STARTing TO RETHINK OUR FOREIGN POLICY

The US Senate, during its “lame duck” session, is currently being urged by President Obama to ratify the START treaty with Russia, signed by Obama and President Medvedev of Russia last Spring. The treaty, upon ratification, would subsequently renew the Arms Reduction negotiations we have had with Russia since the end of the USSR, and would further lower our nuclear warhead count to 1,550. (SOURCE)

It seems all roads point to the eventual renewal of this treaty... Followed by the claim to diplomatic victory for the US... Followed by the proclamations of the great gains for world peace, international cooperation, and global nuclear deterrence...

It seems our choices are to follow those for the treaty, and consequently be pro-world peace, or to follow those opposed to the treaty, and be pro-nuclear development to the point where the US has an unchecked, unnecessary right to develop an unlimited amount of nuclear warheads however we would enjoy doing so.

But let’s take a close look at what this treaty even begins to entail. These disarmament treaties deal with only one of three categories of nuclear warheads. It is said that we will have reduced our amount of nuclear warheads by 80% by the completion of the terms of this treaty, but that is only counting one of the three types of nuclear warheads that exists in American and Russian “arsenals”. According to the Guardian, (SOURCE) there is a difference between “deployed”, “reserve”, and “retired” warheads (not to mention all the short-range nukes we have that don’t concern Russia). The treaty only counts and addresses the “deployed” warheads. Furthermore, in fulfilling the terms of a disarmament treaty, we often imagine the removal and destruction of the these “deployed” warheads from our warehouses. Instead, it has been more common in recent years for ourselves and Russia to simply remove warheads from their missiles and place them in a bunker somewhere, where they are still kept under constant maintenance. They are then counted as “reserve” warheads instead. The largest amount of nuclear weaponry, though, is found in the stockpiles of “retired” nuclear arms owned by the US and Russia... and somehow, this is the number that nobody counts, even though there is no reason they cannot be reassembled and used if the “security needs” of one country might demand so... (for more information on current state of global nuclear developments check out the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)

I’m not writing today to simply rail on the START treaty and its essential uselessness. Instead, I wonder why we need START or anything like it begin with. Wasn’t it Jefferson who said “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.” ..?... Was it not George Washington who stated, “'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign world.”...?... Was our government not elected to act in representation of the American people and not the Russian people?

Perhaps treaties like this can be a grand thing promoting gains in international cooperation as never seen before. But to what point and to what avail? At what point is our “leadership” in the world going to be a debilitating thorn in the side of our federal government? When will the concerns and demands of the “international community” start to trump those ordinary concerns of our very citizens? Or have topics like Iran, North Korea, China and Russia already become more time-consuming for our elected officials than topics like education and American industry?... Perhaps it was times such as these that our very founding fathers were warning us about...

-E.C.Mignanelli