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Barack Obama plans 'dramatic reductions' in US nuclear weapons stockpile. Headline only.

The United States has informally told Japan it will retire its sea-based Tomahawk cruise missiles carrying nuclear warheads, in line with President Barack Obama's policy to pursue a world free of atomic weapons, government sources said Monday. Washington said the move would not affect the nuclear umbrella, addressing concerns in Tokyo about the step's effect on U.S. deterrence against potential attacks from China, North Korea or other countries, the sources said. The retirement will probably be stipulated in the Nuclear Posture Review, a new nuclear strategic guideline the Obama administration is slated to submit to Congress next month, they said....

This nation is face-to-face with disarmament by entitlement. On the morning of Jan. 19, the American national debt stood at $12,276,477,277,649.25, according to the US Treasury. Call it $12 trillion, close to a year’s worth of national economic output. Every US citizen—man, woman, and child—owed an average of $39,900 to the nation’s creditors. By the time you read this, the figure will be higher, since the debt grows by $4 billion per day. In fact, US indebtedness, which was $5.7 trillion in 2000, is expected to hit a towering $21 trillion in this decade. This can’t go on, yet it...

The Obama administration will move ahead with Senate ratification of a treaty banning nuclear tests that was voted down by Republicans more than a decade ago, Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. said Thursday. In a speech setting out the administration's arms-control agenda, Mr. Biden also said the United States will continue to pursue President Obama's call for the elimination of all U.S. nuclear arms, but defended spending $7 billion in the coming year to repair an aging arsenal.

Russia and the United States are close to deciding their nuclear weapons disarmament treaty, President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday, ahead of talks to hammer out the new deal due to resume in February. "The negotiations are going well, we agree on 95 percent of the issues in the new deal", the Russian leader said, cited by Russian agencies from southern Krasnaya Polyana, adding he was "optimistic for the (conclusion of the) deal". Russian-US discussions over the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) took place Thursday in Moscow, according to a Russian military and diplomatic source.

The US wants to open Cold War-style arms reduction talks with China to prevent future military confrontations, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, said in New Delhi on Wednesday. His comments appeared to confirm Washington's acceptance of China as a military superpower amid growing regional concerns over its build-up in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. China is currently undergoing a major overhaul of its armed forces. Beijing's increasing number of nuclear submarine deployments have caused alarm in India, which regards China as its main regional rival. China has further antagonised India by increasing military co-operation with India's rival Pakistan, which...

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama's plan to begin phasing out nuclear weapons has run up against powerful resistance from officials in the Pentagon and other US agencies, a US newspaper reported late Sunday. Obama laid out his vision of a nuclear-free world in a speech in Prague last April. But citing unnamed officials, the newspaper said the Obama administration is now locked in internal debate over a top-secret policy blueprint for shrinking the US nuclear arsenal and reducing the role of such weapons in country's military strategy. The Pentagon has stressed the importance of continued US deterrence, an objective Obama has...

MINSK (Reuters) – The United States and Russia will sign a deal this year to cut vast Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons but may miss an early December deadline, a Kremlin source told Reuters on Friday. Diplomats from the two biggest nuclear powers are trying to prepare a new agreement on cutting atomic weapons before the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires on December 5. The new accord will be signed "in a European country" in December, the Kremlin source told Reuters in Minsk, where President Dmitry Medvedev was meeting regional leaders. "We may not be able to do...

Disarming America by J. R. Nyquist Weekly Column Published: 10.16.2009 Print As part of the next arms reduction treaty between superpowers, the United States has tentatively agreed to unprecedented Russian access to American nuclear missile sites. According to published accounts, Russian weapons inspectors will be given an open door to American nuclear sites in order to monitor the number of missiles and warheads. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is quite satisfied with the deal. Perhaps it is an error of omission, but there is no news of a similar concession from the Russian side. This is psychologically and strategically significant:...

Threatening Iran with more sanctions would be counterproductive, Russia's foreign minister declared Tuesday, resisting efforts by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to win agreement for tougher measures if Iran fails to prove its nuclear program is peaceful. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke as Clinton visited Moscow, her first trip since becoming America's top diplomat

In the midst of one of the greatest existential threats of our times, President Obama is pursuing severe reductions in US military strength.  His recent statements at the United Nations have merely added fuel to the fire. When combined with his pledge to reduce US nuclear weapons stockpiles by 80 percent, a clear pattern emerges. These actions would seem irrational, even by Obama's standards, if they weren't in keeping with a 50-year old strategy aimed at unilaterally disarming the United States in order that a "progressively strengthened" UN Peace Force might be established. This idea has been steadily advanced during...

