO had held internal discussions concerning membership for both Georgia and Ukraine. The Russians, by striking Georgia, made it clear that such an action would be intolerable to Moscow. The U.S. responded by sending warships, as part of a NATO naval task force, into the Black Sea.

Russia in turn sent a small naval detachment, as well as a flight of heavy bombers, to Venezuela. Neither deployment represented much in the way of a serious military threat, but together they spoke volumes about the deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations under the Bush administration.
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The Man Who Warned Congress

by J. R. Nyquist

Weekly Column Published: 02.27.2009

On 25 February Andrei Illarionov testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The hearing was titled “From Competition to Collaboration:

Strengthening the U.S.-Russia Relationship.” Illarionov is a Russian citizen presently employed by the Cato Institute. He began his testimony with a brief explanation: “For a number of years I worked at different posts in the Russian government and Administration of the Russian President.” According to Illarionov the Russian regime is a KGB regime, and the United States policy toward this regime is worse than appeasement. It is best characterized as retreat.

Since the collapse of the USSR all American efforts to improve relations with Russia have come to nothing, says Illarionov, and new initiatives from President Obama are doomed; this is because the Americans fail to recognize the nature of the Russian regime. There is an unwillingness to grasp “the internal logic and intentions of the Russian leadership.” It seems that the free world is unable to deal with powerful authoritarian regimes.

In order to deal with Russia, certain facts must be admitted. First, Russia is not a democracy, the Russian people are not free, and the “central place in the Russian political system is occupied by the Corporation of the secret police.”

The secret police of Russia compose a brotherhood, and a system of order. This brotherhood, says Illarionov, is highly disciplined and enforces loyalty with “the ultimate penalty.” They readily use violence against others, and are ruthless in the pursuit of power. They dominate and bully ordinary Russians, who cannot oppose them. They dominate the state apparatus, holding 77 percent of the top 1,016 government positions. There is virtually no independent mass media in Russia, and the level of anti-U.S. propaganda is greater now than in Soviet times.

Even more frightening, the Russian government has killed tens of thousands people, jailing dissidents on trumped-up charges, arranging terrorist “events” to advance its agenda. Many journalists and independent-minded politicians have been assassinated. The Kremlin also threatens its neighbors using energy exports as weapons of coercion, actively engaging in cyber warfare. The Russian invasion of Georgia last August, says Illarionov, was prepared “at least since February 2003.”

The secret police are supreme in Russia. With regard to previous police states, the ruling party or dictator held absolute authority. But the Russian secret police are themselves in control – answering to no one. “The political regime in today’s Russia is therefore quite unique,” noted Illarionov, “since so far there was probably no country in world history … where a secret police organization [captured] all political, administrative, military, economic, financial, and media powers.” This also gives the regime staying power. Since elections are rigged, no opposition can ever take control of the government.

Unless the supremacy of the Russian secret police is acknowledged and understood, the United States will not be able to deal with the regime in Moscow. According to Illarionov, the American side has retreated “on almost all” bilateral issues. If the Americans are alarmed by any development in Russia, whether it is the violation of human rights or the muzzling of the mass media, the Kremlin simply suggests that the Americans shut up and mind their own business. The West has refused to penalize or confront Russia’s destructive behavior. “There were no sanctions whatsoever for any behavior of the Russian authorities,” noted Illarionov.

“The recent suggestion ‘to reset the button’ in U.S.-Russia relations and ‘to start over with a blank slate’ is met with poorly hidden joy and satisfaction on the part of the Russian Chekists.”

The KGB regime now believes the American side is acquiescing to Moscow’s assertion of hegemony over the former Soviet space. “It is a surrender of the hopes and efforts of the Russian democrats as well as peoples of the post-Soviet states who dreamed to get out of the system that controlled and tortured them for almost a century,” said Illarionov. “But it is even more. It is a clear manifestation to all democratic and liberal forces in Russia and in the other post-Soviet states that on all internal and external issues of their struggle … the United States now abandons them and takes the position of their deadly adversaries and enemies. And therefore it is an open invitation for new adventures by the Russian Chekists’ regime….”

As if to scold the U.S. Congress itself, Illarionov noted that the Committee hearings were dedicated to “collaboration” with the secret police of Russia.

