Russia and US renew nuclear talks

Russia and the US are to reopen negotiations about reducing their nuclear warheads, presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama have said.

The discussions will be the first such talks for more than a decade.

Mr Obama said earlier there were very real differences between Washington and Moscow, but that there was also a broad set of common interests.

The announcement came on the fringes of the G20 summit of world leaders which is convening in London.

Mr Medvedev has invited his American counterpart to visit Moscow in July - an invitation Mr Obama has accepted.

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BBC NEWS | Europe | Russia and US renew nuclear talks

It's a step in the right direction, as long as the talks hold strong.

Bush did the same thing at the start of his administration. I dont see much coming from this.

kaya'08 said:

BBC NEWS | Europe | Russia and US renew nuclear talks

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Now's not the time to do this. Russia now has a tangible advantage over the US in terms of the quality of their missiles. There are emerging threats which are breaking the traditional notion of MAD intrinsic to the bi-polar power structure. It might not seem like it at first glance, but I think the world is closer to nuclear war now than we ever were during the Cold War.

BulletWounD said:

Now's not the time to do this. Russia now has a tangible advantage over the US in terms of the quality of their missiles.

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:shock:
Based on what?

BulletWounD said:

Now's not the time to do this. Russia now has a tangible advantage over the US in terms of the quality of their missiles. There are emerging threats which are breaking the traditional notion of MAD intrinsic to the bi-polar power structure. It might not seem like it at first glance, but I think the world is closer to nuclear war now than we ever were during the Cold War.

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Russia doesn't have any incentive to go all out war with America, strategically or economically. During the cold war Russia was eating up countries much like England, it was communistic colonialism. It was rather inefficient way to keep an economy going, and ended up not being economically feasible.

Now that they have let go of much they claimed and scaled back their efforts, why would they go to total war. Before they considered it to claim much of the middle east which America had much of our own interests in.

I don't see bud, can you explain.

thabigred said:

Russia doesn't have any incentive to go all out war with America, strategically or economically. During the cold war Russia was eating up countries much like England, it was communistic colonialism. It was rather inefficient way to keep an economy going, and ended up not being economically feasible.

Now that they have let go of much they claimed and scaled back their efforts, why would they go to total war. Before they considered it to claim much of the middle east which America had much of our own interests in.

I don't see bud, can you explain.

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No, they don't have any reason to go to war with the US. However, as nuclear weapons continue to proliferate there will be more and more scenarios which raise the possibility of a theater exchange which could easily escalate to a total nuclear war.

Here's how it works. Country X is backed by nuclear weapons. Country X decides it is in their best interest, for whatever reason,to invade Country Y. Country Z may or may not possess nuclear weapons. For whatever reason, they decide it is in their best interest to intervene. In order to win the war, Country Z MUST mount an offensive against the territory of his adversary. Faced with the existential threat of military invasion by by Country Z, Country Y launches nukes at country Z. Country S, who has been quietly backing country Z, observes the missile launch, and launches a retaliation. Now you've got missiles lighting up the sensors of all the major powers. They're not going to just sit back and pray that the missiles aren't headed for them. The risk of a counter-value first strike or a decapitation strike is too pervasive to ignore. They will launch their missiles before it's too late. End Game - nuclear apocalypse.

The US's plans to develop a comprehensive missile defense are aimed at preventing this type of scenario. But other countries, who lack the capital of the United States, will try to negate the threat by producing nuclear weapons, thus further propagating the risk of apocalypse. In the event of a failure of the NMD, the US will need to be able to respond to the best of her ability.

