I’m not going to provide too much commentary here; I’m sure you all are perfectly capable of deducting the various ironies, good points, and other pieces of worthwhile information yourselves (but I’ll help out a bit with some visual styles):

As we learned in the 1970s, the devil of arms control often lies in the technical arcana of warheads and delivery systems, so we’ll await the text before pronouncing judgment. But the devil of arms control also lies in the overall concept, with its implicit assumption that the weapons themselves are inherently more dangerous than the intentions of those who develop and deploy them.

What Mr. Obama wants to kill specifically is the Reliable Replacement Warhead, which the Bush Administration supported over Congressional opposition, and which Mr. Obama now opposes despite the support of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the military. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told us this week that “we do need a new warhead.” When we asked about Mr. Obama’s views on the warhead, the Admiral said, “You would have to ask him.”

The irony is that Mr. Obama’s opposition is making substantial reductions in the total U.S. arsenal that much riskier. In the absence of actual testing, which hasn’t happened in the U.S. since 1992, the only real hedge against potentially defective weapons is a larger arsenal. Naturally, arms-control theologians are instead urging the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and ban the production of weapons grade uranium and plutonium.

The thinking here is that somehow the American example will get Russia, as well as North Korea, Pakistan and perhaps Iran, to reject nuclear weapons. In fact, a U.S. nuclear arsenal that is diminished in both quantity and quality would be an incentive for these countries to increase their nuclear inventories, since the door would suddenly be opened to reach strategic parity with the last superpower. Mr. Medvedev, for one, recently announced Russia would pursue “large-scale rearmament” of its army and navy, including nuclear arsenals.

France also plans to deploy new sea-based nuclear missiles next year, even as it reduces the overall size of its arsenal. The French understand that a credible nuclear deterrent requires modern and reliable weapons. The Obama Administration should understand that the best security for both the U.S. and the allies that rely on our nuclear umbrella lies in an unchallengeable arsenal, and not an invitation to the world’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejads to compete on equal terms.

Let’s just say that for the first time ever on this blog, I am on record as wanting to be LIKE France — a country with a little more common sense than Obama seems to be exercising at the moment.  I mean, wasn’t Bush’s biggest criticism during the war being too ideologically driven and not listening enough to his military advisors?  Bush bent over backwards to find common ground with Russian leadership only to have that generosity used against him to further Russian power politics.

Bottom line: we shouldn’t sacrafice ‘deterrence’ — and all its various benefits– for the sake of political popularity or Russian opinion.

via Barack Obama Seeks to Sign an Arms Control Agreement With Russia’s Dmitri Medvedev.