> > The Russians have been trying to get the U.S. to agree to a ceiling of
> > less than 10,000 warheads. The U.S. has been very obstinate about not
> > going below a certain number, which prompted some scientists to figure
> > out why this is the case.
[-fwd-]
A Familiar Bush Strategy on Disarmament By Peter Baker Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, November 14, 2001; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24574-2001Nov13.html (archived here): http://www.prop1.org/nucnews/2001nn/0111nn/011114nn.htm
Ten years ago this fall, President George Bush broke with military orthodoxy by announcing historic deep unilateral cuts in nuclear arms and was rewarded a week later when the Soviet Union matched him.
Now the son has taken a page from the father's playbook. Abandoning the cumbersome construct of formal negotiations and treaties, President Bush has decided to head down the path to disarmament based on nothing more than a handshake. With Russian President Vladimir Putin promising to reciprocate "in kind," the world will be rid of 8,000 nuclear warheads.
Bush's decision to slash the U.S. strategic arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads over the next 10 years, and the Russian response, reinvigorate a disarmament process that had largely stalled out in the decade since the end of the Cold War. Although no longer locked in a geopolitical death struggle, Washington and Moscow failed throughout the 1990s to transform their new relationship into a strategic balance reflecting the imperatives of the new era. President Bill Clinton left office without enacting a treaty eliminating a single nuclear weapon.
"Bush finally came up with a formula to push us out of the dead end we'd gotten into at the end of the Clinton administration," said Rose Gottemoeller, a former Clinton administration official. "We're breaking what had been an effective sound barrier in the arms control world, which is the 2,000 number. That had always been the holy grail -- if you go below 2,000 [the theory went] you'll lose the strategic triad."
In doing so, Bush muscled past the objections of top Pentagon commanders, just as Putin has brushed aside generals insistent on preserving the arsenal that is the last vestige of real Russian power...
(...)
In 1990, as the Cold War was ending, the United States and Russia each maintained about 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads. The START I treaty, signed in 1991, mandated that each side slice that to 6,000, and the deadline for meeting that ceiling is just a few weeks away, Dec. 5.
Russia has already reached that goal, cutting to 5,858 warheads as of July, according to the Arms Control Association. As part of an agreement following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine recently destroyed its final missile silo and Putin announced yesterday that the last nuclear warhead brought to Russia from Ukraine had been destroyed last month. Ill equipped to maintain a superpower arsenal after a decade of economic decline, Russia anxiously wants to cut even deeper to save money.
The United States still had 7,013 warheads in July, but policymakers expect to get to the 6,000 ceiling by next month.
A second treaty, START II, would have cut both arsenals to between 3,000 and 3,500 warheads. However, it never completed the ratification process. Clinton and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed in 1997 to pursue a START III treaty that would go to between 2,000 and 2,500 warheads. But that idea foundered because of Pentagon opposition and a dispute over U.S. missile defense plans.
In proposing a range below that, Bush overrode the objections of Adm. Richard Mies, head of the U.S. Strategic Command, who did not want to go below 2,300 and had the sympathy of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The White House included a top figure of 2,200 in deference to those concerns but prefers the lower number.
(...)
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/ dave /