After years of resistance, Russia's Duma finally ratified the START II Treaty last week, thereby sending a statement that President-elect Vladimir Putin wants improved relations with Western nations rather than confrontation.
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed in 1993 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1996. Ratification debates were twice about to begin in Russia, but were canceled because of U.S. and British airstrikes against Iraq in 1998 and again last year because of NATO's air war against Yugoslavia. But throughout, the main opponents of the treaty were the Communists and their nationalist allies, who dominated the Duma.
Helping to make ratification possible this time were the losses suffered by the Communists and hardliners in last December's elections, as well as a change of mood in Russia itself. Mr. Putin had consolidated his patriotic credentials by his harsh repression of the rebellion in Chechnya, but after his election as president March 26, he evidently decided to adopt a more accommodating policy toward the United States and other Western nations and began lining up the votes in the Duma to ratify the nuclear arms-reduction treaty.