Uh, Who’s Being Disingenuous About New START and Missile Defense?

There’s preambular language in the New START nuclear arms accord with the Russians that touches on Russia’s unease with America’s planned system for European missile defense. It’s non-binding and it’s extremely opaque. (“Recognizing the existence of the interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms, that this interrelationship will More…

With Mitch McConnell in the Room, Clinton Makes Robust Case for New START Ratification

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is giving a speech right now at the University of Louisville about nuclear security. Its overall purpose is to build a domestic political constituency for “a vision of a world in which nuclear materials are not easily available and all states adopt responsible stewardship More…

Outright Misreadings Fuel GOP Opposition to New START

Quelle surprise. Eli Lake reports today that regardless of Sen. Richard Lugar’s (R-Ind.) support for the New START nuclear-arms reduction treaty with Russia, the Republican leadership is signaling its dissatisfaction with the treaty:

“Republicans have made clear for months what needs to be done in order to move this

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As White House Assures Senate on Missile Defense, Obama Makes Reaganesque Offer in Prague

While you were sleeping, Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev traveled to Prague and signed the New START nuclear-arms reductions accord, pledging to reduce their countries’ nuclear arsenals by 30 percent and cap the deployed missiles, submarines and bombers that deliver nukes at 700. The task before the White More…

Obama Administration Declines to Credit Missile Defense Shift for Positive Russia Results

Whether it’s intellectual honesty or another case of a liberal refusing to take his own side in an argument, yesterday at the United Nations, several senior Obama advisers flat-out refused to say that last week’s decision to refashion ballistic missile defense in Europe had anything to do with some comments More…

Pentagon: Gates, Joint Chiefs Support for Obama’s Missile Defense Program Is Real

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told our own Dave Weigel that “those in the Pentagon who do answer to the commander in chief and have to answer for his policy decisions” aren’t “at a point of liberty where they can speak their minds” on the overhauled missile defense system. More…

Russia Sure Seems to Like NATO Cooperation on Missile Defense

A later version of the Associated Press story I cited on joint NATO-Russia missile defense has this reaction from Russia’s emissary to NATO:

Since 2003, NATO and Russia have staged at least four simulated missile defense exercises. Both sides say they were successful.

“They showed (NATO’s and Russia’s)

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Clinton: If You Support Missile Defense, You Have to Support Obama

I had some technical problems during my livebloggery this morning and our content-management system erased my capture of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s endorsement of the administration’s big missile defense decision. Luckily my Olympus DS-330 digital recorder doesn’t sleep, because sleep is the cousin of death, and so More…

A NATO-Russia Missile Shield?

It went kind of underneath the radar yesterday when President Obama decided to replace the proposed outdated-before-it-was-ever-built anti-ballistic missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic with a new four-phased plan for Iran-based missile defense, but Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had an More…

A Tale of Two Defense Secretaries

Iran is placing extraordinary emphasis on its ballistic missile and WMD development programs. The ballistic missile infrastructure in Iran is now more sophisticated than that of North Korea, and has benefited from broad, essential, long-term assistance from Russia and important assistance from China as well. Iran is making very rapid

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