This is a blog for the community of Geography 170: "Geographies of Violence in the Age of Empire" in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. This course explores a range of answers to the question: How might geographical thinking be used to critically explore new forms of violence and empire?


Nov 19, 2010

Quick question about USA-Russia nuke treaty?

I'm just confused as to what this agreement is hoping to achieve? As I understand, both countries have enough nuclear weapons to obliterate the world many times over, so about from a sheer political move, what is the purpose of this?

2 comments:

rfpm said...

apart from a sheer political move*

Anonymous said...

I think that it is a move to build a stronger trust between nations. The treaty would mean that both countries would have to reduce their nuclear arsenal and that both countries would have inspection access to each others facilities.

What does this mean really when the reduced number of weapons could still obliterate the world? Not much in absolute security, but the strengthened Russian/U.S ties would mean greater relative security.

Russia has also been included in the recent conference to renew NATO's conceptual strategy. Russia has agreed to be apart of the proposed "missal defense shield" that is suppose to protect Europe and the United States from aerial threats. Russia signed an agreement that states that Russia and NATO nations are no longer threats to each other. That is big news considering that we wanted to kill each other less than twenty years ago.