According to Illarionov, “the term chosen for the agents of the U.S. administration’s policy … is ‘collaborationists.’ Collaboration between the two governments today could only be on the Russian regime’s terms and for fulfillment of the Russian government’s goals.” The United States, in effect, has chosen something worse than appeasement. It has chosen the path of outright surrender. “We know the consequences of the collaborationist policy,” warned Illarionov.

“Those who retreat and surrender will not get peace, but war – war with unpredictable and nasty results.” The situation is reaching critical mass. The United States is no longer a superpower in terms of its thinking. It no longer opposes totalitarianism. A time of troubles is approaching. “When the world gets there,” said Illarionov, “we need to remember that we had a warning.”

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Monday, March 9, 2009
U.S., Russia aim to cut nukes
Nicholas Kralev (Contact)


ASSOCIATED PRESS Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
says now is the time “for making real progress in resuming the
global disarmament process.

GENEVA | It's official - the U.S. and Russia want to revive arms control talks to cut their nuclear stockpiles.

Disarmament goals pronounced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the issue had not been heard from the one-time enemies in years.

“The right moment has come today, for the first time after the end of the Cold War, for making real progress in resuming the global disarmament process on a broad agenda,” Mr. Lavrov said at the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva over the weekend.

Mr. Lavrov's comments were preceded by another bold statement by Mrs. Clinton during their meeting in this city, long associated with Cold War-era arms control negotiations.

“We are going to believe in arms control and nonproliferation as a core function of our foreign policy,” Mrs. Clinton said Friday, adding that there was “a great deal of confusion and infighting and ideological position-taking regarding arms control and nonproliferation in the last administration.”

Just a year ago, Mr. Lavrov delivered an unusually pessimistic speech at the Conference on Disarmament, a 65-nation body that has failed to produce any substantive results for years.

Russia and other countries blamed the George W. Bush administration's decision to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was necessary for the U.S. to begin developing a missile-defense system.

Mr. Clinton promised Mr. Lavrov that the Obama administration's priority will be completing a follow-on accord to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) before it expires in December.

The agreement's official name is START I, though negotiations on its two successors were never finalized.

“We agreed to a work plan,” Mrs. Clinton said after meeting with Mr. Lavrov. “We are going to create a very specific set of objectives and responsibilities. We hope to be in a position where we can present those to our two presidents before their meeting, so that they can then agree upon the instructions that should be provided to our negotiators.”

President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are expected to meet on the sidelines of a global financial summit in London early next month.

“There's been some good preliminary work on START, and we intend to get fully immersed in that,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We discussed some of the elements of what a new treaty would look like.”

In spite of the secretary's enthusiasm, however, “no decisions on the particulars of the U.S. negotiating position have been made,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association (ACA) in Washington.

Unlike the Russians, the Americans have not appointed negotiators, he added.

After a visit to Moscow to discuss arms control issues and specifically START, Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged Mr. Obama to name an ambassador-at-large for strategic negotiations with Russia.

One name that has been mentioned for a senior position in the field is Rose Gottemoeller, who is expected to become assistant secretary of state for arms control. A former deputy undersecretary of energy for defense nuclear nonproliferation, she was director of the Carnegie Moscow Center until recently.

Last summer, Ms. Gottemoeller made known her views on the future of START in an article in Arms Control Today, a magazine published by the ACA, and co-written by Alexei Arbatov, head of the Center for International Security at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of International Economy and International Relations.

The article suggested that START be replaced by “an enhanced SORT,” a reference to the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Moscow, which was negotiated by the Bush administration.

The new accord would include SORT's basic premises, but with specific verification measures that do not exist in the 6-year-old document. Such measures can be found in START, but analysts deem many of them outdated.

“For the Russian side, the major goal would be to maintain a semblance of parity with the United States, while addressing the basic problem with SORT - the lack of acceptable counting rules and corresponding verification procedures,” the article said.

“For the U.S. side, the major goal would be to maintain sufficient transparency with respect to Russian strategic nuclear forces, while making sure that force cuts would not be too expensive for the United States,” it said.

