President Obama seeks Russian deal to slash nuclear weapons

**vector7** · June 30th, 2009, 01:58

Monday, June 29, 2009
Updated at 29 June 2009 23:30 Moscow Time.
The Moscow Times » Issue 4177 » Opinion
Obama Will Make Russia a Priority
30 June 2009
By Mikhail Margelov

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration came to the White House during a difficult period. The economic crisis forced it to make greater allowances for the domestic situation in developing its foreign policy than is customary for U.S. politics. And apart from the country's economic woes, the new administration cannot help but be concerned about the problems created by former President George W. Bush -- troubles that not only wound national pride but constitute a direct threat to the United States' traditional leadership role in the world. Observers unanimously note the weakening of Washington's global standing, pointing to its tarnished image, its relative loss of influence in South America and its failure to meet its stated goal of spreading democracy in the Middle East.

Without question, Obama will try to rectify those failures, but he will do so by using different methods than the preceding Republican administration.

The new Democratic administration prefers the use of so-called "smart power" that relies on a wider array of tools to influence the situation than the use of military threats alone. In particular, the United States intends to give greater consideration to world opinion and international institutions when formulating its policies and actions. Obama promised to make wide use of the negotiation process to "consult with the world," taking global interdependence into consideration.

The United States is "tired" of the burden of single-handedly and constantly expanding an unlimited zone of responsibility around the globe. Washington needs, if not allies, at least loyal partners.

It is well-known that a number of disagreements accumulated in U.S.-Russian relations during the years of the Bush administration. These concerned the deployment of elements of U.S. missile defense batteries in Central Europe, policies in the Caucasus, the relationship with Ukraine, Iran's nuclear program and NATO expansion. It is therefore unreasonable to expect an instantaneous improvement in relations. The first meeting between Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev in London, and their summit next week in Moscow, are only the initial efforts at improving those relations. However, both Obama and Medvedev left their London meeting on April 1 with favorable impressions. The U.S. president has declared explicitly that he is traveling to Moscow to "reset" relations with Russia. Washington considers it necessary to do so because there are many important problems in the world that the United States cannot resolve with Russia's participation, and vice versa. The Moscow summit is certain to include talks on various forms of strategic cooperation, including missile defense, nuclear nonproliferation, the fight against international terrorism, joint actions in Afghanistan and the Middle East, economic ties and measures for overcoming the crisis.

Russia might expand the level of its cooperation by offering more than the current, single corridor through its territory by which the United States can deliver supplies to its forces in Afghanistan. It is entirely possible that a certain rapprochement will be achieved on the U.S. and Russian positions concerning Iran's nuclear program. That question is clearly connected to U.S. plans to deploy missile defense systems in Central Europe. It should also be taken into account that the new U.S. administration believes that relations with Russia should be pursued on a strictly pragmatic, not ideological, basis.

Obviously, high on the agenda will be a range of questions connected with signing a new treaty limiting strategic nuclear weapons. The START I treaty expires at the end of this year. The agreement has played itself out. However, painstaking preparations have been made to fashion a new treaty with weapons limitations terms that are acceptable to both countries. The Russian side feels that it would make sense to leave certain aspects of START unchanged, such as the mechanisms for verifying compliance with the agreement and a range of other points.

The fact that the U.S. and Russian presidents will be meeting in Moscow on the eve of a Group of Eight summit inspires hope that, after a long period of stagnation, a new life will be breathed into U.S.-Russian relations. This is because neither Russia nor the United States is satisfied with the present condition of relations. Both sides are also interested in developing trade and economic ties, realizing that the crisis will not last forever. It is even possible that Moscow and Washington will reach some form of understanding over the issue of missile defense in Central Europe.

As Obama declared, U.S.-Russian relations go beyond bilateral considerations. He said the solution to a large number of major international questions depends upon these ties. Russia was not originally a high foreign policy priority for the new U.S. administration. However, I think that will change after the two presidents meet face to face in Moscow.

Mikhail Margelov is chairman of the International Affairs Committee in the Federation Council.

**vector7** · June 30th, 2009, 02:00

Monday, June 29, 2009
Updated at 29 June 2009 23:30 Moscow Time.
The Moscow Times » Issue 4177 » Disquiet in the Ranks
Oil Will Dictate U.S. Ties
30 June 2009
By Alexander Golts

Whenever people ask me about the future of U.S.-Russian relations, I answer that they will be determined by the price of oil. If the price stays below $40 per barrel, relations will be great. Both sides will hold talks on a strategic partnership, Russia will be included in Middle East negotiations, and Moscow will carry out limited participation in joint military activities. If on the other hand the price of oil is more than $60 per barrel, Moscow will resume "getting up off its knees" and attempt to assert itself by creating problems for the West -- and the United States in particular -- under the slogan of "defending national interests."

By a strange twist of fate, the price of oil happens to be hovering near $60 per barrel, and Moscow strategists cannot decide which course to pursue.

Thus, President Dmitry Medvedev has announced his readiness to reduce the number of strategic delivery nuclear weapons to levels lower than those stated in the START I treaty. What's more, Moscow has declared its willingness to reduce the number of nuclear warheads below the level stipulated in the Moscow Treaty of 2002. In return, the United States should cancel plans to deploy elements of its missile defense system in Central Europe. At first glance, that appears to be a fair trade. In reality, though, it is not. START established a ceiling of 1,600 delivery vehicles for each side. Moscow has officially informed Washington that it possesses 814 such delivery vehicles. However, defense specialists estimate that Russia currently has only 600 delivery vehicles. That makes it possible for Russia to fulfill its pledge without eliminating a single actual weapon. The same is true regarding warheads. Moscow would have little difficulty in limiting its total warheads to 1,500 -- close to its current actual total -- even if the Moscow Treaty allows for as many as 1,700 to 2,200.

The same thinking is behind Medvedev's proposal for a new European security pact. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently explained that the pact is necessary because Europe should "not provide for its own security at the expense of the security of others, should not allow any activity within the framework of military alliances and coalitions that would weaken the unity of the overall security of the region nor permit the use of its territory to the detriment of the security of other states, to the detriment of peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic region, and should not permit military alliances to develop at the expense of the security of other participants in the treaty."

At the same time, Lavrov pretends that he does not see two obvious flaws in his argument. The first is the difference between a security system such as NATO and one established by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. NATO was created by a group of states with common values to ensure their mutual defense against an external threat. The NATO countries guarantee each other mutual defense. The OSCE provides a fundamentally different form of security guarantee -- the assurance that member states will not attack each other. It took a considerable amount of time and effort for member states to reach an agreement on confidence-building measures and to determine limits to the number of armed forces and weapons required to prevent surprise attacks.

But now, Russia has suggested finding a way to determine the extent to which security is compromised by this or that action of a particular state. That would require establishing an objective indicator that could serve as a common denominator for the subjective fears and biases of various states. Thus, NATO insists that granting membership to former Soviet republics does not constitute a security threat to any other state. Moscow's position is the exact opposite. The only possible solution is for all security-related questions, including internal NATO decisions, to be approved by some form of pan-European forum. In that way Moscow would finally receive veto power over NATO decisions, primarily concerning the admission of new member states -- a right Russia has unsuccessfully striven to obtain for the past decade.

I doubt that anyone in the Kremlin seriously entertains any hopes that such an initiative would succeed. The goal in putting it forward is to gain time until Moscow can finally decide if it plans to befriend the West or treat it with enmity.

Alexander Golts is deputy editor of the online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal.

**vector7** · July 2nd, 2009, 20:12

US and Russia to cut nuclear arsenals by up to a half

Russia and the US will pledge to begin slashing their nuclear arsenals by up to a half when President Barack Obama makes his first state visit to Moscow next week.

By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Published: 4:32PM BST 01 Jul 2009

Barack Obama is expected in Moscow on July 6-8 for his first summit with Dmitry Medvedev - they are expected to agree a deadline to cut nuclear arsenals by up to 50 per cent

Agreement on a December deadline for the start of decommissioning, expected to be imposed on Monday when Mr Obama meets his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, will be hailed in both Washington and Moscow as a breakthrough in efforts to revive relations between the two Cold War rivals.

Although no concrete figure is likely to be set during the American president's three-day visit, observers say the two sides are hoping to cut their respective arsenals by up to 50 per cent, to between 1,000 and 1,500 deployed warheads.

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Both countries claim currently to have about 2,200 missiles primed for deployment, with thousands more either in reserve or awaiting dismantlement.

The declaration will allow both leaders to claim a foreign policy success.
The Kremlin needs a new deal to replace the Cold War START treaty more than the Americans. With most of its nuclear arsenal already technically defunct, military experts believe that Russia will only be able to maintain 500 deployed warheads by 2020.

A new treaty, strongly resisted by President George W Bush, would allow to Russia to maintain parity with the United States and with it its last claim to genuine superpower status.

For Mr Obama, a deal would allow him to boost his credentials as a president committed to the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.
Yet, although his visit will be couched in the language of diplomacy and partnership, Mr Obama has been told to expect a frosty welcome from his Russian hosts.

Fresh from a triumphant trip to the Middle East, where he projected soft American power by reaching out to adversaries in the region, Mr Obama hopes to bring the same message of reconciliation to Russia.

The Russians, however, have greeted the overtures coolly, claiming that the atmosphere between the two countries remains too poisoned to hope for the swift improvement in ties that the Obama administration has advocated.

"A crisis of trust developed between us in recent years," Sergei Lavrov, Russia's hawkish foreign minister, wrote this week. "Our political relationship became too adversarial. Overcoming this legacy will take time."

Under the tutelage of Vladimir Putin, president from 2000 to 2008, Russia gradually adopted an increasingly belligerent anti-American stance and the rhetoric of the Cold War again rose to the fore.

