Normally, the New York Post is a publication known for tabloid-style stories with a right-wing slant. However, in January 2009, they published a short but fascinating inauguration story on something that has the feel of a whispered legend... but it's entirely real. The story was about the "football":

The nuclear "football" was handed off yesterday without a fumble.

The metal briefcase with the power to launch Armageddon arrived at the Capitol yesterday behind George W. Bush and left trailing President Obama.

Moments after Obama was sworn in, a military aide in full dress uniform holding the black container, which holds the keys to a nuclear strike, crossed the platform to stand closer to the new commander in chief.

The Federation of American Scientists website has more details on "the football", and what the briefcase generally contains.

If you think that the Post's language regarding Armageddon is hyperbolic, think again.

The briefing that Obama got -- and that his counterpart, President Dmitri Medvedev must have gotten -- would include information regarding their respective nuclear arsenals, which are indeed vast, as you can see here:

US, Russian nuclear inventory details.

Image credit: Hans Kristensen, Federation of American Scientists. Click to enlarge.

The number, and manner of deployment, of these nuclear weapons has decreased and shifted gradually over the years:

The US and Russia still have huge inventories of nuclear warheads.

Image credit: Hans Kristensen, Federation of American Scientists.

Several years after the end of the Cold War, in 1991, George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev got together and signed a treaty to limit strategic nuclear weapons:

Presidents Bush and Gorbachev sign[ed] the "Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms" (START I), which calls for the United States and the Soviet Union to reduce their strategic nuclear forces over seven years to 1,600 SNDVs and 6,000 "accountable" warheads, of which no more than 4,900 may be on ballistic missiles. This will result in a cut in strategic warheads of 25 to 35 percent.

As you can imagine, the details of the START I treaty are anything but simple; the path the arms reductions have taken over the years is also not without bumps, but overall, it's obvious that both of our countries have managed to significantly reduce our respective arsenals.

This past summer, Presidents Obama and Medvedev met in Moscow to discuss a new START agreement, because the old one will expire on December 5, 2009. Their Joint Statement was broad but decisive; an excerpt:

Presidents Obama and Medvedev in Moscow, July 7, 2009. Official White House photo by Pete Souza.

The United States of America and the Russian Federation confirm their commitment to strengthening their cooperation to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and stop acts of nuclear terrorism. We bear special responsibility for security of nuclear weapons.  While we reconfirm that security at nuclear facilities in the United States and Russia meets current requirements, we stress that nuclear security requirements need continuous upgrading.  We will continue cooperating on effective export controls that make it possible to prevent nuclear materials, equipment and technologies from falling into the hands of actors unauthorized by the state as well as prevent their use in any manner contrary to obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Negotiators have been working tirelessly and continuously behind the scenes to meet the treaty deadline. Obama and Medvedev met in Singapore during Obama's recent trip to Asia. Though the leaders downplayed any problems with the negotiations on "New START", it has become clear that a new treaty probably won't happen until after the December 5 deadline.

Kingston Reif is Deputy Director of Nuclear Non-Proliferation at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. The other day, we chatted about New START and how there won't be a treaty by the deadline. Reif has previously written about possible obstacles that the US and Russia are encountering, which include verification issues, missile defense, advanced conventional weapons systems, and upload capacity (which is our ability to quickly put nuclear warheads that are in reserves back on delivery vehicles).

In our conversation, Reif explained that since the treaty involves only strategic forces, missile defense will not be mentioned in it, except perhaps in the treaty preamble. However:

In recent weeks we’ve seen a lot of stories and reports on some of the verification issues that have yet to be resolved.  For example, the Russians no longer want to extend us the right to have monitors at their mobile missile production facility at Votkinsk. I think that's an issue. That's obviously something we would like to retain, and the Russians are telling us that "well, we don't have any comparable ability to do that in the US because you are no longer producing new missiles, you stopped doing that, so it would be one-sided if we were to allow you to monitor what's going on at our facility."

Another issue that has arisen with regard to verification is that the Russians have a road/mobile version of their SS-27 missile, which is also known as the Topol-M, and they're resisting efforts on the part of the US to try and monitor and verify the movements of that particular missile. So I think that's also still a sticking point.

Regarding upload capacity, Reif said:

The US basically wants to maintain more delivery vehicles and fewer warheads, whereas the Russians have been reducing their forces by getting rid of delivery vehicles but still maintaining a relatively steady number of warheads.

This relates to the Moscow Treaty, which -- the limits in the Moscow Treaty [SORT] for warheads were 1,700 to 2,200. Basically, we've tried to get down to that limit by taking warheads off of delivery vehicles and just putting them into our reserve. So the Russians are worried that we could just quickly take those warheads and put them back on our missiles and bombers.

But it’s important to keep this in perspective -- obviously, there are stumbling blocks, but the two sides should be able to get around them. I think they'll be able to do so this year, maybe early January at the latest, but I still think there's an excellent chance for an agreement this year.

Most importantly, to those who would say that this is some sort of "failure", Reif pointed out that:

It's important to take into account that the two sides only began negotiating earlier this year, in large part because, as we all know, the Bush administration was not interested in a new arms control agreement to replace START I. They knew that the expiration of START was on the horizon, and they simply weren't interested in doing much about it. The Obama administration's negotiating team entered this in a pretty tight spot, so it was always going to be a challenge to get an agreement negotiated before December 5, to say nothing about actually getting an agreement negotiated, signed, and then ratified by the US Senate by December 5.

