Is the GOP Risking a New Cold War?
Before Republican senators vote down the strategic arms reduction treaty negotiated by the Obama administration, they should think long and hard about the consequences.
In substance, New START has none of the historic significance of Richard Nixon's SALT I or ABM treaty, or Jimmy Carter's SALT II, or Ronald Reagan's INF treaty removing all intermediate-range missiles from Europe, or the strategic arms reductions treaties negotiated by George Bush I and Bush II.
The latter cut U.S. and Russian arsenals from 10,000-12,000 nuclear warheads targeted on each nation to 2,000—a huge cut.
If Republicans could back those treaties, what is the case for rejecting New START? Barack Obama's treaty reduces strategic warheads by 450, leaving each side 1,550.
Is this not enough to deter when we consider what the Chernobyl disaster did to the Soviet Union and what the knockdown of two buildings in New York has done to this country? Ten hydrogen bombs on the United States or Russia could set us back decades, let alone 1,000.
Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona is holding up the treaty until he gets more assurances that the administration will do the tests and upgrades necessary to maintain the reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons. He should receive those assurances.
Maintaining the credibility of the U.S. deterrent is a vital national interest. But does this justify holding the treaty hostage?
Without a treaty, we lose our right and our ways and means to verify that Russia is carrying out the terms of arms treaties already agreed upon.
How does leaving the United States in the dark about who is doing what with Moscow's nuclear weapons enhance our security?
Not only are our allies behind this treaty—as are Republican secretaries of state and defense and ex-national security advisers—so, too, is the Pentagon.
If the joint chiefs say this treaty is good for America, what do the reluctant Republican senators believe is wrong with it? Have they considered the impact of the treaty's defeat on Russia?
In Russia today, there is a widespread belief that when the Soviet Union gave up its global empire, allowed itself to be split apart into 15 nations and brought the Red Army home from Europe, America exploited her weakness by moving NATO onto her front porch.
We brought the Baltic states, all former republics of the USSR, into an alliance aimed against Russia. George W. Bush sought to bring in Ukraine and Georgia, thereby surrounding a Russia that had sought our friendship with U.S. power.
Among Russia's elite, there is an understandable distrust of the intentions of their old superpower rival. For Republicans in the Senate to kill New START would clinch the case of the anti-Americans in Moscow that we are not interested in nuclear parity but seek strategic superiority.
Killing the treaty would morally disarm those Russians who see their future with the West.
On taking office, Obama put the Ukraine-Georgia accession to NATO on a back burner and canceled the anti-missile missile system planned for Poland and the Czech Republic. His policy has paid dividends.
Half of the U.S. supplies going to the war in Afghanistan go through Russia. Moscow has backed U.N. sanctions on Iran and refused to deliver to Iran the A-300 surface-to-air missile system it had promised. President Dmitri Medvedev is interested in Russia's participation in a missile defense for all of Europe.
Behind the Obama policy lies this reality. The best way, the only credible way to secure the freedom and independence of former Soviet republics like Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine and Georgia is not by threatening Russia with war, but by bringing Russia in from the cold and giving Russia a growing stake in aligning with the West.
No matter the NATO war guarantees we have given to the Baltic republics, we are not going to war with Russia over Estonia. For the first result of such a war would be the annihilation of Estonia.
Moreover, many of Russia's concerns are our concerns. Moscow does not want to see a Taliban triumph in Afghanistan, as that would embolden Islamic secessionist movements across the North Caucasus that have conducted terror attacks inside Russia itself.
Russia is also deep into a demographic crisis, with more than 500,000 Russians disappearing every year. That this should happen is both a human tragedy and a strategic disaster, for Siberia and the Russian Far East, and all their resources could wind up under the de facto control of 1.4 billion Chinese.
Richard Nixon would have supported this treaty. Ronald Reagan would have supported this treaty, as he loathed nuclear weapons and wished to rid the world of them. And simply because this treaty is "Obama's treaty" does not mean it is not in America's interest.
If Republicans should kill New StART, and Vladimir Putin responds by using U.S. rejection to rev up Russian nationalism to terminate the "reset" and return to a policy of cooperating with America's enemies from Pyongyang to Tehran to Caracas, does the Republican Party wish to be held responsible for that?
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Entries(RSS)
The Stupid Party rides again!
Yep, chasing evil wherever it isn't,like Greyhounds after a plastic rabbit.
