Reagan’s ghost: Starwars stops START

Hopes are fading that the historical treaty between the US and the Soviet Union will be renewed, observes Eric Walberg

Russian confidence that US President Barack Obama might represent a fundamental change in the direction of US foreign policy is fast eroding. Even pro-Western analyst Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre reflects, “The people who see Russia as a problem are still at the Pentagon,” and he predicts that even if Obama lasts another seven years, the Russians are coming to the conclusion that “he may not be able to withstand the pressures on him.”

The hope, as recently s a month ago was that a new version of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (SALT) might be successfully negotiated. But Obama’s two other surges — NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe and the rush to implement the US missile defence system around the world — follow so closely the hawkish policies of his predecessors, that whatever “Atlantists” there might be in the Kremlin have been put on the defensive, so to speak.

To blame Russia for tripping up the START talks, given the facts on the ground, is nonsense. The writing for the present impasse was on the wall even before SALT I was signed. Anyone old enough can remember Reagan in the 1980s with schoolboy enthusiasm showing the media his Disneyesque coloured charts with US satellites zapping UFOs and unnamed enemy rockets.

This was the beginning of the Starwars project which effectively ended the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the US and the Soviet Union sign in 1972 to refrain from developing blanket missile defence systems, the logic being to discourage any thought of launching the unthinkable.

It was only Gorbachev’s willingness to throw in the towel and ignore Reagan’s duplicity, desperate to show some quick results of his perestroika, that allowed SALT 1 to be signed in the first place. The finishing touch came shortly after 911, when Bush II gave notice that the US was formally withdrawing from what is perhaps the most important disarmament treaty in history. Now that Russia is on its feet again, the ghost of Reagan has come back to haunt us.

Asked by a journalist just before the new year what the biggest problem was in replacing the old START treaty, Russian Prime Minister Putin said: “What is the problem? The problem is that our American partners are building an anti-missile shield and we are not building one.” “The problems of missile defence and offensive arms are very closely linked. By building such an umbrella over themselves our partners,” Putin said, with his trademark sarcasm, referring to the US, “could feel themselves fully secure and will do whatever they want, which upsets the balance.” Stating the obvious, he added, “Aggressiveness immediately increases in real politics and economics.”

Rumour has it that Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Putin disagreed over the new START treaty, with Medvedev and foreign policy advisor Sergei Prihodko inclined to ignore Starwars and sign the treaty as soon as possible to score a major foreign policy success for Medvedev. Putin and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, it is said, opposed rushing the deal, reminding Medvedev of Gorbachev’s hasty agreement with Reagan-Bush in the late 1980s and early 1990s which upset the hard-won balance-of-power policies of Stalin through Brezhnev.

But that is unlikely, as almost any Russian will tell you in unprintable language just what he thinks of Gorbachev’s follies. Medvedev would hardly want to be seen as following in these ill-starred footsteps. As his recent statements make clear, Putin is the force to reckon with on such weighty matters, and few Russians would take issue with this, as his enduring popularity shows.

So instead of a “surge” in dismantling nuclear weapons, the Russian government is reluctantly calling for more money to be spent on developing new ICBMs that cannot be disabled by US anti-missile defences. The world can only be thankful that there is some force preventing the militaristic hegemone from launching nuclear war at will.

This is not what Obama had in mind last summer when he scrapped the Bush plan to set up bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, a decision Putin called “correct and brave” at the time. But in early December, the US and Poland signed an infamous “status of forces” agreement, allowing the US to station troops in Poland for the first time, as well as, yes, an agreement to build an anti-missile defence system there, now “mobile”.

What are the Russians supposed to make of this? Just what country are these troops and missiles to protect Poland from? This move can only be taken as an insult to Russia, and is a foolish and provocative step by Poland. And just role does Obama play in this duplicity? Is he a closet peacenik who is being forced against his will to follow the policy begun by Reagan almost three decades ago?

The missiles are scheduled to arrive in Poland in a few months’ time. And yet US Russian-watchers feign dismay at Putin’s warning. “It would be a huge obstacle in the talks if Putin now says we need limits on missile defence as part of this treaty,” frets Steven Pifer of the Brookings Institution. “It would be a huge setback, and it would make the treaty very hard, if not impossible, to conclude,” he moans.

