Biden Points to U.S.-Russian Disarmament Cooperation, also to Russian Nuclear Provocations

While tensions between the U.S. and Russia remain high, Vice President Joe Biden yesterday highlighted recent areas of cooperative success between the two nations, including the New START Treaty. “From 2009 to 2012, we achieved a great deal together, a great deal of cooperation with Russia, to advance our interests—Russia and ours—[including] a New START Treaty that reduced strategic nuclear arsenals by one-third,” Biden said during a speech about Russia and Ukraine at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

 

Biden juxtaposed past cooperation with today’s situation, which he said involves provocative Russian nuclear rhetoric that was common decades ago. “[Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin is also trying to scare our allies and partners with the threat of a new and aggressive Russia—terms we haven’t heard in a long time…relating to nuclear power, nuclear arms, and as it tries to rattle the cage, the Kremlin’s working hard to buy off and coop European political forces, funding both right wing and left wing anti-systemic parties throughout Europe.” Putin has pointed at his country’s nuclear arsenal at different points in the past year, and in March was featured in a documentary program saying that he had considered putting Russia’s nuclear weapons into a state of alert during last year’s unrest in Crimea.