Washington
Post: Last April in the Czech capital of Prague, US
President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a
new nuclear weapons treaty. Neither the US Senate nor the
Russian Duma has ratified the treaty. As Mary Beth Sheridan and
Walter Pincus of the
Washington Post report, Senate ratification appears to
hinge on the views of one senator, Republican Jon Kyl of
Arizona. He is insisting that the new treaty be accompanied
with $4 billion of additional funding to modernize the US
nuclear arsenal. Kyl's influence is particularly potent because
few of his fellow Republicans have taken an interest in nuclear
weapons. If the treaty remains unratified, neither the US nor
Russia is obliged to limit its nuclear weapons or allow its
nuclear facilities to be inspected. That's because the previous
treaty, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, expired in
December 2009.