With two young presidents in office on either side of the Cold War divide, optimists had hoped that fresh leadership could see a reversal of the alarming deterioration that has characterized the East-West relationship.

Yet Mr Putin, now prime minister, remains the dominant force in Russian politics and observers believe he has restrained his successor's more liberal tendencies.

Nor have most areas of contention been resolved.

Russia remains angry over a vague offer by Nato to promise eventual membership to Ukraine and Georgia as well as over US plans to erect a missile defence shield in central Europe that the Kremlin believes would give the United States an edge in a nuclear war.

Despite suffering its worst economic downturn since the rouble crash of 1998, Russia has lost none of its ambitions of staging an international resurgence.

More worryingly, the Kremlin has shown signs of disengagement from the rest of the world.

Last month, Mr Putin effectively shelved Russia's long-standing application to join the World Trade Organisation. Some analysts are predicting it could soon withdraw from the Council of Europe, meaning that Russia would no longer be bound by the European Court of Human Rights, seen by activists as the last civilizing influence on the country's increasingly enfeebled judicial system.

Mr Obama will try to placate Kremlin hostility with charm. Observers say he is even unlikely to push Russia either over its failure to abide by ceasefire provisions that ended last year's war in Georgia or its insistence in expelling international peacekeepers from the region.

Even so, Russia has shown little desire to make concessions of its own, critics say. Despite next week's planned joint declaration, hopes for reaching a disarmament deal have been jolted after Mr Putin insisted on linking it to the far more contentious issue of missile defence.

"The Russians are playing hardball," a western diplomat said. "There is a risk that no meaningful progress will be made on any substantive issue."

**American Patriot** · July 6th, 2009, 13:25

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**American Patriot** · July 6th, 2009, 13:31

Obama’s Youth Shaped His Nuclear-Free Vision

Chicago Tribune Photo, 2005
In college, Barack Obama wrote about nuclear arms. As a senator, he viewed a deactivated Russian nuclear missile.

By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: July 4, 2009
In the depths of the cold war, in 1983, a senior at Columbia University wrote in a campus newsmagazine, Sundial, about the vision of “a nuclear free world.” He railed against discussions of “first- versus second-strike capabilities” that “suit the military-industrial interests” with their “billion-dollar erector sets,” and agitated for the elimination of global arsenals holding tens of thousands of deadly warheads.
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Interactive Feature Obama’s 1983 College Magazine Article

Graphic President Obama’s Nuclear Agenda

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In Russian Trip, Obama to Take On Power Equation (July 5, 2009)

The student was Barack Obama, and he was clearly trying to sort out his thoughts. In the conclusion, he denounced “the twisted logic of which we are a part today” and praised student efforts to realize “the possibility of a decent world.” But his article, “Breaking the War Mentality,” which only recently has been rediscovered, said little about how to achieve the utopian dream.

Twenty-six years later, the author, in his new job as president of the United States, has begun pushing for new global rules, treaties and alliances that he insists can establish a nuclear-free world.
“I’m not naïve,” President Obama told a cheering throng in Prague this spring. “This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence.”

Yet no previous American president has set out a step-by-step agenda for the eventual elimination of nuclear arms. Mr. Obama is starting relatively small, using a visit to Russia that starts Monday to advance an intense negotiation, with a treaty deadline of the year’s end, to reduce the arsenals of the nuclear superpowers to roughly 1,500 warheads each, from about 2,200. In an interview on Saturday, Mr. Obama, conscious of his critics, stressed that “I’ve made clear that we will retain our deterrent capacity as long as there is a country with nuclear weapons.”

But reducing arsenals, he insisted, would be the first step toward giving the United States and a growing body of allies the power to remake the nuclear world. Among the goals: halting weapons programs in North Korea and Iran, discouraging states from abandoning the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and ending global production of fuel for nuclear arms, a step sure to upset Pakistan, India and Israel.

Even before those battles are joined, opposition is rising. “This is dangerous, wishful thinking,” Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, and Richard Perle, an architect of the Reagan-era nuclear buildup that appalled Mr. Obama as an undergraduate, wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal. They contend that Mr. Obama is, indeed, a naïf for assuming that “the nuclear ambitions of Kim Jong-il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be curtailed or abandoned in response to reductions in the American and Russian deterrent forces.”

In the interview, the president described his agenda as the best way to move forward in a turbulent world.

“It’s naïve for us to think,” he said, “that we can grow our nuclear stockpiles, the Russians continue to grow their nuclear stockpiles, and our allies grow their nuclear stockpiles, and that in that environment we’re going to be able to pressure countries like Iran and North Korea not to pursue nuclear weapons themselves.”

Realist or dreamer, Mr. Obama has an interest in global denuclearization that arises from what can best be described as a lost chapter of his life. Though he has written two memoirs, he has volunteered few details about his two years at Columbia.
“People assume he’s a novice,” said Michael L. Baron, who taught Mr. Obama in a Columbia seminar on international politics and American policy around the time he wrote the Sundial article. “He’s been thinking about these issues for a long time. It’s not like one of his advisers said, ‘Why don’t you throw this out?’ ”

In a paper for Dr. Baron, Mr. Obama analyzed how a president might go about negotiating nuclear arms reductions with the Russians — exactly what he is seeking to do this week.

At critical junctures of Mr. Obama’s career, the subject of nuclear disarmament has kept reappearing. Now both he and his agenda face the ultimate test: limiting nuclear arms at the very moment many experts fear the beginning of a second nuclear age and a rush of new weapons states — especially if Iran proves capable of making atomic warheads.

The Seminar

“I personally came of age,” Mr. Obama wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” his second memoir, “during the Reagan presidency.”

It was a time when President Ronald Reagan began a trillion-dollar arms buildup, called the Soviet Union “an evil empire” and ordered scores of atomic detonations under the Nevada desert. Some Reagan aides talked of fighting and winning a nuclear war.

The popular response was the nuclear freeze movement. Dozens of books warned that Mr. Reagan’s policies threatened to end civilization and most life on Earth. In June 1982, a million protesters gathered in Central Park, their placards reading “Bread Not Bombs” and “Freeze or Burn.” The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops issued a pastoral letter denouncing nuclear war.

Many Columbia students campaigned for the freeze movement, which sought a halt to additional nuclear arms deployments. Mr. Obama explored going further.

In his senior year, he began Dr. Baron’s seminar on presidential decision-making in American foreign policy. The first semester, starting in fall 1982, covered such cold-war flashpoints as the Cuban missile crisis — a dramatic study in the decision-making style of President John F. Kennedy. In the second semester, students focused on particular topics, and Mr. Obama wrote a lengthy paper about how to negotiate with the Soviets to cut nuclear arsenals.

“His focus was the nature of the strategic talks and what kind of negotiating positions might be put forward,” Dr. Baron said. “It was not a polemical paper — not arguing that the U.S. should have this or that position. It was how to get from here to there and avoid misperception and conflict.

“He got an A,” recalled Dr. Baron, who now runs a digital media business. Later, he wrote Mr. Obama a recommendation for Harvard Law School.

It was during that seminar that Mr. Obama wrote his Sundial article, profiling two campus groups, Arms Race Alternatives and Students Against Militarism. Photographs with the March 1983 article showed students at an antiwar rally in front of Butler Library.

The Article

Mr. Obama’s journalistic voice was edgy with disdain for what he called “the relentless, often silent spread of militarism in the country” amid “the growing threat of war.” The two groups, he wrote, “visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are throwing their weight into shifting America off the dead-end track.”

Despite Mr. Obama’s sympathetic portrayal of the two groups, the article seemed to question the popular goal of freezing nuclear arsenals rather than reducing them, the topic of his seminar paper. Mr. Obama wondered if the freeze movement “stems from young people’s penchant for the latest ‘happenings.’ ”

What clearly excited him was the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which would have ended the testing and development of new weapons, and thus, in the minds of arms controllers, the nuclear arms race.

The Reagan administration vehemently opposed the treaty. One Columbia activist, Mr. Obama wrote, argued that the United States should initiate the ban “as a powerful first step towards a nuclear free world.”

That phrase — a “nuclear free world,” which was Mr. Obama’s paraphrase — would re-emerge decades later as the signature item of his nuclear agenda.

The article was lost for years — some of Mr. Obama’s campaign advisers said they had heard of its existence and went looking for it, presumably to see if it contained anything that might prove embarrassing. It came to light on the Internet just before the inauguration, and some conservative bloggers called it naïve, anti-American and blind to the Soviet threat.

Precisely how the article found its way onto the Internet is unclear. But late last year, a Columbia alumni publication said it had learned of it from an alumnus, Stephen M. Brockmann, who also had an article in the same Sundial issue. Dr. Brockmann, now a professor of German at Carnegie Mellon University, said he found the issue “while rummaging through some old stuff.” When he saw the Obama article, he recalled, “I could hardly believe my eyes.”

The Senator

After the Sundial article, Mr. Obama went silent on nuclear issues for the next two decades. In Chicago, where he worked as a community organizer, topics like remaking the schools, the welfare system and health care seemed a lot more urgent. The cold war ended. So did the protests.

But in 2003 Mr. Obama began his unlikely campaign for the United States Senate and answered a detailed questionnaire from the Council for a Livable World, an advocacy organization in Washington that evaluates candidates on arms control issues.

“He opposes building a new generation of nuclear weapons,” the organization said in a fund-raising letter supporting Mr. Obama’s candidacy. At the time, the Bush administration had proposed developing nuclear arms that could shatter deeply buried enemy bunkers.

“The United States has far more nuclear weapons than it needs,” the organization quoted Mr. Obama as saying, “and any attempt by the U.S. government to develop or produce new nuclear weapons only undermines U.S. nonproliferation efforts around the world.”

