Obama to Russia: Let's Cool the Planet and the Nukes

Under the expiring START and the Moscow treaties the maximum allowable levels of warheads is 2,200 and the maximum allowable level of launch vehicles is 1600.

One day ahead of his first visit to Russia as President, Barack Obama said Sunday he wants to "press the reset button" on American-Russian relations. Obama told the Russian state news agency ITAR-Tass in an interview at the White House that his meetings with Russian leaders will focus on mutual reduction of nuclear weapons stockpiles and cooperation on climate change, among other issues.

Today, President Obama and his family landed in Moscow. He met privately with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the Kremlin. A meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is scheduled for Tuesday.

President Obama said he would like to see a new approach to the reduction of nuclear weapons stockpiles by both countries. START II, the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, although ratified, has never entered into force.

The treaty was officially bypassed by the SORT treaty, agreed by Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin at their summit meeting in November 2001, and signed at the Moscow Summit on May 24, 2002. Both sides agreed to reduce operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,700-2,200 by 2012.

President Obama said he aims to move beyond this point.

"I think our first step is to provide a framework for the post-START treaty," Obama said Sunday. "And my goal is that both countries reduce their nuclear stockpiles in a way that doesn't leave either country with an advantage, but reduces tensions and the expense of maintaining such high nuclear stockpiles when they're not necessary for our defense and our deterrence."

"And if we can get the framework during this summit, then we will be able to advance a treaty by the end of December," Obama said.

Michael McFaul, special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs, told reporters in a briefing July 1, "The START I treaty expires in December, so we are under the gun to try to get something to replace it by the end of the year."

The negotiations were launched in April, said McFaul, who explained that the post-START treaty will involve "real verification procedures."

"This is what we were not doing recently in the last eight years, so we are going to have to work through those and with new technology. That requires a lot of heavy lifting and you can't get to the numbers that you're talking until you know what you can verify and what not because of the counting procedures that go with that," McFaul said.

The new treaty will limit delivery vehicles as well as warheads, and McFaul explained that "the relationship between those two numbers is quite complicated because the Russian forces are structured in a different way than our forces."

President Obama said Sunday, "I think the issue of nuclear proliferation remains very important and we need to create a strong non-proliferation framework in the international community. Having Russia as a leader on that is going to be critical. I think counterterrorism activities, ways we can cooperate together, that will be very important."

"But given the unique position the United States and Russia has when it comes to nuclear power, for us to send a strong signal that we want to reduce our stockpiles I think would help us internationally, to give people a sense that we're moving into a new era and we want to get beyond the Cold War," Obama said.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, left, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (AP Photo/ Alexander Zemlianichenko Creative Commons License)

President Medvedev said on Thursday that the two countries must set aside the power politics of the past and unite in tackling global problems.

"The new U.S. administration headed by President Obama is now demonstrating readiness to change the situation, and build more effective ... relations," Medvedev said in a video blog posted on his Kremlin website. "We are ready for this," he said.

"The main thing that I want to communicate to Russian leadership and the Russian people is America's respect for Russia, that we want to deal as equals," Obama told ITAR-Tass. "We are both nuclear superpowers; with that comes special responsibilities that are very different from the positions of many other countries around the world, and we have to handle those responsibilities in a way that encourages peace."

While the United States remains a military superpower with the largest economy in the world, Obama said, he pointed out that the world is becoming "more integrated" with countries such as China and India and Brazil more developed and growing more quickly than in the past.

"I think the United States has to recognize that our role is not to dictate policy around the world, but to be a partner with other countries around the world and find those areas of mutual concern and agreement that are so important," he said.

"And a great example of this is the issue of climate change. This is an issue that could have profound impacts on both the United States and on Russia," Obama said.

"If the permafrost in Russia completely melts, it could completely transform the weather patterns on the planet, in some cases in very dangerous ways," he warned.

"The problem is no one country can solve this," Obama said. "The United States has to take steps; China has to take steps; Russia has to take steps; India has to take steps. And so I hope that the United States' role will be to help convene and moderate negotiations that lead the international community to move in a direction that's good for all people and not just for a few."

President Barack Obama (Photo courtesy The White House)

On Tuesday, President Obama will have breakfast with Prime Minister Putin and later will have a meeting with former President Mikhail Gorbachev.

President Obama will give a speech at the New Economic School Tuesday afternoon on U.S.-Russia relations and then hold meetings with a variety of Russian political and business leaders.

On Wednesday, Obama will fly to L'Aquila, Italy for the annual meeting of the Group of Eight, G8, the world's eight largest economies - Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, together with the European Union.

This year, many other government leaders have been invited to participate in the G8 meetings.

Briefing reporters, Michael Froman, deputy national security advisor for international economic affairs, said this year's G8 meeting "is actually a series of summits, sort of ever larger summits over the 48 hour period there."

"It starts with the G8; added to the G8 on the second day are the "plus-5" as the major emerging economies - China, India, South Africa, Mexico, and Brazil. In addition, for this summit, Italy invited Egypt to join those meetings," Froman said.

On the afternoon of the second day, Australia, Indonesia, and Korea will join in for the Major Economies Forum, which will cover climate change. Government leaders will attempt to agree on limiting greenhouse gas emissions enough to stave off catastrophic global warming in the run-up to the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen in December.

G8 leaders must commit to keep global average temperature rise well below two degrees Celsius in order to prevent climate change from threatening the future of our planet, WWF says ahead of the G8 summit.

The meeting taking place in L'Aquila from July 8-10 will be "a major test of leadership and commitment, and will show whether the wealthy world is willing to take responsibility for a common fight against rising temperatures and devastating climate change," WWF said in a statement.

"It is very simple. A clear commitment to a two degree Celsius danger threshold on paper is an absolute must for G8 countries," said Kim Carstensen, the leader of WWF's Global Climate Initiative. "The countries gathering in L'Aquila have the biggest responsibility to show leadership on climate. Without their action we cannot expect the rest of the world to move."

Copyright Environment News Service, ENS, 2009. All rights reserved.