WASHINGTON -- The signing ceremony in Moscow was a grand affair. For Barack Obama foreign policy neophyte and reset man the arms reduction agreement had a Kissingerian air. A fine feather in his cap. And our president likes his plumage.
Unfortunately for the United States the country Obama represents the prospective treaty is useless at best detrimental at worst.
Useless because the level of offensive nuclear weaponry the subject of the U.S.-Russia Joint Understanding is an irrelevance. We could today terminate all such negotiations invite the Russians to build as many warheads as they want and profitably watch them spend themselves into penury as did their Soviet predecessors stockpiling weapons that do nothing more than as Churchill put it make the rubble bounce.
Obama says that his START will be a great boon setting an example to enable us to better pressure North Korea and Iran to give up their nuclear programs. That a man of Obamas intelligence can believe such nonsense is beyond comprehension. There is not a shred of evidence that cuts by the great powers -- the INF treaty START I the Treaty of Moscow (2002) -- induced the curtailment of anyones programs. Moammar Gaddafi gave up his nukes the week we pulled Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole. No treaty involved. The very notion that Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will suddenly abjure nukes because of yet another U.S.-Russian treaty is comical.
The pursuit of such an offensive weapons treaty could nonetheless be detrimental to us. Why? Because Obamas hunger for a diplomatic success such as it is allowed the Russians to exact a price: linkage between offensive and defensive nuclear weapons.
This is important for Russia because of the huge American technological advantage in defensive weaponry. We can reliably shoot down an intercontinental ballistic missile. They cannot. And since defensive weaponry will be the decisive strategic factor of the 21st century Russia has striven mightily for a quarter-century to halt its development. Gorbachev tried to swindle Reagan out of the Strategic Defense Initiative at Reykjavik in 1986. Reagan refused. As did his successors -- Bush I Clinton Bush II.
Obama who seeks to banish nuclear weapons entirely has little use for such prosaic contrivances. First the Obama budget actually cuts spending on missile defense at a time when federal spending is a riot of extravagance and trillion-dollar deficits. Then comes the pause (as Russias president appreciatively noted) in the planned establishment of a missile shield in Eastern Europe. And now the Joint Understanding commits us to a new treaty that includes a provision on the interrelationship of strategic offensive and strategic defensive arms. Obama further said that the East European missile shield will be the subject of extensive negotiations between the United States and Russia.
Obama doesnt even seem to understand the ramifications of this concession. Poland and the Czech Republic thought they were regaining their independence when they joined NATO under the protection of the United States. They now see that the shield negotiated with us and subsequently ratified by all of NATO is in limbo. Russia and America will first have to come to terms on the issue explained President Dmitry Medvedev. This is precisely the kind of compromised sovereignty that Russia wants to impose on its ex-Soviet colonies -- and that U.S. presidents of both parties for the last 20 years have resisted.
Resistance however is not part of Obamas repertoire. Hence his eagerness for arcane negotiations over MIRVd missiles the perfect distraction from the major issue between the two countries: Vladimir Putins unapologetic and relentless drive to restore Moscows hegemony over the sovereign states that used to be Soviet satrapies.
That -- not nukes -- is the chief cause of the friction between the U.S. and Russia. You wouldnt know it to hear Obama in Moscow pledging to halt the drift in U.S.-Russian relations. Drift? The decline in relations came from Putins desire to undo what he considers the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century -- the collapse of the Soviet empire. Hence his squeezing Ukraines energy supplies. His overt threats against Poland and the Czech Republic for daring to make sovereign agreements with the United States. And finally less than a year ago his invading a small neighbor detaching and then effectively annexing two of Georgias provinces to Mother Russia.
Thats the cause of the collapse of our relations. Not drift but aggression. Or as the reset man referred to it with such delicacy in his Kremlin news conference: our disagreements on Georgias borders.
Charles Krauthammer is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner 1984 National Magazine Award winner and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985.
