That's it! It should be a huge red flag for all of us as to what a second Obama term might look like once he doesn't have to worry about re-election.
The Senate Refused to take up the SALT II Treaty for discussion because the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. That put a damper on all US-USSR relations. We withdrew from the Moscow Olympics and so did the rest of the world, we re-instituted draft registration (which we are still doing for no good reason) and it looked like for an hour and a half that Carter might have a pair of testicles..
Look, both we and the Russians would like to see further reductions in nuclear weapons. For obvious reasons. Many of these weapons are old and unreliable, and we don't need that many of them. The Russians would like to see us take Missile Defense off the table before they go back to their people and say it's a good thing. Understandable. You don't want to reduce yourself to 100 missiles when you can shoot them down. That makes you want to have more missiles than they could possibly shoot down.
This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Disarmerment has been a goal of both Republican and Democratic presidents since the 1960's.
Only because a guy who hid from military service doing missionary work in France wants to look tough now are we even discussing this stupidity.
A reasoned argument and one I will even think about. At the same time, I remember Reagan saying let's work on SDI and get it up and running and then give it to everybody. And that will end the threat of nuclear war. He was ridiculed and damned and accused of the worst sorts of things by the Democrats for even suggesting that we would give our technology away to the enemy.
There is a lot of history on both sides that factors into what is and what is not reasonable.
Russia has no reason to fear any manner of aggression, much less nuclear attack, from any European nations. Given Russia's long history of aggression, threats, doing deals with viscious totalitarian regimes, and annexing neighboring nations, many if not most European nations have a great deal of reason to distrust a rearmed and newly ambitious Russia. And to distrust any agreements to reduce armaments. So for that reason, if no other, a missile defense system at least makes the people feel better whether or not it is 100% effective. And only a nation who wanted military superiority would care whether those countries had a missile detense system.
We might even question whether a President who acquiesced to Russian demands to shelve a missile defense system might have great sympathy for the country that was the greater threat to the others? I'm not saying that is the case because I don't know. But the question hangs out there.
Nobody, other than suicidal or kamikazi type fanatics presumes to mess with the USA because we have ability to wipe any aggressor off the face of the Earth should we choose to do so. Nor does anybody fear unprovoked attack or invasion by the USA.
Russia is a very different ballgame.
