The START of a New Obama Narrative
“Hundreds of articles about the New START Treaty agreement between Russia and the United States have been published in the past week in media outlets around the world. This one by Joe Cirincione, President of the Ploughshares Fund, published on Huffington Post is worth reading. It is a good follow-on to the president's successful trip to Iowa this week.”
by Joe Cirincione
Days after scoring his biggest domestic policy win, President Obamasecured his first major foreign policy victory. He's on a roll.
The new treaty with Russia, dubbed New START, makes the world a
little safer. It verifiably reduces the threat posed by the only
weapons that can destroy America. It shrinks, at least a little, the
dangerously bloated U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles. But it does
much more than that.
It helps reset the relationship with Russia, whose cooperation is
necessary for progress on Iran, the Middle East, global warming,
European security and many other issues. But it does more than that.
This treaty is the gate through which Obama had to pass to get to the
rest of the new nuclear security agenda. Now, he can move forward
aggressively on agreements to lock up nuclear materials from terrorists,
to stop new nations from getting these weapons, and to begin planning
for a new round of negotiations to go from thousands of nuclear weapons
to hundreds.
To read the rest of the article on Huffington Post click here.
~Joseph
Cirincione joined Ploughshares Fund as president in March 2008. He is author of
Bomb Scare: The History and Future
of Nuclear Weapons
and served previously as senior vice president for national security and
international policy at the Center for American Progress and as director for
nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace for eight
years. He worked for nine years in the U.S. House of Representatives as a
professional staff member of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee
on Government Operations, and served as staff director of the bipartisan
Military Reform Caucus. He teaches at the Georgetown University Graduate School
of Foreign Service and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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