Michael Gordon

This is a very significant milestone.

Since the early 1970s, there has been one sort of strategic arms treaty or another which has constrained the Russian and American long range.

nuclear arsenals.

The agreement can't legally be extended again, but the issue on the table is a Russian proposal to informally observe the ceilings in the treaty on warheads and missiles and bombers.

as a kind of a holding action for a year pending a decision on where to go next.

But over the last few months, President Trump's been on both sides of the issue.

He initially said that he was concerned about not having any limits on nuclear weapons, and he thought Putin's proposal was a good idea.

More recently, the administration has signaled that they'll address this issue on their own timeline.

So that's created a lot of uncertainty, at least among strategic weapons experts, not only about what the future would hold, but about what the Trump administration has in mind, because there hasn't been a vision laid out so far in his second term.

Part of that meant relaxing rules of engagement, which are put in place to govern the use of military force.

Hegseth argued that the rules had been too restrictive in the past and that they needed to be eased.

So I don't think it's surprising that the administration has taken a pretty assertive use and aggressive use on these bus strikes.

It's pretty much what Secretary Hegseth said he was going to do.

His recommendation that the ROE, Rules of Engagement, be used is highly controversial within military circles.

I've talked to generals who are currently serving, and they say the previous ROE were fine and necessary even to regulate the use of force.

The next month, there was an instance in which the U.S.

struck a semi-submersible vessel.

There were two survivors.

They were rescued and they were repatriated to their countries.

And so a question I have in my mind is how does the administration explain an action that killed the two survivors in September and a set of decisions just a month later in which it not only rescued the survivors but sent them home scot-free?