In the interview, Mr. Obama noted that he was too young to “remember having to do drills under the desk.” But as a student “interested broadly in foreign policy,” he recalled, he focused on “a central question: how would the United States and the Soviet Union effectively manage these nuclear arsenals, and were there ways to dial down the dangers that humanity faced?”

The organization said Mr. Obama also supported an American-financed effort to secure Russian nuclear arms, as well as ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, still in limbo two decades after Mr. Obama wrote about it.

When he became a senator in January 2005, Mr. Obama zeroed in on arms control, an issue with little traction in the Republican-controlled Senate. Mark Lippert, now chief of staff of the National Security Council, recalled the senator’s seeking his nuclear views when he applied for a Senate staff job.

Mr. Obama found a mentor in Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a longtime star of nuclear nonproliferation efforts. Later that year, Mr. Obama asked to accompany his Republican colleague on a trip to monitor Russian efforts to scrap nuclear arms and secure atomic materials from theft or diversion.

“When we got there, he was clearly all business — a very careful listener and note taker and a serious student,” Mr. Lugar recalled.

During the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama seized a new opportunity, and political cover, by aligning himself with four of the biggest names in national security. They had decided to campaign for the elimination of the nuclear arsenals they had built up and managed as cold warriors.

There were two Republicans, Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Shultz, secretary of state under Mr. Reagan, and two Democrats, William J. Perry, secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton, and former Senator Sam Nunn, who has made fighting proliferation his life’s work.

In a 2007 opinion article in The Wall Street Journal, the four men argued that the time was right to seek “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” as the headline put it. President George W. Bush never invited them to the White House to make their case.

But Mr. Obama embraced the four wholeheartedly, echoing their message in campaign speeches in places like Chicago and Denver and in Berlin, where he spoke in July 2008 as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“This is the moment,” he told cheering Berliners, to seek “the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.”

The President

The nuclear world Mr. Obama studied and wrote about at Columbia bears little resemblance to the one he faces today.

Russia in many ways is the least of his challenges. Both Washington and Moscow want to renew the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires late this year, and both say they want to shrink their arsenals.

More complex are problems posed by the rise of new nuclear states, chiefly North Korea, which has now conducted two nuclear tests, and Iran, which experts say will be able to build a warhead soon, if it cannot already. Pakistan has the fastest-growing arsenal, India’s is improving, and Israel’s nuclear capacity has never been publicly discussed, much less dealt with, by the United States.

The threat, Mr. Obama added in the interview, has “only been heightened with the emergence of extremist organizations such as Al Qaeda.”

Mr. Obama and his aides say they want to address all these issues — though they have only recently begun to discuss strategy.

“We tried the unilateral way, in the Bush years, and it didn’t work,” a senior administration official said recently. “What we are trying is a fundamental change, a different view that says our security can be enhanced by arms control. There was a view for the past few years that treaties only constrained the good actors and not the bad actors.”

Beyond the first step — deep cuts in American and Russian arsenals — is an agenda that has already provoked stirrings of discontent at home and abroad.

In January, in the journal Foreign Affairs, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, the lone holdover from the Bush cabinet, called for financing a new generation of longer-lasting and more dependable nuclear arms.

He was immediately overruled. Mr. Obama’s first budget declared that “development work on the Reliable Replacement Warhead will cease.”

Another focus of activity early this year was the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Its ratification faces a tough Senate fight. But his aides are already building a case that advanced technologies obviate the need to detonate weapons as tests of the American arsenal and can verify that other countries also refrain.

Critics argue that the North Koreas of the world will simply defy the ban — and that the international community will fail to punish offenders.
“If the implications were not so serious, the discrepancy between Mr. Obama’s plans and real-world conditions would be hilarious,” said Frank J. Gaffney Jr., a Reagan-era Pentagon official who directs the Center for Security Policy, a private group in Washington. “There is only one country on earth that Team Obama can absolutely, positively denuclearize: Ours.”

Even more ambitious, Mr. Obama wants a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would bar all nations that sign it from making fuel for their atom bombs. But when asked how Mr. Obama would sell the idea to America’s allies — primarily Pakistan, India and Israel — administration officials grow silent.

All this is supposed to culminate, next year, in an American effort to rewrite crucial provisions of the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Mr. Obama wants to strengthen inspection provisions and close the loophole that makes it easy for countries to drop out, as North Korea did in 2003.

Each of those steps would require building a global consensus. It would also mean persuading countries to give up the coveted freedom to make fuel for reactors — and instead, probably, buy it from an international fuel bank.

Most of all, Mr. Obama and like-minded leaders will have to establish a new global order that will truly restrain rogue states and terrorist groups from moving ahead with nuclear projects.

“I don’t think I was that unique at that time,” the president said of his Columbia days, “and I don’t think I’m that unique today in thinking that if we could put the genie back in the bottle, in some sense, that there would be less danger — not just to the United States but to people around the world.”

**American Patriot** · July 6th, 2009, 15:38

Obama-Medevev currently doing a joint news conference.

They are combining forces to disarm the US nuclear force.

Agreements are being made to cooperate now, in spite of Russia's invasion of Georgia.

They will be cooperating militarily, medically and economically.

Cool

We're doomed.

**vector7** · July 8th, 2009, 14:18

Barack Obama holds a fire sale of America's nuclear defences in Moscow

By Gerald Warner World Last updated: July 7th, 2009
18 Comments Comment on this article

No apologies for posting consecutively on Barack Obama: the Looney Tunes President’s sell-out of US and Western interests is proceeding at such a speed that it is difficult to keep pace. Well said, Nile Gardiner, for asking if Barack Obama is the most naïve president in American history.

The answer is undoubtedly yes – unless he has a secret agenda to cut America down to size.

It was always in Russia that Obama threatened to do most damage and, as Nile Gardiner has rightly pointed out, these forebodings have been fulfilled. His supposed missile deal with Vladimir Putin (let’s cut straight to the organ-grinder and by-pass Medvedev, the monkey) is very satisfactory to Russian ambitions and realpolitik.

The nuclear power balance, as at 2007, was a Russian superiority of 2,146 land-launched nuclear warheads to 1,600 US; this was counterbalanced by a US superiority of 3,168 sea-launched US warheads to 1,392 Russian and 1,098 air-launched US warheads to 624 Russian. What should also be factored in is the leaking, deteriorating, rust-bucket condition of some of Russia’s deterrent ordnance, although it has already decommissioned the most basket-case Soviet weaponry.

The bottom line, however, is that it is Russia which is now in the lead in ICBM development, not America.

For America voluntarily to reduce its nuclear superiority is madness. Bien-pensant talk of a nuclear-free world displays total stupidity in a global situation where nuclear weaponry is proliferating, not receding. There is even a nuclear bomb in Pakistan, which is teetering on the brink of failed statehood at the hands of Islamist insurgents. Is this a time for America to disarm, to “sell the store” as one trenchant right-wing commentator has already described Obama’s posturing in Moscow?

For Obama, success is not the delivery of watertight nuclear security for America; it is a feel-good news conference and photo opportunity that will create huge approval ratings on liberal campuses where the delusions of 1968 and the anti-Vietnam war movement still linger on in these isolated Jurassic Parks.

It seems certain Obama will sacrifice the anti-missile shield in Europe that would have been our defence against a nuclear Iran after the ayatollahs, with Russian help, emerge as potential vapourising agents of the infidel. The interceptor missiles do not even carry warheads: they rely on an impact at 14,900mph to destroy any incoming missile, so Russian hysteria about this “threat” is synthetic.

Where I disagree with Nile Gardiner is on restricting the expansion of Nato. The alliance always relied for its effectiveness on being a compact group of mature nations. The alliance’s “All for one, one for all” philosophy means that if Georgia had been a Nato member last year when its irresponsible president so conveniently provoked Russia, the consequences could have been disastrous. Allow Russia her sphere of influence, but do not drop the West’s guard. With our own Dave Cameron flaky on renewal of Trident, Obama’s fire-sale diplomacy augurs ill for our future.

**vector7** · July 9th, 2009, 02:45

Parting With Delusions
Obama, Medvedev, and Putin.
by Reuben F. Johnson
07/08/2009 12:00:00 AM

Kiev
President Barack Obama has had his first meetings with the leadership of Russia, and the question now is how the relationship between Moscow and Washington will move forward after this "reset" summit. A lot was wrong with the relationship between the U.S. and Russia over the past decade, and--contrary to popular opinion--the wrongs did not begin under the previous administration of George W. Bush; nor did they end when he left office early this year. It should also be said that the infamous Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission of the 1990s was not the answer to a maiden's prayer that it is frequently characterised as.

The long-term problems of Washington's relations with Moscow can be traced to two very simple acts of self-delusion. The first is that the current Russian government refuses to accept that they are not in the same position of world dominance that the then-Soviet Union was some four decades ago. The second is that the U.S. and other western nations continue to refuse to acknowledge the depth and severity of Russia's internal decline. This results in the rest of the world extending to Russia trappings of a great power (i.e. membership in the G8 and World Trade Organisation) for which they are neither eligible nor deserve.

Moscow's illusions can be seen in much of the regime's current foreign policy, which bears a strong resemblance to the actions of the Soviet government in the second half of the 1970s. At the beginning of that decade, then-Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko spoke to the 24th Party Congress and told the assembled delegates "there is not a single important issue that today can be solved without or in spite of the Soviet Union." At the time he was correct. Moscow was either a major partner or impediment to most of the world's international dilemmas. For all intents and purposes there were no other players on the world stage in the league of the U.S. and USSR.

