Senior Statesman Declare "Now is the Time to Act" on New START

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

Stories we're following today: Friday, September 10, 2010.

It's Time for the Senate to Vote on New START - Former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Madeleine Albright and former Senators Chuck Hagel and Gary Hart in the Washington Post [link]

• The Senate should promptly vote to approve the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (New START) with Russia for one reason: It increases U.S. national security. This is precisely why Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared at the outset of Senate consideration of the treaty that it has "the unanimous support of America's military leadership."
• Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has urged the Senate to ratify the treaty, and seven former Strategic Command (STRATCOM) chiefs have called on Senate leaders to move quickly.
• In addition to our military leadership, there is overwhelming bipartisan support for the treaty among national security experts. Also, officials from the past seven administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, testified before Senate committees in support of the treaty. In fact, the number of Republican former officials testifying outnumbered the number of Democrats.
• The Senate has done its due diligence: Over the course of 21 hearings and briefings during the last five months, senators have had the opportunity to ask questions and put to rest concerns. From the director of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, senators learned that the treaty in no way limits the ability of our military to deploy the missile defenses it needs or wants. From STRATCOM Commander Kevin Chilton, they learned that with the treaty in place, the United States will retain a strong and reliable deterrent. Sen. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even delayed the committee vote on the treaty to give senators an extra month to review background materials and seek answers to their questions.
• Given the national security stakes and the overwhelming support from the military and national security community, we hope that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will send the treaty to the floor with robust bipartisan backing and that senators will promptly ratify it with the kind of resounding margin such measures have historically enjoyed.

Ambassador Supporting New START Treaty - Knoxville News Sentinel [link]

• Ambassador Linton Brooks, who was chief U.S. negotiator for the START I arms control agreement signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1991, is a big supporter of the New START Treaty with Russia that would further reduce the world's largest nuclear arsenals, and he's urging ratification by the U.S. Senate.
• He explained: "I think we'll be safer for several reasons if it's ratified. We will be safer because we will build better relationships with Russia, and that's key. We will be safer because we'll understand the Russian nuclear programs better, and that's important. We will be safer because we will have more standing to rally the international community to counter nuclear terrorism."

Churches Cheer Anti-Nuke Pact - Salt Lake Tribune [link]

• When President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met in Prague to sign a new agreement on nuclear weapons, it marked one more step in the religious community’s long campaign to reduce, if not end, the threat of nuclear war.
• For Christian denominations both at home and abroad, it represents a major victory in a campaign that has waxed and waned since the first atomic bombs were dropped at the end of World War II.
• More recently, the so-called “new evangelicals” have organized the Two Futures Project, a movement that calls for the abolition of all nuclear weapons.
  On the international level, both the WCC and the Vatican, under a succession of popes, have been outspoken opponents of the arms race and any use of nuclear weapons. Pope John Paul II edged the Catholic Church close to pacifism, declaring there are next to no conditions in a nuclear age that justify nations going to war with one another.
• “The moral end is clear: a world free of the threat of nuclear weapons,” Archbishop Edwin O’Brien of Baltimore told the Global Zero Summit in February.
• Note: Two Futures Project is a Ploughshares Fund grantee.

Dissidents Claim Iran is Building a New Enrichment Site - New York Times [link]

• A dissident group that had previously revealed the existence of several hidden nuclear sites in Iran claimed Thursday that it had evidence that the country was building another secret uranium enrichment plant.
• The group, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, showed satellite photographs of an extensive tunnel-digging operation near a military garrison northwest of Tehran. But the group had no pictures of the interior and no evidence to back up its claim that the site was intended to hold several thousand centrifuges, the machines used to enrich nuclear fuel for power production or weapons.
• The Obama administration, which publicly revealed evidence a year ago of a hidden nuclear facility near the holy city of Qum, reacted cautiously to the group’s announcement.
• Some other allegations from the group, one American official noted Thursday, “haven’t proven as accurate.”

A View from the Dark Side

Heritage Foundation's New START Video - Heritage Foundation [link]