by hilzoy
"What Rumsfeld was most effective in doing," says a former senior White House official, "was not so much undermining a decision that had yet to be made as finding every way possible to delay the implementation of a decision that had been made and that he didn’t like." At meetings, he'd throw up every obstacle he could. "Rumsfeld would say, 'Golly, we haven’t had time to read all of these documents! I mean, this is radical change!'" the official adds. "And then, if you suggested that maybe he should've read all the documents when everyone first got them a week ago, he'd say: 'Well! I've been all over the world since then! What have you been doing?'"
"Rumsfeld's office cut against Bush’s pledge of cooperation and transparency with Russia on "a whole host of things," says this official: the proposed Russian-American Observation Satellite, the Joint Data Exchange Center, plutonium disposition. By 2005 the Bush-Putin partnership had soured for a variety of reasons, including Russia’s growing economic swagger and America’s Iraq-induced decline in global prestige. But, the official observes, Rumsfeld "did not help the relationship; that’s clear." Russia came to believe that the U.S. wasn't interested in cooperating, and Rumsfeld's actions "devalued what the president had originally said. It made the Russians believe he lacked credibility.""
"The entire nine year program to date has been focused on investing to prepare for beginning to reduce excess plutonium stockpiles in the future."
"Although the original agreement called for each side to start off at a rate of two tons of plutonium a year and seek to move to four tons a year, the four-ton objective appears to have been largely abandoned, and the planned Russian program now stretches to 2040. (...)
A wide range of other obstacles have contributed to these slowing schedules and escalating costs. After delays resulting from a year-long Bush administration policy review, the Bush team delayed matters further by demanding that Russia accept liability provisions that would make Russia liable even for damage caused by intentional sabotage by U.S. personnel, a provision Russian negotiators predictably rejected. Because construction of the U.S. and Russian MOX plants had been linked, this dispute resulted in years of delay in both countries. A liability protocol for plutonium disposition, in which the Bush administration effectively abandoned its earlier demands, was finally signed in September 2006, ironically not long after the linkage between U.S. and Russian construction was dropped."
"This agreement (...) establishes a Joint Data Exchange Center (JDEC) in Moscow for the exchange of information derived from each side's missile launch warning systems on the launches of ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles.
The exchange of this data will strengthen strategic stability by further reducing the danger that ballistic missiles might be launched on the basis of false warning of attack. It will also promote increased mutual confidence in the capabilities of the ballistic missile early warning systems of both sides."
"In 1995 the Russians mistakenly interpreted a Norwegian meteorological missile launch as a launch of a military missile, and the black case of the Russian President was activated for the first time since the end of the Cold War."
"The agreement regarding the JDEC was first signed by Presidents Bill Clinton and Putin at their June 2000 meeting in Moscow. Over the next several years, implementation of the center fell prey to bureaucratic issues between Moscow and Washington such as the question of which side would pay for upgrading the school building that had been selected for the site. In addition, the general disinterest of the Bush administration toward negotiated agreements with Russia, especially when negotiated by earlier presidents, served to shelve the JDEC further. The agreement remains intact, however, and the center could be rapidly established as a venue for confidence building on missile defenses."
Isn't it just the most likely explanation that the Bush Gang dragged their feet over things like missile monitoring and plutonium controls because they simply didn't trust the Russians to live up to their end of any deals (coupled with a residual Cold-War-Era obsession about giving the Russkies any access to "proprietary" data?
Concerns about terrorism notwithstanding, stuff like this seems just SO typical of Team Dubya: lip service to high-minded goals of "nonproliferation", but in reality, polices that treat the concept of "nuclear nonproliferation" as "everybody else gives up their nukes"; i.e. pretty much the same way they viewed "bipartisanship" in the realm of domestic policy.
Posted by: Jay C | May 17, 2009 at 06:35 PM
I wish I had a dollar for every time Rumsfeld said "I haven't read that yet" when asked about some damning report or news story in a press briefing. And not one of the gutless pukes who pass for military reporters ever came back the next week and asked, "Have you read X?"
Posted by: Nell | May 17, 2009 at 11:45 PM
Doesn't that story also point out that Rumsfeld kept army rescue helicopters from going to New Orleans after Katrina over some stupid turf war?
Posted by: Ugh | May 18, 2009 at 09:21 AM
Friends in the CDC tell me that dangerous biological materials are sitting around in Russia unsecured or barely secured by flimsy door locks. etc.
Posted by: Heart | May 18, 2009 at 09:56 AM