On Friday the Russian State Duma ratified the START II treaty by a vote of 288-131. The treaty will now pass to Russia's upper house, the Federal Council, where approval is almost certain. Implementation of START II means that U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals will be reduced to half their present size -- to roughly 3,500 warheads on each side.

Given the radical reductions proposed by START II, a brief overview of the START process and its implications is in order.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) were first suggested by President Ronald Reagan in May 1982. During a speech at Eureka College, Reagan proposed the reduction of superpower arsenals to 5,000 nuclear warheads and 850 missiles. START was initially opposed by leaders in Reagan's own party. As Senator Malcolm Wallop (R-Wy.) wrote in 1987: "Reagan's proposal made sense on the surface, but only on the surface."

Wallop co-authored a book with Angelo Codevilla in 1987 entitled, "The Arms Control Delusion," in which he noted that a typical U.S. warhead in the mid-1980s was only 40 kilotons, which "yields only about one-twentieth the explosive power of the most typical warhead in the Soviet arsenal. ..."

Reagan's START proposal, based on straight numbers, would fix America into a position of permanent strategic inferiority. START was therefore denounced by Leslie Gelb, President Carter's Director of Political-Military Affairs. START was also criticized by the president of the left-of-center Arms Control Association, Herbert Scoville. But Reagan's thinking was ahead of its time: If the United States developed ballistic missile defenses under the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the reduced number of warheads would then be to America's net advantage. A subtle thought, indeed, and a nice twist to the olive branch Reagan was extending toward Moscow. Unfortunately, Reagan's SDI program -- ridiculed as "star wars" -- died in its crib. The United States never developed a national ballistic missile defense. Instead, it was Russia that developed an SDI program, and this has been documented by William T. Lee in a book entitled, "The ABM Treaty Charade."

If we look at the wider strategic context, Reagan's START proposal was only sensible if America went ahead with a massive missile defense program. The weakened and watered-down SDI research efforts that followed, however, with tiny and wavering budgetary commitments, could achieve very little. Given the huge size, delivery capacity and tremendous speed of Russian rockets, only the most robust Strategic Defense Initiative would make a START treaty advantageous for the American side. Because Reagan's SDI never got anywhere, the START process gave the advantage to Russia. As Senator Wallop predicted in 1987, the proposed START reductions would leave the United States unable "to carry out an attempt at Assured Destruction (in a war with Russia), much less any rational military strategy."

Peter Vincent Pry, a leading CIA analyst at the time, also warned against the proposed START reductions in his 1990 book, "Nuclear Wars: Exchanges and Outcomes." Pry wrote that even if START was coupled with SDI, the START I treaty would leave America with a limited retaliatory capability after a Russian first strike. Pry's 1990 study, painstakingly researched and ignored by the public, showed that after a Russian first strike under the START I treaty the U.S. "would be able to attack only about 30 percent of Soviet military targets, falling to 5 percent of Soviet military targets when further reductions required by START II are completed at the close of the century."

Pry's groundbreaking 1990 analysis showed that deep reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, like those envisioned by the START I and START II treaties, "would cut U.S. weaponry to such low levels that the United States would not be able to meet basic targeting requirements for achieving warfighting objectives and for enforcing deterrence."

William T. Lee, yet another distinguished former analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA, stated in 1997 that the START II treaty would make Russia "potentially the world's preeminent nuclear superpower with its combination of strategic offensive and defensive forces. ..."

According to Lee, "the START II Treaty limit of some 3,500 strategic warheads is below the safety threshold."

So why did America's leaders negotiate such an idiotic treaty? And why did the U.S. Senate ratify an earlier version of this treaty?

American politicians and negotiators have foolishly extended a kind of trust to Russia's leaders, imagining that these leaders are no longer "communists." But the new leaders in Russia are the same old apparatchiks painted over in nationalist colors. It does not matter what they call themselves. The chief Kremlin players today are interchangeable with the players of yesterday.

Today Russia possesses the world's best and also the world's largest strategic rockets. Russia has the world's only national anti-ballistic missile defense system. The Kremlin has already broken the ABM treaty, the chemical and biological weapons treaties, and its leaders cannot be trusted to keep the START II treaty. To repeat the point made above: Reagan's strategic plan has been turned on its head. Instead of the U.S. possessing an advantage from the START process, it is Russia that gains the advantage -- because Russia has Reagan's SDI and the United States has nothing but President Clinton's ongoing obstruction of SDI.

There is also another interesting fact to consider. The former Soviet Union gained a great deal from its reputed implosion. Not only did the USSR breakup lead the United States to trust the Kremlin as never before, but many republics of the former Soviet Union were converted into nuclear free zones -- areas that will not come under attack during a future war. Consequently, the air and missile defense problem of the former Soviet Union has been simplified.

To show how cynical the breakup of the Soviet military system was, the former Soviet military districts largely remain intact. Not only this, but the former Soviet Republics have recently engaged in numerous joint military exercises, some of which emphasize air and missile defense. A good example was provided by the Comradeship-in-Arms '99 exercise of last Aug. 24, in which former Soviet republics jointly defended against mock U.S. warplane and cruise missile attacks. The commander of the exercise was none other than Anatoly Kornukov, chairman of the coordinating committee of the united air defense system of the CIS countries and commander in chief of the Russian air force.

On the same day as the Duma elections last December, a special meeting was scheduled in Moscow of the Council of Defense Ministers of the CIS. These defense ministers had previously met in August, to discuss the coordination of former Soviet Union air defenses. Do you really think the old Soviet military structures have evaporated?

We have to face the truth. START II is a threat to America's national security. Not only does it give a tremendous advantage to Russia, but the treaty says nothing about the size of China's nuclear arsenal.

In closing, we should consider what Pavel Felgenhauer wrote in the Moscow Times of April 13. According to Felgenhauer, Russia's Duma was urged by the Kremlin to ratify START II as a propaganda ploy "to expose the evil Americans." One Kremlin official, said Felgenhauer, fully acknowledged that the provisions of START II would never be implemented by Russia.

The U.S. Senate will probably reject the revised START II treaty ratified by the Russian Duma. But Clinton will enforce this treaty despite the Senate's rejection. And so will Al Gore -- if he should become our next, and perhaps last, president.