Hagel and Global Zero
President Obama’s plan to carry out a new round of nuclear-warhead cuts will be announced soon, U.S. officials say.
The
coming round of warhead-reduction talks with Russia was put on hold
partly as a result of the Senate delay in confirming Defense
Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel, an outspoken proponent of the Global
Zero anti-nuclear weapons group that called in a report last year for
radical denuclearization steps.
According to one defense
official, the president will propose that the United States and Russia
initiate talks aimed at reaching a further one-third cut from the 2010
New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) target level of 1,150
deployed warheads.
Asked about the coming cuts, a White House
official told Inside the Ring: “Nothing to announce.” The official then
referred to Mr. Obama’s statements in Seoul in March. The president said
at the nuclear summit there he thinks the United States can maintain a
strong deterrent and “still pursue further reductions in our nuclear
arsenal.”
In the months ahead, the president said he would “continue
to seek discussions with Russia on a step we have never taken before —
reducing not only our strategic nuclear warheads, but also tactical
weapons and warheads in reserve.”
The summit was also the site of the
now-famous conversation overheard on an open microphone when Mr. Obama
told then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that, after his re-election,
Moscow could expect more flexibility toward Russian demands to limit
U.S. missile defenses. Russia has been demanding those limits as a
precondition for further warhead cuts.
Rose Gottemoeller, the
acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international
security, was in Moscow last week for talks that included discussion of
the new arms cuts.
http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/20/inside-the-ring-835197397/?page=all#pagebreak
3 comments:
I am really surprised that Hagel passed the confirmation. It appears that if you were a member of the club that mulligans are the order of the day. I wonder if we had lost the revolutionary war if the signers of the declaration of independence could have said "Yes, that's what I said, but that's not what I meant."
Chuck Hagel doesn't care for the security provided by nuclear weapons.
If NNSA labs get handed off to DoD... WATCH OUT!
In past years when there had been attempts to move the NNSA labs to DoD, the loud and clear retort had been "no thank you, but we are doing very well without them". Now in a very different environment, Hagel may not be given a choice to turn them down again, and DoD will find itself stuck with the mess left from NNSA. All in all, not a bad arranged marriage. Hagel and the labs might just turn out to be a good couple.
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