This seems like good news:
The Obama administration scored a victory in its drive to curb the worldwide spread of nuclear material with an agreement on Wednesday by the hard-line former Soviet republic, Belarus, to surrender its stockpile of highly enriched uranium by 2012.
The announcement came at a European security conference here after a meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the foreign minister of Belarus, Sergey Martynov. Mrs. Clinton said the United States would give Belarus technical and financial aid to eliminate its stockpile.
She welcomed the decision as a sign that Belarus would join the United States in its campaign to stem the proliferation of weapons-grade material by converting nuclear plants to run on low-enriched uranium — an effort that is one of President Obama’s most cherished foreign policy goals.
The administration had pushed Belarus for months to relinquish its stockpile without success. As a result, the country was not invited to Mr. Obama’s 47-nation nuclear security summit last April, at which another former Soviet state, Ukraine, agreed to give up its highly enriched uranium.
Efforts like this would be easier if Republicans would stop impeding foreign policy advances such as START for little more than domestic partisan gain.
TheMightyTrowel
I know this is controversial round the web, but I gotta say, at times like this I admire the shit out of Hillary Clinton. That woman gets shit done.
NobodySpecial
At least Obama’s Cabinet has been mercifully mostly drama free and effective.
New Yorker
Why are we talking about this? The more important thing to do is continue to wring hands about how Obama has failed to draw and quarter Julian Assange and put his head on a pike on the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
LGRooney
Reagan brought down the Soviet Union several years after he left office, I am sure that Bush forced the Belarusians to give up their nukes with a steely-eyed Texas stare.
General Stuck
@NobodySpecial:
Hillarious
Maude
@TheMightyTrowel:
The negotiators do the work. It is all agreed to by the time the SoS gets there.
JGabriel
John Cole:
It’s not even for partisan gain. Only wingnuts wants to block START; the GOP isn’t going to make any inroads among non-wingnut independents on this issue. This is partisan maintenance, not gain.
.
Joseph Nobles
Sadly, we won’t hear about this at all because the latest reiteration of “Who’s On First” between GOP Abbott and Barack Costello. I’m glad something good is being done.
TheMightyTrowel
@Maude: Naive as it might appear to be that the SoS personally sorts shit out herself, the broader point I was making was that she runs a good ship, has a decent crew in place and that under this particular SoS shit gets done.
I may not always agree with her personal views on war or america’s place in the world, but there’s no denying that she is an effective leader – both as a diplomat and as the head of a large bureaucracy.
Linda Featheringill
Applause! Bravo! In the long run, this sort of victory may prove more important than a lot of stuff people are fighting about.
And yes, under Clinton’s management, stuff is getting done. It looks like she is doing a good job. Go, Hillary!
Maude
@TheMightyTrowel:
The Assistant Secretary of State runs the day to day stiff at State.
Condi Rice ran the State Department when she was there. They might have liked her, to put it mildly, but she was excellent at what she did.
I don’t agree that she’d good. Read up on the XL pipeline remarks she made in SF on October 15th. Mother Jones had posts about the remark and the responses to it by the Nebraska govenor, Patric Leahy and other Senators and evironmental groups.
She said she was leaningin favor of approving the pipeline. The problem was that the DoS reports wasn’t completed and not all the info was in. If she approves the project (sand oil) the DoS can and would be sued.
It’s things like this that make my toes curl. It is so basic not to say anything before all the info is in.
My big gripe is the spying at that level on the UN officials. Gives me the creeps.
Obama is known to have (their words at State) an iron grip on foreign poilicy.
And the Belarus nuke news is excellent.
kindness
How hard would it be to plant the seed among RedState types that Obama & Democrats are doing this to try & build their own H-bombs. Yes most those with any brains would know it was bullshit but that is my point exactly. Most the red sites would eat it up. No doubt it would be a Drudge link by sundown.
James E. Powell
Efforts like this would be easier if Republicans would stop impeding foreign policy advances such as START for little more than domestic partisan gain.
The question is, why does impeding foreign policy advances such as START provide the Republicans with domestic partisan gain?
ET
Of course all the idiot Republicans in the Senate now won’t do ANYTHING unit the tax cut “issues” are dealt with.
Seriously, if we had a better media and better talking heads they would be like “why are we paying Senators to do nothing?” and instead they will all be discussing the legislative strategy while Democrats will sit there with their heads up their collective asses instead of pointing out how Republican strategy is hurting Americans in a broad array of areas by not passing legislating or doing anything substantive, at all. They won’t get into the public relations aspect of this strategy and won’t even hit back with good old fashion populism.
cleek
@James E. Powell:
because the GOP has convinced enough people that START is a bad thing, that it weakens the US and empowers its enemies. for example
sparky
is there anything else?
Catsy
You’d think that Belarus, of all countries, might be a little more eager to eliminate their radioactive material.