Commentators Stunned by Republican Delays on New START

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Friday, August 20, 2010:

On START Treaty, U.S. Suffering From Senate Republican Ignorance - John Farrell in U.S. News and World Report [link]

• Intent on obstructing anything that President Obama proposes, the Senate Republicans--with a few exceptions--are blocking a crucial nuclear arms treaty that would allow the U.S. military to continue to make on-site inspections of Russia's nuclear arsenal.
• The information that we get from those inspections gives U.S. intelligence a wealth of data, and the Pentagon a solid base on which to make decisions about the Russian nuclear threat and the means and costs of assuring our own safety.
• Yet when Post reporter Mary Beth Sheridan asked Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the deputy Republican leader and one of the organizers of obstruction, why he and other members of his party were so willing to sacrifice such an important American advantage, Kyl told her that he thought the inspections were continuing.
• The ignorance of his answer stuns me. A senator should have a basic understanding of the actions he/she is taking. Especially when it involves nuclear weapons and national security.

Wanted: A Few Stand-up Candidates - David Broder in the Washington Post [link]

• The Democrats seem determined to teach us the price of vacillation, while the Republicans are bent on instructing us on the rewards of obstruction.
• But let me focus on the report in Tuesday's Post that the delay in Senate consideration of the new strategic arms treaty with Russia means, as the story said, that "for the first time in 15 years, U.S. officials have lost their ability to inspect Russian long-range nuclear bases."
• Republican Richard Lugar, probably the Senate's leading authority on nuclear disarmament, told reporter Mary Beth Sheridan that the delay "is very serious and impacts our national security."
• But Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the deputy Republican leader and one of the main voices challenging the urgency of action, told Sheridan he had assumed the inspections were continuing. What a price to pay for ignorance.

U.S. Assures Israel That Iran Threat Is Not Imminent - The New York Times [link]

• The Obama administration, citing evidence of continued troubles inside Iran’s nuclear program, has persuaded Israel that it would take roughly a year — and perhaps longer — for Iran to complete what one senior official called a “dash” for a nuclear weapon, according to American officials.
• Administration officials said they believe the assessment has dimmed the prospect that Israel would pre-emptively strike against the country’s nuclear facilities within the next year, as Israeli officials have suggested in thinly veiled threats.
• American officials said the United States believed international inspectors would detect an Iranian move toward breakout within weeks, leaving a considerable amount of time for the United States and Israel to consider military strikes.
• The American assessments are based on intelligence collected over the past year, as well as reports from international inspectors. It is unclear whether the problems that Iran has had enriching uranium are the result of poor centrifuge design, difficulty obtaining components or accelerated Western efforts to sabotage the nuclear program.

Latest Critique of New START Verification Misses Mark - The Arms Control Association [link]

• This week, in response to new expressions of urgency, Paula DeSutter, George W. Bush's assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance, tries to attack the adequacy of verification provisions in the New START agreement.
• DeSutter was the senior verification official of the administration that negotiated and promoted the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), a treaty with no definitions, no counting rules, and no verification provisions whatsoever.
• Unfortunately, President Bush and his team, including Paula DeSutter, did not seek to negotiate a new treaty before leaving office or even to extend START's verification system to bridge until 2012 when the SORT limits would apply.
• The Obama administration wasted no time in negotiating New START within only one year and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee leadership also moved expeditiously to examine the treaty on its merits.
• The fact remains that until New START is approved by the Senate, insight into the only potential existential threat the United States faces will continue to diminish.

Defense Against Nuclear Terror - Letter to the Editor in The Georgia Ledger-Enquirer [link]

• I greatly welcomed Major General Paul Eaton’s perspective on the New START Treaty in Sunday’s Ledger-Enquirer. Many military leaders have advocated the reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons since the Cold War ended in 1989
• Unless the U.S. and Russia continue to cooperate on nuclear disarmament to comply with Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as securing and eliminating fissile material, the day may come that a nuclear weapon will be delivered.
• Military leaders, scientists, government officials and religious clergy have all thrown their support behind New START. Now it’s our turn: ‘We the People’ must speak.
• Please, if the future of our children and grandchildren is important to you, contact Senators Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss and ask for their “YES” vote on New START. We’re all in this together.

A View from the Dark Side

This is No Way to Approve the New START Treaty - Stephen Rademaker in The Washington Post [link]

• From the outset, proponents of New START have framed the issue as one on which senators must vote either yes or no.
• This narrative grossly oversimplifies the way complex treaties typically are addressed in the Senate. In addition to voting yes or no, senators ordinarily are afforded the option of voting "yes, provided . . . " -- with that "provided" consisting of declarations and conditions in the Senate resolution of approval that are designed to remedy concerns about particular aspects of a treaty.
• If current trends continue, the likely outcome will be a near party-line vote in the committee next month, probably foreclosing prospects for Senate approval this year.
• Should this happen, it will be unfair to simply blame those who voted no. Rather, it will be important to ask whether supporters could have done more to help them find a way to vote "yes, provided . . ."