Using START Momentum in the Senate

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

Stories we're following today: Monday, September 20, 2010.

A Start for New START: Keep It Going – Nick Roth in The Hill [link]

• Chairman John Kerry and ranking member Richard Lugar did a great job generating bipartisan support for the treaty. And Senators Corker and Isakson, two Republicans who voted yes, showed guts, choosing national security over increasingly divisive partisan politics.
• The next step is for the full Senate to pass the treaty. If a vote doesn’t happen until after November elections, the entire terrain could change, and it’s unclear when the resolution for ratification will come up again.
• New START is the best way to check up on the Russians. Without a treaty, we have little idea of what they’re doing: The inspections and surveillance that are part of the treaty are the best check we have.
• Note: Nick Roth works for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Ploughshares grantee.

Sharing New START's Negotiating Record is Unwarranted – Kingston Reif and Travis Sharp in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists [link]

• The votes of confidence from Lugar, Corker, and Isakson demonstrate that the Obama administration and bipartisan treaty supporters have alleviated many Republican concerns about New START's impact on US missile defenses, treaty verification, nuclear modernization funding, and tactical nuclear weapons.
• Nevertheless, treaty skeptics such as Sen. Jon Kyl, the Republican minority whip, say that concerns about New START cannot be fully laid to rest until the Obama administration provides the Senate with access to the negotiating record.
• While childhood lessons ("sharing is caring") and platitudes ("what do you have to hide?") suggest that the Obama administration ought to comply, sharing New START's negotiating record with Senate Republicans is unwarranted. In fact, sharing the record might delay the approval process and would confuse key issues, misinterpret ratification precedents from previous arms control treaties, and undermine future US diplomacy based on flimsy evidence.
• Given the abundance of information available to senators to make a decision on the treaty, requests for the negotiating record are gratuitous and oblivious to the damage that releasing the record could do to future American diplomacy.
• Note: Kingston Reif is the Director of Nonproliferation Policy at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation.  Travis Sharpe is a Research Associate at the Center for a New American Security.  Both organizations are Ploughshares grantees.

Obama at the U.N.: Seems Not Like Old Times – Pamela Falk from CBS News [link]

• At U.N. headquarters next week, Mr. Obama will be back, and 192 nations will be watching for leadership.
• White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea will be high on his agenda.
• Another usual headliner: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has already landed in New York, offering direct talks with the U.S. on its nuclear program and calling for the release of Iranian nationals in U.S. custody.

State Department: North Korea has to talk to South Korea before it talks to the U.S. – Josh Rogin from The Cable [link]

• Former President Jimmy Carter may believe that the North Korean regime really wants to rejoin negotiations with the United States, but according to the State Department's top Asia official, North Korea will first have to make nice with South Korea.
• In fact, in the wake of the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, the State Department is making it clear they won't get ahead of Seoul in engaging North Korea.
• Following China's reluctance to blame North Korea for the sinking of the Cheonan and difficult negotiations over a presidential statement at the U.N., there is a realization inside the administration that the United States and China are not communicating as well as they should be on the North Korean issue.

Couple tried to sell nuclear arms secrets to Venezuela: US – AFP [link]

• A US scientist and his wife who worked at the leading nuclear research site were arrested Friday and charged with trying to sell secrets to help Venezuela start a nuclear weapons program, US officials said.
• They had sought 793,000 dollars in payment for the restricted and classified data which they believed they had provided to a Venezuelan contact, but who was actually an undercover FBI agent.
• The Justice Department was quick to acknowledge that the indictment does not allege any wrongdoing by the Venezuelan government or anyone acting on its behalf, and also said no one currently working at Los Alamos was charged or accused of wrongdoing.
• The defendants, Pedro Mascheroni, 75, and Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, 67, had both worked as contractors at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the southwestern state of New Mexico, and could face life in prison if convicted on all charges.

A View From the Dark Side

New START Treaty's China Challenge – Peter Brookes in The New York Post [link]

• Discussion of the US-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty -- aka New START -- has so far pretty much skipped one very important consideration: China.
• China has been growing all aspects of its national power: political, economic and military. Nor is the last limited to a break-neck conventional buildup; its strategic forces are booming, too.
• If any country can undertake a so-called "rush to [nuclear] parity" with the United States and Russia, it's China, especially considering its aspirations, wealth and willingness to lavish largesse on its armed forces.
• As such, in considering New START, senators need to take time not only to consider the other salient questions about the deal -- but also to figure China into their deliberations on a new strategic treaty with Russia.
• MJ Note: By the numbers, China has 240 operational nuclear weapons compared to the United State's  5,000 (with 3,500-4,500 in reserve or awaiting dismantlement). Thus, parity for China would require a 20 fold increase in nuclear weapons.  Since China hasn't increased the size of their arsenal since 1983, it does not seem like they are exactly rushing.