By the middle of the 1970s Russia was so awash in petrodollars that it began a military spending binge, started funding every anti-western revolutionary movement or terrorist band abroad that it could make friends with, and was subsidizing allies like Cuba so they could make mischief in Angola and elsewhere. With recent record-high oil prices and the temporary windfall that it has brought to Russia's economy, it is no small wonder that Russian PM Vladimir Putin and Co. felt a 30-plus years-on sense of "Happy Days Are Here Again" nostalgia.

The truth is that today's Russia is a shambles and has none of the influence that the Soviet Union enjoyed on the international stage. Years of neglect or just plain refusing to face reality has produced a country that the Wilson Centre's famous Russian population trends expert, Murray Feshbach, describes as "not just sick but dying." Aside from an infrastructure that sometimes makes one wonder why the Upper Volga region of Russia was not renamed "Upper Volta" (before that country was renamed Burkino Faso) a long time ago, population trends are noting short of apocalyptic.

Life expectancy in Russian males is falling, and its disparity with female life expectancy is unprecedented for a nation that calls itself a modern, industrialized state. Infant mortality is rising, female fertility (and hence birth rates) is dropping, and the level of both HIV/AIDs and TB is climbing towards epidemic proportions. Deaths due to cancer, heart disease and alcoholism are also off the charts. Average alcohol consumption in Russia, Feshbach points out, is double what the WHO considers to be a level that is hazardous to health.

There is, however, little evidence that the leadership in the Kremlin is even remotely aware of the demographic disaster in the making.

Alcoholism's impact on society is Exhibit A of how far out of touch the present leadership is with the man on the street. Just one week ago Russian president Dmitri Medvedev held a meeting with his Minister for Health and Social Development and stated, "I was astonished to learn that we now drink more than we did in the 1990s, although those were very tough times."

Memo to Medvedev: Inflation is out of control, unemployment is climbing by the day, banks are failing and people's savings are being stolen, entire cities are in danger of becoming ghost towns due to the failure of the community's one major industrial enterprise, and thanks to artificially inflated and out-of-control real estate prices most people have no hope of ever owning their own apartment. Yet you are "astonished" that people are drinking more? With such atrocious detachment from the plight of the average citizen it is no small wonder Russia's leaders can still live in denial and believe they are the same military and political colossus of the 1970s USSR.

But if the Russian leadership is living in a fool's paradise, western nations have been the worst sort of enablers. Collectively they have outdone themselves in obsequiousness by granting Russia membership in international organizations and seats on major multinational bodies that it has no business even being considered for.

As a gesture of goodwill, although it didn't meet the qualifications at the time, in 1998 the G7 group of industrialized nations was made the G8 in order to include Russia. Eight years later in 2006, the G8 examined Russia's qualifications for membership. The resulting audit reads like Delta Fraternity brother John Blutarsky's (played by the late John Belushi) mid-term grade points in the National Lampoon film "Animal House."

The report gives scores from 1 to "broad compliance with G8 norms," to the failing mark of 5, which means "total failure to comply with G8 norms." Ratings are given not just for economic performance, but also for "openness and freedom of speech, political governance, rule of law, social capital, economic weight in the world, inflation, economic stability and solvency, unemployment, trade volume, level of protectionism, energy market conditions, and discernible stance on key international issues."

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with today's Russia will not be shocked to learn that the nation did not score above 3, which rates as "sporadic compliance with G8 norms," in any category. The report's key findings stated that "the size of Russia's economy does not merit its inclusion in the G8; Russia is neither politically nor economically free; Russia's presidency of the G8 is correspondingly anomalous; the other G8 nations must develop a concentrated policy to force [then-President] Putin to live up to his international obligations." None of these indicators have changed since 2006, except possibly for the worse, so why is Russia still a G8 member?

Russia was equally unqualified to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), which may explain why PM Putin appeared to overrule his own president and decided that the whole WTO effort should be abandoned in favor of a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan. This is perhaps the clearest signal that Moscow has no real interest in being a partner with the West--and that on more than one issue Medvedev's authority as president is little more than ceremonial.

Plus--once again--the needs of the already-driven-to-drink ordinary population are being subjugated to the interests of a few in the Kremlin. The Russian people might do well by joining the WTO, but this carries no weight when those around Putin and Medvedev see little personal gain for themselves in the process. They have turned away from the WTO for the simple reason that they can instead earn a cornucopia of kickbacks by forming an economic bloc with the kleptocracies of their former Soviet brethren.

Such a bespredel, which is Russian for "lawless disorder," is completely at odds with the status that Russia enjoys in the international community. This façade of a civilized nation of laws that Russian diplomats, politicians and oligarchs arrogantly thrust in your face has all the true substance of a Hollywood plywood set.

What raises the question if the central goal that Obama took great pains to emphasise during his address to the Moscows New Economic School on Tuesday--Russia's assistance in preventing nuclear proliferation--has not come a cropper from the outset.

Investigative journalist Ron Suskind reported that in 2003, a Georgian source working with the CIA intercepted a delivery of 170 grams of 93 percent enriched uranium (65 percent is considered good enough for weapons grade) that had originated at nuclear production facilities in Novosibirsk. The package was intercepted while being smuggled from Russia to Georgia, but the ultimate customer was "a Moslem man."

The Russian government was informed of the incident--then-President Bush spoke to then-Russian President Putin about the matter personally. Putin gave his unequivocal assurances that the smuggling ring had been rounded up and that there would be no more such incidents.

Except that Putin turned out to be completely wrong. In February 2006 another illegal shipment was seized--again coming from Russia to Georgia and from the same smuggling ring that originated in Novosibirsk. Clearly, even dictates from the highest levels of the Russian government mean nothing, and any promises they make to Obama about being equally committed to the goal of non-proliferation mean even less.

Even more alarming is a recent report from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that assesses the design of the Unha-2 ballistic missile that North Korea launched on April 5. The majority of the critical components of this missile are now believed to have not have been developed in North Korea, but instead come from Russia "although likely without the involvement of the Russian government." Parts of the North Korean design appear to also have been derived from the Russian R-27 (SS-N-6) submarine-launched ballistic missile.

In most nations illegal exporting of nuclear materials and missile technology are among the most serious crimes, but in Russia they appear to take place with alarming regularity. If any Russian president assures his American counterpart in the present day that he can be a reliable partner in containing attempts by Iran and others to acquire nuclear weapons it has to be looked at with healthy skepticism. Any occupant of the White House has to face the unpleasant fact that Russia is falling apart and is headed for more--rather than less--disorder.

In the meantime, Obama has to try and solve the puzzle of on whose authority--Medvedev's or Putin's--he can rely on any given issue. Considering both men's delusions about the true situation inside their own country, it is hard to say if discerning the answer to this riddle really matters.

Reuben F. Johnson is a frequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD Online.

**vector7** · July 9th, 2009, 02:56

From The Times
July 8, 2009
Barack Obama offers to scrap missile shield in return for help from Russia with Iran
Tony Halpin in Moscow

President Obama put the Kremlin to the test yesterday by offering to scrap a missile defence shield in Eastern Europe if it helped to stop Iran building a nuclear bomb.

He used the second day of the Reset Summit in Moscow to urge a new era of partnership between Russia and the US in combating the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue states and terrorists.

“That is why we should be united in opposing North Korea’s efforts to become a nuclear power and preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” Mr Obama said.

The US plan to put a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic strained relations with Russia under President Bush. Moscow views the shield as a threat to its security, while Washington insists that it is to defend against a surprise attack from Iran. In a speech that was notably light on criticism of Russia, Mr Obama pressed Moscow to take more responsibility for stopping an Iranian bomb.

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“I know Russia opposes the planned configuration for missile defence in Europe . . . I have made it clear that this system is directed at preventing a potential attack from Iran and has nothing to do with Russia,” he told an audience of students from the New Economic School in Moscow.

“I want us to work together on a missile defence architecture that makes us all safer. But if the threat from Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes is eliminated, the driving force for missile defence in Europe will be eliminated. That is in our mutual interest,” he said.

Russia is building Iran’s first nuclear power station and has been sceptical about American warnings about the threat posed by Tehran. It has argued against taking a tougher line with the Islamic Republic and Dimitri Medvedev, the Russian President, was the first world leader to meet President Ahmadinejad during protests against his re-election last month.

Mr Obama said that America wanted “a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia” that would take “its rightful place as a great power” in global partnerships to deal with nuclear proliferation and violent extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Moscow and Washington had learnt to respect a “balance of terror” during the Cold War but “we have to ask whether 10 or 20 or 50 nuclear-armed nations will protect their arsenals and refrain from using them.

“In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonising other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board are over,” Mr Obama added.

As he held out the prospect of a deal on missile defence, Mr Obama chided Russia for threatening pro-Western neighbours such as Georgia and Ukraine over their desire to seek membership of Nato.

He stopped short, however, of criticising Russia for recognising the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia after the war with Georgia in August last year.

Mr Obama said that no nation could deal with the challenges of the 21st century alone “nor dictate its terms to the world”, adding: “That is something that America now understands just as Russia understands.”

He disappointed liberal critics of the Kremlin by avoiding direct criticism of Russia over democracy and human rights. Mr Obama praised Mr Medvedev at a meeting with civil society groups for easing restrictions imposed by Vladimir Putin on non-governmental organisations.

He met Mr Putin for the first time yesterday at his country residence and praised his “extraordinary work” as President and now Prime Minister of Russia. Mr Obama had called Mr Putin a man with “one foot in the old ways of doing business” last week.

Mr Putin told Mr Obama: “We associate your name with the hopes of developing our relations.”

