Sen. Daschle: Rejection of New START Could Lead to "Nuclear Anarchy"

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

Stories we're following today, Wednesday, July 21, 2010:

New START Is Critical for Our National Security and International Credibility - Remarks by Sen. Tom Daschle at the Center for American Progress [link]

• To say that ratifying New START ought not be controversial is an understatement. Experts of all ideological stripes have argued the merits for its passage—including Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Stephen Hadley, and James Schlesinger. It has the unanimous support from our country’s military.
• The obstacles to reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world, the obstacles to increasing this country’s national security, the obstacles to continuing down the path President Reagan himself first cleared—they are entirely political.
• There is no clearer example of plain and simple short-term politics at play than on New START, and we can’t afford to let that rule the day, especially when it comes to nuclear weapons.
• New START is so widely acknowledged to be the right move that it presents conservatives in Congress with a clear choice: They can choose politics, or they can choose governing. They can choose Mitt Romney, or they can choose the entire U.S. military establishment.
• I urge the Senate to do the right thing for the security of this country, and to stand up for a New START.
• To watch the full event, including Sen. Daschle's remarks and the panel featuring Ploughshares Fund president, Joe Cirincione, see below.

Ex-Military Officers, Senators Support Arms Treaty - The Washington Times [link]

• A group of four retired military officials and senators have expressed their support for the New START agreement as the nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia makes its way through the Senate.
• During a teleconference call Monday, they said the treaty is a necessary step toward global security in an increasingly complicated world.
• Their teleconference marked the launch of the Consensus for American Security, a bipartisan initiative promoting a national security strategy focused on 21st-century threats with the backing of more than 30 senior former military and government officials.
• "Things like this should always be above politics," former Sen. Gary Hart said. "We owe it to our children."

The Value of New START Verification - The Arms Control Association [link]

• Absent the new treaty’s extensive verification provisions (see summary below), the United States will steadily lose clarity on the current status of the most lethal potential threat it faces: Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal.
• The updated system of information exchanges and enhanced on-site inspections under New START would provide high-confidence that Russia is complying with the new, lower limits on deployed strategic nuclear warheads and delivery systems.
• That the treaty was negotiated in close consultation with, and sensitive to the requirements of, U.S. defense and intelligence agencies helps explain why it has received such broad-based support.
• Superficial comparisons of the two treaties’ verification systems are misleading. The verification system of START I was designed to monitor compliance with a different treaty, with a different (and more complex) set of limits, in a different political context.  
• If one is really worried about such implausible scenarios, one should be more rather than less eager to return U.S. weapons inspectors to the sites where such violations could occur.

Corker's Can Be a Pivotal Voice - Tyler Wigg-Stevenson in the Tennessean [link]

• Bob Corker has defied type casting for a freshman senator. Though his conservative credentials are unimpeachable, he has also emerged as a go-to leader in the Capitol for getting work done across party lines.
• Tennesseans should urge him to continue in this vein by leading his fellow Republicans to support the New START treaty in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote scheduled July 27.
• Top security officials from the past seven administrations, including George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft and James Schlesinger have endorsed the treaty.
• Let’s be candid: A treaty this conservative, with over whelming bipartisan and military support, would be ratified overwhelmingly if it had been proposed by a Republican president — as were Ronald Reagan’s START I and George H.W. Bush’s START II.
• An increasingly ideological Washing on may not welcome the common-sense, pragmatic leadership demonstrated by Sen. Corker through out his career. But Tennesseans appreciate political courage: Let’s let Sen. Corker know that we’ll stand behind a vote for New START.

Will Countdown to Zero Bomb at the Box Office? - Mother Jones [link]

• Countdown to Zero is a splashy and distressing look at nuclear security and nonproliferation, packed with frightening accounts of uranium smuggling and assorted near-misses.
• Nonproliferation expert Joseph Cirincione notes how easy it is to smuggle highly enriched uranium; hiding it in kitty litter works well. It's the ultimate horror movie.
• After An Inconvenient Truth, producer Jeff Skoll thought it was time to go nuclear; producer Lawrence Bender told him about a group of arms-control experts who were working on Global Zero, a campaign calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
• Their aim was to recast disarmament as a tough-minded policy motivated by national security concerns—namely, the growing risks of proliferation and nuclear terrorism.
• And his new movie has the benefit of good timing, appearing as it does when nuclear weapons are in the news thanks to the Obama administration's recent initiatives on nuclear policy. It's an auspicious environment for what Skoll calls the "biggest public awareness campaign about nuclear weapons since the 1980s."