[jholmes]

As a child of the sixties who did duck and cover drills in elementary school and watched people protest nukes all through the seventies, I can't beleive how little fanfare this has received. It hasn't been that many years since the closest an American President would come to Moscow was a qucik side trip to Iceland.

But this seems to be a non-event. It is building an almost friendly relationship between two countries that have had the means and occasional inclination to wipe each other off the planet.

I think this is a huge deal and I can't understand why it isn't being hailed as the great thing it is. Am I wrong in thinking that if Al Gore had done this would it have been the greatest step in Russian/American relations since 1944? And the greatest foreign relations coup since Nixon went to China.

[chris v]

It's a large step in the right direction, and like you, I think it's a pretty big deal. Any reduction in the number of nukes on missles aimed at anyone is always a good idea. Unfortunately, just taking the warheads off the missles and putting them in storage is not as good as having them actually dismantled.

I gotta read up on it some more, but I think the Russians have been promised substantial aid from the US with the dismantling process-- They've been in a catch 22 in that they can't afford to maintain their missles, but neither can they afford to dismantle them.

I'm still agog at the possibility of Bush having done something right, and am trying to figure the ulterior motives. How could this possibly benefit the oil industry?

CV

[driven]

Originally posted by jholmes:
<STRONG>As a child of the sixties who did duck and cover drills in elementary school and watched people protest nukes all through the seventies, I can't beleive how little fanfare this has received. It hasn't been that many years since the closest an American President would come to Moscow was a qucik side trip to Iceland.

But this seems to be a non-event. It is building an almost friendly relationship between two countries that have had the means and occasional inclination to wipe each other off the planet.

I think this is a huge deal and I can't understand why it isn't being hailed as the great thing it is. Am I wrong in thinking that if Al Gore had done this would it have been the greatest step in Russian/American relations since 1944? And the greatest foreign relations coup since Nixon went to China.</STRONG>

Agreed. I remember full well the Reagan/Gorby meeting in Iceland which was hailed as a huge success, yet it didn't go nearly this far.

[thunderous_funker]

I will say it is a step, and a big one that deserves attention. Some have argued that it is a side-step rather than one forward for a few reasons.

The agreement only reduces the number of "deployed" nuclear weapons. It does not destroy them. The US has already announced that it will store most of the warheads. The Russian military, which was mostly reluctant about this deal, will argue for the same. That could mean more Russian warheads in storage under questionable security than before. Not a prospect to be ignored.

The US will also get rid of some legacy deployment systems which are no longer militarily viable but actually makes no restrictions on Trident systems which are more accurate and the delivery system of choice these days anyway.

The agreement also allows either side to withdraw from it with only 3 months notice. The Bush Administration has very visibly demonstrated it's readiness and willingness to withdraw from treaties when it's convenient so that leaves a lot of questions. Especially considering the Nuclear Posture Review debacle and the administrations recent attempts to secure funding for new nuclear arms (bunker buster and the so-called "low-yield" bomb that could be used in first strike scenarios and against non-nuclear states according to the NPR). So far they only got Congress to pass funding for research of these new nukes, but the fight continues.

Don't get me wrong. Pointing fewer nukes at each other is a good step towards East-West relations and deserves some applause. It's not, however, a great step towards actual arms reduction and leaves quite a bit of wiggle room for either side to continue on a path that is far from positive.

Time will tell, let's hope for the best and keep the pressure on both sides to work on more agreements that continue in the right direction.

[Jim Paradise]

The START II treaty was a big step... this is another big step but will the States actually start reducing it's nuclear arsenal? A lot of nuclear weapons that the States are supposed to get rid of are merely just stored elsewhere and not destoryed. And both sides still have the capability of destroying the world in 20 minutes even with these cuts.

But I'm still happy about the move for further cuts in both nuclear arsenals.

Now if the United States would just resign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty again.........

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by driven:
<STRONG>


Agreed. I remember full well the Reagan/Gorby meeting in Iceland which was hailed as a huge success, yet it didn't go nearly this far.</STRONG>

That's odd. At the time the Reagan/Gorby summit was hailed as a huge failure. But in retrospect it was a true turning point.

This new treaty is good because it signals that our relations aren't going to be dependent on treaties as much as before. Countries that trust each other and have interests in common don't need them as much. The press disinterest probably signals that as well as anything else.

[Millennium]

It's a great start.

But I have to wonder, when the nukes are retired, where do they go? Destroying them completely isn't too much of an option; the radioactive materials just don't go away too easily, and that's really what we have to worry about.

They could be used as fuel for nuclear power plants, perhaps. Or perhaps using some kind of process similar to nuclear-fuel reprocessing, they could first be "downgraded" so that they're unsuitable for use in weapons (this would be important, because that way even if the material is somehow stolen it wouldn't be as much of a threat).

Theoretically we could also shoot the stuff into the sun, which would destroy the waste safely. However, I'd love to see you get the environmentalists to agree to that; they were up in arms over Cassini, and that had far less nuclear material than a project like this would likely entail.

[SimeyTheLimey]

Originally posted by Millennium:
<STRONG>It's a great start.

But I have to wonder, when the nukes are retired, where do they go? Destroying them completely isn't too much of an option; the radioactive materials just don't go away too easily, and that's really what we have to worry about.

They could be used as fuel for nuclear power plants, perhaps. </STRONG>

I think some of it has been used in power plants. That was where the 4 tonnes or so of the stuff we bought from some of the former Soviet states went, I believe.

Some of it I'm sure is just stored. I had a professor who described holding a kilo or so of weapons grade Plutonium during a tour of a facility when he was with the DoD. So it's somewhere.

Part of the reason we aren't pressing the Russians to dismantle the warheds is that it is easier for everyone to keep track of the parts if they are in one piece.