A Place to Stand

The Cold War ended yesterday. It went almost unnoticed in Britain's media. It consists of 2 parts. Obama & Medvedev signing a new Start treaty committing them to

It limits the US and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads each on no more than 800 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles...

But it compares with the 2002 Moscow treaty, which obliged each side to cut strategic nuclear warheads to 1,700-2,200 by December 31 2012.

In fact, both the US and Russia have already been cutting such warheads faster than the rate that treaty foresaw.

This is the first significant achievement in resetting the US-Russia relationship since Mr Obama took office. Relations hit rock bottom in August 2008 during the war between Russia and Georgia. The Kremlin's top foreign policy adviser recently called yesterday's agreement "a huge event that will have an extremely profound and positive effect on the way our countries deal with many other issues".

...This treaty must be ratified by the US Senate. Republicans are resisting. Russia will resist further cuts because strategic weapons are its claim to superpower status and its tactical arsenal is seen as security against Nato's superior conventional forces in Europe. [paradoxically up to the fall of the USSR the NATO position was always that they needed nuclear weapons as security against superior Soviet conventional forces, which the USSR had maintained post WW2 as security against the initial American monopoly & later superiority in nukes]

The highlighted quote & body language of both parties suggest a more general, if not alliance, at least entente cordiale. In particular we may expect Russia to support sanctions, probably with minor changes to prove they are independent, against Iran if they seriously try to go nuclear. Russia's geographical position, gives them, like Israel, reason not to want a nuclear Iran, but under Bush they had more immediate reason not to trust the USA. Probably the US has also agreed not to encourage Georgia & other border states to be belligerent.

There is no real conflict of interest between Russia & the USA. Russia has never asked for Alaska back & that is the only place their territories abut. The cold war was built partly on ideology & partly on the invention of nukes, which is the only way either country could seriously threaten the other.

And nuclear weapons are the other part of the change

The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in a joint briefing with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu on the newly released strategy, known as Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

This conditional assurance means that countries like Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea that have violated or renounced the treaty would remain on the potential target list of U.S. nuclear forces.

Gates also warned that "if any state eligible for this assurance were to use chemical or biological weapons against the United States or its allies or partners, it would face the prospect of a devastating conventional military response."...

"For the first time, the NPR places preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism atop the U.S. nuclear agenda," said the document. "It renews the U.S. commitment to hold fully accountable any state, terrorist group, or other nonstate actor that supports or enables terrorist efforts to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction, whether by facilitating, financing, or providing expertise or safe haven for such efforts."...

The United States declared on Tuesday in its new nuclear strategy that the "sole purpose" of its nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States or its allies and partners.

Throughout the cold war the US always maintained that it was ready to use nuclear weapons first, even against non-nuclear states like China in the 1950s. This gave little reason for any non-nuclear state [eg China} not to develop them. For the first time there is an upside to not having nukes. Nuclear proliferation is indeed a genuine problem & in fact it is astonishing that so few states, in the years since 1945, have gone nuclear. The comparison has been made to 2 men pointing automatic rifles at each other. Neither wishes to kill the other but both know that the person who pulls the trigger first is the only one who may possibly survive. In such circumstances trust is difficult. Proliferation is more men with guns in the circle.

Obama is therefore absolutely right to put stopping proliferation as the prime US (& everybody else's) national interest & to be willing to make concessions to do so rather than demanding the role of world policeman & world judge & jury. I am not generally a fan of Obama but this is a major change which has made the world much safer.

It also makes our own "stockpile of no more than 200 nuclear weapons" nuclear weapons a more significant, anachronistic & destabilising part of the world arsenal. That will be dealt with after the election but expect all parties to studiously avoid making that an issue in this generally issueless election.

Labels: International politics, nuclear, Social