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US, Russia Reach Nuclear Arsenal Agreement
Peace Corps Library writes "The United States and Russia, seeking to move forward on one of the most significant arms control treaties since the end of the cold war, announced that they had reached a preliminary agreement on cutting each country's stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons, effectively setting the stage for a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), a cold war-era pact that expires in December. Under the framework, negotiators are to be instructed to craft a treaty that would cut strategic warheads for each side to between 1,500 and 1,675, down from the limit of 2,200 slated to take effect in 2012 under the Treaty of Moscow (PDF) signed by President George W. Bush. The limit on delivery vehicles would be cut to between 500 and 1,100 from the 1,600 currently allowed under Start. Perhaps more important than the specific limits would be a revised and extended verification system that otherwise would expire with Start in December. The United States currently has 1,198 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-based missiles and bombers, which together are capable of delivering 5,576 warheads, according to its most recent Start report in January, while Russia reported that it has 816 delivery vehicles capable of delivering 3,909 warheads. 'We have a mutual interest in protecting both of our populations from the kinds of danger that weapons proliferation is presenting today,' said President Obama."
boooo, there goes my hopes of one day having a child that would roam the wastelands and be the savior of all humanity.
hi there
It has come to my attention that the entire Linux community is a hotbed of so called 'alternative sexuality,' which includes anything from hedonistic orgies to homosexuality to pedophilia.
What better way of demonstrating this than by looking at the hidden messages contained within the names of some of Linux's most outspoken advocates:
I'm sure that Eric S. Raymond, composer of the satanic homosexual propaganda diatribe The Cathedral and the Bizarre, is probably an anagram of something queer, but we don't need to look that far as we know he's always shoving a gun up some poor little boy's rectum. Update: Eric S. Raymond is actually an anagram for secondary rim and cord in my arse. It just goes to show you that he is indeed queer.
Update the Second: It is also documented that Evil Sicko Gaymond is responsible for a nauseating piece of code called Fetchmail, which is obviously sinister sodomite slang for 'Felch Male' -- a disgusting practise. For those not in the know, 'felching' is the act performed by two perverts wherein one sucks their own post-coital ejaculate out of the other's rectum. In fact, it appears that the dirty Linux faggots set out to undermine the good Republican institution of e-mail, turning it into 'e-male.'
As far as Richard 'Master' Stallman goes, that filthy fudge-packer was actually quoted on leftist commie propaganda site Salon.com as saying the following: 'I've been resistant to the pressure to conform in any circumstance,' he says. 'It's about being able to question conventional wisdom,' he asserts. 'I believe in love, but not monogamy,' he says plainly.
And this isn't a made up troll bullshit either! He actually stated this tripe, which makes it obvious that he is trying to politely say that he's a flaming homo slut!
Speaking about 'flaming,' who better to point out as a filthy chutney ferret than Slashdot's very own self-confessed pederast Jon Katz. Although an obvious deviant anagram cannot be found from his name, he has already confessed, nay boasted of the homosexual perversion of corrupting the innocence of young children. To quote from the article linked:
'I've got a rare kidney disease,' I told her. 'I have to go to the bathroom a lot. You can come with me if you want, but it takes a while. Is that okay with you? Do you want a note from my doctor?'
Is this why you were touching your penis in the cinema, Jon? And letting the other boys touch it too?
We should also point out that Jon Katz refers to himself as 'Slashdot's resident Gasbag.' Is there any more doubt? For those fortunate few who aren't aware of the list of homosexual terminology found inside the Linux 'Sauce Code,' a 'Gasbag' is a pervert who gains sexual gratification from having a thin straw inserted into his urethra (or to use the common parlance, 'piss-pipe'), then his homosexual lover blows firmly down the straw to inflate his scrotum. This is, of course, when he's not busy violating the dignity and copyright of posters to Slashdot by gathering
Just destroy your selves so we can go back to our huts and tipis, thanks.
