On April 8, 2010 after the signing a new treaty on strategic offensive weapons, the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev declared the need for the signed agreement simultaneous introduction for ratification by the parliaments “so that neither side feels aggrieved.” At the same time the Russian president reminded that in the history of our nations there were cases where one party ratified an agreement and the other did not, referring to the changed situation, and expressed on this subject his fears about the U.S.Senate. And these fears were not in vain ...
Hearings on the appropriateness of ratification of the new treaty on strategic offensive weapons that were held in the U.S.A., revealed the diametrically opposed views on this issue. The most critical part of the opponents of the treaty, mostly representing the Republican Party and the interests of the American military-industrial complex, displayed a resolution to literally torpedo “the Prague agreement” of the Russian and American Presidents. The opponents of the treaty urge the senators to extend the ratification discussion in 2011. Their substantiation thereof is simply banal: they say, there is no reason to hurry with ratification of the treaty. Furthermore the ultimate goal of the opponents of the treaty in general provides for the breakdown of ratification.
How do the opponents of the treaty motivate their position?
Their main complaint is the assumption that it can slow down the process of deploying a national global ABM system and block the establishment of a joint US-NATO anti-missile shield in Europe and around it. Some senators also worry about the imposed by the contract ban on conversion of the mines intended for intercontinental ballistic missiles installation there into mines for placing there interceptor missiles of the ABM system.
The statement of interrelation between strategic offensive and defensive weapons come under criticism too, which on the insistence of Moscow was reflected in the preamble to the treaty. It is noted thereby that our country can withdraw from it referring to a separate article on the conditions of withdrawal from a treaty, as well as to the statement on ABM problematics, specially made by Russia in Prague on the day of its signing. An ambition to keep unimpaired by any means the plans and programs of deployment of the ABM large-scale and multi-layered system is a key motive for objections of opponents of the “Prague agreement”.
American critics of the treaty argue that it will not allow to fully slow the process of modernization of Russia's strategic potential, what may happen by passing into service new perspective types of nuclear delivery vehicles. But the treaty does not provide for the termination of modernization of the U.S. strategic offensive arms either: say, the Pentagon intends to continue this process until the end of this century, on which in the next twenty years 125 billion dollars will be allocated under the plausible pretext of “ensuring a safe and secure storage of strategic nuclear warheads”.
Another objection of the opponents of the treaty signed in Prague is that its realization they say would result in further reducing the U.S. nuclear-missile arsenal which is urgently required if not against Russia then against Iran or North Korea, which are allegedly seeking to create their own nuclear weapons and for this reason constitute a danger to the United States and its allies. Some Republican senators who critically take the treaty say that the Russian-American agreement on ABM in Prague can lead to “disproportionate disarmament of the USA.” In this regard, they require form the current administration to provide them additional information on specific sections of the Prague agreement, allegedly hidden by the White House. In this sense, the opponents of the treaty are trying to raise the question whether Washington has come to some unknown to lawmakers terms with Moscow when writing this treaty?
They bring forward as a reason for the ratification of the treaty on strategic offensive weapons a thesis of Russia’s “significant numerical superiority” over the United States in tactical nuclear systems whereby the most frequently ratio mentioned is 10:1. At the same time we all know that this “advantage” has never existed and does not exist now.
Thus, attacks on the treaty on strategic offensive weapons in the U.S.A. on the part of the forces which are not interested in its ratification and consequently in strengthening the greater security and stability in the world by lowering the levels of nuclear arms, are farfetched by nature and are exclusively aimed at inter-party struggle between Democrats and Republicans. The ultimate goal of this struggle is to prevent Barack Obama’s election for the second presidential term, to revive the weakening U.S. military supremacy in the world, and at the same time to slow, by all manner of means, the development of Russian-American relations.
If the contract will not be approved at all by the U.S. Senate, which is not excluded by experts, in this case it is the U.S. that will bear the entire political and moral responsibility for the failure of the process of reducing strategic offensive arms and other nuclear states involvement in it. It is exactly the U.S. that will have to be responsible to history, if such a step undermine the efforts aimed at addressing the major challenges of our time - widely and consistently strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime. It is the U.S. and no other that will be involved in the fact that by its omission with regard to the “Prague Agreement”” it will reinforce arguments of those who is for the weakening of this regime.
Due to the current situation in the U.S.A. around the treaty on strategic offensive weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that if the Senate delays the ratification of the concluded with Russia new treaty on strategic offensive weapons, it “would undermine” the national security of the United States, “restrict” its possibilities in observation of the Russian strategic nuclear program, which will lead to uncertainty and instability, which in turn would inevitably lead to unpredictability in the military-political situation in the whole world.