The authors also suggested that “the upper limit allowed for strategic nuclear forces would be 1,700 deployed warheads, to be achieved by the end of 2012.” SORT required that both countries reduce their arsenals to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads, and today they are at the higher end, Mr. Kimball said.

Although the Obama administration's official positions on START are still unknown, Russia has announced two major requirements.

“A future agreement should be legally binding,” Mr. Medvedev wrote in a letter to the Conference on Disarmament, which Mr. Lavrov read to delegates on Saturday.

“It is of no less importance that the instrument should be forward-looking and should limit not only warheads but also strategic delivery vehicles, i.e. intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers,” the Russian president wrote.

Diplomats in Geneva reacted positively to both Mr. Lavrov's and Mrs. Clinton's remarks, though some said that other accords should be taken up even while a replacement of START is being negotiated.

“There's no reason to wait for START to re-energize the Conference on Disarmament on a fissile material cut-off treaty,” said John Duncan, Britain's ambassador to the conference.

• John Zarocostas contributed to this report.

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U.S., Russia announce nuke talks; Obama plans to visit China

• Story Highlights
• Nuclear talks announcement with Russia comes ahead of G-20 summit
• Joint statement: "New agreement will mutually enhance security of the parties"
• Presidential meeting also aimed to set up U.S.-Russian summit in Moscow
• White House: Obama will visit China and "resume the human rights dialogue"

(CNN) -- U.S. President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced Wednesday that their countries will soon begin negotiations on reducing their nuclear arsenals, according to a joint statement from the two leaders.


Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and President Obama
talk Wednesday in London ahead of the G-20.

The announcement came after Obama and Medvedev met in London ahead of Thursday's G-20 summit.

The statement said the two leaders agreed that the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms -- which expires in December -- "has completely fulfilled its intended purpose and that the maximum levels for strategic offensive arms recorded in the treaty were reached long ago."

"They have therefore decided to move further along the path of reducing and limiting strategic offensive arms in accordance with U.S. and Russian obligations under Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons," the joint statement said.

Negotiators from both countries will soon begin talks "to work out a new, comprehensive, legally binding agreement on reducing and limiting strategic offensive arms to replace the START Treaty," the statement said.

Earlier, two senior Obama administration officials said another goal of the president's meeting with Medvedev was to set a date for a U.S.-Russian summit in Moscow, Russia, this summer.

The joint statement said negotiators from both countries would report their progress on working out the new nuclear arsenal reduction agreement by July.

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"The new agreement will mutually enhance the security of the parties and predictability and stability in strategic offensive forces, and will include effective verification measures drawn from the experience of the parties in implementing the START Treaty," the statement said.

In a joint news conference Wednesday with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- ahead of his talks with Medvedev -- Obama emphasized that Russia and the United States also have a common interest in "reducing nuclear stockpiles and promoting nuclear non-proliferation" across the world. Watch Obama, Brown statement ahead of world stage »

"One of the things I have always believed strongly is that both the United States and Russia and other nuclear powers will be in a much stronger position to strengthen what has become a somewhat fragile thread-bare nonproliferation treaty if we are leading by example and if we can take serious steps to reduce the nuclear arsenal," Obama said.

"I think people on both sides of the Atlantic understand that as much as the constant cloud, the threat of nuclear warfare has receded since the Cold War, that the presence of these deadly weapons, their proliferation, the possibility of them finding their way into the hands of terrorists, continues to be the gravest threat to humanity. What better project to start off than seeing if we can make progress on that front. I think we can."

The U.S. president said there's been a rift in the past several years in the U.S.-Russian relationship.

"There are very real differences between the United States and Russia, and I have no interest in papering those over. But there are also a broad set of common interests that we can pursue" and "great potential for concerted action," Obama said.

Along with the nuclear issue, Obama said, the countries "have an interest in stabilizing the world economy. Both countries have an interest in finding a sustainable path for energy and dealing with some of the threats climate change that we discussed."

Also on Wednesday, the White House released a statement saying that Obama will visit China this year. Obama met Chinese President Hu Jintao as world leaders gathered in London for Thursday's G-20 summit. Watch an assessment of Obama's first G-20 summit »

The two agreed to set up a high-level strategic and economic dialogue chaired by Cabinet-level representatives -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner for the United States, and State Councilor Dai Bingguo and Vice Premier Wang Qishan for China.

