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“What drives nuclear disarmament in both countries is domestic, not foreign policy."
MOSCOW, Sep 2 2013 (IPS) - A Kremlin compromise on nuclear disarmament looks as far away as ever as Russian president Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama use their
countries’ strained relations to bolster their own domestic political agendas, experts say.
Obama’s call, during a speech in Berlin in June, for a dramatic reduction in the world’s nuclear weapons had led to hopes that there would be cuts in world nuclear arsenals on the
agenda of a potential nuclear summit in 2016, and gave extra impetus to what will be the first-ever high level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on nuclear disarmament this month.
But following Russia’s granting of asylum to U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden and Washington’s subsequent cancelling of a summit meeting between Obama and Putin, some critics say the U.S. may use the political rift between the two states as a pretext to fail to make progress on disarmament.And the Kremlin is more than happy to do the same.
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