| The US will not comply with the Moscow Treaty Disarmament is over. The United States will not reduce its nuclear weapons, as required by the agreement with Russia. Yesterday, at a hearing in the US Senate, US Deputy Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security Linton Brooks said that the US nuclear arsenal would be reduced by “about two-thirds” by 2012, but “this reduction will not reach the level of 1.7-2.2 thousand. nuclear warheads." These are the figures provided for by the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (STR), signed in Moscow on May 24, 2002 by Vladimir Putin and George Bush. A year later, the Moscow Treaty was ratified by the Russian Federation Council and the US Senate.
“The dramatic reduction spelled out in the Moscow treaty is based on the fact that Russia does not pose a direct threat to the United States,” Linton Brooks emphasized. “But the experience of the past 15 years has clearly shown that we should not base our security on the false confidence that we can foresee the future.” “The nuclear potentials of the United States and Russia are still aimed at each other,” Sergei Oznobishchev, director of the Institute for Strategic Assessments, commented on Washington’s position to VN. “No matter how much they talk about the priority of the fight against terrorism, it is impossible to fight either terrorists or problematic countries with strategic nuclear weapons.”
The Moscow Treaty does not imply the destruction of warheads. Brooks' statement suggests that the United States is ready, if necessary, to return its mothballed nuclear warheads to service. "A sufficient number of nuclear warheads will be retained to increase deployed forces in case world events require a more powerful deterrent," Linton Brooks said. Russia cannot take advantage of the so-called return potential. “A significant part of our strategic nuclear weapons are exhausting their technical resources, and it is problematic for Russia to maintain its nuclear potential at a rational level,” says Sergei Oznobishchev. According to him, “today it is hardly possible to persuade the United States to agree to additional agreed restrictions if this is not associated with some other obligations of Moscow in areas in which Washington is interested.”
Unexpectedly for many, yesterday Russia and the United States reached a compromise in the UN Security Council - they jointly introduced a draft resolution on the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The meaning of the resolution, according to Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Yuri Fedotov, is “to prevent the threat of WMD falling into the hands of non-state actors, primarily terrorists.” The resolution requires all UN member countries (191 in total) to introduce additional legislative measures to suppress the illicit trafficking of weapons of mass destruction and their components. Secret negotiations on the text of the resolution went on for several months, and, as Mr. Fedotov emphasized, Russia “has done a lot to reach the current compromise option.” The draft resolution echoes the Strategic Nonproliferation Initiative launched by President Bush last year. It provides for the interception of suspicious cargo anywhere in the world, which Moscow does not agree with. Therefore, Russia did not join the Bush initiative, despite the fact that 14 countries have already become members, including seven from the G8. Andrey ZLOBIN |
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