No Nukes

Presidents Bush and Putin came to a final agreement on nuclear arsenal reduction, or as the Washington Post points out, "Bush and Putin agreed to the nuclear reduction targets in principle last year, leaving difficult negotiations over details to their diplomats." Unlike Clinton, Bush is doing things the normal way: let the professional negotiators negotiate. The result? A treaty should be signed in Moscow on Bush's May 23-26 trip out there, and the U.S. Senate ought to ratify it without too much difficulty, I would think.

Some people will panic at the idea of reducing our arsenal, but 2,000 warheads is really enough to do all the damage we need to do. The mechanics of nuclear proliferation made both arsenals far bigger than need be so that "cheating" would be much harder. Basically, the idea is that if both superpowers had the ability to succesfully hide 100 nukes, cheating make a big difference if arsenals were small. For our example, say the superpowers agreed to maintain just 500 nukes each; if one side cheated and added the extra 100 that they could hide, it could make a potentially big difference. However, if each side amasses 10,000 nukes, 100 more or less on each side honestly doesn't make much of a difference. Thus, Instant Replay applauds Bush and Putin for making something real out of their cooperation.

The one potential danger of this accord is that the underfunded Russian military could decide that the most profitable way to disarm is to sell their nukes - to China, Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, or others - and that could seriously upset the regional or global balance of power, depending on the scale. I doubt it'll happen, but international observers would go a long way towards ensuring that not too many of these nukes are sold instead of destroyed. On the plus side, a smaller Russian arsenal will decrease the chances of unauthorized nuke sales in the future. Right now they have more than they know what to do with, and the only way to make money with a nuke is to sell it, so that happens occasionally. Scary, huh?