Obama and Hu appear to have deferred the question of human rights, one of the greatest points of friction between the two sides. "The two sides agreed to resume the human rights dialogue as soon as possible," the White House statement said. China did not immediately confirm the details of the U.S. announcement.

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Obama faces test in Europe this week

By Michael D. Shear
The Washington Post


President Obama faces tough sales job.

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WASHINGTON — After 69 days in which international issues have taken a back seat to attempts to rescue the economy at home, President Obama takes the world stage this week as a wildly popular figure among the people of Europe but facing a difficult task in selling his plans to the continents' leaders.

The president plans to push for a new approach to the war in Afghanistan, aggressive action to stop the proliferation of weapons and a more united European effort to combat the global recession.

But if the new U.S. president thought his popularity would cause foreign governments to fall quickly into line behind a new American leadership, experts warn, he could be in for a rude awakening.

Still, White House officials describe the trip as a way of confronting the "inherited challenges" left over from the Bush administration, and said they expect the three summits of world leaders he will attend to produce broad agreement on new approaches to economic recovery, fighting terrorism and securing peace in unstable regions.

"We think (the trip) is obviously going to be a fundamental part of the president's agenda of restoring America's standing in the world, and particularly in Europe," said Denis McDonough, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.

Longtime observers of cross-Atlantic presidential trips say the president retains much of the star power he exhibited during his campaign swing through Europe last summer, when he delivered a speech to more than 200,000 people in a German square.

"It's still a case that European leaders want to be seen next to Obama, preferably with Obama, his arms around their shoulders and a big smile, because he's so popular in Europe," said Reginald Dale, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But replacing Bush with Obama has not wiped clean the substantial disagreements that remain between the U.S. and Europe.

"That's an invitation to disillusionment," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "These are complicated times. There's an anger in the world ... about how people think our country has helped create these problems. The president has to lift heavily to get us over the Bush hurdle."

Throughout the presidential campaign, Obama's rivals repeatedly questioned whether his youth and relative inexperience would make him a pushover when he came face to face with world leaders.

Obama's mission now is to lay those doubts to rest, in part by making good on his campaign promise to improve the sometimes strained relations with U.S. allies abroad.

Aides point out that Obama has been engaged in that effort since he took office, calling world leaders almost daily. Last week, he discussed his trip and the global economic crisis with French, German and British leaders, among others.

And between dealing with economic crises, Obama has made a series of moves that have been generally well-received across the Atlantic, ordering the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay closed, announcing a draw down of U.S. forces in Iraq and crafting a new policy for dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he announced on Friday.

"This is his first major multilateral summit," said one senior foreign-policy adviser. "But he's been working the issues all the way back to the transition."

Michael Froman, Obama's Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs, said the president plans to "lead by example," offering his actions domestically — including a stimulus package, regulatory reform, housing proposals and financial-stability plans — as motivation for global action.

Obama's counterparts are struggling domestically with economic crises at least as severe as the one in the U.S. That has led to political instability throughout much of the continent that complicates Obama's upcoming meetings.

Governments have collapsed in Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland and, most recently, in the Czech Republic, where Mirek Topolanek, the prime minister, lost a vote of no confidence. Topolanek currently serves as the president of the European Union but is expected to remain as the host for the organization's summit in Prague on Sunday despite his political problems.

"(Obama's) problem is that everyone is weak. His main allies are very weak.

Even his rivals are weak," said Moises Naim, the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine. "In the weakness of rivals loom large risk."

The danger, Naim said, is that European leaders are in no position to deliver what the United States wants on the economy or security issues despite their desire to please America's new president.

In addition, he said, many of the foreign leaders have their own domestic reasons to pick a fight with the new American leader, if only to show that they are not bowed by his star power.

That could be particularly evident when Obama meets in a one-on-one meeting with Russian president Dmitrij Medvedev in London.

"Medvedev also has to show that he is as tough as (Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin," Naim said. "The 500-pound gorilla that's not in the room in Putin. Everyone knows, and Putin makes sure that everyone knows, that he calls the shots."