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
The indefinite combinations of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to the destruction of nations. - Robert S. McNamara
Slightly offtopic but in high school I read a few books by Robert S McNamara who died yesterday. It's too bad he didn't get to see this agreement between old enemies. He was Secretary of Defense from 1961-1968. Although I did not agree with a lot of his views he shaped a lot of the nuclear buildup during the cold war. I believe he was responsible for abandoning Eisenhower's policy of massive retaliation in the event of a nuclear war. He was first tasked by Kennedy of explaining nuclear fallout. McNamara favored non-nuclear power and one of the books I read "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" shed a lot of light on the Vietnam war for me.
If you haven't seen Erol Morris' "The Fog of War" you should.
Rest in peace Robert Strange McNamara. You revealed to me the horrors that leadership must face during war.
My work here is dung.
This could mean even more cheap launch vehicles for satellites, since launching missiles is a good way of reducing their numbers...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
BBC radio is reporting this will bring the USA and Russia down to owning a mere 95% of the world's nuclear weapons. Go USA! Go Russia!
Seriously, good work both countries for making a step in the right direction. But keep going, you've got a long way to go before you can start preaching to countries with a dozen or nuclear weapons about the need for restraint.
now you fuckers can only destroy the world once over! ...ooooh wait a second.
Basically the United States gave Russia a billion or so and tactical/technical/administrative support every year to reduce their weapons stock pile.
So even when Bush and Putin had their panties bunched up, great work was being done cooperatively by both sides. The program considered pretty successful by government standards.
I know, I know, the idea of good news from government is a scary one!
I think not! These weapons are with us for good.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
In this day and age of missiles that can shoot down missiles, you need more missiles not less so that an unstoppable barrage of nuclear death is assured to break through any possible defense.
...
The new limit works out to roughly one warhead per seventeen thousand square miles of the Earth's land-mass. That's an area a bit larger than the Netherlands. While I'm glad that we'll be spending less in the long run on maintaining and securing the decommissioned armaments, this doesn't really change the picture should the shit really hit the fan someday.
Any species that figures out how to travel in space also invents powerful weapons and blows itself up before it can visit other inhabited worlds.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
But John R. Bolton, who was ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, said Mr. Obama was going too far. "The number they are proposing for delivery vehicles is shockingly low," he said.
Really? They're aiming for 500 launch vehicles. Are there even that many targets to nuke or does Bolton just want us to do it a few times over for the refried beans effect? Also, this is 500 launch vehicles and 1,500 warheads so I assume there are some MIRVs in there. I was under the impression that the whole defense aspect of nukes was to make retaliation too expensive for the other side to shoot first. If that's the case, 500 launch vehicles and 1,500 warheads would be enough to make anyone regret it. France, China, and the UK seem to be pretty secure with even less.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
...that America and Russia don't want to set the world on fire - they just want to start a flame in your heart?
The program considered pretty successful by government standards.
Meaning what, a lot of rich fucks got richer, and almost nothing actually got done?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Exactly what the difference between 1500 and 2200 nukes is? What has that really accomplished?
Not so sure this is a good thing in the short term - in the long term we're all better off with less nukes about the place.
My worry is that Russia will use the money, released from no longer having to maintain part of their arsenal, to have another foray into another ex-Soviet state. Their economy isn't looking too healthy, and what better way to detract the population from economic issues than an exciting little war? Putin's not exactly a tree-hugging, peace-loving type, and his puppet Medvedev was happy to go along with the incursion of Georgia.
Obama's good intentions may just end up haunting him.
START requires only that the weapons be deactivated, not destroyed. The US currently has over 4,000 "deactivated" nuclear weapons. Believe someone who used to shove them up a Buff's (B-52) belly, they can be reactivated in short order.
Also, START is 'Strategic' Arms Reduction Treaty. It says nothing about tacticals, either battlefield or ship based weapons, or EMP devices.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
you insensitive clod
Do you realize how much it is costing to maintain our nuclear arsenal? And that our reactors for making the fissionable and fusionable parts are deteriorating, with little hope of getting a new one approved thanks to the "consortium of idiots afraid of anything nuclear so we'll keep burning natural gas".