WASHINGTON -- The signing ceremony in Moscow was a grand affair. For Barack Obama foreign policy neophyte and reset man the arms reduction agreement had a Kissingerian air. A fine feather in his cap. And our president likes his plumage.
Unfortunately for the United States the country Obama represents the prospective treaty is useless at best detrimental at worst.
Useless because the level of offensive nuclear weaponry the subject of the U.S.-Russia Joint Understanding is an irrelevance. We could today terminate all such negotiations invite the Russians to build as many warheads as they want and profitably watch them spend themselves into penury as did their Soviet predecessors stockpiling weapons that do nothing more than as Churchill put it make the rubble bounce.
Obama says that his START will be a great boon setting an example to enable us to better pressure North Korea and Iran to give up their nuclear programs. That a man of Obamas intelligence can believe such nonsense is beyond comprehension. There is not a shred of evidence that cuts by the great powers -- the INF treaty START I the Treaty of Moscow (2002) -- induced the curtailment of anyones programs. Moammar Gaddafi gave up his nukes the week we pulled Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole. No treaty involved. The very notion that Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will suddenly abjure nukes because of yet another U.S.-Russian treaty is comical.
The pursuit of such an offensive weapons treaty could nonetheless be detrimental to us. Why? Because Obamas hunger for a diplomatic success such as it is allowed the Russians to exact a price: linkage between offensive and defensive nuclear weapons.
This is important for Russia because of the huge American technological advantage in defensive weaponry. We can reliably shoot down an intercontinental ballistic missile. They cannot. And since defensive weaponry will be the decisive strategic factor of the 21st century Russia has striven mightily for a quarter-century to halt its development. Gorbachev tried to swindle Reagan out of the Strategic Defense Initiative at Reykjavik in 1986. Reagan refused. As did his successors -- Bush I Clinton Bush II.
Obama who seeks to banish nuclear weapons entirely has little use for such prosaic contrivances. First the Obama budget actually cuts spending on missile defense at a time when federal spending is a riot of extravagance and trillion-dollar deficits. Then comes the pause (as Russias president appreciatively noted) in the planned establishment of a missile shield in Eastern Europe. And now the Joint Understanding commits us to a new treaty that includes a provision on the interrelationship of strategic offensive and strategic defensive arms. Obama further said that the East European missile shield will be the subject of extensive negotiations between the United States and Russia.
Obama doesnt even seem to understand the ramifications of this concession. Poland and the Czech Republic thought they were regaining their independence when they joined NATO under the protection of the United States. They now see that the shield negotiated with us and subsequently ratified by all of NATO is in limbo. Russia and America will first have to come to terms on the issue explained President Dmitry Medvedev. This is precisely the kind of compromised sovereignty that Russia wants to impose on its ex-Soviet colonies -- and that U.S. presidents of both parties for the last 20 years have resisted.
Resistance however is not part of Obamas repertoire. Hence his eagerness for arcane negotiations over MIRVd missiles the perfect distraction from the major issue between the two countries: Vladimir Putins unapologetic and relentless drive to restore Moscows hegemony over the sovereign states that used to be Soviet satrapies.
That -- not nukes -- is the chief cause of the friction between the U.S. and Russia. You wouldnt know it to hear Obama in Moscow pledging to halt the drift in U.S.-Russian relations. Drift? The decline in relations came from Putins desire to undo what he considers the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century -- the collapse of the Soviet empire. Hence his squeezing Ukraines energy supplies. His overt threats against Poland and the Czech Republic for daring to make sovereign agreements with the United States. And finally less than a year ago his invading a small neighbor detaching and then effectively annexing two of Georgias provinces to Mother Russia.
Thats the cause of the collapse of our relations. Not drift but aggression. Or as the reset man referred to it with such delicacy in his Kremlin news conference: our disagreements on Georgias borders.
Charles Krauthammer is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner 1984 National Magazine Award winner and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985.