Still, Obama and Medvedev are expected to reach an agreement that could lead to a new arms-reduction treaty between the two nations. The START treaty reached in 1991 expires at the end of this year.

In Prague, the new president will make what aides describe as a "major address" on the proliferation of dangerous weapons. At a summit of NATO leaders, Obama will urge a modernization of the alliance to better fight the security threats from terrorists and rogue nations.

And at the G-20 economic summit, he will call for a new approach to reviving the global economy through government spending, tougher regulation of financial institutions and an embrace of free trade.

In between, the White House promises a series of one-on-one conversations with the leaders of Turkey, Russia, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Korea, China, India and Britain. On Wednesday, Obama will meet privately with the Queen of England. In Istanbul, he will hold a global, video-based town-hall meeting that will allow students from across Europe and Asia to ask the American president questions.

"This is a real test of his leadership," Dale said of the eight-day, five-country trip. "Particularly, I think in the economic section, where the whole world is suffering and there's a real opportunity for the president to show global leadership."

Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company

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President Barack Obama calls for a nuclear free world in Prague speech

The country that dropped two atom bombs on Japan in 1945 has a "moral responsibility" to work towards securing "a world without nuclear weapons", President Barack Obama has said in a speech in the Czech Republic.

By Toby Harnden in Prague
Last Updated: 5:21PM BST 05 Apr 2009

Mr Obama told a crowd of about 20,000 gathered in Hradcany Square, next to Prague Castle that nuclear weapons were the "most dangerous legacy of the Cold War" and the risk of a nuclear attack had never been greater because "terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one".

Speaking in a city chosen for the symbolism of its peaceful toppling of communism through the Velvet Revolution of 1989, he denounced "fatalism" over nuclear proliferation and vowed to lead a global effort to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons.

"As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act," he said. "We cannot succeed in this endeavour alone, but we can lead it.

"So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment and desire to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."

Maintaining that he was "not naïve", Mr Obama buttressed his startlingly optimistic and ambitious aim - even employing his campaign of "Yes, we can" - with a strong condemnation of the North Korean rocket launch, hours before his speech, and tough words on Iran.

The United States would continue to develop a missile defence system until Iran abandoned its nuclear ambitions, he said. "As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven," he said.

"Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbours and our allies." He hailed the "courageous" Czech Republic and Poland for "agreeing to host a defense against these missiles."

But he also spoke of the potential for a rapprochement with Iran that would remove the need for a missile defence system.

"If the Iranian threat is eliminated, we will have a stronger basis for security, and the driving force for missile defense construction in Europe will be removed."

Tehran, he said, had two choices. "We want Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations, politically and economically. We will support Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy with rigorous inspections. That is a path that the Islamic Republic can take."

Mr Obama called for a reduction of the role of nuclear weapons in American national security strategy, negotiating a new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia - to which Moscow agreed to in principle last week - and seeking a new treaty to end the production of fissile materials used in nuclear weapons.

He also announced that the US would hold host a global summit on nuclear security in next year and that he would work to ratify the nuclear Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1999 but rejected by the US Senate.

Mr Obama who was woken at 4.30am in his hotel room in Prage by his press secretary Robert Gibbs to be told of the North Korean rocket launch over Japan, said that, said Pyongyang had to be called to account and urged a strong international response at an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting.

"This provocation underscores the need for action, not just this afternoon at the UN Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons," he said. "Rules must be binding, violations must be punished, words must mean something.

"The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."

Mr Obama's reference to the devastating atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing as many as 220,000, in August 1945 was part of his concerted effort to rebuild bridges with the world by promising, as he said in Strasbourg, "to listen to learn and to learn" and to acknowledge American failings.

Gary Samore, the White House's Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism, indicated that Mr Obama's call for ridding the world of nuclear weapons need not be taken too literally.

"In terms of a nuclear-free world, I think we all recognize this is not a near-term possibility." Rather, the call was an attempt to "seize the moral high ground" in order to increase pressure on countries like North Korea and Iran.

