Dr. Richard Haass Talks Nukes and "Rhetorical Eruptions"

Dr. Richard Haass, president of the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations, told Imus his organization’s role is “to call ‘em like we see ‘em” on issues of foreign policy and international relations. Let’s just say he keeps busy these days.

President Obama will meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev this week to sign a new arms treaty with Russia, a deal Haass believes is very important.

“It’s one way of bringing down U.S. and Russian arsenals somewhat,” he explained, putting that reduction at around 20 percent. The negotiations are also a bit of a throwback to the Cold War, said Haass, giving the Russians “a kind of prominence they used to have, and that they no longer have.”

Reducing the United States arsenal also makes it less difficult for Obama to preach to the rest of the world about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. “It takes away the arguing point—Gee, why should we listen to you guys?” Haass said.

This new treaty replaces the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, and is an expansion on agreements that have been in place since the early 1970s. It places limits on the numbers of items like launchers and warheads, and Haass suspects this latest round is as low as the U.S. will go in terms of formal arms control agreements.

“As some point, it gets very hard to monitor and verify them, and also the Russians are worried,” he said. “They’re saying, we don’t want to go any lower unless you Americans do something to limit your missile defense systems. We’re not going to do that.”

In fact, given the possibilities of proliferation by other countries, Haass believes there’s not a chance the U.S. will do that. However, this new treaty “provides a bit of certainty and stability,” he said. “And that’s always what you want from arms control.”

He applauded Obama for not adhering to the Left, and leaving open a small loophole that the United States could respond with nuclear weapons if another country threatens us with a major biological weapon.

The author of War of Necessity, War of Choice, about the wars in Iraq, Haass said recent “rhetorical eruptions” by Afghan President Hamid Karzai highlight the weaknesses in America’s strategy there. 

“We’re building up temporarily to buy time to then strengthen our Afghan partner,” said Haass. “But what we’re seeing is we don’t have much of a partner, at least not in the President of Afghanistan.”

Like Lt. Col. Bill Cowan yesterday, Haass recommends circumventing Karzai. “This is a country where the president has never mattered much, or the king, or anybody else,” Haass said. “We’ve got to forge relationships with local leaders, with military leaders, police leaders, and essentially limit this guy to being sort of the Mayor of Kabul.”

While he finds the idea “hideously unrealistic,” Imus suddenly saw how it could work, saying, “So, we’d operate like we did when Gerald Ford was President.”

Exactly.

-Julie Kanfer