So, this is a win-win.
Russia never reduces its stock of nukes, american fools.
But America is supposed to have the Big Stick! Who will listen to us if our stick shrinks?
Then there's the psychological effect. In historical war terms, 9/11 was a nonevent. 25000 people are believed to have been killed in one air raid on Dresden in WW2, maybe three times that in a short period at Hiroshima. Yet the psychological effect on the US was tremendous. If a tenth of the population died in an hour, and maybe another tenth over the next year, that shock would be multiplied many times over.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Well yeah. Anyone ever here of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start_Treaty/? Let me quote the Wikipedia article: START negotiated the largest and most complex arms control treaty in history, and its final implementation in late 2001 resulted in the removal of about 80% of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence. Proposed by United States' President Ronald Reagan, it was renamed START I after negotiations began on the second START treaty, which became START II.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Note the voting pattern of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc. These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against Whites (and other non-Black folks). Neither Barack Hussein Obama nor John McCain is Hispanic or Asian. So, Hispanics and Asian-Americans used only non-racial criteria in selecting a candidate and, hence, serve as the reference by which we detect a racist voting pattern. Only about 65% of Hispanics and Asian-Americans supported Obama. In other words, a maximum of 65% support by any ethnic or racial group for either McCain or Obama is not racist and, hence, is acceptable. (A maximum of 65% for McCain is okay. So, European-American support at 55% for McCain is well below this threshold and, hence, is not racist.)
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama. At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race.
At this point, African-American supremacists (and apologists) claim that African-Americans voted for Obama because he (1) is a member of the Democratic party and (2) supports its ideals. That claim is an outright lie. Look at the exit-polling data for the Democratic primaries. Consider the case of North Carolina. Again, about 95% of African-Americans voted for him and against Hillary Clinton. Both Clinton and Obama are Democrats, and their official political positions on the campaign trail were nearly identical. Yet, 95% of African-Americans voted for Obama and against Hillary Clinton. Why? African-Americans supported Obama due solely to the color of his skin.
Here is the bottom line. Barack Hussein Obama does not represent mainstream America. He won the election due to the racist voting pattern exhibited by African-Americans.
African-Americans have established that expressing "racial pride" by voting on the basis of skin color is 100% acceptable. Neither the "Wall Street Journal" nor the "New York Times" complained about this racist behavior. Therefore, in future elections, please feel free to express your racial pride by voting on the basis of skin color. Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American. You need not defend your actions in any way. Voting on the basis of skin color is quite acceptable by today's moral standard.
Both sides are developing SDI/anti-missile defenses. This makes many of these weapons obsolete, as they no longer have a guaranteed first-strike capability.
The old arms race was big missiles and bombers; the new arms race is drones and micro-cruise missiles.
But it was a nice press opportunity for both men to come out smelling like roses while they quietly plan each other's destruction.
Futurist Traditionalism
DAVID LANGE, Oxford Union debate, 1985
I would MUCH rather that Russia and USA be armed to the point where an ABM site can interfere with a high percentage. In particular, China is now over 600 nuclear-tipped launchers, and appears to be building many more (and may actually already be up to 1000).
The simple fact is, that MAD prevented the cold war turning hot. Now, with China on a major defensive buildout, mostly space and nukes, the west (and russia) MUST keep its number up. Otherwise, this will encourage a few ppl in China to decide to turn things hot.
A member of the bipartisan Congressional Strategic Posture Commission -- headed by former secretaries of defense William J. Perry and James R. Schlesinger -- warns that the preliminary agreement signed by Barack Obama guts part of the American nuclear arsenal but does not demand significant gutting of the Russian nuclear arsenal. Two points of serious note are (1) nuclear launchers and (2) tactical nuclear weapons.
Nuclear launchers are mechanisms for launching the intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Russians are demanding that we Americans reduce the number of our launchers to 500, but the Russians were already (before the signing of this agreement) planning to reduce the number of launchers to close that number because they cannot afford to replace the launchers that must be shutdown due to reaching the end of their operational life. In other words, the Russians do not make any sacrifice on this matter but demand that the Americans make all the sacrifices.