A senior US official later told reporters that Mr Obama had changed his view of Mr Putin and was “convinced the Prime Minister is a man of today”.
__________________

From The Times
July 8, 2009
Barack Obama’s deal puts pressure on Russia to help with Iran
Bronwen Maddox: Analysis

It was clever of President Obama to tell Russia’s leaders that US missile defence in Europe was intended to counter a threat from Iran. That puts the burden on Dimitri Medvedev, the President, and Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, to pitch in and try to persuade Iran to drop its nuclear ambitions.

You help with that and maybe we drop our missile shield plans — that was Obama’s barely coded offer. It would be a good deal for the US if the Russians take it: surrendering something that does not work yet and which the US only half wants to keep, but which Russian leaders really dislike.

In return, the US would get help with Iran, its biggest foreign worry.

Too good to be true, probably. That apart, the summit brought an odd package of remarks from the US President — some surprisingly provocative, others easily dismissed. He said that a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonising other countries. Perhaps he had Georgia in mind, but surely this is better directed at President Bush and his Axis of Evil, not to mention the Iraq war.
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Obama also said that old assumptions that the US and Russia were antagonists vying for spheres of influence were wrong. Not completely wrong, surely. That is not how it looks to Georgia. Or those in many countries in Central Asia. Or, most to the point, to the Russian leaders.

Obama also added, directing his remarks at Russian students, that they had the privilege of determining what comes next. “You get to decide.” Eventually, maybe, but not now given the increasingly authoritarian hand of Putin and Medvedev.

That will be needling to the leadership duo, given the spectacle of the Iranian elections and the inspiring challenge that the younger generation has presented to the clerics. That is worth saying — as was his criticism of Russian corruption and suspicion of democracy — but not without cost.

Other remarks by Obama appeared to contradict US policy. He maintained that the future did not belong to those who gathered armies or planted missiles. But the US military is the anchor of Nato and has been the most active in the world in recent years.

By the standards, say, of his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, it was an off-hand and not particularly well-crafted set of remarks. It used the Cairo formula — a claim of common interests, a bit of self-criticism used to support a bit more criticism of the host — but with less subtlety about Russia itself. In itself that may have carried a message, and one that has been hinted at by his advisers in advance: that he can be bothered only so far with courting Russia before turning to bigger problems.

Given all that, Obama’s best pitch in Moscow was the narrow one on Iran: that Russia and the US share a clear interest in stopping it getting close to nuclear weapons capability, and that the US might be open to a trade on its missile defence if Russia gets on board quickly.

That is clear enough to be the foundation of a deal. The rest created as much opportunity for misunderstanding and irritation as it did to make peace.
__________________

From The Times
July 6, 2009
Barack Obama makes basic error over balance of power in Kremlin
Tony Halpin: Commentary

President Obama has made his first mistake in Russia even before he arrives in Moscow today. His attempt to cast Vladimir Putin as yesterday’s man and to drive a wedge between the Prime Minister and President Medvedev demonstrates a misreading of relations in the Kremlin.

Mr Medvedev is in office but not in power and whether he becomes President in more than name depends on Mr Putin’s support and intentions. Mr Medvedev may represent a more accommodating face of Russia but this is only because Mr Putin wants him to.

Mr Obama declared: “I think that it’s important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev that Putin understand that the old Cold War approaches to US-Russian relations is outdated . . . Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new.” That suggests that Mr Medvedev’s outlook differs from that of his mentor despite a lack of evidence. Mr Putin is not known as a bad judge of character and he himself described his successor as “no less a Russian nationalist than I am”.

Mr Putin’s dominance was evident at the start of last year’s war in Georgia, when he directed operations in South Ossetia. Foreign relations are also the responsibility of the President. But Mr Putin has been an active globetrotter and does not hesitate to involve himself in policy in a way that would have been unthinkable for any of his prime ministers.

He told Japanese leaders during a recent visit that Tokyo would have to meet Moscow’s terms for a formal peace treaty ending the Second World War, adding that Mr Medvedev would raise the issue at next week’s G8 summit in Italy. Nobody would have dared dictate his presidential agenda for him. One Western diplomat told The Times that Mr Putin continued to hold 90 per cent of power. Mr Obama’s decision to meet him is an admission that he holds sway and everyone from President Hu Jintao of China to European Union leaders make the same journey.

Mr Medvedev’s utterances about enforcing the rule of law remain just that — and are tainted by the blatantly rigged manner of his election. Mr Obama will ignore that detail in talking up their “very good relationship”. But if Mr Putin decides to return to the presidency in 2012 — and it is his decision — then Mr Obama will be dealing directly by the end of his first term with a man he has dismissed.

He may have played into Mr Putin’s hands. Despite the old pals’ act with George W. Bush, the Kremlin became increasingly anti-American over Nato expansion, missile defence in Eastern Europe, and Washington’s support for pro-Western leaders in Georgia and Ukraine.

Mr Obama’s pledge to press the reset button in relations was seen by Moscow as confirmation that Russia was right all along. Russia did not offer to change its attitudes.

Unless the US is preparing to abandon those policies, Mr Putin will feel justified in declaring that there is no sign of the new era. This would be a gift for the Kremlin as it struggles to decide how to deal with the phenomenon of a globally popular US president after Mr Bush.

It would allow Mr Putin to pursue Moscow’s strategic goal of dividing Europe from the US by casting America as unreasonable over Russian security concerns, and then using energy politics to keep Europe divided against itself.

Mr Obama is coming to the table like a card sharp to a casino, ready to charm his hosts and pull aces from his sleeve to win support for crucial objectives in Afghanistan and Iran. But Russia is a land of chess players, cautious and calculating. Mr Putin does not respond to charm — and he has just closed Russia’s casinos.

**Ryan Ruck** · July 9th, 2009, 15:07

From what I have read and heard, it seems like the only thing Obama came away from this meeting with was reducing our nuclear weapons, after all we already know the Russians won't abide by any reduction treaties. One of the most important things that Obama went there seeking was overland routes to Afghanistan through Russian territory. This vital link was denied yet we hear nothing about this foreign policy failure in the press.

**vector7** · July 10th, 2009, 14:23

Obama: Washington and Moscow must lead on nukes

1 hour ago

L'AQUILA, Italy (AP) — President Barack Obama says the United States and Russia must show they're "fulfilling their commitments" to lead global efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons.

Obama told a news conference at the end of the G-8 summit that if the two superpowers demonstrate that they will limit or eliminate these weapons, it would strengthen their moral authority to speak to others, like North Korea and Iran.

The president said it was important that other countries understand that efforts to control the spread of these weapons are "not just being imposed" on them by countries which already have a nuclear weapons capability.

Obama said there is a need to build "a system of international norms" for nuclear weapons. With respect to North Korea and Iran, he said "it's not a matter of singling them out ... but a standard that everybody can live by."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

**vector7** · July 13th, 2009, 23:35

Russia may still reply to U.S. shield with Baltic missiles

Related News

19:0510/07/2009

L'AQUILA, July 10 (RIA Novosti) - Russia could still deploy tactical missiles in its westernmost exclave if the U.S. goes ahead with its plans for a missile shield in Central Europe, the Russian president said on Friday.

Dmitry Medvedev said Russia's position on U.S. missile defense in Central Europe had not changed.

"We are ready to participate in the construction of a global missile defense by providing both intellectual input and our radars," Medvedev said after the G8 summit in Italy's L'Aquila. "We are glad that there is a readiness in the U.S. to review its plans."

Russia opposes the missile shield as a threat to its national security and Medvedev said last November that it would deploy Iskander-M missiles in the Kaliningrad region, which borders NATO members Poland and Lithuania, if the shield was put into place.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who completed a three-day visit to Moscow on Wednesday, has shown less interest than President George Bush in the missile shield. Obama has not yet announced a final decision on whether to move ahead with its deployment.

However Medvedev said that if no agreement was reached on the issue, "the consequences are well known," adding that his proposal, made in his state of the nation address in November 2008, "has not been withdrawn yet."

Washington has agreed with Warsaw and Prague on plans to deploy 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic by 2013.

The United States says the defenses are needed to deter possible strikes from "rogue states" such as Iran.

**vector7** · July 14th, 2009, 18:08

Obama is Russia's New Useful Idiot

By John Griffing

When the US President is openly being compared to Miikhail Gorbachev, it's time to reevaluate national policy toward historic enemies. Russia may now have a parliament, an elected President, and a free-market economy, but its global aspirations remain the same. President Obama's response in the face of Russia's saber rattling is to offer unilateral strategic concessions.

Let's review recent events:

o Russia invades Georgia with no compelling American response.

o Russia threatens nuclear war with Poland due to the inclusion of Poland in the new US missile defense shield.

o Russia cuts off Ukraine's electricity as penalty for Ukrainian support of the US missile defense shield.
Russia practices nuclear war on the United States in a joint exercise with China as a part of the new "Shanghai Cooperation Organization."

o Russia is designing and adding next generation ICBMs in direct violation of its START commitments, even as the US is progressively reducing its deterrent options, even basing all our missiles in one location.

o Russia provides extensive nuclear expertise and technology to enemies of the US.

o Russia has spearheaded a new multilateral defense organization-noticeably similar to the Warsaw Pact-, which features Iran as one of its members.

o Russia has begun reopening Cold War bases in the Mideast.

o Russian Defense Minister Dmitry Rogozin has even threatened to attack US forces in Kosovo if Kosovo is not forcibly reintegrated into Serbia, raising the possibility that WWIII will happen in our lifetime.

This dangerous increase in Russian bellicosity, described by many as a reheating of the Cold War, stems less from some new destructive capability on Russia's part than it does from a lack of resistance on the part of the American government. The United States has for the last two decades engaged in an unnecessary experiment in "multilateralism" which has cost us critical strategic position with a weakened but potentially dangerous enemy. A dying bear can still inflict fatal wounds on the unwary.

