Good News: US started to make good moves towards Russia

Despite that President Obama is not planning to visit Russia yet, even though he is silent about his vision of the U.S. - Russia relations (especially in the field of disarmament), even if Obama is not talking to Medvedev - there is a number of outstanding leading leaders in the United States who work their way to warm up Russian heart and launch a spring time between the U.S. and Russia.

New York Times reports: According to the latest news, three former American secretaries of state and a former secretary of defense were in Moscow on for informal meetings with top Russian officials in an attempt to pull relations between the United States and Russia out of a tailspin before the countries’ presidents meet for the first time next month. A month ago, the Obama administration sent a letter proposing a dialogue on curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions that could diminish American needs for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. Separately, James A. Baker III was in Moscow for a conference and called the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons laudable but said Russian-American relations could be more immediately revived with the measure of resuming talks on prolonging the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or Start I, which expires in December. No replacement has been negotiated for Start I, and Russia’s support for Iran’s civilian nuclear industry is thwarting Western efforts to dissuade that country from enriching uranium that could also be used in a bomb. Along with Mr. Kissinger, former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William Perry and Sam Nunn were scheduled to meet the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, on Friday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/world/europe/20russia.html?_r=1&sq=veterans&st=cse&adxnnl=1&scp=5&adxnnlx=1237557667-KqGD/FzH/+BWtMl8NA7QUw

Bad News: Syrian Nukes...

According to YNET News Syria has nuclear weapon plans. CIA and Israeli officials are surprised and...astonished? Media is quite and we continue to worry about economy more than about a nuclear terrorist attack or other nuclear catastrophe...

A top-ranked Iranian defector told the United States that Iran was financing North Korean moves to make Syria into a nuclear weapons power. The daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung published an article, which went into detail about an Iranian connection and talked about Israel's Sept. 6, 2007, raid that knocked out Syria's nearly completed Al Kabir reactor in the country's eastern desert. The February 2007 defection to the United States of Ali Reza Asghari, a retired general in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards and a former deputy defense minister, provided considerable information on Iran's own nuclear program, said the article, written by Hans Ruehle, former chief of the planning staff of the German Defense Ministry.
For more info: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3689320,00.html

a note from the moderator

My apologies to all the commentators. Due to some reasons, I was not able to work on the blog lately. But now we are back and there are many exciting news.

Interesting thoughts on the Post-Bush future for disarmament

Dear dear friend of mine shared a quite interesting link to some notes by U.S. Nuclear Envoy Ms. Wolcott.
She shares some perspectives on international security regime, its future, nuclear disarmament and etc.


http://www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/hl1112.cfm

Proud Israel, Troubled Iran and No End in Sight for Disarmament

I want to assure dear readers, that I try to be pragmatic and I strongly believe in objective approach to political issues. However, I am also passionate about disarmament and the way international community deals with nuclear weapons. I want to live long on this planet and I want the future generations to never experience a nuclear explosion. Yes, I am for a peaceful international community with greatly reduced dangers posed by nuclear weapons. But, I can not understand immaturity of the current European leaders and a "cold war" based U.S. foreign policy - no change did bring Mr. Obama.

So the news of the day: Israel is proud because of its progress in nuclear energy industry! The only country with nuclear weapons outside any controls, regimes or treaties and the U.S. leadership has its eyes closed on the matter! Of course Israeli lobby is the largest in the U.S. and of course Israel is a strategic point for U.S. in the Middle East - but the rest of the international community is in limbo of how to fit Israel with its nuke into the Middle Eastern quest for peace and disarmament!

Israeli President Shimon Peres the other day stated that the installation of a nuclear reactor is one of the primary achievements of Israel. At the swearing-in ceremony of Israel's 18th Knesset, Peres expressed his happiness about the installation of the nuclear reactor. Oh, well, teasing other Middle Eastern neighbors and Iran is just another habit of the Israeli political established.
On the other hand, European leaders and U.S. already prepared new list of sanctions on 34 Iranian institutions and 10 individuals. It is clear, that Russia was not consulted or involved in this process. "If they have any discussions to that effect, we are not part of them," Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters on Friday. Speaking after a UN Security Council meeting. "We have been talking with our partners in this group of six (5+1) about the need to produce incentives for Iranians to cooperate based on the well-known package of the six."

There should be finally a multilateral approach to dealing with international issues. The U.S. President has to sit at the same table with Russian President, work together towards reduction of nuclear stockpiles and invite other large and politically significant nations to join the concert of powers, not a concert of one power.

Nothing has changed since U.S. changed its leadership, European leaders continue the same course of diplomacy (abusing Russia in everything possible, while trying to gain political influence in economically devastated countries of the former Soviet block. Today, international security situation only worsens, nuclear weapons technologies proliferating from Pakistan to North Korea and Syria, but the Western world only cares about Undemocratic leaders of the world (aka Russia, Iran, Chile)...

I think that the reasons for the current stagnation in international security and roll back in disarmament is fear, selfishness and egoism. In the game of blaming each other and stealing each other's geopolitical points of influence nobody is a winner. It even seems there is no a zero-sum game either...Everyone is at a loss, and security threats only grow