START-ing Without China

On Sunday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told reporters his country was close to agreement with the United States on extending the landmark Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, better known as START I, which expired in early December. Whatever one thinks of the proposed arrangement, there is a fundamental problem: China will not be a party to the deal.

As Beijing is fond of saying, we live in a multipolar world. If that is true, then bilateral-weapons agreements are out-of-date. Yet the Chinese, when it comes to arms-reduction matters, play the count-me-out card, even though they are supposed to dominate this century.

Their position is that they will talk about limiting their strategic weapons only after the U.S. and Russia have in fact reduced theirs.

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