Peace through strength, a tried and tested policy, has been replaced with the less potent "peace through lots and lots of talk." It's the UN way: "If you don't stop manufacturing WMDs, we'll send you a letter telling you how very angry we are, and then we'll give you more time. If you're smart you'll ship the weapons to Syria."

Russia is weak militarily, and current UN population projections reveal that Russia will implode by the year 2050. Yet they have proven willing to threaten, invade, and attack whenever our willingness to fight appears to be waning. They're testing us to see if we have any moral indignation left or instead just a lot of hot air about international justice. America's credibility as a world power depends in part on our response to Russian brinkmanship. Instead, President Obama seems determined to help Russia regain its superpower status.

President Obama's line on Russia has sounded eerily similar to the defeatism that pervaded US strategic thinking for most of the Cold War era. Talking with Medvedev has not altered Russia's strategic ambitions or made the United States safer. It's simply talk. Nevertheless, this reality has eluded leftist bastions like Pravda, which has likened Obama's efforts at dialogue to "perestroika," proclaiming Obama the new Gorbachev.

The American media seems to interpret this comparison as a compliment. But do we really want to model American foreign policy on the man whose actions brought down his own government?

As for our dealings with Medvedev and Putin, multilateral discussions or "peacekeeping forces" won't get Russia to back down. Yet these are exactly what Obama wants. As he said in August during the campaign, "The current escalation of military conflict resulted in part from the lack of a neutral and effective peacekeeping force operating under an appropriate UN mandate." Is this a joke? A UN mandate would be decided in the Security Council, giving Russia a veto on its own disciplinary action. This is rather like telling a child that he will only receive a spanking if he wants one. When in fifty years of Cold War conflict did a UN mandate alter Russian behavior?

And then there's President Obama's unilateral pledge to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles by 80 percent. We haven't even been able to verify Russian compliance with previous arms reduction agreements, and yet President Obama is deliberately sabotaging US defenses at a time of resurgent Russian imperialism, even placing the US missile defense system begun in the Reagan era and further developed in the Bush years -- successful in 38 out of 48 tests -- on the chopping-block.

In fact, the current chess game with Russia is merely a reversal of Reagan's show of force at the Reykjavik Summit where he refused to surrender his Strategic Defense Initiative, the contemporary version of today's National Missile Defense. It was this act, as later acknowledged by members of the Soviet government itself, which brought down the Soviet Union.[1]

The United States now has the capability of hitting a missile with a missile, potentially rendering every nuclear arsenal "obsolete". In fact, US anti-missile technology is so sophisticated that it can distinguish between dummy warheads and the real thing, important if ICBMs equipped with Multiple Reentry Vehicles are launched. Predictably, some countries don't like this, especially countries like Russia, China, or North Korea who have offensive weapons pointed at the United States and its allies.

But the missile shield is a defensive measure, aimed at protecting the American people from annihilation. Even so, our establishment has never endorsed this measure, since it upsets the "balance of terror" that they say lowers the risk of nuclear war. Our president seems to echo these sentiments, and is inexplicably willing to sacrifice this critical strategic advantage.

In the meantime, Russia has been working overtime to gain a naval edge, launching new Kirov-class warships. Its flagship, Peter the Great, is 823 ft., and is now the world's largest active warship. Its mission? To defend Russia's ballistic missile submarines, which are ever more deadly thanks to recent modernization. In fact, as we are abandoning our posts, Russia is developing new destroyers bigger and more powerful than any in the US fleet. It has begun work on advanced new-age nuclear weapons, and it has rebuilt Cold-War era bases throughout the world. Russia has based several of its nuclear-powered submarines in Syria, and has signed a mutual-defense pact with Iran, China, and India.

The American response has been to retire our comparable Iowa-class destroyers with no explanation. Suicide is now considered strategy.

To make matters worse, President Obama journeys hat-in-hand to Russia to remind Putin that "the Cold War is over," offering arms reduction agreements as an olive branch. Instead of exploiting our position of strength, we're allowing Russia to issue ultimatums.

Russia is weaker now than it was at the end of the Cold War, and is running a very transparent bluff to test the state of American will-power. If we listen to President Obama and the defeatist elites that still dominate American government, we will do the very thing that would have spelled our defeat in the Cold War. Putin knows this. This time he's Reagan and Obama is Gorbachev. If we give ground now, it will without a doubt have disastrous consequences for American influence and power.

Russia understands strength; therefore we must be strong. As a great American once said,

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children what it was once like in the United States when men were free."

Let's make sure the "evil empire" knows we're still alive.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/...useful_id.html

**vector7** · July 21st, 2009, 15:08

Outmaneuvering Obama: Russia's Crafty Weapons Cuts

Ed Feulner
Tuesday, July 21, 2009

In chess, a player will sometimes sacrifice some pawns as part of a grand strategy to compromise an opponent’s defenses. Pawns are relatively unimportant pieces, so it’s a good way to get something for virtually nothing.

Russia’s leaders are, apparently, skilled chess players.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama visited Moscow and signed a preliminary agreement aimed at getting both countries to reduce their nuclear and conventional weapons systems. But the Russians are playing a clever game. The “cuts” they propose wouldn’t actually affect their defenses at all.

Obama has promised that the U.S. will reduce its number of strategic force launchers --the systems that deliver both nuclear and conventional weapons -- to between 500 and 1,100 (the U.S. is permitted 1,600 launchers under a current treaty). Moscow matched that commitment, but that’s not saying much, since the number of Russian weapons is going to plummet with or without a treaty.

“By 2017-2018 Russia will likely have fewer than half of the approximately 680 operational launchers it has today,” arms control expert Keith Payne recently testified before Congress. “With a gross domestic product less than that of California, Russia is confronting the dilemma of how to maintain parity with the U.S. while retiring its many aged strategic forces.” One way, of course, is to sacrifice some pawns -- the non-existent or inoperable weapons -- to take out vital American weapons.

In short, the Russians agreed to “cut” weapons they were going to have to retire anyway.

The Russians haven’t made their declining stockpiles much of a secret. Payne notes that Nikolay Solovtsov, the man in charge of Russian missiles, recently told Moscow Interfax-AVN Online that “not a single Russian launcher” with “remaining service life” would be withdrawn under the agreement reached with Russian leaders.

Obama looks to have been played by Moscow.

The president also agreed to a new limit on operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads. He intends to reduce our arsenal to between 1,500 and 1,675 such weapons. But the timing is odd, since the administration hasn’t yet completed its Nuclear Posture Review. It would make sense to get those results, which are supposed to let policymakers know how many nuclear weapons our country needs, before agreeing to any cuts.

That leads directly to another concern: the haste with which the agreement was reached. Obama wants the deal ratified before December, when the current Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) expires. But what’s the hurry?

In addition to the nuclear review, the administration is conducting a complete survey to determine what weapons systems the U.S. needs and how many people our military will require in the years ahead. That’s a smart thing for a new presidential team to do. But why agree to any reductions before this review is finished?

It’s not as if either side plans to build thousands of new nuclear weapons this year, anyway. The Russians already have fewer missiles than they’re allowed. Even if START I expires and isn’t replaced with a START follow-on agreement for a year or two, the geopolitical power picture will remain unchanged. This is because, among other things, another agreement known as the Moscow Treaty requires both sides to work toward no more than 2,200 operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads.

“Russian leaders hope to control or eliminate many elements of U.S. military power in exchange for strategic force reductions they will have to make anyway” Payne concludes. “U.S. leaders should not agree to pay Russia many times over for essentially an empty box.”

Before it can take effect, a START follow-on agreement, like all treaties, requires Senate approval. Let’s hope some senators question the wisdom of giving up valuable American weapon systems to get rid of crumbling Russian ones.

This agreement needs to go back to the drawing board. Anything less could checkmate our defenses.

http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage...ba39c071dd&t=c

**vector7** · August 5th, 2009, 23:17

Pentagon Says Nuclear Review Will Address Disarmament, Deterrence

Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2009

By Martin Matishak

Global Security Newswire

(Aug. 4) - The U.S. ballistic-missile submarine USS Michigan, shown in 2002. A high-level Pentagon official last week discussed the challenge of pursuing nuclear disarmament while retaining an effective nuclear deterrent (U.S. Navy photo).

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration's review of the nation's nuclear-weapon policy will address both the desire for global nuclear disarmament and the need to maintain an effective deterrent, a senior Defense Department official said last week (see GSN, July 28).

President Barack Obama's speech in April on nuclear nonproliferation sketched out "twin imperatives in the nuclear realm," Brad Roberts, deputy assistant defense secretary for nuclear and missile defense policy, said Wednesday at a U.S. Strategic Command symposium on deterrence in Omaha, Neb.

The first imperative is to "explore the possibility of creating conditions that might ultimately allows the nuclear weapons states to feel safer in relinquishing their nuclear weapons," according to Roberts. The five recognized nuclear powers are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States

The second imperative is to "not to disarm unilaterally and to maintain an effective deterrence so long as nuclear weapons remain," he told the audience.

The "business" of the congressionally mandated Nuclear Posture Review is to "figure out how to balance these two objectives," he said.

That review, which Roberts is helping to lead, will establish policies and strategies for the U.S. nuclear deterrent over the next five to 10 years. It is scheduled to be released this fall.

That dual approach makes sense, according to national security analyst Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

While Obama has talked about creating a world free of nuclear weapons, "you have to have enough of a deterrent to maintain security, especially if others don't follow you on the path to zero," Korb, who also attended the symposium, said today in a telephone interview with Global Security Newswire.

Roberts said last week there are "three main expectations" on nuclear weapons as the administration prepares a new national security strategy.

The first is a "continued focus on practical steps to reduce nuclear weapons roles, numbers and emphasis," according to Roberts.

