START Ratification Sought for National Security Reasons, Despite Calls for Delay

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

Stories we're following today, Wednesday, November 17, 2010:

Clinton Seeks to Save Russia Arms Treaty as Republicans Balk at Approval - Flavia Krause-Jackson and Nicole Gaouette for Bloomberg [link]

• President Barack Obama’s push for a quick vote on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty suffered a setback yesterday when Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, the chamber’s second-ranking Republican and one of his party’s leading voices on nuclear weapons policy, said the issues are too complex to resolve by year’s end.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet with leaders on Capitol Hill today in a bid to salvage the administration’s goal of winning Senate ratification this year for an arms control treaty with Russia.
• “Some Republican senators just want to deny the president a victory, while some are trying to get the best possible deal,” said Robert Kagan, a national security expert at Brookings Institution in Washington and a former foreign policy adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona. “Still, blocking the treaty is a mistake.”
• Clinton is scheduled to meet with leaders from both parties and will try to draw on goodwill from her eight years in the Senate to persuade lawmakers to ratify the treaty before the Democratic majority in the chamber shrinks in January, making it more difficult to win approval of an agreement Obama calls one of his top foreign policy priorities.

Kyl Leans Against START Vote in Lame Duck - Laura Rozen of Politico [link]

• Seemingly shutting the door on one of the Obama administration’s key goals for the lame-duck session of Congress, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday he doesn’t believe the Senate should move to ratify the New START treaty before the end of the year.
• “When Majority Leader Harry Reid asked me if I thought the treaty could be considered in the lame duck session, I replied I did not think so given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to START and modernization,” Kyl said in a statement.
• “Issuing a press statement while sensitive private talks are ongoing strikes me as an act of bad faith,” said one nonproliferation hand, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It only reinforces those who believe that Kyl is playing the administration for a fool, stringing out a series of concessions before abruptly calling the whole thing off.”
• He said that Kyl is expected to have a meeting later this week on the issue with Biden.
• “Further attempts by Senator Kyl to ‘earmark’ still more funding for the well-funded weapons labs is fiscally irresponsible and politically unsustainable,” the Arms Control Association’s Daryl Kimball said in a statement.
• The move could also be a blow to the Obama’s administration’s “reset” of relations with Russia, and for U.S.-Russian cooperation on countering Iran’s nuclear program, among other areas.
  

More Money to Come? - Nickolas Roth for "All Things Nuclear" [link]

• Senator Kyl issued a statement questioning whether New START could be voted on during the lame duck session:
• "When Majority Leader Harry Reid asked me if I thought the treaty could be considered in the lame duck session, I replied I did not think so given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to START and modernization. I appreciate the recent effort by the Administration to address some of the issues that we have raised and I look forward to continuing to work with Senator Kerry, DOD, and DOE officials."
• It is well known that for more than a year, Senator Kyl has been demanding big bucks for nuclear weapons programs, and the demands keep coming. In exchange, he has indicated that he may support New START. While his recent statement is not a “no,” it does not sound like the kind of enthusiasm that the administration was hoping to get for its money.
• Last week, the Obama administration previewed for Senator Kyl the first half of a revised 10-year budget for nuclear weapons. It increased spending on nuclear weapons by $4.1 billion over the next 5 years, over and above the more than $80 billion that the Obama administration already pledged for nuclear weapons (not including delivery vehicles) over the next ten years.
• But wait! More money could be on the way! Wednesday the Obama administration is planning to reveal the second half of a new 10-year plan for nuclear weapons.
• This makes the timing of Senator Kyl’s statement particularly odd. Why would he issue a statement before he has all the facts?
• What we do know is that the military is happy with New START, and in fact view it as essential to U.S. security. From Secretary Gates to Admiral Mullen on down, they want the Senate to approve the treaty ASAP. This is not joking matter, and not a subject for partisan debate. Every living former commander of U.S. nuclear forces supports New START.
  

