|
Disarmament: Restart of US-Russia START Treaty
-DR. ABDUL RUFF
--------------
According to Moscow sources, Russia's parliament gave preliminary approval to a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty with the USA on 24th Dec, supporting ratification of the new START pact in the first of three required votes. The treaty, signed by Madvedev and Obama in April, cleared its first hurdle in Russia's parliament with a 350-58 vote in a 450-seat State Duma dominated by the ruling United Russia party.
The treaty will cut long-range, strategic nuclear weapons deployed by Russia and the United States to no more than 1,550 on each side within seven years. Deployed missile launchers will be cut to no more than 700 on each side. Russia currently has an estimated 2,600 deployed strategic warheads, while the United States has 1,968. China has 3,000. The agreement also creates an inspection and verification process to replace the one that expired nearly a year ago with the end of the original START accord, leaving the nations with decreased ability to keep tabs on each other's arsenals.
Moscow is concerned that Russia's military might could eventually be undercut by U.S. missile defense plans, which Obama has said will not be restricted by the pact. The preamble of the treaty cites an interrelationship between offensive and defensive weapons. But it places no limits on missile defenses, and Russia stressed it could withdraw if a U.S. missile shield weakened its nuclear deterrent.
However, the “arms reduction” is different from disarmament that requires destruction of all stockpiles of nukes and other strategic terror goods.
Will USA, Russia, UK, France, Israel, India and other nuclear terror powers dismantle their strategic terror materials as per a fixed timetable? And these powers are more likely to cause WW3 sometime in this century. That ends the human race!
I posed this very question in 1992. I would repeat it after a couple of years!
|