Reif feels that there is a good chance that New START will be ratified by the US Senate and the Russian Duma sometime this Spring, and that it will be a far less contentious battle than that we'll see regarding ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Between the time we have a treaty and the time that both sides ratify it, there will be a significant gap. Reif said:

Earlier this month, Sen. Lugar introduced a bill that would give the President the authority to continue to grant privileges and immunities to Russian inspectors to carry out START I’s inspection provisions until June 2010.  Once START I expires, Russian inspectors will have no legal authority to remain in the U.S.  But at this point this bill is more or less a half measure.  It’s not clear that the Russians would reciprocate.  

U.S. officials have stated that they are negotiating a bridging agreement in parallel to the actual treaty to cover the gap but they’ve remained pretty tight-lipped about the details of it.  START I includes provisions for data exchanges, 12 types of inspections, as well as continuous monitoring at certain mobile missile production sites (see Votkinsk).  What’s going to happen to these verification provisions once START I expires?  Neither side simply wants to extend all of them.  Some of them will need to be amended and some new provisions will have to be negotiated.  So the most likely outcome is that the two sides will agree to abide by New START’s provisions on a provisional basis until the treaty is ratified.  What these procedures will be remains to be seen.  We may not get them until the treaty is negotiated.

Finally, Reif left me with a quote by Linton Brooks, who negotiated START I:

To reiterate, there still are issues that need to be resolved. There's no question about that, but I still think we’re very likely to get an agreement by the end of this year.  As Linton Brooks [the US negotiator for START] I put it, "Arms control’s gotta be a little bit painful; otherwise, why do you do it?"

And another reason why I'm optimistic is that both sides don't want to live in a world in which there are no legally-binding limits on or the means of verifying their respective nuclear arsenals.  The further they stray from December 5, the longer they may have to live in such a world.

Let's hope that we do get a New START treaty by the end of the year, and that Senate ratification happens with minimal fuss, with as few Republicans as possible taking the hard-line approach that we saw during the Bush years, and that still surfaces again from time to time.

In a week, President Obama will travel to Moscow to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The agenda items of the summit in Moscow are of course numerous and complex, but it would be a mistake to let human rights concerns get lost in the mix. High among those concerns is the troubling rise in hate crimes in Russia, the government's inadequate response to this trend, and increased harassment – including at times murder – of human rights defenders. These and other outstanding human rights issues could make Russia a far less reliable partner in addressing economic, security, and other issues.

With everyone riveted on the stimulus bill at Obama's presser last night, did anyone notice his remarkable response to a terse (and slightly bizarre) question from press corps doyenne Helen Thomas? He sent a strong signal to Iran, the middle east, Russia and the world at large that the U.S. will take a fundamentally different approach to its relations with other nations.

Thomas asked, "do you know of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?" Obama's response:

With respect to nuclear weapons, you know, I don't want to speculate. What I know is this: that if we see a nuclear arms race in a region as volatile as the Middle East, everybody will be in danger.

Ha! It is I, Vladimir Putin, come to gloat on your capitalist demise. I see your economy failing. I engineer it with cunning and deceit.  I just smile and wink at number 43 and send him on his way. I wait. I am KGB. He sees my soul and I laugh loud, totalitarian gauffaws. I say, how you Yankees put it...my barbaric Yawp! Heh, blue jeans and McDonald's, YES, that will fall the Mighty Bear! You have so little understanding of Russian will. I have been working for my rise to power for 30 years, and you with your designer jeans and 'rock' music think to topple my empire. I now laugh at your insignificance. I only make for crops to rot in fields, you make for your money to disappear in thin air.  Your money is air, your power is air.

Yeah, I know this is 'how many houses' week. But once the smoke settles from McCain's multiple chimneys and the McMSM tires, says their yeah, but's, and returns to the CW of war mongering as an indispensable characteristic of a commander-in-chief, I just wanted to bring Georgia back up. This is my first. evar. diary. And, just to be sure I don't run afoul of the DMCA, I'll be cut & pasting from myself, from an article published in the Carolina Independent Weekly.

When young Mr. Bush told Vladimir Putin in June 2007 that "The Cold War is over," we couldn't have gotten more surefire confirmation that the Cold War was, in fact, alive and kicking.  The recent monkey business in Georgia has been in the pipeline since at least then, probably since much earlier.  

I didn't want to write about this, because thinking about it makes me angry and depressed at the same time.  Our functioning Democracy has been made increasingly dysfunctional by the Bush Administration.  Police have been granted far broader powers to spy on American citizens, according to a new Washington Post article.  Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnsondescribe the expansion of police powers at the 18,000 local branches of law enforcement in the United States.

Mucho mas antes de "flip"

(Crosspost of sorts from Green Mountain Daily) Looking at comments around the blogosphere, as well as the void in my own head, it seemed clear that there's a lot of misunderstanding and good ol' fashioned ignorance about what's going on between Russia and Georgia right now. This diary is an attempt to flesh out the background of the conflict.

There are a few things that even the most casual observer should bear in mind. First, that, like so many conflicts in the modern era, fossil fuels very much complicate the dynamics of what can and should be done, and what is underway. Second, that distinguishing who the good guys are isn't exactly as clean as the media might like to believe.

The word most often used to describe the attack on South Ossetia by Russian news media and by the Russian president himself is Genocide.  Why then, in the four days since war broke out, has the US Media not even mentioned the accusation?  Ask yourself; have I heard this word uttered by anyone on TV describing the situation?  Read it in a headline?

Here's Medvedev himself, explaining their point of view:

"Georgia has exposed South Ossetia to a very crude and cynical aggression. People have died. Russian citizens have died, including local residents and peacekeepers. The actions of the Georgian side cannot be described as anything else but genocide.

"The information we have received suggests that horrible crimes were committed there. People were killed, burnt, run down by tanks, had their throats were cut," Medvedev said.

I have no doubt that if US News outlets would use this term, even just once in a while, even only in context of Medvedev's statement, that the prevailing US attitude would be very different.