Iowans Should Care about US-Russia Relations
by Paul Deaton“As former General Colin Powell said
in the film, 'The Nuclear Tipping Point,' nuclear weapons are no longer
needed to maintain national defense. They are not relevant.”
Should Iowans care about United States relations with Russia? At Blog for Iowa, we have written often about US-Russia relations in the context of the New START agreement signed by presidents Medvedev and Obama on April 8 this year. The US and Russia own the vast majority of nuclear weapons in the world and nuclear disarmament is a key provision of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. US-Russia relations have meaning in the nuclear disarmament context. If you have not done so, let Senators Harkin and Grassley know that you support ratification of New START by clicking on the links below.
As former General Colin Powell said in the film, “The Nuclear Tipping Point,” nuclear weapons are no longer needed to maintain national defense. They are not relevant. What is relevant is the fact that nuclear weapons exist and bad guys may get their hands on one of them to terrorize us. The smaller the number of nuclear weapons, the fewer chances there are for terrorists to detonate one. In some ways, our relationship with Russia is a cold war legacy that most of us wish could be traded for something else, just like we traded those Russian spies at an airport in Vienna, Austria last week.
Some in the conservative camp have a different view of US-Russia relations. In a recent report, the Heritage Foundation’s Shoumikhin and Spring wrote, “Russia retains a significant nuclear weapons capability and is the only global power capable of threatening the existence of the United States.” Because of Russia’s existential threat to the United States, what remains more important than the New START treaty is negotiation of “a verification and transparency protocol (as a treaty document) to the Moscow Treaty.” According to Shoumikhin and Spring “This is the most immediate and important issue for U.S.-Russian arms control.”
The Heritage Foundation is on no hurry to finalize the New START treaty and underlying their positions is the idea that nuclear weapons serve as mutual deterrence of Russian aggression against the United States. The truth is that the Heritage Foundation’s political action arm, Heritage Action for America calls for stopping the New START Treaty. We can expect conservative senators to use Heritage Foundation’s talking points when they express doubt about ratification of New START during the full senate debate.
At the same time the United States Foreign Relations Committee is holding hearings on New START, with hopes of voting the treaty out of committee before the August recess, Russia is gaining dominance over the United States in other areas. According to Reuters, Russia has taken positive steps to improve its grain exports and the expectation is that they will surpass the United States to become the top exporter of wheat by the year 2019. The United States has dominated the wheat export market since World War II. Bill Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions, a food consulting firm based in Omaha, Nebraska, said in the article, “(Russia is) essentially taking bushel for bushel market share away from the U.S. while we are focused on burning our food (as biofuel).”
Much has been written in the corporate media regarding sanctions against Iran for violating the terms of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. While Russia agreed to a regime of sanctions, in the Russian news outlet, Rianovosti, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said “sanctions will not be a hindrance,” to Russia-Iran cooperation on oil and gas development projects and on nuclear power development. Russia is concerned about the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons but they are trying to thread the needle to balance this concern with potential economic cooperation. This reflects Russia’s pragmatic outlook on international relations and is a source of frustration to some in the US.
The reason Iowans should be concerned about US-Russia relations is that it will take 67 votes for the Senate to ratify the New START treaty. Senator Harkin supports the treaty, and Senator Grassley’s position is “undecided.” While the arms reductions in New START are modest, there is a verification regime and the treaty represents a next step in moving towards reduction of nuclear weapons between the countries that own the most of them. Ratification of this treaty may come down to one vote, and that is why it is important to let Senator Grassley know that we are waiting to see what he will do, and that this vote will have consequences for the senior senator from Iowa. Let's ask him to vote YES on ratification of the New START Treaty by clicking on the links below.
~Paul
Deaton is a native Iowan living in rural Johnson County and weekend
editor of Blog for Iowa. E-mail Paul
Deaton
Click here to contact Senator Grassley on the START
Treaty.
Click here to contact Senator Harkin on the START
Treaty.
Treaty.
Click here to contact Senator Harkin on the START
Treaty.
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