U.S. & Russia Agree to New START Treaty

We are finally making some advancements in getting rid of these vestiges of the Cold War (don’t tell Dick and Liz Cheney, they’ll have a meltdown):

And here is the whole briefing but the quality isn’t great- the quality gets better and it has all of Secretary Clinton’s remarks and not just an excerpt. She speaks after Obama:

From Laura Rozen:

President Barack Obama announced Friday that that the U.S. and Russia have finalized a new strategic arms reduction treaty that will reduce the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals by a third.

“I’m pleased to announce that after a year of intense negotiations, the United States and Russia have agreed to the most comprehensive arms control agreement in nearly two decades,” Obama said at the White House press briefing Friday, flanked by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen.

“Broadly speaking, the new START treaty makes progress in several areas,” Obama said. “It cuts — by about a third — the nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia will deploy. It significantly reduces missiles and launchers. It puts in place a strong and effective verification regime. And it maintains the flexibility that we need to protect and advance our national security, and to guarantee our unwavering commitment to the security of our allies.”

Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will sign the new treaty in an April 8th ceremony in Prague, where Obama gave a major nonproliferation speech a year ago calling for moving towards a world without nuclear weapons.

Under the treaty, the U.S. and Russia will be limited to 1,550 nuclear warheads within seven years from the date it enters into force. Each party has the flexibility to determine for itself the structure of its strategic forces within the aggregate limits of the treaty, a White House fact sheet said. “These limits are based on a rigorous analysis conducted by Department of Defense planners in support of the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review,” which Defense Secretary Gates would be issued shortly.

Obama appealed to a “strong tradition of bipartisan leadership on arms control” to encourage Senate ratification of the new START treaty.

“Presidents of both parties have recognized the necessity of securing and reducing these weapons,” Obama said. “Statesmen like George Shultz, Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, and Bill Perry have been outspoken in their support of more assertive action. Earlier this week, I met with my friends John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) to discuss this treaty, and throughout the morning, my administration will be consulting senators from both parties as we prepare for what I hope will be a strong, bipartisan support to ratify the new START treaty.”

Clinton said she looks forward to working with her former colleagues in the Senate to try get swift ratification of the treaty.

Later, she quipped, in response to a question from a Russian journalist about ratification prospects, that Obama had offered President Medvedev to send Rahm Emanuel to Russia to help him get the Duma to ratify the treaty. Smiling, Clinton said “we in” Obama’s national security cabinet “immediately endorsed” the idea…

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