John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tells National Review Online that he is skeptical of the reported “agreement in principle” between U.S. and Russian negotiators on a successor to the START treaty that expired last year. The deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, would reduce the number of actively deployed nuclear warheads from 2,200 to between 1,500 and 1,675, and the number of possible delivery vehicles to between 700 and 800 per side.

“On strategic offensive capabilities, we don’t know the specifics, but the levels of nuclear weapons contemplated are dangerously low,” Bolton says. “Perhaps even worse, the limitations on delivery systems, depending on how the treaty language is written, can impede our ability to use delivery systems for conventional rather than nuclear munitions.” This, he says, “would have the ironic effect of limiting our ability to use these conventional weapons without reducing our nuclear umbrella.”

Bolton adds that it is “still not clear what the Obama administration has agreed to on strategic [missile]-defense issues,” noting that “there is speculation in the Russian press that the Obama negotiators have made concessions in the arms-control negotiations in order to get unspecified Russian support for sanctions on Iran.”

“This is like giving to the Russians with one hand, and then giving to the Russians with the other hand,” Bolton concludes.