He said the administration would not take "any and every step" to address the three aspects, but rather those that "preserve and indeed enhance strategic capability, if we can do so at lower numbers."

The second expectation is that there will be a continued focus on stability in Washington's relationship with the other nuclear powers, according to Roberts. Russia and China "continue to perceive rising instability in the strategic military relationship with the United States," he noted.

He said the White House is taking a new tack in the U.S. relationship with Russia, "seeking to revitalize the arms control foundation on the hope that this will renew the political relationship and strategic cooperation more generally."

Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last month signed a "joint understanding" for new limits on deployed nuclear warheads and delivery systems in a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (see GSN, July 6). The 1991 agreement is scheduled to expire in December.

Observers should "expect more continuity than change out of this administration on overall strategic political objectives with China," Roberts said. No fewer than six administrations have tried to engage the communist country as a "responsible stakeholder in the international system ... and trying to engage China in a dialogue about non-zero-sum approaches to our shared and sometimes competitive interests," he said.

Lastly, there will be an increased emphasis on extended deterrence and the assurance of allies, according to Roberts. Extended deterrence refers to the "nuclear umbrella" the United States provides to allies such as South Korea and Japan.

"The concern about tipping points is rising," Roberts said, noting that the anxieties of partner nations in East Asia have "sharpened" as a result of North Korea's two nuclear tests and the modernization of the Chinese military's nuclear capabilities.

There is an "active process" within the administration to consult with ally countries on the Nuclear Posture Review and how the United States will address the challenges in their security environments.

The imperatives and expectations Roberts laid out shows that the White House wants to de-emphasize nuclear weapons, Korb told GSN today. He said the key drivers for that approach are the cost of maintaining the country's nuclear stockpile and concerns about proliferation.

When asked last week what effect a dramatic reduction in the U.S. nuclear stockpile would have on proliferation or convincing other nuclear weapons states to reduce or forswear the possession of warheads, Roberts responded "it depends and it's mixed."

The administration "can imagine reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal that would generate anxiety among our partners and opportunism by others," he said. "It's difficult to imagine any single action by the United States that would have a single international response."

Roberts said the "shorthand" of the debate within the arms control community is that further reductions are essential in order to underscore the strength of the commitment by the United States and Russia to the nonproliferation regime.

"I think that accords with our thoughts that further steps are necessary and useful in demonstrating that commitment," he told the audience.

**vector7** · August 5th, 2009, 23:25

U.S. Could Pull Back Europe-Based Nukes, State Department Official Says

Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2009

By Martin Matishak

Global Security Newswire

(Aug. 5) - B-61 gravity bombs displayed on a storage cart. The United States could be willing to withdraw some or all of its nonstrategic nuclear weapons from Europe, a senior State Department official said last week (U.S. Defense Department photo).

WASHINGTON -- The United States could remove some or all of its tactical nuclear weapons from Europe to encourage Russia to consolidate its own arsenal of nonstrategic bombs, a key U.S. State Department official said last week (see GSN, July 27).

Such a move would lessen the possibility of a Russian weapon falling into terrorist hands, according to Robert Einhorn, the agency's special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control.

The United States is believed to have between 150 and 240 weapons deployed across the continent, according to the Federation of American Scientists. A majority of them were installed during the Cold War as a hedge against Moscow's nuclear arsenal.

At one time there were as many as 480 short-range B-61 bombs -- which can be dropped by F-16 fighter aircraft or their European equivalent the Tornado -- kept under U.S. control at bases in Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, Turkey and the Netherlands, according to a 2005 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Prior administrations have removed some of the weapons, most recently from Germany between 2005 and 2007 and the United Kingdom last year (see GSN, July 10, 2007 and June 26, 2008). The rest remain in Europe under control of the U.S. Air Force.

Russia, meanwhile, is estimated to have more than 2,000 deployed tactical nuclear weapons that could be carried by cruise missiles, torpedoes or other means, according to the federation.

Those tactical weapons are clustered around the Kola Peninsula, where a majority of the country's naval fleet is docked, and Vladivostok, Russia's largest port city, according to Hans Kristensen, director of the FAS Nuclear Information Project. The bombs are also thought to be west of the Ural Mountains, as well as around the Russian border with China.

Tactical, or nonstrategic nuclear weapons, typically refer to short-range weapons, including land-based missiles with a range of less than 300 miles and air- and sea-launched weapons with a range of less than 400 miles.

In a commentary last year former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn called for eliminating short-range nuclear weapons designed to be forward-deployed.

When considering future formal and informal arms control agreements, the United States should determine not only how they might serve "traditional" goals such as reducing incentives for a nuclear first strike, but also how they would affect "the likelihood of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons or fissile materials," Einhorn said Thursday during a U.S. Strategic Command symposium on nuclear deterrence in Omaha, Neb.

Addressing the "large U.S.-Russian asymmetry" in nonstrategic nuclear weapons would not only reduce the threats perceived by a number of European states, it would also reduce the risk of Moscow's tactical weapons from falling into terrorist hands, Einhorn told the audience.

Such a move in regards to tactical nuclear weapons would differ from Cold War thinking, when the central U.S. goal of arms control was reducing the risk of a massive nuclear war by limiting and reducing Soviet strategic forces that posed the "greatest risk" to U.S. retaliatory capabilities, Einhorn said.

"Removing such tactical nuclear weapons from forward-deployed locations and consolidating them in secure storage facilities deep within Russia could be just as worthwhile, and perhaps more feasible, than classic arms control solutions," he said.

"This poses a question of whether the U.S., as an inducement to Russia to limit or consolidate its tactical weapons, should be prepared to reduce or eliminate the relatively small number of U.S. nuclear weapons that remain in Europe," according to Einhorn.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last month signed a "joint understanding" on reductions to their nations' respective strategic nuclear arsenals (see GSN, July 6). The agreement does not address tactical warheads.

The military value of the Europe-based tactical weapons has "dropped precipitously since the days of the Cold War," Einhorn said. However, they continue play a role in the "cohesion" of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, he added without elaborating.

In addition, "at least one" ally country believes the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons on it soil reduces the incentive for it to acquire its own nuclear weapons capability, Einhorn told the audience. Kristensen told Global Security Newswire yesterday in a telephone interview that Einhorn was referring to Turkey.

In its final report to lawmakers in May the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States said that the requirements of "extended deterrence in Europe are evolving, given the changing relationship with Russia" and the perception of some allies that they are "keenly vulnerable to Russian military coercion."

Nations located near Russia believe that U.S. nonstrategic forces in Europe remain necessary to prevent the Kremlin from using its nuclear arsenal as a means of coercion against them, according to the report.

It warns that the United States should not abandon "strategic equivalency with Russia" and should not cede to Moscow "a posture of superiority in the name of de-emphasizing nuclear weapons in U.S. military strategy."

Balance "does not exist in nonstrategic nuclear forces, where Russia enjoys a sizable numerical advantage," the report states, adding "the current imbalance is stark and worrisome to some U.S. allies in Central Europe."

Einhorn cautioned that any changes to the United States' nuclear deployments in Europe "should only be considered after extensive consultations and consensus-building within" NATO.

His comments "means he's preparing the soil for the next phase" of U.S.-Russian arms control talks after the START follow-on treaty is finalized, according to Kristensen, who attended the symposium.

He predicted that administration officials would become more specific "within the next year or two."

The idea of reducing or eliminating the European-based weapons "was always something that was dismissed and the stock statement was, 'Well, the Europeans want them there,'" Kristensen said.

He dismissed the argument made by some experts that if the United States shrinks its extended deterrent, or "nuclear umbrella," that ally countries would seek their own nuclear-weapon capability.

"We have an interest in the Russian weapons being consolidated or taken back into the country," Kristensen told GSN. "The real question is how do we play it and get them to engage on it?"

Until now Moscow has refused to discuss relocating its tactical nuclear weapons, citing NATO deployments along its border, according to Kristensen.

"It's more of a Cold War assessment of the need for national prestige, more than anything," he said. "The bottom line is they haven't been interested so far."

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sam Nunn is co-chairman and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. NTI is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by the National Journal Group.]

**vector7** · August 5th, 2009, 23:27

Medvedev, Obama Pledge to Expedite START Talks

Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2009

(Aug. 5) - U.S. President Barack Obama, shown today, yesterday agreed with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to increase efforts to establish a new nuclear arms control agreement between the two countries (Tim Sloan/Getty Images).

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pledged yesterday to redouble efforts to replace a key strategic arms control treaty set to expire in December, the Xinhua News Agency reported (see GSN, Aug. 4).

The leaders last month resolved to cut their nations' respective deployed strategic nuclear arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads under a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The two countries are now required under a 2002 pact to hold no more than 2,200 operationally fielded warheads by 2012.

Speaking by telephone, Medvedev and Obama said they would provide their negotiators with additional directions on reaching a deal to replace the START pact.

The leaders "exchanged views on the implementation of the outcome of the Moscow summit, in particular the need for an early start of the practical work of [the] Russian-American Presidential Commission," a body that would address arms control matters and other bilateral issues, a Kremlin statement says (Xinhua News Agency, Aug. 4).

They "agreed to give additional instructions to experts on intensifying work, to reach a constructive decision by December," RIA Novosti quoted the release as saying.

Obama and Medvedev also decided to "continue a trusting and honest exchange of opinions and assessments on all problems of interest to both sides," the release states (RIA Novosti, Aug. 4).

Under the 1991 agreement, the United States has conducted nearly 100 more inspections than Russia to verify weapon reductions in its former Cold War rival, Interfax reported yesterday.

"Since the treaty took effect, 464 inspections of American strategic arms facilities have been carried out. The U.S. has held 559 similar inspections in Russia," said Sergei Ryzhkov, first deputy head of the Russian National Nuclear Threat Reduction Center.

