John McCain on Nuclear Security

DENVER, Colorado (CNN)
The United States should scrap a significant portion of its nuclear arsenal, Sen. John McCain said Tuesday in a speech laying out his nuclear security policy.
McCain also spoke about canceling the development of nuclear “bunker-busting” bombs and working with Russia and China to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

“Today, we deploy thousands of nuclear warheads. It is my hope to move as rapidly as possible to a significantly smaller force,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said at the University of Denver.

“The United States cannot and will not stop the spread of nuclear weapons by unilateral action,” he said. “As powerful as we are, America’s ability to defend ourselves and our allies against the threat of nuclear attack depends on our ability to encourage effective international cooperation.”

The GOP candidate voiced support for the U.N. Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency as well as an updated Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“We also need to reverse the burden of proof when it comes to discovering whether a nation is cheating on its NPT commitments. The IAEA shouldn’t have to play cat-and-mouse games to prove a country is in compliance,” he said.

The speech elaborated on a nuclear policy McCain outlined in a foreign policy address two months ago.
It was noticeably more conciliatory toward Russia than the one in March, when McCain proposed ejecting the country from the Group of Eight nations. McCain also did not mention the United Nations in his March speech.
McCain gave qualified support to an international treaty banning the testing of nuclear weapons, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which he opposed in the Senate in 1999.
And he proposed an “international repository for spent nuclear fuel” to keep the raw ingredients for nuclear bombs from falling into the wrong hands.
“It is even possible that such an international center could make it unnecessary to open the proposed spent nuclear fuel storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada,” McCain said, referring to a controversial project in the Southwest.
Randy Scheunemann, a senior foreign policy and national security advisor to the McCain campaign, said later that the repository could be in Siberia and that if there were sufficient security guarantees, McCain had a “willingness to entertain possibility … that we could possibly send some of our spent fuel there.”

Reacting to the speech, a spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic front-runner, said that the substance of it mirrored Obama’s positions but that McCain has no track record of leading on the issue.

And this from ABC News

McCain’s claim that he was departing from Bush’s policy was supported, albeit with qualifications, by an unlikely source: Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been an outspoken critic of McCain. But Biden acknowledged Tuesday that McCain’s nuclear security speech contained “many ideas that suggest a welcome departure from the Bush Administration’s hostility to arms control.”

While praising McCain’s pledge to work with Russia on nuclear arsenal reduction, Biden maintained that McCain’s policy has some “critical gaps,” particularly on the issues of Iran and North Korea.

Wild Thing’s comment……..
OH Great, now he’s channeling Kissinger.
Hey, I know… Iran is trying so hard to get Nukes, and since we’re gonna get rid of them, why not just hand them over to Iran? That way, we get rid of them, and they can have what they covet so greatly!
sheesh!
He voiced explicit support for the U.N. Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency as well as an updated Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s rely on the UN.
Should we just cut to the chase and start Armageddon?! My gosh!
John McCain is NOT Ronald Reagan!! What Reagan did worked with the Soviet union. The Great Man, President Ronald Reagan, took a few threes and turned them into a royal flush, Gorbachev bought it, and thus Star Wars actually became reality…twenty years later, AND Mr. Gorbachev DID tear down that wall. BUT that was a different time and a different war, we were not at war with Islam. And Reagan and McCain are polar opposites in too many ways to even put here.
But Biden acknowledged Tuesday that McCain’s nuclear security speech contained “many ideas that suggest a welcome departure from the Bush Administration’s hostility to arms control.”
Well, if its good enough for Hairplugs Biden, no worries from me.
HERE is McCain’s full text of his speech in Denver.
John McCain’s website