Medvedev cautions of "Cold War-style arms race"

**Seraphima** · 2nd December 2010 11:51 PM

Dmitry Medvedev warns of Cold War-style arms race - Telegraph

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow 5:21PM GMT 30 Nov 2010
Mr Medvedev, the Russian president, who was giving his annual state-of-the-nation speech in the Kremlin, issued the stark warning in an apparent attempt to strong-arm Nato into caving in on the sensitive issue.

He is reported to have presented his own blueprint for a joint Nato-Russia missile defence shield at the Nato summit in Lisbon earlier this month but to have got only a lukewarm response.

Analysts said his blunt message to the West on Tuesday appeared to be: embrace us as a fully-fledged partner or have us as a potential foe.

...

To stormy applause Mr Medvedev warned that Russia would be forced to start thinking about where to deploy "new offensive weapons" if there was no agreement with Nato, raising the spectre of the Kremlin pumping billions more into a new nuclear weapons programme. Such a scenario would be "very grave," he noted.

Not really surprising, but thoughts?

**Tedminator** · 3rd December 2010 12:40 AM

Originally Posted by Seraphima

Dmitry Medvedev warns of Cold War-style arms race - Telegraph
Not really surprising, but thoughts?

I'm wondering... is there any good reason why the US senate has not yet signed off on the START treaty?
The US might at any moment get into show-down with North Korea and/or Iran, so it'd be a good idea to have that treaty signed with Russia before it happens.

**Dr.Knuckles** · 3rd December 2010 09:39 AM

They're threatening the West with an arms race.. but arms races are the only things that really get Western economies pumping and it's the only thing that makes Western citizens make sacrifices of their own well-being for the sake of pouring public money into massive leviathon public work projects.

I think the US government's answer to this will be "PLEASE! When can we start?"