{"id":141950,"date":"2019-09-02T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=141950"},"modified":"2019-08-31T11:30:41","modified_gmt":"2019-08-31T10:30:41","slug":"what-good-is-a-new-cold-war-without-a-new-arm-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/09\/what-good-is-a-new-cold-war-without-a-new-arm-race\/","title":{"rendered":"What Good Is a New Cold War without a New Arm$ Race?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

7 Aug 2019 – <\/em>The US and Russia are closer to annihilating each other and the world than ever before, but Democrats think Trump is too friendly with Putin.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump is pursuing probably the most aggressive foreign policy that any US president has pursued in a long time.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Last week the US was shocked by the shooter who gunned down three people and injured 15 at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, then the shooter who gunned down 22 and injured two dozen more in El Paso, then the shooter who gunned down nine and injured 27 in Dayton. On August 2, between the Gilroy and El Paso shootings, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, also known as the INF Treaty, expired, and the\u00a0US announced\u00a0 <\/a>plans to develop weapons systems the treaty had banned.<\/p>\n

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev negotiated and signed the INF Treaty in 1987, and the US Senate approved it in 1988. After the fall of the Soviet Union it became a treaty between the US and the Russian Federation. It prohibited both the US and the Soviet Union from possessing, testing, and deploying ground-launched, nuclear-weapons-capable cruise and ballistic missiles with ranges between 300 and 3400 miles, which might be used to fight a war in Europe. During the New Cold War, both sides began sparring back and forth as to whether one or the other might be violating the treaty, and in July 2014, the US State Department alleged that Moscow was indeed in violation. Then, before leaving office, President Obama announced a trillion-dollar nuclear weapons upgrade.<\/p>\n

In October 2017, the\u00a0Congressional Budget Office (CBO) <\/a>reported that the nuclear weapons budget that President Trump had inherited from President Obama would cost $1.2 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars between fiscal years 2017 and 2046, and said that would amount to about six percent of war and weapons spending anticipated for that period.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore leaving office, President Obama announced a trillion-dollar nuclear weapons upgrade.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

US taxpayers pay far more than Russians for weapons \u201cparity\u201d because we pay our war and weapons industries to manufacture parity in excess. Russian President Vladimir Putin recognizes instead that parity is parity and manufactures only weapons essential to achieving it. He\u2019s vowed not to let the arms race bankrupt the Russian Federation as it did the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, speaking on the\u00a0first CN Live! webcast <\/a>, said, \u201cNow if you know anything about the way the Pentagon works, you know there\u2019ll be cost overruns. So we\u2019re essentially talking about $3 to $4 trillion dollars to turn around and refurbish our nuclear arsenal, which of course is against the law because we\u2019ve signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and there\u2019s a section in there that says we have to continue making an effort to reduce our nukes down to zero but we\u2019re going in the opposite direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

In October 2018, President Trump\u00a0announced <\/a>that the US would withdraw from the INF treaty, repeating the State Department\u2019s 2014 allegation that Russia had developed a missile violating its terms and thereby threatening NATO nations. Russia denied the allegation, but the US insisted that Russia destroy all its new 9M729 missiles and Russia refused. The US followed through on its announcement, withdrawing from the treaty in February, and Russia followed suit.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin has\u00a0vowed not to let the arms race bankrupt the Russian Federation as it did the Soviet Union.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Speaking on the August 2\u00a0CN Live! <\/a>, Hungarian scholar George Szamuely marveled that Democrats criticize Trump\u2019s allegedly close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin despite Trump\u2019s withdrawal from the INF treaty and other forms of aggression towards Russia:<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump is pursuing probably the most aggressive foreign policy that any US president has pursued in a long time. I mean, this is a very, very aggressive policy. On Iran, on Russia, on China.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd how are the Democrats responding? They say he’s not aggressive enough, but what he’s been doing on Russia has been quite extraordinary. I mean, he’s walked out on a major arms control treaty [the Intermediate Range Nuclear Force Treaty]. And he\u2019s about to let another major arms control treaty lapse [New START, a long range nuclear missile treaty scheduled to expire in 2021]. And how are the Democrats responding? \u2018Why,\u2019 they ask, \u2018are you being so friendly with Putin?\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s just mindless. Instead of saying, \u2018Hey, we\u2019re spiraling towards what could be a nuclear confrontation,’ they\u2019re saying, \u2018Oh, he’s being really friendly with Putin. Putin has got something on him.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very, very aggressive policy. On Iran, on Russia, on China.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what’s their evidence for that? \u2018Oh,\u2019 they say, \u2018he doesn’t say anything mean about Putin in public and he kind of has a friendly banter with him. That proves that Putin has something on him!\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNever mind all the other things he\u2019s done like walking out on the INF Treaty. Never mind about sending arms to Ukraine. Instead they say, \u2018Oh, y\u2019know he doesn’t call Putin names in public.\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just nuts, and that’s the Democratic Party.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, it is nuts. It\u2019s nuts, crackerjacks, and jawbreakers. But why should we expect Democrats to disagree with the military-industrial recklessness that escalates from one administration to the next, Democrat or Republican? It\u2019s almost enough to make one imagine that a deep state remains in control behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

George Szamuely is a\u00a0Senior Research Fellow at the Global Policy Institute, a <\/em>CN Live! commentator, and author of the book <\/em>Bombs for Peace: NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia <\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She <\/em>attended Stanford University and is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. In 2014 she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize<\/em> for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at <\/em>@AnnGarrison<\/em> or <\/em>ann@kpfa.org<\/em> <\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 blackagendareport.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7 Aug 2019 – \u201cTrump is pursuing probably the most aggressive foreign policy that any US president has pursued in a long time\u2026 Before leaving office, President Obama announced a trillion-dollar nuclear weapons upgrade\u2026 Putin has vowed not to let the arms race bankrupt the Russian Federation as it did the Soviet Union.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":141951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1188,1061,120,331,401,267,504,291,91,450,109,287,639,70,126,118,172,75],"class_list":["post-141950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-arms-race","tag-cold-war-ii","tag-conflict","tag-development","tag-environment","tag-geopolitics","tag-international-relations","tag-military","tag-nato","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-uk","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-war","tag-west","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}