What? WikiLeaks: Obama Sold Out UK, Giving Details Of Their Deterrent To Russia, In Order To Induce It To Sign Meaningless START Treaty

Oh. My. God.

For a piece of paper?

Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal signed by President Barack Obama next week.

Defence analysts claim the agreement risks undermining Britain’s policy of refusing to confirm the exact size of its nuclear arsenal.

The fact that the Americans used British nuclear secrets as a bargaining chip also sheds new light on the so-called “special relationship”, which is shown often to be a one-sided affair by US diplomatic communications obtained by the WikiLeaks website.

One can imagine why the Russians wanted the information -- "look, we need to know what missiles your British buddies have too, because you are joined at the hip on foreign policy" -- but what on earth is the US doing selling out the Brits? Why not just tell them, "No, you'll have to get that from them?"

Again -- for what? For a meaningless piece of paper. Which has, at best, some trivial good-feeling advantage vis a vis Russia.

What of the former era of good feeling that existed between America and the UK?

But WikiLeaks Is Often Hype... One thing: WikiLeaks doesn't have all the diplomatic cables. It might be the case (in fact, I'd bet hope it is the case) that the US and UK had a side-deal where the UK blessed this exchange.

So, actually, give this one 24 hours.

But Then... Allies paper things over publicly even in the case of a major breach. Publicly, they say "everything's cool.'

So to find out the real story, we'll also have to wait for anonymous quotes from the British government. We can also look to the enthusiasm they show or lack when making their "everything's cool" statement.

posted by Ace at 06:02 PM

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