Tuesday marks the 21st anniversary of the decision by then-US President George W. Bush to quit the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a landmark 1972 agreement. 13.12.2022, Sputnik International
germans who got out of the nuclear power business. so making nuclear threats in countries like germany really resonate. and that s he s playing the nuclear card. and the fact that his former prime minister, dmitry medvedev a day ago also threatened to pull out of the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty, that would lead to a new nuclear arms race. that would take us back more than 70 years when neither russia nor america s nuclear arsenals were under any kind of limitation. so they re really uping the nuclear ante. what now is either the symbolism or the direct messaging from germany today when the chancellor olaf scholz says they ll look to increase defense spending. is that germany, you know, standing up to putin in a different way? yes, i think this is a threshold moment for germany.
sort of the russian version of the munich security conference. it s called the valdi club. he was introduced to me, and he started to rail against the bush administration for pulling out of the abm treaty. and he said, you know, the fact that russia can make the united states vulnerable with its nuclear forces is what makes us a superpower. and you are trying to deny that capability to us. so he thinks in nuclear terms. he s obsessive, if you will, about russian nuclear capabilities, and when you think about it, russia is a country with a gross domestic product about the size of spain. there s nothing that makes russia a superpower other than its huge nuclear arsenal. and the second concern, though, is beyond putin is because russia s conventional forces are nowhere as strong as they were