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Disarmament 101

by J. R. Nyquist

Weekly Column Published: 04.10.2009

When we read eye witness accounts of the bombing of Hiroshima, which occurred in August 1945, we are shocked at the horror and inhumanity of the world’s most terrible weapon – the atom bomb, which subsequently evolved into the hydrogen bomb. If today’s nuclear arsenals were unleashed against urban centers, hundreds of millions would die. Entire national economies would collapse.

Some people imagine that nuclear weapons are, in themselves, a great evil. They argue that all nuclear weapons should be scrapped. After all, in the fullness of time, by design or by accident, nuclear war is inevitable. Doesn’t it make sense to do something to prevent such a disaster? Shouldn’t we embark on a universal program of nuclear disarmament?

Two points should be made regarding this subject. First, nuclear weapons are not evil. They are merely inanimate objects. If there is danger in the world, it comes from evil politicians. Second, lethal biological weapons have greater death-dealing potential than nuclear weapons. The United States does not possess an arsenal of lethal biological weapons. If we eliminate our nuclear weapons and do not account for the biological arsenals of Russia, China, North Korea, etc., we will leave ourselves open to attack without any means of retaliation.

Few have considered what genuine nuclear disarmament would entail. Unless the whole human race takes a drug that makes everyone stupid, nuclear technology is not going to disappear. As long as modern civilization remains technologically advanced, we will have weapons of mass destruction. There is no way around this, because the ultimate weapon is not a nuclear bomb. The ultimate weapon is the human mind.

Our new administration in Washington thinks that eliminating all nuclear weapons (in every country) would be a good thing. President Obama says that eliminating all nuclear weapons “is not pie in the sky.” But if this is not pie in the sky, then nothing is. For even if every nuclear arsenal were dismantled, some countries might build new arsenals in secret. Therefore, real nuclear disarmament requires the elimination of all whose skill and knowledge would facilitate the construction of future arsenals. One would have to arrange abortions, as well, for all fetuses that might be born and later become nuclear scientists. It must be admitted that weapons of mass destruction do not exist of and by themselves. They stem from our technological sophistication, from our intellectual accomplishments, from modern scientific concepts. Only if we eliminate these precursors, can we eliminate the possibility of nuclear weapons and nuclear war.

Nevertheless, the new administration is determined in its Utopian venture. The White House Web Site states: “Obama and Biden will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it. Obama and Biden will always maintain a strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist. But they will take several steps down the long road toward eliminating nuclear weapons.

They will stop the development of new nuclear weapons; work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair trigger alert; seek dramatic reductions in U.S. and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material; and set a goal to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global.”

Obama and Biden are determined to remove the chief guarantor of peace – America’s nuclear arsenal. They no longer believe in the “balance of terror.” What they want is a treaty for the elimination of nuclear arsenals worldwide. Totalitarian countries have a long record of treaty violations.

The ruling KGB gang in Russia is currently developing a super-plague weapon in violation of existing treaties. These people are not going to keep a nuclear arms control agreement if they can achieve global dominance by cheating. If all nuclear weapons were eliminated, you would merely achieve the disarmament of the United States.

Obama and Biden are dreamers. If you are going to play the utopian game, why stop at the elimination of nuclear weapons? Why not eliminate evil? Get every world leader on the phone and propose the elimination of evil worldwide. After all, the problem was never in the weapons. It was in the people who built them. Even if you remove all the nuclear weapons from the planet, evil people will try and build new weapons. And they will do so secretly. How does Obama propose to stop them?

In discussing the elimination of nuclear weapons, or the elimination of evil, we are not talking about a fourth grade math problem; in fact, many so-called problems are not problems at all because they do not admit of any solution whatever. We cannot prevent a nuclear war by eliminating nuclear weapons any more than we can eliminate evil. The truth of the matter was eloquently summed up by Ursula LeGuin, who wrote: “[Evil is not] something that can be solved...” Instead, she observed, it is “all the pain and suffering and waste and loss and injustice we will meet all our lives long, and must face and cope with over and over, and admit, and live with, in order to live human lives at all.”

As mature adults, as realists and not fantasists, we should embrace LeGuin’s words. Evil is among us, it is within us, and it is here to stay. And the same is true of nuclear weapons, with the following addendum. There is a path to nuclear disarmament and a nuclear-free world. It is the path of nuclear war, in which civilization and mankind are taken back to an earlier, less technologically advanced era.

