Senate Edges Closer to New START Vote

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

Stories we're following today, Tuesday, November 9, 2010.

Senate Must Make Arms Treaty Lame Duck Priority - Phineas Anderson, Richard P. Anderson, and Stephen Stranahan in The Toledo Blade [link]

• The U.S. Senate will consider the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) during its lame-duck, year-end session. Sen. George Voinovich would demonstrate statesmanship during his final days in office by joining his Ohio colleague, Sherrod Brown, in voting to approve the treaty.
• Although they have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, America and Russia continue to hold most of the world’s nuclear weapons. They must show other nations their commitment under the treaty to reduce and eventually to eliminate such weapons.
• Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and our top military leaders, as well as seven former commanders of the U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Air Command, urge prompt ratification of New START. Our senators should back our military on this matter.
• Nuclear missiles remain on hair-trigger alert status. There remains the possibility of an accidental launch, especially given the potential reality of cyberwar scenarios that simulate false attacks. Even more alarming is the possibility of terrorists buying, stealing, or building a nuclear weapon and exploding it in a major city, with devastating consequences. New START will reduce these risks.
• If New START is ratified, our chances of establishing a more cooperative relationship with Russia improve. As trust is built between the two countries, they can work together on a range of security issues vital to both.
• Senator Voinovich and his fellow Republicans should unanimously join Democrats in passing New START this year, as senators of both parties joined in 2002 to approve the Moscow treaty. On national security, bipartisanship rather than politics should rule the day.

New START at a Crossroads - Jeffrey Lewis in Arms Control Wonk [link]

• Forget all the stories explaining how the election imperils the New START treaty. The elections matter, but not quite in the way you think.
• The real threat to the New START treaty is now from the nuclear-weapons complex — comprising NNSA, the labs, and the production facilities — which is poised to blow up the bipartisan consensus in favor of both the New START Treaty and modernizing the nuclear-weapons complex, over a wafer-thin mint.
• The issue is whether to insist on a multi-year appropriation for the nuclear-weapons complex.
• Senator Kyl, prompted by sources inside NNSA, is now mulling over whether to demand another delay in ratification, followed by a multiyear design/construction appropriation next year to guarantee that the money will be available in future years. Did you know Congress could do that? Yes, they can!
• After getting tough with his own team, Obama has to begin aggressively reaching out to Republican Senators directly, not merely relying on finding a magic formula for Kyl (which might not exist), or hoping that others, like Senators Corker or Lugar, will do his dirty work for him.
• If there was ever a time for Obama to find a little Lyndon Johnson in him, this is it.

New Tea Party Senators are likely 'no' votes on New START - Josh Rogin in “The Cable” a Foreign Policy Blog [link]

• If the Senate vote on the New START nuclear reduction treaty with Russia is postponed until next year, the new Tea Party-affiliated senators are likely to vote no.
• "I think we need to have more discussion on it, but it doesn't sound like that I'm probably going to be in favor of that," Kentucky Republican Senator-elect Rand Paul said on ABC's This Week on Sunday.
• Paul, who is a leader of the Tea Partiers though with more libertarian inclinations, added that the Tea Party has no real foreign policy, but that its members are likely to unify around core principles when they descend on Washington next week.
• John Isaacs [a Ploughshares granteee], the executive director of the Council for a Livable World, an arms control organization that supports New START, said Paul's opposition made sense in light of Tea Parties opposition to increased government activity both at home and abroad.
• Even if the treaty is voted on in the lame duck session, there will be two new senators who have not yet disclosed how they intend to vote: Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Mark Kirk (R-IL). Both are open to the overall idea of arms control but both will need to be convinced to sign on the line when it comes to New START.
  

US Rejects Israel Call for Military Threat Against Iran - Dan De Luce in AFP [link]

• US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday rejected comments by Israel's prime minister calling for a "credible" military threat against Iran to ensure it does not obtain nuclear weapons.
• "We know that they are concerned about the impact of the sanctions. The sanctions are biting more deeply than they anticipated and we are working very hard at this," Gates told reporters on a visit to Australia for security talks. "So I would disagree that only a credible military threat can get Iran to take the actions it needs to end its nuclear weapons program.”
• President Barack Obama's administration, while not ruling out a military option against Iran, has so far stressed sanctions and diplomacy as its preferred course with dealing with the Islamic republic's nuclear drive.
• The New York Times reported last month that the Obama administration and its European allies were preparing a new, more onerous offer for Iran than the one rejected by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last year.
• The offer would require Iran to send more than 4,400 pounds of (1,995 kilograms) of low-enriched uranium out of the country, an increase of more than two-thirds from the amount required under a deal struck in Vienna.

Georgia Reveals Details of Undercover Operation That Seized Nuclear Material - Desmond Butler in The LA Times [link]

• Early one morning in March, two Armenians slipped aboard a train in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, unaware they were being watched. They removed a pack of Marlboro Reds hidden in a maintenance box between two cars. Inside the pack, Georgian authorities say, was nuclear bomb grade uranium, encased in lead.
• Before long, Georgian officials seized the uranium and arrested the men, breaking up a ring they say was willing to sell material for nuclear weapons to any bidder
• For all its apparent success, the investigation highlighted the difficulty of stopping nuclear smuggling in the Caucasus. The region has porous borders, widespread corruption and unknown quantities of unsecured materials left over from the Soviet period.
• Though this seizure involved, as in previous cases, a small amount of nuclear material, international nuclear safety officials are not reassured. A terrorist organization could accumulate material from numerous small acquisitions over time. And if small amounts can be smuggled and sold, larger batches could follow similar routes.
• "The dangerous thing is that there might be more material out there somewhere," said Archil Pavlenishvili, chief of Georgia's nuclear smuggling unit in the interior ministry. "This proves that if a criminal or an extremist is wealthy enough, it is possible to obtain material."

Obama Says US Anxious to Work With India on 'Securing' Nuclear Weapons Around the World - The LA Times [link]

• President Barack Obama says the United States and India can work together to "secure the world's vulnerable nuclear materials."
• The president said that Washington and New Delhi can work together to "pursue a vision that Indian leaders have espoused since independence — a world without nuclear weapons." He said countries must have peaceful programs, and abide by world rules, specifically mentioning Iran.
• Obama noted the new START treaty he negotiated with Russia to reduce nuclear arsenals. He has asked the Senate to ratify the pact during its post-election session beginning next week.

A View From the Dark Side

GOP Memo Urges Delay to START Vote - Laura Rozen in “Foreign Policy” a Politico Blog [link]

• President Barack Obama said last week before he left for Asia that one of his administration’s top priorities for the lame-duck Congress would be trying to get a Senate ratification vote of the new START treaty.
• But a Nov. 5 memo from the Republican Policy Committee to Senate GOP staffers asserts that “it’s not time for the Senate to vote” on the U.S.-Russian strategic arms control treaty.
• While agreeing that the Obama administration would allocate an additional $10 billion in new funds to modernize the U.S. nuclear complex, the memo says the $80 billion allocation “actually raises the question of whether this Administration is committed to modernizing the nuclear weapons complex.”
• Some observers interpreted the memo as more about tactical positioning than signaling an absolute GOP intention to block a Senate ratification vote by the end of the year.
• The memo “actually doesn't raise any issues on the treaty but on related issues which are GOP priorities,” such as missile defense, said Heather Hurlburt, executive director of the National Security Network and a Ploughshares grantee. “I read it as an effort to raise the price of the treaty by linking to issues that properly should be treated separately.”