Would you be satisfied if your only access to a computer was to try to boot up one that hadn't been used or tested since 1992? That's the predicament of our nuclear deterrent on which we depend for our ultimate physical survival.
On April 8 in Prague, President Obama signed what is called the New START bilateral arms control agreement. It reads like it was written by the Russians and has nothing good in it for the United States.
Obama is demanding a rush to ratification, after which we can then discover the details of what the treaty requires. Does that remind you of the procedure used for Obamacare?
If there ever were a need for the Senate to read the bill and for the Senate to use its "advice" power as well as its "consent" power, this is it, including reading the treaty's protocols and annexes. Harry Reid's Senate promptly held one hearing, but heard only from treaty advocates, not from its critics.
In the globalist world that Obama inhabits, he dreams of a nuclear-zero world. But his "world without nuclear weapons" would be a world where the United States is a sitting duck for nukes fired by a rogue nation.
The treaty allows Russia to build new and modern weapons to reach New START limits, whereas the United States is locked into reducing its current number. That means Russia will have new and tested weapons, but the U.S. will be stuck with its current, out-of-date, untested warheads.
We live in a dangerous world in which bad guys respect strength and weapons, and disdain weakness and disarmament. Yet Obama is already presiding over the steady obsolescence of our aging deterrent, a failure to test our weapons and the phasing out of our skilled workforce to sustain them.
The fantasy that our abandonment of nuclear weapons will inspire other nations to follow our example is so foolish that it can only be described as nuts. When the Cold War thawed and the U.S. and the old U.S.S.R. dramatically reduced their nuclear warheads, that encouraged proliferation -- with India, Pakistan, North Korea, Syria and Iran trying to join the nuclear club.
New START allows the United States to have only as many nuclear warheads as Russia can afford to build. And Russia gets to set the count of weapons.
Equal ceilings on warheads are ridiculous because, while Russia only has to defend its own people, our allies all over the world count on us for protection. If the treaty prohibits us from having weapons to fulfill those expectations, they will try to build their own.
The treaty does not limit tactical nuclear weapons, leaving Russia with a 10-to-one numeric superiority, which Russia has threatened to use in regional conflicts. We could build more tactical missiles, but there is no chance Obama will do that.
New START gives up the verification, on-site inspections and monitoring of production that were requirements of previous treaties. Whatever happened to Ronald Reagan's maxim, "Trust, but verify"?
Obama has made it clear that his eagerness for a nuclear-zero world also means a world without any defense against nuclear weapons. He has cut spending for missile defenses and killed or mothballed the few innovative programs we have to knock down incoming rockets in their boost phase.
Ever since President Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in 1983, the Kremlin has tried to ban all U.S. missile defenses. The Kremlin brags that it achieved this goal in New START.
This treaty gives Russia a veto over all U.S. defenses against incoming missiles. Article V contains a binding clause that we "shall not convert and shall not use ICBM launchers and (submarine-launched ballistic missile) launchers for placement of missile defense interceptors therein."
Article XIV confirms this prohibition, stating that any party can withdraw from New START if "extraordinary events ... have jeopardized its supreme interests." Russia explained that this means it will stick with New START "only if the (U.S.) refrains from developing its missile defense capabilities quantitatively or qualitatively."
The wisdom of the Founding Fathers is available to save us from New START folly -- i.e., the constitutional provision that ratification requires approval by two-thirds of senators. That's the provision the globalists hate the most.
The Council on Foreign Relations complained in print on May 1, 2008, that "the separation of powers enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress a critical voice in the ratification of treaties and endorsement of global institutions, complicates U.S. assumptions of new international obligations."
Our Constitution can save us from New START if 34 senators will stand up for America.