It would be diplomatically devastating for Russia to let the first nuke go. America has much more friends, Russia has nobody anymore. And i doubt the US would press the red button first. Plus we are going to see huge scale backs in the amount of oil we import, so Russia's oil revenues in itself will not be enough to reform the country and make it economically stronger. There power base is also concentrated in Europe and the rest of Russia is pretty much vulnerable. They dont uphold much influence in Eastern Russia because they dont have the resources to sustain a strong military presence in the east like they do in the west. So the countries on Russia's boarders will be easier to influence under America and will provide an advantage against Russia. Also, Russia has no advantage in nuking the US, because they know they will get nuked back harder. We've seen these two bad boys get pissed off at each other before, worst comes to worst, they'll fight proxy wars because there too scared to fight each other directly, partly because they know it would end up to be devastating for both sides and everybody in between.

kaya'08 said:

It would be diplomatically devastating for Russia to let the first nuke go. America has much more friends, Russia has nobody anymore. And i doubt the US would press the red button first. Plus we are going to see huge scale backs in the amount of oil we import, so Russia's oil revenues in itself will not be enough to reform the country and make it economically stronger. There power base is also concentrated in Europe and the rest of Russia is pretty much vulnerable. They dont uphold much influence in Eastern Russia because they dont have the resources to sustain a strong military presence in the east like they do in the west. So the countries on Russia's boarders will be easier to influence under America and will provide an advantage against Russia. Also, Russia has no advantage in nuking the US, because they know they will get nuked back harder.

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Exactly. As Russia gains a qualitative advantage in their nuclear arsenal, scaling back quantities will harm the US more than it will harm Russia.

We've seen these two bad boys get pissed off at each other before, worst comes to worst, they'll fight proxy wars because there too scared to fight each other directly, partly because they know it would end up to be devastating for both sides and everybody in between.

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All of our proxy wars ended in disaster. If a state aligned with Russia or China launches a nuke against a state aligned with the US/NATO, you'd better believe there will be retaliation. This could easily escalate. See my previous post.

BulletWounD said:

Exactly. As Russia gains a qualitative advantage in their nuclear arsenal, scaling back quantities will harm the US more than it will harm Russia.

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Where did you the idea that the Russians have/will have a qualitative advantage over the US?

All of our proxy wars ended in disaster. If a state aligned with Russia or China launches a nuke against a state aligned with the US/NATO, you'd better believe there will be retaliation. This could easily escalate. See my previous post.

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I reckon we'd be in a lot of **** right now had Georgia been in NATO at the time the Ruskies took back Ossetia.

Goobieman said:

Where did you the idea that the Russians have/will have a qualitative advantage over the US?

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As far as ICBM's go, the US is using old Minuteman III's and has no plans to replace them. Russia has started developing the RS-24, which is much more capable than the Minuteman. The US currently has a major advantage in the area of blue water navies and SLBM's such as the Trident II, but here too Russia and China are working diligently to catch up with and eventually overtake the US. The real wildcard here is China as we have no idea how many warheads they possess. As far as I know, this has not been factored into Obama's equation.

BulletWounD said:

As far as ICBM's go, the US is using old Minuteman III's and has no plans to replace them. Russia has started developing the RS-24, which is much more capable than the Minuteman. The US currently has a major advantage in the area of blue water navies and SLBM's such as the Trident II, but here too Russia and China are working diligently to catch up with and eventually overtake the US.

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And so, how does this qualitative advantage manifest itself?

Goobieman said:

And so, how does this qualitative advantage manifest itself?

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Higher accuracy, advanced decoys, radar absorbent materials, improved solid state electronics, more capable warheads....

BulletWounD said:

Higher accuracy, advanced decoys, radar absorbent materials, improved solid state electronics, more capable warheads....

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So, your this is based on the idea that the US will not replace its current boosters, and that the new Russian boosters will be significantly better than the current US boosters.

Neither of these things are a given.

Goobieman said:

So, your this is based on the idea that the US will not replace its current boosters, and that the new Russian boosters will be significantly better than the current US boosters.

Neither of these things are a given.

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Let's hope not. The US has been de-MIRVing their missiles since the START II agreement which turned the Peacekeeper missile into a huge waste of money. Russia has bailed out of START II and plans to MIRV their missiles in light of the fact that the US is deploying it's NMD program, which as I have explained is vital to national security and the security of the world at large.