It has been so long since an American president has negotiated an arms-control agreement that I am honestly not sure what to make of yesterday’s announcement from Moscow.
MOSCOW — President Obama signed an agreement on Monday to cut American and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals by at least one-quarter, a first step in a broader effort intended to reduce the threat of such weapons drastically and to prevent their further spread to unstable regions.
Mr. Obama, on his first visit to Russia since taking office, and President Dmitri A. Medvedev agreed on the basic terms of a treaty to reduce the number of warheads and missiles to the lowest levels since the early years of the cold war.
The new treaty, to be finished by December, would be subject to ratification by the Senate and could then lead to talks next year on more substantial reductions.
Here are the outlines of the agreement:
Under Monday’s agreement, the Start successor treaty would reduce the ceiling on strategic warheads to somewhere between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads within seven years, down from the current ceiling of 2,200 warheads by 2012. The limit on delivery vehicles — land-based intercontinental missiles, submarines-based missiles and bombers — would be somewhere from 500 to 1,100, down from the 1,600 currently allowed.
On the surface, this is a huge change in approach — after eight years in which President Bush angered nearly every world leader. The question is whether the plan on the table is a strong enough first step toward what must be the ultimate goal — not just disarmament, but abolition of nuclear weapons.
Daryl G. Kimball, of the Arms Control Association, told The New York Times that the agreement was “an overdue if very modest step toward ridding each side of obsolete and expensive cold war legacy weapons.”
Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, sees the announcment as positive — a “cautious optimism” — though she thinks a lot more need to be addressed.
In their first face-to-face meeting, Presidents Obama and Medvedev agreed they were “ready to move beyond Cold War mentalities,” and launch a “fresh start” in what has been an increasingly strained relationship. There was agreement to cooperate on stabilizing Afghanistan and reining in Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But the most substantive part of the meeting is the decision to develop a new arms control framework to replace the one dismantled by Bush and his team (who considered virtually any treaty a subversive document). Obama and Medvedev agreed to launch negotiations to draft a new arms control treaty that could slash US-Russian strategic nuclear arsenals by a third.
More can be done, but you have to start somewhere and this is a lot more than we’ve gotten in a long time.
Hank Kalet 