#3
Newsday
February 7, 2002
Editorial
Nuclear Deal
Bush sensibly agrees to Russia's plea for a binding agreement on cuts in nuclear arms.

The White House is making the right decision in agreeing to meet Russia's demand for a legally binding agreement on steep mutual reductions in the two nations' nuclear arsenals. Now President George W. Bush should follow this positive policy shift with assurances that the nuclear warheads targeted for reduction will be destroyed and not simply stored away.

Until now, the White House had rejected Russia's insistence that the cuts pledged by Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin last November be put in a signed form - either an executive agreement with congressional consent or a formal treaty. Bush's preference was for both sides to decide on the exact extent of the cuts and disposition of the warheads, leaving open the option Bush favored: detaching the warheads from the missile and storing them separately, rather than destroying them.

Instead Putin insisted that the agreement be legally binding, spelling out the exact cuts and ensuring that the reductions be deep and irreversible, which would preclude the storage option. Putin's position always made more sense. And Putin needs to show his own constituency that he's getting a significant concession from Washington. In turn, Bush will need Moscow's cooperation to step up the containment of Iraq and to ensure that Iran doesn't develop nuclear weapons - for which Russia is selling Tehran the necessary technology.

It's good to see the White House begin to shift its own stance on this key issue, a move disclosed by Secretary of State Colin Powell in testimony Tuesday before the Senate.

The details of the actual agreement - to be signed when Bush and Putin meet again in Moscow this spring - are still being worked out, though the goals set by Bush and Putin are clear: Each side is to reduce its arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,000 warheads. That's a steep drop from the current levels of about 7,000 for the United States and 5,500 for Russia. What would be left is still more than enough to ensure a mutual nuclear deterrent or, for that matter, to ward off nuclear retaliation from any other power.

Whether the pact takes the form of a treaty or an executive agreement is irrelevant, so long as it's legally binding. But a key detail to be worked out is the physical disposition of the warheads set for reduction. To make those cuts irreversible, as Russia properly demands, would mean destroying the warheads, not simply storing them apart from their missiles as Bush proposed.

It's a crucial detail that would make a shabby mockery of the agreement if it's not spelled out in the binding document. Bush must do the right thing and consent to their destruction.

BACK TO THE TOP    #192 CONTENTS    NEXT SECTION