Warheads

Washington -- The question is: What should we do with the nukes? My own answer, fashioned equally of unavoidable ignorance and strong conviction, is to scrap 99 percent of them.President Bush is prepared to go a long way in that direction. In the near future he proposes to eliminate the entire arsenal of 50 MX intercontinental missiles. A bit further along, he will eliminate 1,000 of the 1,500 nuclear warheads now positioned on Minuteman II missiles. He will cut back on B-2 bombers and reduce the number of missiles on strategic submarines.

Excerpts from the congressional report on Chinese espionage: The People's Republic of China (PRC) has stolen classified design information on the United States' most advanced thermonuclear weapons. These thefts of nuclear secrets from our national weapons laboratories enabled the PRC to design, develop, and successfully test modern strategic nuclear weapons sooner than would otherwise have been possible. The stolen U.S. nuclear secrets give the PRC design information on thermonuclear weapons on a par with our own. The PRC thefts from our national laboratories began at least as early as the late 1970s, and significant secrets are known to have been stolen as recently as the mid-1990s.

THE SATIRICAL Parkinson's Law holds that work expands to fill the time available for doing it. The bizarre dialectic of strategic nuclear planning appears to have long held that the number of targets pinpointed for attack will increase as the production of nuclear warheads rises.About 12,000 U.S. nuclear bombs or warheads had been earmarked for about 8,500 targets in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. "With all the weapons they had, (Pentagon planners) seemed to have targeted almost every telephone pole and Communist Party headquarters out in the sticks," one former high Department of Defense official told Los Angeles Times staff writer Robert C. Toth.

WASHINGTON - U.S. and Russian officials claimed progress toward a nuclear arms deal yesterday, but the two sides failed again to complete the agreement that the nations' leaders hope to sign at a summit in Moscow in three weeks. After a session with Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that some sticking points remain and acknowledged that the deal might not be completed in time for signing at the summit. Powell said that if the agreement is completed in time, "fine.

MOSCOW - Russian lawmakers put off yesterday the ratification of a treaty to reduce the strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia, a delay signaling Moscow's disapproval of Bush administration plans to wage war in Iraq. The Kremlin has regarded passage of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, which would cut arsenals to fewer than 2,200 warheads during the next decade, as a vital part of relations between Washington and Moscow. In autumn 2001, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin convinced President Bush of the need for a binding pact to cut back nuclear arms, which Bush contended could be accomplished with a handshake deal.

It would have been hard to imagine yesterday afternoon that there could be television any more gripping than Wednesday night's broadcasts by CNN from Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.But then came last night's initial reports out of Israel -- with pictures of reporters in gas masks and the sounds of sirens in the background -- after Tel Aviv was hit by Iraqi missiles.Watching it was an intense, frightening and, at times, surreal experience.Unlike Wednesday night, when the story belonged to CNN after the first 20 minutes, all four major news organizations were in the hunt with live hookups to correspondents in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

WASHINGTON -- The Patriot missile system, hailed by the Raytheon Co. and the Army as a symbol of U.S. technological mastery, was in fact an often-troubled weapon that cannot be proven to have destroyed more than one Scud warhead of the 47 engaged in the Persian Gulf War, several independent U.S. and Israeli military experts have concluded.Even that lone success -- captured on film by Israeli military scientists over Tel Aviv toward the end of the war -- is still a matter of some debate.This radical conclusion, from experts in both countries who have had access to the classified military data, is starkly at odds with the Pentagon's public score card on the Patriot's performance.

WASHINGTON - The United States and Russia forged a historic treaty yesterday that would require both nations to slash their nuclear arsenals by two-thirds over the next decade. President Bush, who plans to sign the treaty in Moscow next week, said it would "liquidate the legacy of the Cold War." With little advance word, Bush appeared outside the White House to make the announcement, hours after U.S. and Russian diplomats completed months of negotiations. The two sides had been eager to strike a deal in advance of Bush's visit to Russia.

THE CURRENT unpleasantness in the Middle East may be remembered less for what eventually happens than for what we learn from it.Lesson 1: Even without an aggressive Soviet menace, the United States cannot afford to disarm. Before the Soviet Union there was Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. Before that, Kim Il Sung in North Korea (which he still rules today). Before that, Emperor Hirohito in Japan and Adolf Hitler in Germany. Before that, Kaiser Wilhelm And on and on, through a list of names and places now long forgotten.

Yesterday's Bush-Yeltsin agreement to reduce nuclear arsenals to one-third their present level will eventually eliminate the multiple-warhead, land-based intercontinental missiles that are the most menacing and destabilizing weapons ever devised. It is an extraordinary step forward, the symbol of a relationship that is leaving confrontation behind and moving toward friendship, if not outright military alliance. No wonder President Bush could say "the nuclear nightmare recedes."The accord will permit the United States to maintain a predominant position in those areas where it traditionally has been strongest: submarine-based strategic rockets and nuclear arms carried on long-range bombers.