Fox News declares Cold War officially over.

Most people would argue that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of The Cold War. But Fox news is not most people. Apparently Sean Hannity and his cohorts are only now emerging from under their desks as word breaks of President Obama’s “’road map’ for a future treaty to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty on Monday, a prologue to a new plan to reduce the nuclear stockpile to its lowest level ever..."[Foxnews.com] That’s right folks, today is a momentous one in world history as our President and the President of Russia totally pinky-swear to eventually agree to do something no one was worried about. I have chills.

The joint understanding on START commits the United States and Russia to reduce their strategic warheads to a range of 1,500-1,675, and their strategic delivery vehicles to a range of 500-1,100. It is an update to the START deal ratified in 2001 that is set to expire in December. The previous deal allowed up to 2,200 warheads and 1,600 launch vehicles. It also sets out plans to establish a Joint Data Exchange Center, which will notify each country of planned missile launches. It also calls on other countries with "missile potential to refrain from steps that could lead to missile proliferation and undermine regional and global stability." And it urges interested countries to cooperate in assessing the danger of global proliferation of ballistic missiles.[Source: foxnews.com]

People like Gordon Chang insist that if we, as Americans, want the rest of the world to halt nuclear programs and dispose of the weapons they already have, that we must set an example by destroying all of our weapons. It seems a solid point but I, as all modern Americans, was raised in a culture of fear. I can’t help but think of The Simpsons' Halloween episode in which Lisa uses Homer’s monkey’s paw to wish for world peace and when the world disposes of its guns, aliens attack. Am I suggesting that Russia is working with aliens and Gordon Chang to confuse us into getting rid of our weapons so that they can enslave us? I don’t think so. I’ll be honest, this post got away from me about four sentences ago.

PS The fox news article was listed under "Cold War Thaw" and had the following tagline:
"In a sign the Cold War is definitely over, the U.S. and Russian presidents signed a joint understanding on reducing their countries' nuclear stockpiles to a maximum 1,675 weapons and 1,100 delivery vehicles." So I don't want to hear any crap from you neocon types that I'm unjustly making fun of foxnews. It's just.