As for tactical nuclear weapons, the Russians successfully insisted that these weapons be removed from coverage in this preliminary agreement. The Russians have a 10-to-1 advantage over us Americans in tactical nuclear weapons.
The only winning move is not to play
How about a nice game of chess?
It's nice to see that the appeasement policies of President Carter's second term haven't skipped a beat since the end of his first (there's something to be said for consistency). Still, I find it a bit disconcerting that he appears not to have noticed that there are now other players in the nuclear proliferation game beyond the US and Soviet Union. I hope he plans to give some recognition to that fact soon, since those other players are not nearly as rational and level headed as the USSR.
Slashdot has officially jumped the shark.
120 comments and not a single "In Soviet Russia" joke?
This is truly a sad day.
More flags? More fun! Six Flags!
The only good thing I can say about this is perhaps it shows some good intentions. The actual arms reduction doesn't make the world any safer. I would much rather see international collaboration to develop technology that mitigates the effectiveness and deadliness of nuclear weapons.
I think you are writing megatons and mean kilotons. The effects you describe are those of tactical warheads, not strategic ones. And your ignorance of the effects of fallout, high atmospheric dust and the rest suggest that you are possibly not a very reliable source generally.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
is to get global corporation into the countries. Once that happens, peace will have a few large corporate allies.
Allies with access whose best interest is no war.
Yes, our best way toward global peace is corporate interest.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Anywhoo if we ever design a bomb that would cleanly kill all the people, it'd probably never actually get used. Just doesn't have the intimidation value of a good old fashioned nuke. Now a bomb that makes you gay... THAT would get top billing in our military arsenal!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
O is a naive waif. Clear-eyed columnist Ralph Peters knows what he's talking about: http://www.nypost.com/seven/07072009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/desperate_deal_177977.htm
Mod Me Up. You'll make a grown man cry.
John Bolton repeatedly demonstrates exactly why he was a rubbish choice for the UN. From accusing presenters on the BBC Today programme of being "left wing" just because they wanted him to answer a question to his complete and utter inability to view the world through anything other than jaundiced eyes.
The man is so far out of touch with normal reality and the norms of society as to be scary. Basically if John Bolton doesn't like it then 99.99% of the world's population will almost certainly think its a good idea. Hell he even fell out with Bush and Cheney.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
It's nice to see this socialist foreign village idiot going around the world apologizing to all the dictators for our evil republic, and spitting in the faces of all the all the freely elected governments we should be supporting.
the worst part is the Congress using the death as a distraction to get some of their less savory items into law
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Those figures aren't unreasonable at all. High-end military hardware (which ICBMs, bombers, nuclear devices, and submarines all certainly are) are much more complex than your average family car or consumer electronic device, and are often put through much harsher use, even just in training. Consider this:
Mission-capable rates (the percentage of equipment that, at any given time, is available to perform a mission) for conventional military aircraft generally hover in the 70-90% range. Sustaining a rate of 90%+ is considered phenomenal performance. Periods of sub-60% are not unheard of.
(incidentally, this appleis to ships, too... most ships spend 1/2 to 2/3 of their time in port or drydock, or in exercises, rather than on deployment. An aircraft carrier, for example, may spend 6 months in port for refit, modification, and resupply, then 6 months training and exercise, then 6 months deployment. That's why 12 carriers in service only equates to 4-5 on station at any given time, plus one or two more available if needed)
Civilian launch vehicles still experience a number of malfunctions, and that's with an army of support personnel, flexible deadlines, and optimal conditions. Plus, they get rather frequent launches to test things and learn from them. ICBMs and SLBMs don't get that kind of testing due to funding and political constraints, and even when they do, it's under those optimal conditions. And if rockets in optimal conditions still have relatively high failure rates, what does that say about the ones sitting in underground silos for years that have to be launched at a moment's notice?
Even "simple" guided weapons like laser-guided bombs, SAMs, and AAMs experience a number of failures and near-misses. Hitting a precision target with a ballistic missile is much harder.