During his appearance at the United Nations, Barack Obama envisioned a world without nuclear weapons. We think we found this imaginary world and where it came from, as shown in the animation (http://www.stentorian.com/cartoons/2008/obama_movie.gif, Barack Obama's Amazing Acid Trip to a World Without Nuclear Weapons). Meanwhile, with due credit to Jefferson Airplane for the original, The red pill makes you larger And the blue pill makes you small And the pain pill that Barry will give you Won’t do anything at all Go ask Barry When he’s ten feet tall And if you want nuclear disarmament And you know anything at...

President Obama's dream of a world without nuclear weapons seems more like a nightmare to Russia and other nations that possess doomsday arms. Obama is pushing on a door that is closed, barred from inside and locked with a key that has been thrown away as far as the Kremlin is concerned. This harsh reality does not mean that the president should abandon his effort, which is a useful tool in his broader, more urgent campaign to change America's image abroad. It does mean that Obama should temper his rhetoric and avoid adding atomic abolition to the growing list of...

The right is calling Obama weak, but his wily foreign policy is paying off The spluttering of the American right — and some European conservatives — over Barack Obama’s foreign policy reached a new level of vituperation last week. “Is Obama naive?” pondered Michael Ledeen at National Review. “I don’t think so. I think that he rather likes tyrants and dislikes America.” Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation wrote in The Daily Telegraph: “[Obama’s] appeasement of Iran, his bullying of Israel, his surrender to Moscow, his call for a nuclear-free world ... have all won him plaudits in the large...

When it comes to the nuclear-weapons issue, President Obama wants to be a global community organizer. However, what we really need are some tough beat cops with a mandate to clean up the neighborhood. On Thursday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution drafted by the United States that calls upon, urges, encourages, but does not require U.N. member states to take various actions to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Mr. Obama chaired the meeting and pressed the vision of a nuclear-weapons-free world that he had introduced in April. In the practical world of counterproliferation, the president...

President Obama appreciates "teachable moments," so let's all discuss this week's lesson in arms control theory and practice. The President brought his soaring sermon about "a world without [nuclear] weapons" before the U.N. General Assembly. He called for a new arms control treaty and won Security Council support for a vague resolution on proliferation. On cue yesterday, Iran showed the world what determined rogues think about such treaties. On the evidence of his Presidency so far, Mr. Obama will not let that reality interfere with his disarmament dreams. The disclosure that Iran has a second facility to make bomb-grade fuel,...

Defense Spending: The TARP bailout may hit $24 trillion, but the Senate says the F-22 is too expensive to build and maintain. So why are the Japanese so desperate to buy this "unnecessary" Cold War weapon?By a vote of 58-40, the Senate on Tuesday voted to remove $1.75 billion set aside in a defense bill to build seven more F-22 Raptors, adding to the 187 stealth technology fighters already in the pipeline. After some hope the production lines would be kept open, the Senate succumbed to arguments by the administration and others that the fighter was too expensive, too hard...

Defense: By a narrow margin, a House subcommittee has voted to keep open the F-22 Raptor production line. The future of American air dominance and the fate of the world's most capable fighter hang in the balance.On May 30, with North Korea huffing and puffing about nuclear war, the first of 12 high-tech U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter jets landed at Kadena Air Base on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. It was just days after North Korea unnerved the region by detonating a nuclear device. There were reasons the F-22 was deployed to Japan. The stealthy, radar-evading fighter jet is...

Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after midnight I was informed in a telephone call by President Barack Obama that (his) administration had decided to pull out from the planned missile defense shield installations" in the Czech Republic and Poland, the...

Undermine our allies. Embolden our enemies. Diminish our country. Those nine words define the Obama doctrine with respect to American security policy. All three elements were much in evidence in the president's benighted decision last week to cancel the "third site" for intercontinental-range missile defenses in Eastern Europe. They will be on display as well during this week's several conclaves with foreign leaders. The cumulative effect is predictable: A world in which the United States has fewer friends, more enemies and fewer options for assuring its security. Let's start with the decision to abandon defense of our allies and the...