Paul Kerr used to work for the Arms Control Association and vents about stuff here. This is a personal blog; opinions expressed here are not those of anyone else.
It’s now the bittersweet time for me to say goodbye. I wanted to thank Mr. WonKerr for the fun opportunity and for his patience during these ten months. The heartfelt thanks, however, are reserved for the few readers out there. Thanks for letting me entertain you with some silliness and providing me with feedback on the very few serious posts. And since the Russian Staryi Novyi God holiday is still a few days ahead, I wanted to wish the best in 2009 and beyond!
In Akimoto’s view, INFCE resulted in two “major” achievements. The first is that “the world has reconfirmed the political nature of nonproliferation issues,” even though the exercise itself took “the opposite course.”
The second is “that the member states have recognized how the world is too small to allow arbitrary movements of individual nations.”
In that regard INFCE was like hedgehogs “trying to warm themselves in winter cold.
“Winter cold,” he said, “was the increasing danger of nuclear proliferation. The American hedgehog probably was the first who reacted to such cold and his sudden move resulted in unconsciously harming his companions, the other nuclear nations, with his spines. Due to the resultant confusion, many of the countries involved wounded each other.”
But INFCE, said Akimoto, “offered a suitable place for the wounded hedgehogs to display their respective wounds to each other and to learn how to warm themselves without harming others.”
Paul Says: Anya’s efforts made this blog much better than it otherwise would have been and she will be missed around these parts. But you will hear from her again, doubtless from much loftier perches.
The Russian MFA recently released a summary article titled Russia in International Counterterrorism Cooperation in 2008. The article seems to confirm that, at least from the Russian perspective, bilateral cooperation on terrorism issues between Moscow and Washington is going strong.
[D]espite all the twists and turns of the recent period in Russian-US relations, the bilateral anti-terror mechanism – the Russia-US working group – has been working during this period almost without interruptions (with allowance for the August “freezes”), performing as well as previously in terms of the exchange of information, analytical layouts, and the national experience in improving anti-terror, fulfilling the appropriate interagency coordination and so on. That is, it turns out that in contemporary conditions antiterrorist cooperation can and does act as a kind of “safety net” and as an untouchable “territory of mutual understanding and trust,” which can well assist the restoration of mutual understanding and trust in other fields as needed. Further, by the way, the “salutary” function of joint anti-terror will additionally be dealt with in the context of the OSCE and Russia-NATO relations.
It’s apparently not so strong with London, however.
Against this background, perhaps the British alone still remain an unpleasant exception, as they continue unjustifiably, I would say, obstinately keep the bilateral antiterrorist group at a standstill, and boycott contacts with the Federal Security Service of Russia, without which discussions of antiterrorist tasks lose all practical sense. I am certain that this “infantile disease” of the British will eventually pass, but some time is already lost, along with some mutually useful results already missed or unachieved. And perhaps it was London that needed these results to a greater degree.
I know at least one TW reader who’ll love (not) this line from a recent essay by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The United States is an integral part of European civilization. And now the time has probably come to return to Europe, that is, accept the soft European attitude to the world, shaped, inter alia, during the Cold War period not without the participation of America itself.
(And, yes, in this essay Lavrov too notes that the Sochi Declaration rulez.)
In a recent interview, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Ryabkov said that the April 2008 Sochi Strategic Framework Declaration “was conceived as a strategic framework for [U.S.-Russian] relations, not limited to Bush’s tenure.” He also noted that “[t]he Russian side intends to continue work precisely in the Sochi vein.”
Thought I’d highlight some points (aside from the obvious post-START agreement and missile defense cooperation) in the Declaration.
We are fully committed to preventing the illicit trafficking or destabilizing accumulations of conventional arms in order to contribute to regional and international security and stability. The U.S. and Russia will cooperate to ensure that transfers of such weapons do not contribute to the development and enhancement of military capabilities which undermine these goals, as well as to deny conventional arms to terrorists.
We will work together to address serious differences in areas where our policies do not coincide, including NATO expansion; development of a package solution that helps restore the viability of the CFE regime and prompt ratification of the Adapted CFE Treaty by all the States Parties; and certain military activities in space.
We will cooperate in preparing and ensuring a successful outcome of the 2010 NPT Review Conference.
We remain committed to political and diplomatic efforts to find a negotiated solution guaranteeing that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes…Russia’s agreement to deliver nuclear fuel and take back spent fuel from Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr is a welcome step that provides Iran a civil nuclear power capability without the need for the indigenous enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.
We will sign in the near future and work to bring into force the bilateral agreement between the Russian Federation and the United States that was initialed on June 29, 2007. This agreement will create the necessary legal basis for our cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy and will permit the expansion of such cooperation.
We will continue to expand and strengthen [the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism] and fully implement the agreed program of work.
UNDERSECRETARYROOD: With regard to the [START] treaty, I think one of the principal differences is over the scope of the treaty. For us in the United States, we would like a treaty which sets limits on strategic nuclear weapons. Our colleagues in Russia would like a treaty with a broader scope than that, and they would like it to encompass conventional forces as well, conventional strategic forces.
QUESTION: Conventional nuclear?
UNDERSECRETARYROOD: Sorry?
QUESTION: Conventional nuclear forces?
UNDERSECRETARYROOD: That’s a contradictory term, conventional nuclear. (Laughter.)
QUESTION: Well, there is such a – well, so is full tactical nuclear weapons. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I’m saying.
UNDERSECRETARYROOD: Tactical nuclear weapons form a nuclear weapon. I wouldn’t call it a conventional weapon. But there are —
QUESTION: Are there long-range bombers, then, or something like that?
UNDERSECRETARYROOD: No. You can have strategic conventional weapons. Long-range bombers that drop a conventional weapon would be one. Conventionally armed —
QUESTION: They’re talking about – that they’re talking about?
UNDERSECRETARYROOD: Yes, yes.
QUESTION: Okay.
UNDERSECRETARYROOD: They’d like that sort of thing to become –conventionally armed missiles, other forms of conventional forces. And whatever means they would be, they would be strategic.
QUESTION: So when you say conventional, you mean not nuclear?
UNDERSECRETARYROOD: Yes.
Now that we got that sorted out… Might I recommend WMD411?
Surely you remember part one and part two of the Total WonKerr feature The Church of Nuclear. In our third installment, we wanted to briefly note the importance of clergy presence at construction sites of nuclear power plants. Here is a picture from concrete pouring activities at the second unit of the Leningrad nuclear power plant. (Original here.)
I have been meaning to highlight Rosatom’s Blogstroyka website for some time. However, the blog, which has just 6 posts, hasn’t been updated since November 26.
Maybe it’s the credit crunch.
And sadly, there are no Bushehr highlights on the blog… Yet?
But the blog features a neat post about Kudankulam, which has pictures of the famous (in my book) wave cutter. And there are also some pics of NPPs that Atomstroyexport is constructing in China (here and here) that are worth a glance.
There is also this video on NPP construction.
Oh yeah, with all the money Rosatom is dumping into outreach to English-speakers with multiple websites (this, this, this, this, and more), I really wish they’d invest in a good translator instead. It was funny at one point. But today, stuff like this is just sad and embarrassing.