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		World
		Obama shows flexibility in first 100 days - Russian senator
		13:53 | 28/ 04/ 2009

MOSCOW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) - U.S. President Barack Obama has, in his first 100 days in office, demonstrated flexibility in foreign policy and a willingness to use dialogue rather than confrontation, a senior Russian senator said on Tuesday.

Mikhail Margelov, the head of the Russian Federation Council's foreign affairs committee, said the new U.S. administration is not rushing to integrate the ex-Soviet states of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO or to deploy its controversial missile defense shield in Central Europe.

"President Obama is striving to solve these issues in [U.S.-Russian] relations through dialogue," Margelov said.

Moscow has been at loggerheads with Washington over plans to deploy a missile defense system in Central Europe. The U.S. earlier signed agreements with the Czech Republic on hosting a radar station and with Poland on the deployment of 10 interceptor missiles by 2013.

Russia says the missile shield would be a threat to its national security while the United States has argued it is necessary to guard against the threat of missile attacks from states such as Iran.

Top Russian officials have repeatedly expressed their hope that the new U.S. administration will not follow through with the plans, and President Dmitry Medvedev said following talks with U.S. President Barack Obama in April that both countries would make every effort "to find a way out of this difficult situation."

Margelov also said that a working group between the Russian Federation Council and the U.S. Senate will take place at the end of May to discuss joint U.S.-Russian projects, which according to him is required after both countries have new leaders.

"We will try to deliver the results of our inter-parliamentary meeting to the leaders of our countries before [Obama's visit] to Moscow," he said.

Obama plans to visit Russia in July.

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From The Times

April 27, 2009
Cutting the nuclear arsenals

The fewer warheads Russia and America have, the harder it is to maintain global balance

Russian and American negotiators began work at the weekend on their ambitious plans to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The talks are intended to produce a new agreement to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) that expires in December. This time, however, both sides are committed to cutting their arsenals well below the current combined total of 5,000 warheads, after the declaration by presidents Obama and Medvedev in London on April 1 that they would work towards the scrapping of all nuclear arms. It is a fraught endeavour, but a very worthwhile one.

It is a visionary aim, and revives one of the main vehicles for reducing East-West tensions during the Cold War. President Obama has returned to arms control, one of the goals outlined in his inaugural address, as a way of improving America's strained relations with Russia. But it will be difficult to achieve. For as warhead numbers are reduced, related issues become more complicated. If, for example, both sides cut their totals to 1,500 each, verification becomes more important, especially for the Russians, who know that the Americans could rebuild their arsenals more quickly. And this would mean Russia's defence ministry and arms factories accepting more transparency than they have before.

The second issue is delivery systems. Russia fears it will lose out in cuts, as its long-range missiles are ageing and probably far less reliable than US missiles. Last week Mr Medvedev insisted that any new treaty should limit all systems, including the strategic triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-based missiles and heavy bombers. But the Americans have an advantage that strategists might be reluctant to abandon, especially as they are deeply worried about the threat of missiles fired by states still building up offensive capabilities. But with warhead numbers reduced to about the 1,000 mark proposed by Mr Obama, the US would have to consider abandoning one leg of its strategic triad.

The third risk in a drastic reduction of warheads is that the two former superpowers have less of an advantage over other nuclear powers, especially China. The deterrents still hosted by Britain and France are unlikely to upset the balance, but China appears determined still to maintain its arsenals at current levels, as do India, Pakistan and Israel. The importance, therefore, of each warhead being up to date and fully operational increases. That will make it harder for Mr Obama to persuade Congress to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which it refused to do in 1999. It may also raise pressure to resume some form of testing.

The talks will also raise questions about other arms treaties. The Russians are unwilling to make concessions as long as the US is committed to the Bush Administration programme of installing an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Mr Obama has signalled that this may not now go ahead, but much depends on Iran and North Korea, which have reacted aggressively to his conciliatory overtures.

The key issue in all talks will be mutual trust. That broke down during the Bush Administration. The relationship may now be on the mend. But it will take months of tough bargaining before either Russia or America is ready to lead the way to a world without nuclear weapons.