Just a quick wrap-up on our coverage of Obama’s trip to Moscow, including the the Joint Understanding for the START Follow-on Treaty:
1. My take on the START Follow-on,
2. Josh Pollack’s take on the companion Joint Statement on Missile Defense,
3. The release of the Russian text of the Joint Understanding, and
4. The release of the US text of the Joint Understanding.
Dear Jeffrey,
partly it’s your fault that all we ACW readers have become so very spoilt.
I think we’d expect to also see some comments and your take on the “Joint Statement on Nuclear Security”.
I think that this text is interesting for the things it’s not mentioning. It also uses some funny language to describe what the many call “multilateralization of the fuel cycle”, or at best a language that reveals some kind of akwardness or reluctance to spell things out.
Anyway, I’d like to see some comments from you ACW guys.
Dear Jeffrey,
partly it’s your fault that all we ACW readers have become so very spoilt.
I think we’d expect to also see some comments and your take on the “Joint Statement on Nuclear Security”.
I think that this text is interesting for the things it’s not mentioning. It also uses some funny language to describe what the many call “multilateralization of the fuel cycle”, or at best a language that reveals some kind of akwardness or reluctance to spell things out.
Anyway, I’d like to see some comments from you ACW guys.
The President’s notion that reducing U.S./Russian nuclear stockpiles is going to ‘lead the way’ for Iran and NK to give up their nuclear ambitions is pure folly.
No nation that has possessed nuclear weapons has ever been invaded, conquered or annihilated.
Iran and NK see nuclear security as insurance, just as their American and Russian counterparts do.
The President has yet to do any heavy lifting regarding Iran and NK.
Rehash and gnash all you care to but, I think a lot will be “clarified” once the QDR & NPR are completed. We gotten the cart before the horse but that’s nothing new.
Anon:
Yeah I’m sure the DoD/DoE will shoot itself in the foot by calling for deep cuts in our nuclear forces. Baloney.
The QDR and NPR will hew to the line they have since the Cold War — big scary Russians have X so we need cX; of course, the Russians use the same “logic”.
Hello — the Cold War is over. Russians are not our enemies.
Absolutely the White House should not wait for the QDR or NPR which will both say that “we need the status quo because we are government officials and we want more free money from taxpayers by fear-mongering”.
Good on Obama for his confidence and lack of paranoia.
The US, Russian and China could each have ~30 low-yield nukes with no deterrent issues for any of them. (~30 is sized to offset weird nations like N. Korea).
What would happen if that treaty would horribly fail?
“Absolutely the White House should not wait for the QDR or NPR which will both say that “we need the status quo because we are government officials and we want more free money from taxpayers by fear-mongering”.
By all means, let’s eliminate all the other bothersome opinions, facts and robust debates. What the hell – if Obama is wrong he can always blame it on bad intel or Bush 🙂
Anon:
I don’t recall Reagan and Gorbachev needing a friggin’ QDR and NPR to get infinitesimally close to eliminating all nukes.
Derailed by “rational” people like you, and by people sitting in the QDR and NPR committee.
I would welcome a robust debate from any such committee — all we get is total Cold War crap.
Invariably.
When Russia is no longer our ideological enemy it is stupid to even being to entertain the concept of studying how they enter into our sizing debates.
If we bombed China, who would finance our SUVs?
That’s deterrence ca. 21st century.