Just nine months after taking office, the Obama administration has already earned a failing grade on matters of nuclear policy. In the span of a single week in September, the Obama administration abandoned long-standing plans to deploy a third missile defense site in Europe and moved to cut drastically the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal to dangerously low levels. The Guardian reported in late September that President Obama has “rejected” the Pentagon’s initial draft of the 2009 Nuclear Posture Review, the congressionally-mandated review of the nation’s nuclear strategy. Radical cuts in America’s nuclear arsenal will have serious ramifications for U.S. national security. Such cuts will reduce the credibility of American power, weaken our bargaining position, and give friends…
Posts Tagged ‘Nuclear Weapons’
The Russian “Reset”
Brad Thayer and I were quoted recently in a piece on U.S.-Russian relations published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The EIU piece provides a solid overview of the arms control negotiations that will occur throughout this year between Washington and Moscow regarding the expiration of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) this December. It certainly looks as though missile defense will be the wedge issue du jour for this upcoming round of negotiations. As EIU reports, “Russian commentators insist that there will be no new START unless the US puts its plans for a missile shield on ice.” It will be interesting to see how these negotiations unfold.
President Obama is clearly receptive to a bargain–at least with respect to the missile defense site in Eastern…
“Russia Goes Ballistic”
Bradley Thayer and I co-authored an article in the September/October issue of the The National Interest entitled, “Russia Goes Ballistic.” Here’s a brief excerpt:
OVER THE next ten to twenty years, the erosion of American nuclear superiority will have major ramifications for the global balance of power. It will place new constraints on our freedom of action and lead our friends and foes alike to doubt the credibility of all instruments of U.S. power. As a result, decades-old alliance structures may fracture amid a drift toward multipolarity. Leadership from Tokyo to Riyadh to Seoul may find new incentives to develop their own deterrents as the relative power of states like Russia and China increases. With our extended-deterrent power lost,…