Most nuclear devices in service have not been tested in a long time, and only a handful of them were tested under "operational" conditions. The vast majority were simply mounted in a test fixture and initiated after careful setup. They very well might not respond as well after a high-G launch, zero-gravity and very cold coast, and a very high-G, high-temperature ballistic entry.
Finally, consider that some portion of your arsenal may be destroyed before launch, or shot down on its way to the target.
After all that, those servicability figures don't look unrealistic at all--and from what I've read from those "in the business", they might even be optimistic.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
Disarming oneself in a war zone and letting everyone know it is a foolish idea. We can negotiate with Russia, but until the various nuclear loose cannons in the world shape up, such arms reductions are foolish. Although I'm actually more peeved that our missile defense funding was substantially cut, as if that would make us all safer.
ALL the WMDs need to get dismantled. There is no reason for having something that could wipe the whole earth clean many times over. It's like having a hummer.
Who cares if you have a tough hummer if you don't even use it (I'm referring to the H1. The H2/3 could just be KIAs with a shell for all they're worth.)
I read the GP's post, got interested and read up on the situation on various news sites, now couldn't agree more with parent. Don't mod everything informative just because it's well written, dammit.
I can recommend the book Epicenter of Peace by Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan. While Nazarbayev is not very well liked in certain circles for other reasons, the book is an interesting story of why he decided to lead Kazakhstan to denuclearization.
One of the many things I learned from this book was the difference between nonproliferation and denuclearization. Kazakhstan didn't simply agree to store away the warheads like the U.S. and Russia have agreed to do, they dismantled them and shipped them entirely out of the country (basically to Russia and the U.S.). Then they dismantled the accompanying infrastructure, reseach facilities, education facilities, etc so that hopefully, nuclear arms would never again be deployed in Kazakhstan.
It's an interesting story.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Would they be able to use up the dismantled nuclear materials to make another reactor with without having to pay for mining of the stuff...(plutonium, uranium, etc..), or is the materials wasted in the making of the warhead to begin with?
Now let's see if the news media reports what Obama does any better than they've been reporting Honduras removing a law-breaking president. Obama doesn't think this treaty with Russia will be approved by the Senate, so he wants to use presidential decrees to make the same changes. Just follow the rules and give it to the Senate.
So why exactly does anyone on this planet need those nukes? It reminds me of the Doomsday device of Dr. Strangelove.
I really with that some extraterrestrial aliens would kick all government's asses, until they wise up!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I'm always curious about whether or not these kind of treaties only restrict the number of warheads or the total yield of the arsenal. Of course, less nukes is always good, but if the agreement only says you must have less nukes, it doesn't stop you from making those nukes even more powerful.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
So THAT'S where the name "Dr. Strangelove" came from! *finally clicks*
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
...are simultaneously jumping for joy and laughing cynically, as the terms of the original START treaty were a distant goal from the current-state in 1998, when the original MGS game was released, and which informed us all of the sad state of nuclear weapons disarmament agreements.
What was it - some 26,000 nuclear warheads remained between the U.S. and Russia in 1998, whereas the START II treaty called for a maximum of 6,000 per nation? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/START_I)
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
they figure out how to remove the nukes buried in each others cities.
ICBM = $2,000,000,000. Bribing a border guard = $50.
Sigh... It's fine if there's only two countries with nukes, but when you New York just blows up and you don't know who did it... well, I'm not sure what you'd do.
The US built these devices because corporations insisted they were necessary (necessary for profit) so we can only assume that they are being dismantled because someone is making money from it.
This has always been a lot less to do with national security than it was good salesmanship by arms manufacturers. There are clearly products that are more profitable to make that are more likely to be blown up and need to be replaced.
There is no cash in servicing nuclear weapons but there are a few dollars in pulling them apart.
The safety difference to the world in countries owning 100 - 20,000 nukes is bugger all. It's a logarithmic curve where 500 is just as insane as 10,000 or very insane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/START_I
It's an acronym, not a word.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!