Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov welcomed President Trump’s talk of new arms
control deals with both Russia and China, saying Russia has long been open to having such talks, if there were any talks to be had.
Trump’s talk of three-way nuclear deals emerged last week, and Ushakov
says Russia will definitely take part, if-talks ever emerge. At the same
time, he said that existing nuclear deals should be more closely
respected.
His comments, and those out of the foreign ministry, were relatively
upbeat. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, was a lot less
hopeful, saying that he doesn’t think Trump’s proposal was at all
serious, and that Russia and China had already talked on the matter.
There is hope on all three sides for a deal that could cut the
increasingly exorbitant cost of nuclear arms modernization, while
ensuring that all sides retain a deterrent force that makes nuclear
exchanges unlikely. At the same time, Trump has long talks of arms races
as though he was eager for them, so his sudden suggestion of talks is
being viewed with more than a little suspicion.
China seems to be taking the stand that it will continue to increase its nuclear arsenal until the US and Russia bring theirs down – it appears that they want to increase strategic weapons parity. The US and Russia each have about 7000 nuclear warheads in their inventory. China has about 300.
As such China does not want to join such talks with US and Russia in the present state of imbalance as Global Times reports here: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1147895.shtml
The Report suggests that US warships would not be carrying out provocative “freedom of navigation” exercises so close to their shores if China had strategic nuclear parity.
This is an inevitable result of the large strategic stockpile held by the US and Russia. One could well expect other nations to follow China’s lead in the coming decades – not only with larger arsenals but putting a significant percentage of them on hair trigger alert to match the approximately 1500 that the US and Russia have on such alert. Such countries are India, Pakistan and perhaps Japan and the ROK.
300 nukes or 3 million makes very little difference… it’s parity with conventional weapons that would make the US think twice, along with the fact that China has nukes at all.
In East Asia China has conventional weapons superiority. In the Korean War, China fought the US to a draw and nearly drove it off the Peninsula. China was very weak then. Today China is strong. The US would lose a conventional war in East Asia. It could not even defeat Vietnam!!
You got that right, Cratylus. China does, indeed, have conventional weapons superiority in East Asia. China fought the US to a draw and nearly drove it off the Peninsula during the Korean War, and China was weak at that time. However, China’s much stronger today, and the US would definitely lose a conventional war in East Asia. You’re absolutely right .. It couldn’t even defeat Vietnam!
The momentum now seems to be towards war – mistrust, the clash of rival core interests, perceived existential threats – all point to the inability to prevent a scenario where the nuclear powers will come into conflict. Such is the cyclical nature of history.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
The ONLY difference is that the Mueller report is history.
Now Trump is free to talk to Russians without hysterical
charges of “collusion”!
I do not think it is that simple.
Mueller served his bros in the Deep State by keeping the myth of Russian govt interference in the US elections alive. And the myth lives that they helped Trump even if there was no collusion. So it will remain difficult for Trump to do any negotiations with Putin. It will be decried as payback.
And then there are simply the dead enders who will see and meeting with Putin as evidence that there was collusion after all.
A residue remains and it is dangerous.
Not only did journalism serve as little more than propaganda once again in Russiagate but it kept alive the Russophobia hysteria that threatens peace and even survival. That is the great crime committed by the MSM, the Deep State, the Dems, the Never Trumpers, the progressives (maybe worst of all) and the Hillaryites.
Oddly, or not, it is only trump apologists who ever bring in “russiagate” to a topic on these antiwar pages. It has always been nothing but an excuse for the victim president, and his victim base. Obama, shortly after his election, went to Russia several times and got the Start treaty done before midterms. That, amidst the loud hue and cry from the right over “handing our security to Putin” the whole time. Different men. One goes to work and gets it done, the other whines and makes excuses.
First of all, Obama was able to move in the early days of his administration in 2009 which is necessary with things like this because he did not have anything like Russiagate to contend with. That is number one. And not all conservatives opposed Obama’s new START treaty in 2009. Robert Kagan and others were supportive. In contrast when Trump tried to meet with Putin and actually did so in Helsinki, all hell broke lose. There was little to no support for the meeting among the pwogwessives with the notable exception of a few groups like Code Pink. ( Same with the Singapore Summit BTW.)
What did Obama achieve in New START that was not already in place under the Treaty of Moscow negotiated by Bush in 2002? Let’s do the numbers as Kai Ryssdal says. Wikipedia tells us: “It (Obama’s New START) does not limit the number of operationally inactive stockpiled nuclear warheads that remain in the high thousands in both the Russian and American inventories.” Wikipedia further tells us that the treaty limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, which is only 10% lower than the deployed strategic warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty negotiated by Bush. That is a decrease of 150 deployed warheads out of a total of 1700 left in place by the Moscow Treaty. Tokenism would be kind word for that decrease. It was in fact the treaty of Moscow negotiated by Bush that resulted in a reduction of deployed warheads by two-thirds (!) from 2839 down to 1700 approximately, a reduction of 1139 warheads! That is more than a token decrease.
Again Wikipedia tells us about the Treaty of Moscow: “Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
reported that President Bush directed the US military to cut its stockpile of both deployed and reserve nuclear weapons in half by 2012. The goal was achieved in 2007, a reduction of US nuclear warheads to just over 50 percent of the 2001 total. A further proposal by Bush would have brought the total down another 15 percent.” This last did not happen but even this add on was a bit larger than the piddling reduction negotiated by Obama.
It is pretty clear that Obama’s New START Treaty was by and large cosmetic, as was most everything else he did.
But that does not let Trump off the hook. The Trump of 2019 is a much different man from the Trump of 2016. Instead of fighting vigorously against the witch hunt of Mueller which came up with nothing, he backed away and backed away, squandering most of his administration well past the midterms until he now finds himself in election mode for 2020. He was outmaneuvered by the Deep State and the Hillaryites. But even in 2016 he was impeded by his Achilles heel, obeisance to Israel, which in my opinion offered at the time could well prove his undoing. And so far it has indeed. Israel, the gift that keeps on giving to the cause of US Empire.
But of course the pwogwessives bear a lot of responsibility also for whining about Trump and the hoax of Russiagate rather than backing the Trump of 2016 on his foreign policy initiatives that were worthwhile. Blind hatred, TDS, moved them and so they were easily manipulated – as they continue to be. Helluva job pwogs. They should have honestly admitted at the outset: “MAGA, Mueller Ain’t Got Anything.”
Carpet bomb ISIS cities, waterboarding and worse, kill terrorist families, rebuild the military to greatness, win the wars, take Iraqi oil, I would have won in Iraq, my missiles are bigger than yours,I will defeat ISIS in 30 days with my secret plan, fill and expand Guantanamo, military deployments all secret…that’s what I heard, and that’s what he is trying to do. What did you hear ? Someone is deranged indeed.