Vladimir Belaeff at the Global Society Institute in San Francisco notes the obliviousness in Washington to its credibility gap with Russia regarding armaments, citing “NATO’s expansion eastward, non-compliance with signed treaties to control conventional armaments in Europe, assurances that American weapons delivered to Georgia would not be used offensively, and the persistence in deploying American weapons in Poland.”

With Obama’s diving popularity (60 per cent of Americans disapproved of his Nobel Prize) and an increasingly ornery Senate, the probability of US ratification of any treaty is not much above zero, so the Russians have nothing to lose by staking out their position to defend the Motherland and waiting for things military to further unravel in the US empire.

What the Russians are up to is well known among Western defence experts. They hailed the failed 13th test of the Bulava submarine-launched ICBM Bulava on 9 December. They were chagrined a week later when an RS-20V ICBM missile was successfully test-fired. The latter is a new version of a Soviet-era missile known in the West as the SS-18 Satan, one of the Soviet Union’s most effective nuclear weapons. The Russian military grimly argue that extending the life of its Soviet-era missiles is a “cost-effective” way to preserve nuclear parity with the US.

US official response has been unimpressive, from the bizarre suggestion that Russia join NATO to the demand that Russia cut its defence and nuclear ties with Iran in exchange for more information about US Starwars plans. Putin brushed such prattle aside by challenging Obama: “Let the Americans hand over all their information on missile defence and we are ready to hand over all the information on offensive weapons systems,” making no reference to any longing to join NATO or to shaft Iran.

Sadly, the present scenario is the classic arms race one: vast sums will be spent by both sides uselessly as their respective economies crumble.

But, maybe all this is a tempest in a teapot, or as the Arab saying has it, salt, which disappears in a drop of water. Andrei Liakhov of Withers Worldwide, London, argues that since the 1960s, “the destructive force of nuclear weapons made them the best deterrent against another global war.” That the proliferation of nuclear states since then merely reinforces this MAD (mutual assured destruction) logic. That rather than a grandiose plan targetting only US-Russian nuclear weapons, strengthening the non-proliferation treaty — which would of necessity include Israel — is the way to go.
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Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/

Obama's Nobel & START: Peacemaker arrives empty-handed

There are many a smirk as US President Barack Obama flies to Oslo to be crowned Peacenik of 2009, but it is the Russians who get the prize for taking the shine off Obama's trophy, notes Eric Walberg

Obama desperately needed a new nuclear arms treaty to replace START I to provide some justification for the Nobel Committee's gamble. The award in the face of US imperial wars and hubris is proving to be extremely embarrassing to everyone, left and right. In awarding the Nobel Prize to Obama on 9 October, the selection committee “in particular looked at Obama’s vision and work toward a world without atomic weapons,” giving him an out, if he could at least bring a nuclear arms treaty with him.

Instead, US inspectors packed their bags last week and left Russian nuclear sites unmonitored for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union almost two decades ago. The expiration of the treaty and stalled talks on a replacement dealt a blow to those in the Obama administration who had hoped to achieve at least this one tangible step before the president goes to Norway.

The Kremlin knows when it has a good hand, and it coolly played along with White House officials frantically trying to broker a signing ceremony for the new START treaty in the Czech Republic on 11 December, after Obama's visit Copenhagen for global climate treaty negotiations and his trip to Oslo. Keep in mind that the Czechs are gung-ho to be part of US missile plans for Europe, which are clearly aimed at Russia as much as any other state. How fitting to have the Russians grovel in Prague and cheer on the war president as the world's symbol of peace and goodwill.

But few children older than six or seven believe in Santa, and the supposedly "minor" details left to negotiate to make sure Santa arrives on schedule at the White House are in fact not so minor.

Moscow December 2009 is not Moscow July 1991, when START I was signed, just weeks before the coup which deposed Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, as the Soviet Union descended into chaos. The original START allowed for US inspectors to live near the country’s primary missile production facility in Votkinsk in the Udmurtia republic, deep in the heart of Russia, and carry out intrusive inspections on demand, something which Gorbachev was in no position to demand from Bush senior.

The need to re-evaluate this lopsided one-way monitoring process just cannot be papered over. It amounts to whether Moscow will accept its subservient role in the US-run nuclear club or not. Russia wants to end the imbalance, while Washington wants to maintain and even increase its access to Russia military secrets.

