Last month, in a speech at Berlin's historic Bradenburg Gate, U.S. President Barack Obama called for continued reductions in American and Russian nuclear armament.
Presently, the United States and Russia have more than 15,000 nuclear warheads combined. Under the conditions of the New START treaty signed in 2010, both countries nuclear stockpiles would be limited to around 1,500 per nation by 2018. In Berlin last month, Obama called for as much as a 66% reduction on top of the New START numbers.
All things considered, it's a pretty good plan.
Michael O’Hanlon and Steven Pifer of the Brookings Institute call it "pragmatic and sensible" in a Reuters op-ed. The two experts note that:
- Having so many nukes is redundant. "It is hard to imagine ... that more than tens of nuclear warheads would ever wisely be employed against an adversary. "
- The idea that you could use nukes to destroy nukes is ridiculous.
- Russia may be surprisingly receptive. "Moscow may also wish to save the money required to stay at New START levels as its Soviet-era systems age and require replacement.
We spoke with Pifer, a former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine and a nuclear armament expert, last month about a range of topics from Edward Snowden to nuclear arms reduction.
Pifer commented on the likelihood of further nuclear reductions: “My own sense is that they still may have some incentives to explore the idea, so I haven’t totally written it off."
Pifer said that progress hinges on a meeting scheduled between presidents Obama and Putin in September: “I think in September when the two presidents meet will be an opportunity to see whether they can define a way forward that introduces greater areas of cooperation on the U.S.-Russian agenda."
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