Thursday, December 23, 2010

Vice Admiral: Obama was outmaneuvered by Russians on START


The official website for the U.S. Naval Institute reports some sobering words from former nuclear plans monitor Vice Admiral Jerry Miller, USN (Ret). After reading this, and the opinions of other opponents of the treaty, it's difficult to determine how we benefit from this.
“...The Obama administration is continuing a dated policy in which we cannot even unilaterally reduce our own inventory of weapons and delivery systems without being on parity with the Russians,” Miller told the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, Md. “We could give up plenty of deployed delivery systems and not adversely affect our national security one bit, but New START prohibits such action - so we are now stuck with some outmoded and useless elements in our nuke force.”

[...]

“The Soviets/Russians were done in by Reagan and our missile defense program because they cannot afford to build such a system,” said Miller. “They instead try to counter our program with rhetoric at the bargaining table. And they won by outmaneuvering Obama. START plays right into their hands.”

[...]

“We have always been superior in quality of our nuclear force, so we did not have to negotiate with a party we do not trust,” said Miller. “If Obama wanted to save some money and improve national defense, he should have gotten out of the nuke negations and acted unilaterally. START is simply a political victory for Obama.”

[...]

“The treaty prohibits the conversion of an existing ballistic missile system into a missile defense system,” said Miller. “We might want to do that with a Trident or an ICBM sometime in the future, particularly if the Chinese alleged threat materializes.”

Here's a list of the eleven Republicans who voted in favor of the treaty:

Alexander, Bennett, Brown, Cochran, Collins, Corker, Isakson, Lugar, Murkowski, Snowe, and Voinovich.

Brown and Murkowski have been particularly reliable in helping to enact Obama's agenda as of late. Unfortunately, there probably isn't anything we can do about those two. However, I suspect Cochran, Isakson, Voinovich, and Corker will likely face hotly contested primaries when their current terms are up.

Read the entire article HERE

Update: More disturbing developments courtesy of The Washington Times.
One of the key arguments made by American proponents of New START is that the language in the treaty’s preamble linking strategic offensive and defensive weapons is nonbinding. Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who has been leading the fight for ratification, said during floor debate that the treaty’s preamble is “a component of the treaty that has no legal, binding impact whatsoever.”

Moscow apparently has a different view of the preamble.
ITAR-Tass, the main Russian government information agency, reported last week: “The treaty will have a legally binding provision on the link between strategic offensive and defensive weapons and will affirm the increasing importance of this link amid the reduction of strategic offensive weapons.”


Several Republican-authored amendments to the treaty that sought to alter the preamble were voted down, based in part on assertions that the preamble had no legal standing.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

American's will regret that Congress didn't listen to Romney and Palin.

Pablo said...

Here we go again. Let's crucify anyone who doesn't toe the line. How about we also excommunicate all of those Republican leaders who came out in support for New START? The list includes...

Condaleeza Rice
Colon Powell
Howard Baker
Henry Kissinger
George H.W. Bush
Robert Gates

RW,

I respect your decision to oppose the treaty. But can you at least admit that there is room for disagreement here?

Anonymous said...

Honestly, I am on the fence here. Since I am considered a Palinite, although I prefer Palin supporter, I trust her decision to oppose the New START. Especially since, she has a respected, foreign-policy adviser that she receives briefings from.

BUT...

My dilemma is that there are so many respected foreign policy experts from the Cold War Era and from today's War on Terror that I'm left a little confused on the entire topic. I mean what do Baker and Rice, et al know that Palin or Romney or the others in opposition to the treaty do not?

Since I am not an expert in nuclear weapons or in missile deployment systems I'm more inclined to believe Palin and Romney as opposed to the others and the reason why is...when Palin and Romney expressed their opposition to the treaty, they gave specific, detailed reasons why...when the others supported the treaty they were not as detailed as to why, except to say that it is a good treaty. Are they more privy to the details and the deals made during the negotiations? I don't know...maybe but as of now I am left confused and curious as to why, once again, this was pushed through this lame duck session with only days left before the session ended. Obviously, I understand why...what I don't understand is how the Democrats can be so stupid to not receive the message that was sent in November.

JR

Right Wingnut said...

Pablo,

If they're going to campaign as conservative on fiscal and national security matters, they should respect the will of the people and vote accordingly. Agreed?

phil said...

I'm wondering if there were changes in the final wording of the treaty as a result of Romney and Palin's opposition. I heard the end of something on the news about the pre-ample of the treaty being re-worded. I know that the pre-amble was one of those issues Romney was against. Not sure about Palin.

Pablo said...

RW,

You are dreaming if you think that supporting the New START Treaty is not conservative.

Right Wingnut said...

Did you even read what the Vice Admiral had to say? We are now in a weaker postion in regards to missle defense, even the state controlled Russian media is saying that. We could have unilaterally reduced our stockpiles WITHOUT this caving to the Russians.

How is this conservative?

GetReal said...

Most of those same experts supporting START also supported LOST (Law of Sea Treaty.) I question their judgment at this point based on that alone. Who knows if they even necessarily read the thing, since they don't mention many specifics?