Writing on Slate.com, Fred Kaplan picks apart a recent op/ed signed by John Yoo and John Bolton recommending that the U.S. Senate put off ratification of the new START treaty with Russia.  While there are parts that are more convincing than others in Kaplan’s response (i.e., linkages), the fact of the matter is that 1,550 nuclear warheads is still quite an overwhelmingly unimaginable quantity of world-ending destructive power, any way you slice it.

The argument here, in plain English, is that we need more nuclear warheads than the Russians–and more than the treaty allows–because, unlike them, we have promised several allies that, if they are invaded, we would come to their defense, with nuclear retaliation if necessary.