President Obama Plans Disarm More Nukes

     According to the Associated Press, the president is working on a planned negotiation to reduce the amount of deployed nuclear arms held by the U.S. and Russia.  The amount of nuclear weapons to be disarmed is even higher than the originally planned reduction set forth in a 2002 treaty between the two nations, according to an article on npr.org.  The originally negotiated amount of nuclear warheads for deployment by either nation was listed on page three of the New Smart Treaty as 1,550 per nation.  However, it has been a main area of focus of President Obama to lower this number by even more.  According to an article on armytimes.com, the new proposition could lower the number of U.S. warheads by as much as 80% of the original agreed amount.  This could mean that we would only have as many as 300 active nukes in our possession.  Even though it would seem that 300 nuclear bombs should be more than enough to protect our interests, many Republicans are against this move.  They feel that it would jeopardize our abilities to shield our allies, such as, Japan and Turkey.  They also believe that this drastic of a reduction could complicate things with unstable countries such as Pakistan and Iran.  The other major concern is that Russia most likely would not make this same commitment.  The main reason many are backing this reduction is the belief that our modern threats of terrorism cannot be fought with thousands of nuclear bombs, which is true, but the same countries that are threatening us with terrorism are gaining access to the tools and the information needed to build nuclear weapons, which means that we have more risks of nuclear attacks from more countries then ever before.
     I agree that the U.S. should set an example of global protection by reducing our nuclear stockpile.  This would give us more credibility when negotiating with nations like Iran and trying to limit their resources in developing weapons, but if we are going to make such major reductions, we need to have commitments from other nations like Russia and China.  If we take these measures into our own hands, we will be giving up our biggest edge in global warfare.  Without at least Russia's commitment, we could be burned by this in the fairly short future.  There has already been much speculation of countries like Iran getting nuclear resources from Russia and other former Soviet states.  We do not know how stable the Russian government will be in the decades to come nor do we know who their future allies will be.  Making this large of a reduction seems to have much more risk than benefit.
     Ultimately I see this measure being discussed and hopefully voted on by Congress.  If this is the case, then I do not see it happening.  The other thing to consider is that this is definitely another campaign driven agenda for Obama.  If he is not reelected then I also do not see this discussion going any further than just discussion.  However, if reelected this could become a reality.  I think that the previously negotiated reductions should be just fine for now.  We need to see how things develop in the east before making any other drastic changes.  With new governments emerging and the political unrest that comes with them, it is too hard to predict who our friends and enemies will be.  Until then, we need all the weapons we have just in case.