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The problem I have with these treaties is that they are with the wrong country. Russia is fast becoming a strategic partner, and it is hard to imagine a scenario today where we would go to war with each other. China on the other hand is modernizing and building up it's military at a frightening pace. What we're going to find out ten years from now is that we have nothing to fear from the Russians, but because of unnecessary arms control agreements with them we are outgunned by the Chinese who are surely celebrating our stupidity. Imagine the negotiations next time one of our planes is forced down and we have 2,000 warheads and the Chinese have 20,000.

Russia remains a clear and present danger to the US. Pretenses aside, it is no US ally as this author has repeatedly pointed out. Interestingly enough President Bush and Condi Rice recognized this during the campaign with their repeated expressions of reservations about President Putin and their refusal to meet with him during the first five months of the administration. Rice stated in 2000 that "there is much reason to be optimistic about President Putin." Bush declared "anyone who says he knows what Putin is up to is just blowing smoke."

The turning point came when Bush began to smart under attack from his European allies for his "unilateralist" foreign policy and was counseled by British PM Tony Blair to lay off the criticisms of President Putin's genocide in Chechnya and his authoritarian suppression of dissent at home. Bush then decided that he wanted to be well-liked not only by the US people, but by Europeans as well and thus arranged a meeting with Putin in Slovenia in June 2001 predeterming the outcome with a declaration to his advisors that he would use the meeting to declare a new found friendship with the Russian President according to a recent article in Time magazine.

There Bush melted in the face of KGB spymaster Vladimir Putin's charm offensive declaring in Chamberlainian terms that he had "looked into Mr. Putin's soul and found that he was a man he could trust." Bush proceeded to declare that he had achieved "peace in our time" and has caved to Putin and appeased him on just about everything but the ABM Treaty ever since. The list of Bush appeasements to Russia includes the Moscow Treaty which mandates that the US eliminate 75% of its deployed strategic nuclear deterrent while enabling the Russians to keep their MIRV'd missiles, joint development of US missile defenses with Russia and the award of a de-facto veto to Russia in NATO's highest policymaking counsels. In return, Putin has proffered only one major concession--allowing a few thousand US troops to be stationed in still Communist controlled Central Asia. Appeasement of dictators has failed every time it has been tried. It failed in 1938 and it will ultimately fail here.

As far as Communist China is concerned, they currently possess only 2300 nukes to our 8000. By 2012, the US will reduce to 3700 nukes and Communist China could potentially surpass us by that time though I think 20,000 nukes is a pretty unrealistic projection.

I share your concern for this piece of paper.

But since
the treaty does not require any reductions in deployed warheads whatsoever until the treaty comes into force in 2012
just maybe events will eclipse the reason to hold to this treaty like the ABM treaty that was just nullified.

Yes, so instead of blowing up the world 6 times, you can do it 8 times...end result? You guys are hillareous. Do you even have a concept of how big a crater, blast zone, fire ball and deadly nuclear radiation a 25 megaton city buster has? Try this: everything within 30 KM is dead, the fall out is much worse. Now, try and challenge your brain to come up with 1000 targets, let alone 2000+. But then again, you've got the same virus that Hitler and Stalin had: Bigger MUST be Better....more, more, more...you need to watch Doc. Strangelove a few times. Maybe you can lead in the cave race.

There Bush melted in the face of KGB spymaster Vladimir Putin's charm offensive declaring in Chamberlainian terms that he had "looked into Mr. Putin's soul and found that he was a man he could trust."

Or, Bush was able to overcome his previous cold-war misconceptions and realize that Putin was a good man. Some people can move on, some remain stuck.