Senators Play Politics with National Security on the Line

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

Stories we're following today, Tuesday, November 30, 2010:

Our View on Nuclear Weapons: Stop Playing Politics and Ratify the New START Arms Treaty - USA Today [link]

• As the 111th Congress grumbles through its final weeks, divided over nearly everything and achieving nearly nothing, you'd think its members might seize an opportunity to show exasperated voters that they can actually govern, not just wrangle for political advantage. But you would be wrong. For evidence, look no further than the Senate's looming failure to ratify the New START treaty with Russia.
• Every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has endorsed New START. So have former secretaries of State from all recent administrations of both parties.
• To address Kyl's longstanding concern that the nuclear arsenal needs to be modernized, Obama offered $80 billion, and recently sweetened the offer, but so far Kyl won't take yes for an answer.
• Democrats say all this shows that the Republicans simply want to deny Obama a foreign policy victory, which, if true, would be shameful.
• We'd rather believe, or at least hope, that Kyl means what he says: He just wants to work out the details. He knows the issues, and he has not said that he opposes the treaty. But delay still equals failure, specifically failure by Kyl to address his concerns in a timely, efficient fashion. It would be a sorry moment if so much progress is lost because one senator couldn't get his homework done on time.

National Security Experts vs. Forces of Delay - Joe Cirincione in The Huffington Post [link]

• A Washington showdown looms on the critical New Start treaty this year. Confronted with GOP calls for delay, more than three-dozen former senior military and national security leaders are weighing in with their strong support for approving the treaty this year. The message is clear: "National Security Can't Wait - Ratify new START Now."
• Some Senators, led by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), have sought to delay the treaty to score political points - pushing aside the urgent advice of our military and national security leaders.
• This recent ad is part of an explosion of support for the treaty, which has pitted mainstream, security-minded conservatives against a narrow few seeking petty political gains.
• This adds to strong support from U.S. military leaders, U.S. intelligence leaders and NATO allies - all have endorsed New START.
• That's why prominent conservatives like Robert Kagan and Max Boot - both advisors to John McCain's presidential campaign - published pieces explaining why ratifying New START this year is in the GOP's best interests.
• Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute said it best: "The stakes for America's national interest...are immense here. Pleases, guys, suck it up and find a way to make this work."

Five Questions for Ambassador Linton Brooks on New START and Modernization - Nick Roth in “All Things Nuclear” a Union of Concerned Scientists Blog [link]

• Members of the Senate are currently debating whether or not to hold a vote on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), and some Senators say they are not prepared to vote at this point. To inform the current debate, I spoke on November 22 with Ambassador Linton Brooks, who served as Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) from 2003 to 2007.
• Roth: As someone who was the lead negotiator for the first START agreement under the H.W. Bush administration, and as the former head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) under George W. Bush, what is your take on New START? Should the Senate support the treaty?
• Brooks: I think the Senate should support the treaty. New START does several things for us. First, it’s important as part of the overall relationship with the Russian Federation… The second thing it does is provide transparency about what Russia is doing. And transparency leads to predictability, and predictability leads to stability.
• Roth: The administration recently provided senators with a detailed budget preview on funding for nuclear weapons. How common is it for an administration to do so at this point in the budget process?
• Brooks: I have never seen this done before. I don’t know if it’s very unusual or actually unique. Certainly I never saw this happen in the past, and it is part of the administration’s pattern of supporting the weapons program… So I think that what you are seeing here are two things: You’re seeing very strong support for the budgets on the part of the administration and then you’re seeing its willingness to make that support clear by providing additional details that it would not normally share with the Congress until the budget goes up in February.
• Brooks: I hope there is time for the Senate to consider the treaty this year. The Senate and Congress generally have a lot on their plates. But my recollection is this needs no more than a couple of days of floor debate. I’m hoping we can find time for that before the end of the lame duck session. I think delay hurts us. It hurts the credibility of the United States, it imperils the reset with Russia, and it gives more time for the consensus on funding to come apart. The Senate has to work its own procedures, but I would be very hopeful that the Senate could act now.
• NOTE: The Union of Concerned Scientists is a Ploughshares grantee.

Iran, P5+1 to Meet in Geneva - Laura Rozen in “Foreign Policy” a Politico Blog [link]

• Iran has agreed to hold nuclear talks in Geneva next week with diplomats from the U.S., UK, France, Germany, China and Russia, a diplomatic source said Monday.
• "An agreement looks to have been reached on Geneva, talks starting Monday into Tuesday," a source with knowledge of the situation said.
• For weeks, the top Iran nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and the chief liaison of the so-called P5+1 group, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, have been trading messages trying to agree on a date and location for the meetings, with Iran recently proposing Turkey as a venue, and Ashton and the P5+1 suggesting the first meeting take place in Europe.
• The resumed international Iran nuclear talks come over a year after the parties met in Geneva in October 2009 and tentatively agreed on a nuclear fuel swap deal, which Iran later reneged on.

Democrats Press Republicans on START Ratification - David Alexander in Reuters [link]

• With little time remaining for action by the current Congress, Senate Democrats stepped up pressure on Monday on Republicans to support ratification of the New START nuclear treaty with Russia, saying it was critical for U.S. security.
• "Without this treaty we know too little about the only arsenal in the world that has the potential to destroy the United States," Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a Senate speech.
• White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the issue was one of several Obama would raise when he meets with Democratic and Republican leaders on Tuesday to discuss the priorities for the final weeks of the current Congress.
• Keith Payne, president of the National Institute for Public Policy…said administration officials had been misleading in claiming the treaty would not limit U.S. missile defense options or its development of Prompt Global Strike, a system to deliver a conventional warhead anywhere on Earth in an hour.
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said the New START treaty would not restrict U.S. missile defense or Prompt Global Strike initiatives.
  

A View From The Dark Side

Opposing View on Nuclear Weapons: 'Dangerously One-sided' - Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) in USA Today [link]

• Despite the ever-growing threat from rogue regimes such as Iran and North Korea, the Obama administration is attempting to strong-arm the Senate into ratifying a treaty that could weaken our nation's ability to defend itself.
• While the White House, accompanied by Russia's own public relations campaign, has attempted to sell the New START treaty as a first step to global non-proliferation, the agreement is dangerously one-sided.
• This treaty also gives Russia a "vote" on our missile defense decisions. Already, Moscow has declared its right to withdraw from the treaty should the U.S. need to expand our missile defenses, giving Russia a lever to use against our right to defend ourselves against ballistic missile attack.
• Adding insult to injury, due to the treaty's dismally weak verification procedures, the U.S. will lack any reliable means of verifying Russian compliance with its warhead limit. Given Moscow's poor history of compliance with arms treaties, having no means to detect Russian cheating is unacceptable.
• This weak and risky argument only demonstrates the need to hit the reset button on New START. The administration needs to go back to the drawing board and negotiate a treaty that puts first America's national security.
• NOTE: Lieutenant General Patrick J. O'Reilly, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said in his testimony before Congress: "The New START Treaty does not constrain our plans to execute the U.S. Missile Defense program."