[Press Conference at 4:15 EST] Senate Approves Nuclear Arms Pact with Russia

[Press Conference at 4:15 EST] Senate Approves Nuclear Arms Pact with Russia

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The Senate on Wednesday approved a major nuclear arms pact with Russia, handing President Barack Obama a huge victory on his top foreign policy priority.

The president is holding a press conference today to address the latest congressional achievements.

The treaty would limit each country's strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, down from the current ceiling of 2,200. It also would establish a system for monitoring and verification. U.S. weapons inspections ended last year with the expirati

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Republicans had tried to kill the treaty by forcing changes in its language that would have sent it back for negotiations with Moscow. Democrats were working to appease some Republican senators by letting them raise these issues in legislation accompanying the treaty that would not directly affect the agreement.

Most Republicans remained opposed.

"The administration did not negotiate a good treaty," said Kyl, the Senate's No. 2 Republican leader. "They went into the negotiations it seems to me with the attitude with the Russians just like the guy who goes into the car dealership and says, `I'm not leaving here until I buy a car."'

Obama will be holding a Press Conference at 4:15pm EST.
Stay Tuned...

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I feel so much safer with only 1,550 nuclear warheads being aimed at me rather than 2,200. Good thing this is Obama's top foreign policy endeavor and not the wars or other more pertinent issues that face this nation and it's reputation.

I see it more as 3100 potential threats to world stability as a whole to be honest.

Still more then enough to destroy the world dozens of times over. Only reason to have such a stockpile for any country is as a last resort option to take down every single country in the world along with them in their demise.

reply to post by Romekje


Nuclear weapons are deterants in our modern era. The single greatest threat of man, against man is nuclear warfare so you would truly have to be one megalomaniacal bastard to actually use them in a strategic capacity.

However, in our world polarized by empires and third-world colonies, nuclear weapons are held by the empires to maintain their stance of invincibility, while developing nations seek them as deterants in order to maintain the national integrity of their countries while holding the empires at bay.

But nobody wants to use them.

Couldn't far, far fewer nukes than any of these numbers still pretty much wipe out the whole planet

But let's try to be optimistic. It's a start. Better than nothing. A victory of sorts.

Aside from the deterrent thing, we try to wrap our heads around this by rationalizing it much the same way we do with guns or any other weapon. Well if we have them they're less likely to use one against us. Well if they launch we launch and we're all sunk. Well we'll never use ours first. Well we're a tiny country in a hostile land and we need to protect ourselves. Well we don't have that many....

These excuses might make us feel better and some of the theories work out okay on a smaller scale (if everyone had a gun, people would be a whole lot nicer to each other), but when it comes to nukes, the reality is that the consequences of an accident or a mad person getting hold of one are just so much greater. It's got to be an all-or-none thing. Beyond that we're just fooling ourselves.