Senior US and Russian diplomats met in Geneva on Thursday and agreed to establish two working groups to pursue further arms control and strategic stability talks. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman led the US delegation, and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov led the Russian side.
“The two delegations agreed to form two interagency expert working groups — the Working Group on Principles and Objectives for Future Arms Control, and the Working Group on Capabilities and Actions with Strategic Effects,” the State Department said in a statement.
The talks were the result of the June summit between President Biden and Vladimir Putin. Sherman and Ryabkov met once back in July and plan to meet again after the working groups hold a series of talks on their assigned issues.
Besides agreeing to establish working groups, no breakthroughs were made in the meeting, and the progress on arms control appears to be very slow. The US and Russia are down to their last nuclear arms control treaty, known as the New START, which limits the number of missiles, bombers, and nuclear warheads each power can have deployed. Early in his presidency, Biden and Putin agreed to renew New START for a five-year extension.
The Biden administration also had an opportunity to salvage Open Skies, a treaty that allowed unarmed surveillance flights over participating countries, but chose not to. After Biden and Putin agreed to extend New START, Moscow signaled it was open to the idea of reviving Open Skies. But in May, the Biden administration notified the Russians it would not rejoin the treaty.
Wonder why the Deep State is so concerned about Open Skies.
In any case, there are so many new weapons systems on the go there’s not much they can practically agree upon.
More to the point, the U.S. is hopelessly in debt, but Russia is broke.
That oddly enough places them on even terms to continue an arms race to see who collapses first…
Russia is not broke. They have little debt, huge amounts in gold reserves, and typically run a budget surplus. They run a tight macroeconomic ship.
Russia is broke; they have no debt, but neither could thay take on any. Who’d stake that loan?
The U.S., is worse than broke, they’re in debt past their economic potential and live of world reserve currency status. On the other hand, the U.S. is so wealthy, a dynamic second Mackindernan world heartland, they make a great never-drying cash cow.
Being broke or not is all about the cash flow as much as assets.
Russia, is like a wealthy person whose cash is tied down in wealth that can’t be liquidated very quickly, but its there. The U.S.A., is like an massively indebted rich person who’s too big for bankers to fail but always makes payments juuuust on time.
Russia is not interested in taking on any debt. They learned their lesson about that in the 90’s. They have enough resources to last them for generations and huge gold reserves. They are 6th largest economy in terms of PPP and they are careful not to run budget deficits. They’re in a much better long term position than the US, which will likely collapse when it loses reserve currency status.
Here too, I don’t think these Biden peace initiatives are any more authentic than those with Iran. This could be the Zionist Empire feigning rapprochement to neutralize China & Russia while it destroys Iran.