Back in the days before Iraq, George Bush's nuclear ambitions marked him out to his critics in Congress as a wild-eyed cowboy. He was the man who scrapped the once-hallowed anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty with Russia, started exploring new missile defences, opposed ratification of a comprehensive test-ban treaty and began looking for ways to develop new nuclear "bunker-buster" bombs. Nowadays, however, some of Mr Bush's ideas look normal and unscary. The abm treaty, for example, is now unla-mented everywhere. Mr Bush has persuaded Russia to agree that by 2012 the two countries will have no more than 1,700-2,200 deployed strategic warheads each (down from America's 4.500 or so today, though the figure could rise thereafter). He has also cut the numbers of extra warheads to be held in reserve for spare parts or for a rainy (and dangerous) day.
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