START and Beyond: Obama Abandons US Power

Ariel Cohen / April 07, 2010

The New START Treaty that Presidents Obama and Medvedev are going to sign tomorrow in Prague sets the stage for the big show, the April 12-13 non-proliferation summit in Washington.

Both events are deeply flawed. Both are theater productions for Obama to push through his unrealistic agenda of “getting to zero”, i.e. attempting to achieve a world without nuclear weapons.

The New START is a déjà vu: in the 1980s, the Soviets threatened to withdraw from existing arms control treaties if US deployed missile defense. Now they are doing it again. Foreign Minister Lavrov is putting caveats on the New START. Lavrov clearly stated that the Kremlin reserves the right to withdraw from the Treaty if they deem missile defense deployment in Romania threatening.

Why should the US Senate ratify a “conditional” Treaty? If the Treaty is ratified, the US under Obama will not withdraw from it “only” if the Russians do, thus US would be committing to unilateral Treaty compliance, which may be against its national security interests. (more…)