Moscow – An almost audible sigh of relief arose in Moscow after the US Senate ratified the New START nuclear arms control accord Wednesday. The vote ends weeks of nail-biting uncertainty and ensures that President Obama's shaky "reset" of US-Russia relations remains on track, at least for now.
President Dmitry Medvedev, currently on a state visit to India, used Twitter to inform the world that he was "pleased" at news of the unexpected bipartisan Senate vote of 71-26, and "expressed the hope" that Russia's parliament would move swiftly to ratify the treaty.
START debate: 3 things nuclear arms treaty would do, 3 things it won't
Within hours of Mr. Medvedev's tweet, the speaker of Russia's State Duma, Boris Gryzlov, announced that parliamentarians would likely ratify the document Friday – as long as the US Senate hasn't inserted any tricky new language into the text.
"There is information that the resolution contains several conditions," Mr. Gryzlov said Thursday. "Unless the conditions concern the wording of the treaty, we may ratify the treaty tomorrow."
The New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) mandate of roughly 30 percent cuts to Russia and US nuclear arsenals is generally conceded to be quite modest – considering that the two former rivals still possess more than 95 percent of the world's atomic weapons – but the political symbolism of the deal is intense. Mr. Obama chose to make strategic arms talks the centerpiece of his calculated "reset" of relations with Russia and any failure to finalize the deal might have plunged the two sides into an instant cold bath.
"We have been asking, 'Is the cold war really over?' The ratification of this treaty tells us, 'Yes, it's over,' " says Viktor Kremeniuk, deputy director of the official Institute of USA-Canada Studies in Moscow. "Clearly we agree that in future we must find the ways to act together. The main question now on the agenda is, what do we do next?"
But the way forward isn't so clear. Most analysts agree there is no more scope for cutting strategic nuclear arsenals, so New START is likely to be the last of its kind for at least a decade. The Russians, in particular, are almost totally dependent on their Soviet-era deterrent of aging intercontinental missiles for external security – as well as their claim to great power status – and would be extremely reluctant to slash beyond the 1,550 nuclear warheads mandated for each side by the new accord.
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President Dmitry Medvedev, currently on a state visit to India, used Twitter to inform the world that he was "pleased" at news of the unexpected bipartisan Senate vote of 71-26, and "expressed the hope" that Russia's parliament would move swiftly to ratify the treaty.
START debate: 3 things nuclear arms treaty would do, 3 things it won't
Within hours of Mr. Medvedev's tweet, the speaker of Russia's State Duma, Boris Gryzlov, announced that parliamentarians would likely ratify the document Friday – as long as the US Senate hasn't inserted any tricky new language into the text.
"There is information that the resolution contains several conditions," Mr. Gryzlov said Thursday. "Unless the conditions concern the wording of the treaty, we may ratify the treaty tomorrow."
The New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) mandate of roughly 30 percent cuts to Russia and US nuclear arsenals is generally conceded to be quite modest – considering that the two former rivals still possess more than 95 percent of the world's atomic weapons – but the political symbolism of the deal is intense. Mr. Obama chose to make strategic arms talks the centerpiece of his calculated "reset" of relations with Russia and any failure to finalize the deal might have plunged the two sides into an instant cold bath.
"We have been asking, 'Is the cold war really over?' The ratification of this treaty tells us, 'Yes, it's over,' " says Viktor Kremeniuk, deputy director of the official Institute of USA-Canada Studies in Moscow. "Clearly we agree that in future we must find the ways to act together. The main question now on the agenda is, what do we do next?"
But the way forward isn't so clear. Most analysts agree there is no more scope for cutting strategic nuclear arsenals, so New START is likely to be the last of its kind for at least a decade. The Russians, in particular, are almost totally dependent on their Soviet-era deterrent of aging intercontinental missiles for external security – as well as their claim to great power status – and would be extremely reluctant to slash beyond the 1,550 nuclear warheads mandated for each side by the new accord.
Read the entire article
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