Neocon Jews HATE Russians and Russian culture, because they know that a revived Russia, Christian Russia, will serve an indispensable role in saving the vestiges of Christendom and then reforging the whole of Christendom. Neocons want a secular philo-Semitic world, bot anything to do with Christendom.
And as the average Evangelical 'conservative' is a dolt who will hear a putative conservative Jew order him to jump and respond only with, 'on whom, my immmeasurably wise and moral leader,' it is going to be tough to keep Republicans from acting stupidly.
Jake: The neocons also hate the Russians because they are Trotskyites. They still want to punish Russia because of Stalin. To the Neocons, there must be endless revolution. First they wanted worldwide communist revolution. They have now moved on to, so called worldwide democratic revolution. These pipe dreams are destroying America. The Neocons have to be expelled from the Republican Party or we need a new party.
On these frequently made remarks by many columnists that Americans will not be able to emotionally withstand a single nuclear attack or a long war with much rationing, I wonder why it is not considered that Americans in the long past have borne the Great Depression, Civil War and Reconstruction, and various skirmishes with native Americans. They have had to live through difficulties, just like any country, and maybe it's too unfair to suggest that Americans (or any people of industrial nations) are so pampered that their world ends the moment their Starbuck coffee is no longer pouring.
I don't know, what do you people think? Would most of your neighbours and family have the steel to withstand a long bitter war on your own soil?
"I don’t know, what do you people think?"
I think the longest wars in our history are now engaged -Aghanistan, Iraq, sustaining a tremendously expensive miltary presence all over the world. Our enemies do not desire to confront us directly but indirectly, to bleed the giant with a thousand nicks and cuts --- export their ecomonic base under the disguise of free trade, import the trojan horse of polyglot culture under the disguise of free immigration, harrass them to fight on enemy terrain and in foreign cultural environments under the disguise of building nations of freedom and democracy, continue to carve and attack the heart of their culture with mandatory and public apostasy at the educational and legislative levels, to hold up representatives in the mirror of public opinion using characters of the foolish, whited sepulcher variety, to aquaint them with police state tactics for "their own safety", and several other unconventional methods of strategic value that seem to be working quite well without the destructive use of nuclear weapons.
Mr Sanjay @ 5,
Here's one "no" vote to your question about "my neighbors having the steel to fight a long bitter war." The conflicts/problems you cite were borne by citizens more acquainted with sacrifice and delayed gratification than our pampered lot are now. When the new Harry Potter books/movies or new electronic gizmos/games are released police are often required to keep some order as people try to storm the store doors -often at midnight - to be the first to get these items; does anyone seriously think this same population would endure the rationing of gas, butter and the like my parents did during WW II?
When the planes hit the Trade Towers our leader urged us to go shopping! Our military has become more of a sociological experiment lab than a fighting force (looked at the rates of pregnant sailors in the Navy lately?)
The war-mongering neo-cons urging us to involve ourselves in every world skirmish imaginable generally have one thing in common - an absence of personal military service; many of them instead have records of taking extraordinary steps to avoid doing so, usually in Vietnam. So, no, I have little confidence that we could stomach any conflict, much less a nuclear exchange.
"The conflicts/problems you cite were borne by citizens more acquainted with sacrifice and delayed gratification than our pampered lot are now. When the new Harry Potter books/movies or new electronic gizmos/games are released police are often required to keep some order as people try to storm the store doors -often at midnight – to be the first to get these items; does anyone seriously think this same population would endure the rationing of gas, butter and the like my parents did during WW II?"
This is so true. A culture is measured by its every day habits and way of living not by current events in legislation or the pleasant and unpleasant economic weather. The essence or esentials of the culture are as you describe, Mr. Collins, and by any "metric used today" --quantitative or qualitative, ours is rather weak, sensational and artificial. Yet, there remains enough to express gratitude for, such as the Chronicles crowd and others like them who still tell the better stories and have the closer friendships.
The discussion on the START treaty is missing the big elephant in the room. It's wonderful to reduce our number of nuclear warheads, but what about China's and all the other countries developing nuclear weapons with the help of the Russian, such as Venezuela, Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia? Now the Bush is gone, everybody and his brother is trying to develope nuclear weapons and we want to go down to 2000. Read President Kennedy's speeches on the subject were he anticipates the situation.