Russia Announces Bilateral Nuclear Arms Control Talks With Biden Administration
Coming off the "positive" June Biden-Putin summit in Geneva, Russian media is now reporting the resumption of direct nuclear talks between Moscow in Washington set for end of this month.
"Russia and the United States have agreed to hold their first round of nuclear strategic stability talks on July 28 in Geneva, the Kommersant newspaper reported on Tuesday," according to Reuters.
Biden and Putin had initially agreed that bilateral dialogue on nuclear arms control and reduction remains a top priority during last month's summit. This after during the Trump administration the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was scrapped, after the US withdrew from it in 2019. New START was also on the chopping block.
However, once Biden took office he scrambled to extend the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia, signing on to an immediate five year extension.
The supreme irony of course remains that it was Trump tearing up Cold War era treaties with Russia - all the while he was supposedly "Putin's puppet" in the White House or something - while Biden is now busy seeking to restore direct dialogue (and then there's also Biden also essentially greenlighting the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline).
The AP had previously detailed based on the Geneva meeting:
The "strategic stability dialogue" would be a series of discussions designed to set the table for a negotiation by sorting out what exactly should be negotiated. More broadly, it would aim to reduce the risk of war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
Biden said the goal is to work with Russia on "a mechanism that can lead to control of new and dangerous and sophisticated weapons that are coming on the scene now, that reduce the time for response, that raise the prospect of accidental war." He said this was discussed in detail.
Interestingly establishment media itself seemed hostile to any potential rapprochement between Putin and Biden along the lines of strategic arms reduction talks. Instead US journalists at the summit were more interested in seeing Biden aggressively "call out" Putin on alleged human rights crackdowns and abuses.
The previous presidential administrations opposed Nord Stream 2 out of fears it would heighten Moscow’s economic & political sway across Europe. The pipeline will allow the Kremlin to increase European dependence on its natural gas.
But Trump collusion! https://t.co/xTLEms4F8w
— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) July 21, 2021
We wonder if the same journalist think avoiding the "prospect of accidental war" with Russia remains a good idea or bad idea, given they've spent the last five years stoking a jingoistic atmosphere of confrontation.