When Is the Far Right Going to Start Listening to the Military? - Joe Cirincione in The Huffington Post [link]

• The New START treaty has the unanimous support of America's military leaders. But you wouldn't know it from the wails of far-right pundits. For a group that traditionally poses as defenders of America against appeasing, anti-military liberals, they are amazingly dismissive of the strong, urgent calls from the military for the Senate to approve this new security pact.
• The leader of this new ignore-the-military pack is Sarah Palin. In an open letter to incoming freshmen Senators and Representatives, she wrote, "...don't listen to desperate politically-motivated arguments about the need for hasty consideration of the 'New START' treaty."
• Who is she referring to? She seems to be calling out Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mullen has come out in full support of New START, arguing that it helps him carry out his mission to protect and defend the United Sates. He said: “I believe, and the rest of the military leadership in this country believes, that this treaty is essential to our future security. I hope the Senate will ratify it quickly.”
• Or maybe she meant the Department of Defense Deputy Assistant Secretary Geoff Morrell who said this month: “This treaty is absolutely critical to the effectiveness of our nuclear arsenal, our knowledge of Russian nuclear capabilities and U.S. national security overall. We're advancing it at this time and pushing for ratification because we need this. And we need it sooner, rather than later.”
• Our military leaders are asking for this treaty to help them do their jobs. There are no senior military officials who have opposed the New START treaty. So who is validating the extreme claims of these far-right pundits and why are they standing in the way of keeping Americans safe?

NATO, Nuclear Security and the Terrorist Threat - Sam Nunn for The New York Times [link]

• Over the past two decades, no geopolitical space has undergone as dramatic a transformation as that between the Atlantic and the Urals. During the Cold War, a devastating conventional and nuclear war on the European continent was a very real possibility; today, no state faces this type of deliberate existential threat.
• Despite these positive developments, the two largest powers in the region — the United States and Russia — still possess thousands of nuclear weapons each, and over 90 percent of the world’s nuclear inventory. Many of these nuclear arms remain deployed or designed for use within the Euro-Atlantic region, including small tactical nuclear weapons — a terrorist’s dream — deployed in numerous states throughout the Euro-Atlantic zone.
• The reduction and elimination of this Cold War nuclear infrastructure is the largest piece of unfinished business from a bygone era, and should be moved to the policy front burner.
• Today, urgent security steps relating to nuclear weapons security are essential for both NATO and Russia.
• At Lisbon, NATO should state that: As long as U.S. tactical nuclear weapons remain deployed in Europe, all of NATO has a stake in their security; all of NATO also has a stake in the security of Russian tactical nuclear arms; and Russia has an equal stake in the security of NATO weapons as well as their own. The United States, NATO and Russia got in to this dilemma together; they need to get out together.

New START Delay: Gambling With National and International Security - Hans Kristensen in the Federation of American Scientists' Strategic Security Blog [link]

• The ability of a few Senators to delay ratification of the New START treaty is gambling with national and international security.
• At home the delay is depriving the U.S. intelligence community important information about the status and operations of Russian strategic nuclear forces. And abroad the delay is creating doubts about the U.S. resolve to reduce the number and role of nuclear weapons, doubts that could undermine efforts to limit nonproliferation.
• Essentially all current and former officials and experts recommend verification of New START, and after more than 20 hearings and nearly 1,000 detailed questions answered it is time for the Senate to ratify the treaty.
• It has now been 348 days since the last U.S. inspection team left Russia. During the 15 years the START Treaty was in effect between 1994 and 2009, U.S. teams conducted 659 inspections of Russian nuclear weapons facilities; Russian conducted 481 inspections of U.S. facilities.
• From the outset, the Obama administration appears to have seen Russia as the main potential obstacle to the treaty, rather than the U.S. Senate. Absent a strategy to secure the votes for ratification early on, the tables have now turned; with the White House desperate to secure ratification, a few Senators who still see Russia through Cold War lenses have effectively managed to use hearings and voting rules to extort concessions (read: money) from the administration to modernize the nuclear weapons production complex and delivery systems.
• U.S. nonproliferation efforts dependent upon international support, but if the international community sees the increased nuclear modernizations as contradicting the U.S. pledge to work toward nuclear disarmament, some countries may well decide not to support the administration’s nonproliferation agenda.
• The Senate needs to demonstrate that it understands that the Cold War is over and that it cares more about national and international security than politics by ratifying the New START treaty before Christmas. And the administration must be careful to balance its nuclear modernization plans with the need to sustain the vision of nuclear disarmament that so inspired the international community just 18 months ago.