instead of one big, mysterious country called the ussr, the world got 15 new countries. armenia, azerbaijan, belarus, georgia, kazakhstan, latvia, ukraine, uzbekistan, russia, of course russia s the biggest. the second largest is kazakhstan. and if there is one thing that s maybe even more amazing, looking back at that time and the fact that the u.s. had no idea it was all coming, the only thing that competes with our ignorance for being as unbelievable in retrospect is the story of what happened to all the freaking nuclear weapons over there once that country spun apart. kazakhstan alone, if kazakhstan alone had just held on to the nuclear weapons that they had on their territory once they became an independent country, they would have become the fourth largest nuclear armed state in the world. but they decided when they became independent that they did not want nuclear weapons. they had tons of them, but they voluntarily gave up all of those nuclear weapons. they gave up being a nucl
states helping mexico get its highly enriched uranium taken out of that country, so it wouldn t end up on the black market and turn into a nuclear bomb or a dirty bomb somewhere down the road. we do this kind of work of locking down all this dangerous stuff all over the world. it is an international problem, but it is one that has our name on it. and not because it s our fault, not because we caused this problem, but because we have taken the lead role in fixing it. american exceptionalism, yes, on this issue, we have shown exceptional world leadership. and it has redounded do our own safety and to the safety of the world. and it is not exactly the same thing with chemical weapons as compared to nuclear weapons, but it is close. turns out we are particularly great at destroying chemical weapons. in part because we ve had so much practice. we had so many chemical weapons that we have destroyed that we ve gotten good at it. president richard nixon is the one who stopped us making chemica
syria, to secure those weapons in much the same way that american and russian scientists and american and russian regulators have worked to lock down other dangerous weapons and nuclear materials around the world? well, i wouldn t want to speculate about the possibility of americans actually going into syria for this. i don t think that that s something that we re looking at at this point. what is true, though, is that in geneva, where secretary kerry is meeting with foreign minister lavrov of russia, we ve brought a significant technical team with experts from across the u.s. government to meet with their russian counterparts and beginning to discuss exactly the challenge you identified. which is, how do we create an accounting of this chemical weapons stockpile, how do we set up a process whereby those weapons can be brought under control and destroyed. so there s a lot of technical discussions that have to take place, and that s starting with us and russia and geneva, even as we a
to completion, and they will enter into force and be acceptable for syria. u.s. officials confirm to nbc news that the cia is continuing to provide small arms to the syrian opposition. here is how white house press secretary jay carnie responded to assad s comments. we are providing assistance to the opposition, the military and political opposition. and again, you know, conditions and demands. placed by someone who a few weeks ago. blithely used weapons against innocent children, so we could all watch them die in videos are a little hard to take. joining me now, alex wagner and chris hays. alex wagner, another day, a signatory to the united nations convention on chemical weapons. a good day for the obama administration. it is a good day.
come into the chemical weapons convention. and number three, the weapons would ultimately have to be destroyed. and that was a credible proposal that the russians made, and that s what provided the opening for us to pursue this. with respect to congress, the president took that decision to congress, because he felt like it was important for the nation to debate these issues. at the same time, we also understood that that would create more space for us to await the u.n. inspectors report that is forthcoming probably next week, about what they found happened in those damascus suburbs on august 21st, and also to continue to work this issue internationally, so we could build broader support for an effort to hold the syrian regime accountable. but what we have now is essentially an opening to resolve this diplomatically. and old-fashioned coercive diplomacy, rachel, where you have a military threat that has prompted this kind of action. because the only thing that s changed from one year a