START Renewal By April?
March 10th, 2010
Last week, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his country and the U.S. were “close to an agreement” on renewing START and hoped negotiations would be wrapped up soon.
This week, the Associated Press reported that a renewal could be finalized by next month. Russia wants access to our missile defense strategy and blames the U.S. for stalled negotiations. Displeased by our Bush-era plans to deploy missile shields to Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia believed the U.S. was capitulating when President Barack Obama dropped those plans. But Russia’s ire has been rekindled. The Obama administration intends to deploy missiles to Poland capable of intercepting shorter range weapons.
One of Russia’s sticking points to START renewal was linking defensive and offensive weapons. Both sides have agreed to the link.
Under the old treaty, signed by Russia and the U.S. in 1991, both countries agreed to reduce nuclear warheads to 6,000 and delivery vehicles to 1,600. Eleven years later, the Moscow Treaty, a follow-up to START, required warhead reductions to between 1,700 and 2,200. Medvedev and Obama reportedly agreed to reduce deployed warheads to between 1,500 and 1,675.




Russia and the U.S. have yet to reach an agreement to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START – also called START-1), set to expire on December 5.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with President Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday to discuss how Russia and the U.S. will deal with Iran. Clinton echoed the president’s resetting Russian relations meme, and promised to stop criticizing the former Soviet Union about its human rights abuses, unlike the Bush administration.
The web is buzzing about two nuclear-powered Russian submarines spotted off the East Coast, a scene right out of the Cold War. U.S. Northern Command spokesman Michael Kucharek said the U.S. is monitoring the submarines. Russia did not alert the U.S. in advance of these patrols. (
Keith B. Payne, a member of the Perry-Schlesinger Commission, established by Congress to assess U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities, says President Barack Obama’s agreement with President Dmitry Medvedev to reduce nuclear arms to their lowest levels since the Cold War is jumping the gun. (