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International News Title: Russia Moves Tactical Nukes Closer to NATO While the U.S. and Russia have been publicly crowing about their awesome new friendship for the past two years, Moscows been moving small, ground-based nuclear weapons closer to the borders of Washingtons easternmost NATO allies. Whats a little heightened nuclear tension between buddies, right? As recently as this spring, the Russians have moved their tactical nukes to sites close to their Western frontiers, alarming the Baltic and Eastern European members of NATO, the Wall Street Journal reports. Russias longstanding position is that it wont pull its tactical nuclear weapons behind the Ural Mountains until the U.S. gets its own small nukes out of Europe. True totals of Russian tactical nuclear weapons is a tightly-held secret, but the Federation of American Scientists estimated last year that Moscow has nearly 5,400 of them, with about 2,000 deployed. The Russian nuke movement isnt expressly forbidden by prior nuclear treaties; and the Journal notes that it appeared to coincide with the arrival of NATO missile defense systems near Russias European borders. At the NATO summit in Lisbon this month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev endorsed building a joint NATO-Russia missile defense system over the next ten years a big NATO priority but warned that if universal missile defense couldnt be fielded, a new round of arms race will start. So its tense, but its not necessarily time to dig out that old Sting song out of the record crates. But it also appears to solve a minor mystery in the Senate, where Republican opposition to a U.S.-Russia treaty on much larger nuclear weapons might end up dooming the accord. In September, James Risch, a Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued that a secret U.S. intelligence report on Russian nukes convinced him to put the treaty on hold. You havent seen the stuff that Ive seen, Risch said. The Journal suggests Risch referred to the tactical-nuke movement. The treaty, known as New START, doesnt deal with tactical nuclear weapons from either side. Obama administration officials have told reporters on background throughout the year that they intend to hash out a subsequent treaty with Russia to limit so-called tacs. (WikiLeaks released a diplomatic this week confirming that the U.S. keeps tactical nuclear weapons in Germany, Turkey, Belgium and Holland.) That sets up a chicken-and-egg problem for Team Obama: it says it cant talk tacs until New START gets ratified, but the tactical-nuke issue adds another political obstacle for New START in the Senate. Update, 1 p.m.: For some fascinating background, check out Pavel Povdigs post for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on the NATO-Russian calculus for reducing or maintaining their tactical nuclear-weapons stockpile. Povdig, an expert in Russian nukes, observes that the Russian military devotes more than 600 [tactical] warheads allocated to the countrys air defense, a relic of Cold War decisionmaking, which leads him to conclude that inertia left over from the Cold War seems to be the reason for the current composition of [Russia's] tactical nuclear forces. But the poor state of Russias conventional military compared with the U.S.s makes it difficult for Moscow to abandon its relative advantage in deployed tactical nukes, a menace ably captured by AOLs David Wood. Povdigs bottom line is that NATO and Russia need to reach an accord to pull tactical nukes out of Europe. He doesnt describe the contours of such an accord beyond the generic: itll need to have some kind of verification mechanism; it doesnt have to require either party to declare how many tactical nukes it possesses; and it should put the tacs into storage before eventually destroying them. That reads like Povdig knows how hard reaching such a deal will be, so he just wants to get the anticipated stumbling blocks out of the way. Credit: Wikimedia
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#2. To: Brian S (#0)
lol. When attacked it defends itself!
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