So naturally we appear eager to make concessions to get Russia to agree to a new arms control agreement:
A major pact within tantalizing reach, President Barack Obama aims to nudge forward an arms-control deal in talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
I imagine the Russians sometimes just look at each other in wonder, amazed at the naive amateurs that run our foreign policy these days.
UPDATE: Strategypage writes:
While Russia got the new Topol M ICBM into service since 1991, this was a Cold War era project, meant to replace the older, and much less effective and reliable ICBMs. While Russia has several thousand nuclear warheads, most are undeliverable because of the post-Cold War military meltdown. In fact, they can launch only a few hundred warheads, with any assurance that these will land anywhere near where they are aimed. That's still a significant deterrent, but it is more vulnerable to anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) defenses (which are more complex and expensive than the missiles they defend against). Thus the great relief in Russian military circles when the U.S. agreed to cancel the anti-missile system planned for installation in Poland (to protect Europe from Iranian missiles).
You'd think we could have gotten something from Moscow for cancelling our missile plan in Poland and the Czech Republic.
And you'd think we could get something from Moscow for agreeing to reduce nukes we can afford in exchange for Moscow reducing nukes that would disappear anyway from lack of maintenance.
You know that "smart" diplomacy we keep hearing we now have? I don't think that word means what they think it means.