The other issue -- how many warheads and launchers each side will be allowed -- probably could be settled without too much effort. The Russian government has said it is more than happy to reduce its strategic arms stockpiles by “several fold” if the US would only give up plans for Star Wars and its planned European bases. After all, what difference does it make if you can destroy the world twice as opposed to only once?

But, after Obama promised not to put its missiles in Russia's backyard in September in order to clinch a deal with the Russians to allow NATO weapons and armies to pass through Russia on their way to Afghanistan, his sundry minions have gone out of their way to backpedal. The Czechs and Poles are increasing their troop numbers in Afghanistan, after all, and they are not easily mollified. Likewise, US and NATO officials continue to assure Ukraine and Georgia that they will soon be part of the happy NATO family, despite Obama's obvious lack of interest in thereby further provoking the Russians. These unstated ploys are really just as much sticking points as the officially acknowledged ones.

START I was indeed historic. In 1985, at the height of the Cold War, the US and Russia possessed 23,000 and 39,000 operational warheads each. By 1995, these arsenals were more than halved to 11,000 and 16,000 respectively. When the Soviet Union was dissolved on 31 December, 1991, Russia and the former Soviet republics with nuclear capabilities (Ukraine, Belarus, Kazahkstan) agreed, in the Lisbon Protocol signed on 5 December, 1994, to abide by the treaty until its expiry 15 years later. Daryl Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association, says that since the START I treaty was signed, the US and Russia have slashed their strategic nuclear arsenals even more. "Today, the United States deploys approximately 2,200 strategic warheads, and Russia deploys somewhere slightly above 2,200 strategic warheads today on a smaller number of strategic delivery vehicles."

The treaty looked doomed as time ran out under US president George W Bush, who dismayed the Russians as he pursued a policy of confrontation and encirclement of Russia and launched war after war abroad. But Obama seemed to promise a less confrontation approach with his talk of "pressing the reset button" with Russia, and during his state visit to Russia last July, Obama and Medvedev agreed to hold talks dedicated to extending START I.

With Obama's embarrassing dilemma -- the Nobel Peace Prize and his vow to intensify the war in Afghanistan -- he was keen to bring to Oslo at least a scrap of paper to justify the committee's faith in him. The Russians, eager to change the trajectory of their relations with Washington, played along. However, to expect the Russians to lie down and play dead again was foolish on the part of Obama's advisers. Sergei Markov, a United Russia State Duma deputy, said the main difficulty would be achieving a treaty that viewed Russia and the US as equals.“It was very difficult to negotiate a balance when in the Cold War the balance of power was 50-50, but in the 1990s it was 90-10 for the US. Today we are still far from equals,” he said, hinting at what might be the case if Russia continues its recovery and the US continues its decline.

But it is not just Russia that is the spoiler. Otfried Nassauer, director of the Berlin Information Centre for Transatlantic Security, said the US has also shown obstinacy on some issues for domestic political reasons. Obama needs at least seven Republican votes in the Senate to ensure ratification.

Anatoly Khramchikhin, an analyst with the Institute for Political and Military Analysis, said the political impetus might be lost if talks run into next year. “It is just very hard to bring the interests of both sides into one place,” he said.

As START I was due to expire, the US and Russian presidents issued a joint statement: "We express our commitment, as a matter of principle, to continue to work together in the spirit of the START treaty following its expiration, as well as our firm intention to ensure that a new treaty on strategic arms enters into force at the earliest possible date." In July, Obama and Medvedev agreed to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear warheads to 1,700 each within seven years, a START I Mark II if you like, though they did not sign anything.

So we can hope that Obama's shiny medal will at least remind him of this one small step he has made towards ridding the world of nuclear weapons, a goal that he has expressed more than once. During his visit to Prague in April, for instance, Obama pledged to push for ratification of the 13-year-old Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, much to the displeasure of many a US hawk.

Ironically, it may be easier to pursue his dream without a new treaty, which would need those pesky seven Senate Republicans to get it ratified. The Senate is notorious for balking at approving peace treaties, most notably, the 10-year-old Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines. Obama supported it back in 2006, but as president, apparently is unable to do anything about getting the Senate to ratify it. Bemoans Senator Patrick Leahy: "The administration’s approach to this issue has been cursory, half-hearted, and deeply disappointing. One would hope that an administration that portrays itself as a global leader on issues of humanitarian law and arms control recognises this is an opportunity."

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Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/