The Senate's 71-26 vote to ratify the New START agreement was a victory for the Obama administration, key members of Congress, the arms control and disarmament movement, and ultimately, all of us, as it makes the world a safer place.
But that was then and this is now. The battle to define the meaning of New START's ratification has already begun. For Robert Kagan, writing in the Washington Post, the treaty is "good news" and a pillar of a "sound American foreign and defense policy." But his idea of a sound policy includes escalation in Afghanistan, a tougher line on China, and an "adequate" (which for him means larger) defense budget. This is what he wants the coalition that came together to ratify New START to work towards next. More directly, he wants more money for missile defense -- he derides Republicans for using missile defense as a "talking point" and asks whether "the next, more Republican Congress will put its money where its mouth is" by pressing for more missile defense funding.
Charles Krauthammer is on the case as well. While acknowledging that New START -- along with his tax deal and the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" -- marks a political victory for President Obama, he's still fixated on missile defense. He criticizes New START and the surrounding debate for its "gratuitous reestablishment of the link between offensive and defensive weaponry."
First, New START does not prevent any administration from developing any kind of missile defense system it chooses to pursue. As for the "link between offensive and defense weaponry," it is a reality that has nothing to do with New START. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has put it:
"Under the last administration, as well as this one, it has been United States policy not [emphasis added] to build a missile defense that would render useless Russia's nuclear capabilities... That, in our view as well as theirs, would be enormously destabilizing, not to mention unbelievably expensive."
Why is this the case? Because if the United States somehow were to develop a missile defense system that Russia perceived as a threat -- in that it would allow the United States to attack Russia with impunity -- Moscow would simply increase its offensive forces, sparking a costly new arms race in the process. In addition, Moscow would be more likely to launch quickly in a crisis, fearful that its nuclear forces would otherwise be wiped out by a combination of U.S. offenses and defenses. Or, as Gates puts it, it would be enormously destabilizing and unbelievably expensive.
So, unless Krauthammer and other missile defense advocates are envisioning a world-straddling missile defense system that can knock out Russia's nuclear weapons, there need be no connection between missile defense and further nuclear arms reductions. If they are seeking such a system, they should admit it. And they should give some sense of how they think it could work (is it even technologically feasible?), what it would cost, and how they think Moscow would react.
In a real, evidence-based approach, the Obama administration is developing a multi-phased missile defense system in Europe that is focused on blunting the threat of Iranian medium-range missiles. This system poses no threat to Russia, so, as noted above, should not stand in the way of further arms reductions. Of course, that won't keep Krauthammer and company from crying wolf, but we should ignore them, and explain to the public why they should ignore them as well.
While the missile defense debate will undoubtedly rear its ugly head again, the real question is whether the Obama administration will move quickly and vigorously towards further reducing the nuclear danger, either by pursuing a follow-on agreement with Russia or seeking ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. If properly educated, voters would support such a move. And it makes sense to move now, when the opposition is weakened. Who, for example, is as afraid of Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) now as they were when he seemed to hold the fate of the New START treaty in his hands? The treaty passed without him, and he has come down a peg or two politically as a result. He will be an impediment to future agreements, but not necessarily an immovable one. So, as much as Kyl would like New START to be "the last arms control agreement for a while," his ability to make that happen is much diminished.
It would make sense to go on the offensive now, and not let the anti-arms control invective that is sure to come from a number of Republican presidential candidates get any traction. Potential presidential contender Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) has already tried to re-frame the issue by asserting that "I fear that the New START treaty will serve as another data point in a narrative of weakness, pursuing diplomacy for its own sake or indulging in a utopian dream of a world without nuclear weapons divorced from hard reality." Expect similar rhetoric from Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and other Republican presidential hopefuls. By reiterating the national security benefits of New START -- backed by the authority of six former Republican secretaries of state, seven former commanders of U.S. nuclear forces, and the other political and national security leaders who supported the treaty - the Obama administration and its allies can deflate the other side's anti-arms control rhetoric while pursuing further steps to reduce global nuclear arsenals. This is no time to sit still.
Cenk Uygur: GOP Not Allowed to Talk About the "Will of the Public"
http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/12/29/38236184.html
"The State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament) plans to confirm the link between the reduction of the strategic offensive arms and the restriction of antimissile defense systems’ deployment in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), signed between the US and Russia, Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma Committee on International Affairs says. "
Before you try to convince me of this' perhaps you could convince RUSSIA that the treaty doesn't say what they think it says. I mean since you clearly know what was agreed on and this is all Republican grandstanding for politics it should be easy to stop the Russian Parliament from doing their Republican Grandstanding.
How did we get Republicans in the Russian Parliament again? Or is Russia wrong about the treaty they signed? I guess there's a reason Obama didn't release the diplomatic details of the treaty to the Senate; he told the Senate one thing and Russia something else entirely.
I guess we had to sign the treaty to find out what was in it?
Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nucle@r expl@sions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nucle@r tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea’s two alleged nucle@r tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).
Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they det@nate a nucle@r we@pon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing”the fe@r and folly of nucle@r we@pons.” It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U8CZAKSsNA
Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea’s two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).
Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing”the fear and folly of nuclear weapons.” It starts really slow — if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so — but the buildup becomes overwhelming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U8CZAKSsNA
The defense budget needs to be cut in places, particularly in those things that have been carried on through inertia, and missile defense is the epitome of the sort of anachronism that needs to go. It shouldn't be entirely defunded, but there needs to be a sense that the technology can be feasibly developed before it is committed to, otherwise it is an unnecessary financial burden and a political liability.
Above all, this country needs to take a step back from this silly ambition of superpowerhood. Our attempts to establish such a hegemony are beyond our actual means and the only thing we seem to be achieve is a more rapid decline because we're overstretching ourselves in the process of satisfying the Krauthammer and Kristols of the world, who have a very detached and rosy view of our strategic capabilities and the perhaps wax nostalgic for the days when Anglo-Saxons carved empires out of Asia and Africa. The problem is that they fail to realize that the natives have gone from spears and crude firearms to Kalashnikovs, RPG's and IED"s, while we have not leapt forward as quickly. They call that "relative decline."
In the end, the US can't afford to be the British Empire redux. The British Empire didn't recover after WWII because the natives got armed and made it unprofitable. That hasn't changed. Unrealistic armchair warriors like the neoconservatives need to realize this. The best course for the US is to mend the fences at home and get out of the war and empire business before it gets us into further trouble. While we're playing with the White Man's Burden, Europe and Asia are moving ahead of us in sectors like renewable energy, the next big lucrative technology.
I favor generally funding research in the hard sciences and seeing what comes up, over a variety of disciplines that could yield all sorts of results that could potentially be applied down the road in missile defense or other similar applications. Rather than a narrow track of research focusing on something like missile defense, I'm in favor of a widespread funding of scientific research. If a breakthrough leads to something that makes missile defense feasible, then I am certainly for it.
The truth is, America needs more research programs and researchers, but focusing on missile defense is not preferable, in my mind, to a more diverse and wide-ranging effort to push research across the board, and I don't consider it to have a benefit that outweighs the cost at this time.
Right !
For those against a missle defense system-- I bet you'll want one when there's a missle headed for your city one day....