As Senate Begins Debate on New START, U.S. Military Reiterates Support for Treaty

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

Stories we're following today, Friday, December 17, 2010:

U.S. Military Backs START Despite Republican Concerns - David Alexander for Reuters [link]

• Top military officials said on Thursday the United States badly needed ratification of the New START nuclear treaty with Russia, even as Republican senators questioned its implications for national security.
• General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters all the military service chiefs were "very much behind this treaty" because it would provide transparency as Russia and the United States modernize their nuclear forces.
• "To have transparency, to understand the rules by which to put structure to that activity, we need START and we need it badly," he said at a White House briefing. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed his support for the arms pact.
• Their comments came as the Senate held its first full day of debate on the treaty, with Republicans raising concerns about the accord but failing to offer amendments, prompting Democrats to accuse them of stalling on one of President Barack Obama's top priorities.
• Administration officials said passage of the New START treaty would be the foundation of any future arms control effort with Russia, including reducing the number of undeployed nuclear weapons and the number of tactical nuclear weapons.
• "If we don't have New START in place, then going forward to reduce tactical nuclear weapons and nondeployed weapons over time, which the president has said we'd like to do, is just not going to be possible," said Jim Miller, the principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.

GOP Holds Off on Amendments as Senate Debates START Treaty - Mary Beth Sheridan for The Washington Post [link]

• The Senate launched into debate on the new U.S.-Russia arms treaty on Thursday, with Republicans warning they needed extensive time to consider the pact in the waning days of the lame-duck Congress.  
• Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), head of the Foreign Relations Committee, repeatedly asked Republicans for their proposed amendments to the treaty and the resolution of ratification, so they could be debated.  "We've been here for a day. We still haven't had an amendment," Kerry said in frustration Thursday afternoon on the Senate floor, after six hours of speeches.
• Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz), said his staff had compiled a list of amendments that Republicans planned to offer. But he told Kerry that a full debate was needed before getting to them.  "Part of the business on the treaty is to expose its flaws and have a robust debate about those flaws, which can provide the foundation for the amendments we intend to offer," he said.
• Kyl pointed to the treaty's limit of 700 deployed nuclear-carrying missiles, heavy bombers and submarines for each side, noting that the United States would have to reduce arms to get to that limit but Russia would not.  "The Russians appear to have gotten very much what they bargained for, and what did we get?" Kyl asked.
• "We get nuclear stability," Kerry said in response, noting U.S. military leaders' support for the pact. New START would also reduce long-range, deployed nuclear warheads on both sides to 1,550. And -- important to the military -- it would set an agreement under which each side gets to inspect the other's stockpile to ensure there are no surprises.

Senator Johnny Isakson's Floor Speech on December 16, 2010 [link]

• As reported by the National Security Network (NSN), a Ploughshares Fund grantee, in his floor speech yesterday, Sen. Isakson (R-GA) appeared to break with Sen. Kyl (R-AZ), suggesting that the junior senator from Arizona is becoming increasingly isolated.
• Sen. Isakson made an emboldened defense of the treaty and stressed the need to reinstate the verification regime, saying, "I went through interviews with Sam Nunn, listened to the chairman and the ranking member, listened to the testimony, read the documentation which everybody else can read, in the secure briefing room, I came to the conclusion that verification is better than no verification at all. Transparency is what prevents things like 9/11 from ever happening again.”

Note:  Click here to watch the Senator's remarks.  

Report Shows How Pakistan Still Bedevils Obama - David Sanger for The New York Times [link]

• Even the toned-down, public version of the one-year progress report released by the White House on Thursday makes clear President Obama is still in search of the leverage he needs to persuade, or compel, Pakistan to close down the safe haven for terrorists and insurgents that has let a battered al Qaeda leadership and a vigorous Taliban survive.
• Sensitivity arises in part from another concern that is in the classified report but that Mr. Obama, Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton avoided discussing: that even as Pakistan’s civilian government teeters on the edge, an insider could slip nuclear fuel out of its laboratories, which was the source of bomb technology a decade ago for Iran, North Korea and Libya.
• That fear was palpable in the classified State Department cables revealed by Wikileaks: In one, the former Ambassador to Pakistan, Ann Patterson, Feb. 4, 2009, cable, wrote that “our major concern is not having an Islamic militant steal an entire weapon but rather the chance someone working in GOP [government of Pakistan] facilities could gradually smuggle enough material out to eventually make a weapon.”
• The review conducted by the White House did not dwell on that possibility. It concluded that the chances of a deliberate transfer of nuclear material or a weapon from Pakistan to a terror group was very low. But it is the presence of nuclear weapons in the most volatile country in a volatile region that in the end makes Mr. Obama’s aides turn to unwieldy acronyms like PakAf. To them, Pakistan remains a far more vital strategic concern for the United States than Afghanistan will ever become.

N.Korea Vows to Strike Back if South Holds Island Drill - Nam You-Sun for AFP [link]

• North Korea's military threatened Friday to strike back with deadly firepower if South Korea goes ahead with a live-fire drill on a border island which the communist state shelled last month.  The North "will deal the second and third unpredictable self-defensive blow" to protect its territorial waters if the South holds the one-day drill scheduled sometime between Saturday and Tuesday, it said.
• The bombardment of Yeonpyeong island last month killed two marines and two civilians, injured 18 people and damaged dozens of homes, and came after a firing drill into the sea by South Korean marines based on the island.  The South, outraged at the first shelling of civilian areas since the 1950-53 war, has fortified Yeonpyeong with more troops and artillery and vowed to use air power against any future attack.
• Members of the US-led United Nations Command are scheduled to observe the drill and about 20 US soldiers will play a supporting role.  But a top US general Thursday voiced concern over a possible "chain reaction".
• General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the drill was being held on a "well-established and well-used" range in a transparent way, but could draw a North Korean reaction.  "What we worry about obviously is... if North Korea were to react to that in a negative way and fire back at those firing positions on the islands, that would start potentially a chain reaction," Cartwright told reporters.
• Pyongyang's disclosure last month of an apparently working uranium enrichment plant -- a potential new source of bomb-making material -- also heightened regional security fears.  US politician Bill Richardson, a veteran troubleshooter with North Korea, is paying a private visit to Pyongyang to try to ease tensions.