Word: accords
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...resentment. The Bush Administration is not entirely paranoid to imagine that American mistakes - like bombing a Chinese embassy in Belgrade or an Afghan wedding party - are more likely to be the source of international condemnation than those made by other nations. Yet just as it did with the Kyoto accord on global warming, the Administration is making its case with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, giving the impression that it will pick and choose which international obligations it likes. That will merely encourage others to do the same...
While President Bush argues that terrorism, not Russia, is the gravest threat to U.S. security, it was his Administration that thwarted Russia's desire for both sides to destroy the nuclear warheads that are to be taken off alert under the new accord. As long as the U.S. insists on keeping some of those weapons intact to face future threats, Russia is likely to follow suit. That means even more nuclear weapons--retired but still potent--will be crammed into the more than 300 buildings in Russia now holding the Holy Grail of terrorists: atomic warheads or the fissile material...
...that he's selling Russia out in exchange for a pat on the head from the U.S. President. In a poll of Russians published last week in Izvestia, 52% of the respondents said they still view NATO as a threat to Moscow, while a newspaper sourly announced the arms accord with the headline Russia Has Lost the Nuclear War. Still, Putin has kept his generals happy by waging an aggressive and often brutal war in the renegade Chechen republic. And despite some reservations about his foreign policy, Putin remains popular with the Russian people for bringing some order back...
...manage to convince Bush that any nuclear-arms accord should be enshrined in a new treaty, something the U.S. President had insisted was unnecessary. But the treaty itself is a flimsy document. Its three pages include no timetable for the reduction of warheads, just a promise to have it all done by 2012, when it expires, and no formula for establishing compliance. It doesn't require any warheads to be dismantled or destroyed, meaning they can and will be stored for possible use in the future. U.S. insistence on this point was particularly troubling to the Russians, but Putin...
...with Washington. While previous arms-control treaties have painstakingly dictated force structures, this one gives Russia's generals maximum flexibility in the way they deploy nuclear missiles. Even if full membership in NATO remains, as a Bush Administration official puts it, "a long way off" for Russia, the new accord gives Moscow a seat at the table with the alliance's 19 full-fledged members for discussions on fighting terrorism and arms control. There also remains what Coit Blacker, a Stanford professor and close friend of Rice's, calls "the elusive promise of economic cooperation." Putin is beginning to allow...