Russia Right to Dismiss Obama Nuke Fakery

Russia Right to Dismiss Obama Nuke Fakery
Finian CUNNINGHAM – 21 June, 2012

Obama’s Berlin speech this week urging Russia to join the US in making sweeping cuts to their stockpiles of nuclear weapons was fittingly delivered at the German capital’s historic Brandenburg Gate.

For it was another Obama «landmark» delivery of style over substance; histrionics over history; and sentimentalism over seriousness. Unfortunately, 6,000 invited German guests bought the charade with resounding, frequent applauses.

Historians may note that the world-famous Berlin gate was commissioned back in 1788 by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm II as a «triumphal symbol of peace».

But, sadly, the Brandenburg Gate has in actuality come to be associated with wars and conflict. This mismatch in reality and illusion is appropriate for Obama’s «landmark» declamation this week.

A brief history recounts how the gate was adopted as an icon by Nazi Germany to adorn the trappings of its war machine. After the Second World War, the neoclassical arch then stood at the heart of the division of Berlin and Europe by the nuclear-powered Western allies and the Soviet Union. Western historians typically blame Moscow for establishing the Berlin Wall, without the context of Washington and London instigating the Cold War aggression under the threat of nuclear weapons at the close of the Second World War, when the Western allies also covertly rearmed the Nazi war machine against the Soviet Union.

So, just like the Brandenburg Gate itself, Obama’s speech this week belongs more in the realm of fanciful sentiment and deception rather than in credible substance.

The supposed highlight of the American president’s speech was his declared aim to push harder for nuclear arms reduction. Let’s take a closer look at his supposedly earnest words.

Obama declared: «Because of the New START Treaty, we’re on track to cut American and Russian deployed nuclear warheads to their lowest levels since the 1950s.»

That is partially true. The world’s nuclear arsenal – of which the US and Russia account for 90 per cent – has been on a steep decline since the end of the Cold War in 1991. There is currently estimated to be about 17,000 nuclear warheads worldwide – down from the high point of 68,000 in 1985. The US and Russia currently account for about 8,000 total nuclear weapons apiece.

Of these, only about 25 per cent of the stockpiles are believed to be active, giving about 2,000 each. The New START accord of 2010 referred to by Obama in his speech seeks to limit the arsenals to 1,550 each. Obama is now saying that after «a comprehensive review» he wants Russia and the US to push even harder for deeper cuts to about 1,000 warheads – a further one-third reduction than the START deal obliges. …more