Agreeing to fewer

Agreeing to fewer
Good, but focus more on helping Russian security

November 15, 2001

The agreement between President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to reduce their nations’ stockpiles of nuclear weapons is cause for celebration. Americans are understandably apprehensive about everything from anthrax to Afghanistan, but nuclear weapons still pose the most dangerous threat to world peace and human life.

While welcome, however, it is only one more step in ridding the world of this threat. The question now must be what comes next — and the answer is largely up to Bush.

Tuesday, Bush and Putin promised to cut the Russian and American nuclear arsenals by two-thirds. Bush said the United States could then have as few as 1,700 nukes. Putin has said that Russia could do with 1,500.

As such, this accord is hardly a complete solution. Nor is it all the result of personal chemistry between the two leaders.

Bush wants to reward Putin for going along on Afghanistan. He also wants to come to some understanding with the Russian leader about the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which would help the president in his obsession with developing a missile defense system.

For Putin, this is an opportunity to be seen as a friend — and to bargain for a few favors.

He is going to need them. For all that he would no doubt like to see himself as the leader of a world power, Putin is in fact presiding over a country in trouble. One measure of that was reported this week in an Associated Press story that said: "Russia has about 5,800 nuclear weapons, but can’t afford to keep all of them."

That is the real danger: a country with nuclear weapons, nuclear material, nuclear scientists — and no money. The opportunity for terrorists is obvious.

The Bush administration’s reasoning, however, is not. Washington Post columnist David Broder reported Tuesday that Bush is "holding back a 10-year-old program to assist Russia in securing its vulnerable nuclear materials and ensuring that penniless Russian nuclear scientists do not join or assist hostile forces."

That program, the 1991 brainchild of Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and then-Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., represents precisely the kind of effort the president should be pushing.

A few thousand nukes under the control of a former member of the KGB is bad enough, no matter how much Bush trusts him. Allowing even one to fall into the hands of an Osama bin Laden, however, is simply unacceptable.