Russia "carries out over 40 inspections each year under the START I Treaty, performs over 50 observation flights under the Open Skies Treaty, over 80 inspections under the 1999 Vienna Document and four inspections under agreements with China," Ryzhkov said.

"An analysis of the inspections conducted suggests that the signatory states mostly abide by the agreements reached," he said (Interfax I, Aug. 4).

"The United States currently has 1,195 [nuclear-weapon] carriers and 5,573 warheads, and Russia 811 carriers and 3,906 warheads," according to Ryzhkov. Before signing the START agreement, the United States possessed 2,246 delivery vehicles and 10,563 warheads while Soviet states held 2,288 delivery systems and 8,757 warheads, he said (Interfax II, Aug. 4).

Elsewhere, Russia's military today confirmed sending two nuclear-powered, conventionally armed attack submarines on a patrol mission off the eastern United States, the Associated Press reported (Associated Press/Google News, Aug. 5).

**Ryan Ruck** · September 6th, 2009, 06:00

An important article pointing out the folly of Obama's efforts to gut our nuclear forces while Russia is doing nothing but exponentially growing theirs.

Don't Get Scammed By Russia Again

American and Russian teams will start another round of talks in Vienna as early as today on a new nuclear-arms-reduction pact to replace the expiring Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Problem is Russia isn't meeting its obligations on some old arms-control agreements.

It's no small matter -- but the question is: Will the Obama administration make an issue of it?

Some analysts fear that, with President Obama keen for a nuke-free world, US negotiators might be willing to look the other way to reach an accord with Russia, despite a record of non-compliance with existing arms-control agreements.

So what are the Russkies scamming on?

Tactical nuclear weapons: President George Bush (41) and his Soviet/Russian counterparts, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, adopted the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNI) to dramatically reduce tactical nuke arsenals.

Earlier this year, a congressional panel, the Strategic Posture Commission, reported that Russia is "no longer in compliance with its PNI commitments" -- leaving Moscow with what some say could be a 10:1 advantage in "battlefield" nukes.

Nuke testing: America, Russia and others have undertaken an informal moratorium on nuclear-weapons tests based on the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which President Bill Clinton signed but the Senate never ratified.

But an SPC member warned recently that Russian "nuclear labs have been growing, their budgets have been increasing and they continue an active underground test program at Novaya Zemlya, which includes the release of low levels of nuclear energy."

This conflicts with America's no-bang, "zero-yield" standard and suggests Moscow is doing some low-yield testing that could lead to new weapons' development. (Russian doctrine puts a premium on fighting battlefield nuclear war.)

Strategic arms: Even as it negotiates a new START treaty, the Kremlin is fudging on the existing one. A 2005 State Department report points to multiple Russian violations, including restrictions on inspections of its intercontinental ballistic missiles and warheads.

There's more: One expert recently noted Russia is testing its SS-27 ICBM with multiple warheads. But START identifies the SS-27 as a single-warhead missile -- and permits testing/deployment only in that configuration.

Proliferation: Others say Russia has been cutting corners on accepted non-proliferation standards -- notably, by helping Iran and North Korea develop ballistic missiles and nuclear know-how. This is no small matter, considering the threat to America.

Indeed, the director of national intelligence sent a letter to the State Department in March 2007, stating: "We assess that individual Russian entities continue to provide assistance to Iran's ballistic-missile programs" -- which implies either Kremlin involvement in, knowledge of, or failure to intervene into these activities.

Some analysts also think North Korea got Russian help in the form of key components for its April long-range-missile test. Others see Moscow's aid to the Iranian nuclear program going beyond the reactor it's building at Bushehr.

Adding to fears Obama's negotiators won't bring up these issues in the Vienna talks is the tentative deal he struck with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on dual-use strategic-delivery systems this summer, drastically cutting US subs and bombers that have conventional military roles, too. They may also throw Iran-focused, Europe-based US missile defense, which the Russkies hate, under the bus in order close a deal.

Successful arms control depends on actually controlling weapons in ways that serve US national-security interests, not by merely inking new pacts for the sake of concluding a deal that sounds good.

Before we rush into signing onto any more arms-control treaties, we need to get to the bottom of Russia's non-compliance with existing arms-control and non-proliferation promises.

If we don't, the Russians will have little if any incentive to correctly implement any new treaty -- and every reason to find clever ways to cheat, as it looks like they're doing now, further jeopardizing our national security.

**vector7** · September 21st, 2009, 15:19

Barack Obama ready to slash US nuclear arsenal

Pentagon told to map out radical cuts as president prepares to chair UN talks

Julian Borger
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 20 September 2009 21.30 BST

President Obama's decision to order a review comes as he takes the rare step of chairing a watershed session of the UN security council. Photograph: Reuters

Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country's arsenal, the Guardian can reveal.

Obama has rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the "nuclear posture review" as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials.

Those options include:
• Reconfiguring the US nuclear force to allow for an arsenal measured in hundreds rather than thousands of deployed strategic warheads.
• Redrafting nuclear doctrine to narrow the range of conditions under which the US would use nuclear weapons.
• Exploring ways of guaranteeing the future reliability of nuclear weapons without testing or producing a new generation of warheads.

The review is due to be completed by the end of this year, and European officials say the outcome is not yet clear. But one official said: "Obama is now driving this process. He is saying these are the president's weapons, and he wants to look again at the doctrine and their role."

The move comes as Obama prepares to take the rare step of chairing a watershed session of the UN security council on Thursday. It is aimed at winning consensus on a new grand bargain: exchanging more radical disarmament by nuclear powers in return for wider global efforts to prevent further proliferation.

That bargain is at the heart of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which is up for review next year amid signs it is unravelling in the face of Iranian and North Korean nuclear ambitions.

In an article for the Guardian today, the foreign secretary, David Miliband, argues that failure to win a consensus would be disastrous. "This is one of the most critical issues we face," the foreign secretary writes. "Get it right, and we will increase global security, pave the way for a world without nuclear weapons, and improve access to affordable, safe and dependable energy – vital to tackle climate change. Get it wrong, and we face the spread of nuclear weapons and the chilling prospect of nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists."

According to a final draft of the resolution due to be passed on Thursday, however, the UN security council will not wholeheartedly embrace the US and Britain's call for eventual abolition of nuclear weapons. Largely on French insistence, the council will endorse the vaguer aim of seeking "to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons".

Gordon Brown is due to use this week's UN general assembly meeting to renew a diplomatic offensive on Iran for its failure to comply with security council demands that it suspend enrichment of uranium. The issue has been given greater urgency by an International Atomic Energy Agency document leaked last week which showed inspectors for the agency believed Iran already had "sufficient information" to build a warhead, and had tested an important component of a nuclear device.

Germany is also expected to toughen its position on Iran ahead of a showdown between major powers and the Iranian government on 1 October. But it is not yet clear what position will be taken by Russia, which has hitherto opposed the imposition of further sanctions on Iran.

Moscow's stance will be closely watched for signs of greater co-operation in return for Obama's decision last week to abandon a missile defence scheme in eastern Europe, a longstanding source of irritation to Russia.

"I hope the Russians realise they have to do something serious. I don't think a deal has been done, but there is a great deal of expectation," said a British official.

Russia has approximately 2,780 deployed strategic warheads, compared with around 2,100 in the US. The abandonment of the US missile defence already appears to have spurred arms control talks currently underway between Washington and Moscow: the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, said today that chances were "quite high" that a deal to reduce arsenals to 1,500 warheads each would be signed by the end of the year.

The US nuclear posture review is aimed at clearing the path for a new round of deep US-Russian cuts to follow almost immediately after that treaty is ratified, to set lower limits not just on deployed missiles but also on the thousands of warheads both have in their stockpiles.

The Obama strategy is to create disarmament momentum in the run-up to the non-proliferation treaty review conference next May, in the hope that states without nuclear weapons will not side with Iran, as they did at the last review in 2005, but endorse stronger legal barriers to nuclear proliferation, and forego nuclear weapons programmes themselves.

"The review has up to now been in the hands of mid-level bureaucrats with a lot of knowledge, but it's knowledge drawn from the cold war. What they are prepared to do is tweak the existing doctrine," said Rebecca Johnson, the head of the Acronym Institute, a pro-disarmament pressure group.

"Obama has sent them it back saying: 'Give me more options for what we can do in line with my goals. I'm not saying it's easy, but all you're giving me is business as usual.'"

**vector7** · September 21st, 2009, 15:20

Security Council agrees on U.S. draft of nuclear-free-world resolution

NEW YORK, Sept. 20 KYODO

The U.N. Security Council reached a final accord Saturday on a draft resolution proposed by the United States supporting a world without nuclear weapons, U.N. diplomatic sources said.

With the 15 council members having reached the agreement, the resolution is certain to be approved at the Security Council summit session on nuclear disarmament later this week.

The special U.N. summit on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation will be chaired by U.S. President Barack Obama. Leaders of the Security Council member states, including Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, will deliver speeches.

The final draft of the resolution includes a proposal to hold an international conference on the peaceful use of nuclear energy in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the sources said.

The United States, which is aiming for a successful conclusion to the review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in May 2010, circulated a draft of the resolution among the Security Council members on Sept. 11.

The six-page final draft says the 1970 NPT is a cornerstone of the nuclear nonproliferation regime and pledges to promote nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.

It urges non-signatory nations to join the NPT and calls for signing and ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The draft also supports establishing nuclear-free zones around the world, according to the sources.

The NPT came into force in 1970 and serves as the world's primary legal and political barrier against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Most nations are members with exception of North Korea, Israel, India and Pakistan.

The NPT review conference is held every five years. In May 2005, the conference ended with no agreement among the 189 signatory nations.
==Kyodo

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