GOP Delays on New START Threaten National Security

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

Stories we're following today: Tuesday, August 24, 2010:

Treaty Heel-Dragging - Toledo (Ohio) Blade Editorial [link]

• Are Senate Republicans playing politics with national security?
• Since December, there have been no American on-site inspections of Russia's long-range nuclear bases. In addition, the dozens of updates the U.S. State Department used to receive daily on the movements of Russian missiles and bombers have all but stopped.
• Ostensibly, Senate Republicans say they want to make sure money will be made available to modernize U.S. strategic nuclear forces.
• But it's also true that ratification of New START would mark the first time a Democratic president had gotten an arms reduction treaty through the Senate. Some in the GOP are unwilling to give Mr. Obama a foreign policy victory this close to the November midterm election, and so the treaty languishes, perhaps until next year.
• On-site inspections - the "verify" in President Reagan's oft-repeated phrase "trust, but verify" - allow the United States and Russia to keep tabs on each other's nuclear arsenals, thus easing tensions between the two countries. As the Washington Post pointed out, only boots on the ground can count missiles or tell how many nuclear bombs each missile is carrying.
• And that makes GOP heel-dragging over the treaty a dangerous political game.

Hatch Should Back Treaty - Letter to the Editor in the Deseret News [link]

• The Dec. 5 expiration of our previous arms control agreement with Russia, START 1, has brought to a standstill the on-the-ground monitoring and verification of Russian nuclear weapons arsenals responsible for ensuring U.S. national security for the past 15 years. 
• The Senate's partisan cold war has done what the most ardent Russian communists couldn't do 15 years earlier, and that's to completely freeze the flow of critical information regarding U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons arsenals between the two nations.
• There are currently 23,000 nuclear weapons in existence: That's 23,000 reasons for the Senate to overcome partisan divisions and take a modest step towards a safer world by ratifying New START.
• I hope Sen. Orrin Hatch joins Republican Sens. Richard Lugar and Bob Bennett in moving beyond partisan politics by working to ratify New START and thus renewing the exchange of information allowing us a critical insight into Russia's nuclear weapons arsenal.

Speed Bumps, and an Exit, on Iran's Nuclear Road - Jerry Seib in the Wall Street Journal [link]

• Think of Iran's nuclear program as a car chugging down a highway, moving relentlessly ahead but with miles to go before reaching its destination.
• Now think of U.S. policy as an effort to slow that car down and make it increasingly expensive to drive—while also building an exit ramp off the highway. The great question to be answered in the next few months is whether Iran has any interest at all in taking that exit ramp.
• There's some good news on making Iran's journey slower and costlier. That's where the exit ramp comes into play.
• U.S. and European officials realize that if the economic pressure now being applied has any chance of succeeding in changing the game, Iran needs to be given a face-saving way to back away from its current nuclear program into one more clearly designed for peaceful purposes. 
• The latest Security Council sanctions resolution starts to sketch out what this exit ramp would look like. Iran would suspend enrichment activity and its work on a heavy-water nuclear research reactor, and cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency to answer a host of questions about its previous, often secretive nuclear activities. Then sanctions would be lifted.
• But the U.S. and its allies know that, if only to retain the diplomatic high ground, they will need to offer something more to make it clear that a truly peaceful nuclear program will be acceptable.

It's Official: Test Site Gets New Name - Las Vegas Review-Journal [link]

• Known for six decades as the Nevada Test Site, the Rhode Island-size tract of high desert where government scientists detonated nuclear bombs during the Cold War got a new name Monday: the Nevada National Security Site.
• The name change was brought about by legislation from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the state's congressional delegation. The branch of the Department of Energy that runs the site -- the National Nuclear Security Administration -- selected a name to reflect the site's expanded missions on counterterrorism, homeland security and treaty verification.
• Reid said the new objectives of the mission are to prevent terrorists from smuggling nuclear materials into the country and "to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of those who want to do us harm."

Jimmy Carter Headed to North Korea on Rescue Mission - Foreign Policy's The Cable [link]

• Jimmy Carter is set to travel to North Korea very soon, according to two sources familiar with the former president's plans, in what they characterized as a private mission to free a U.S. citizen imprisoned there.
• His goal is to bring back Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a 30-year-old man from Boston who was sentenced to 8 years in prison in April, about three months after he was arrested crossing into North Korea via China.
• A senior administration official would not confirm that Carter has decided to go but told The Cable, "If anyone goes it would be a private humanitarian effort."
• Carter has personal experience dealing with North Korea. In a dramatic and controversial June 1994 trip, after North Korea threatened to reprocess its spent nuclear fuel and the Clinton administration called for U.N. sanctions, the former president flew to Pyongyang to meet with Kim Jong Il's father, Kim Il Sung, and successfully persuaded him to negotiate.
• This time, leading Korea experts say, Carter's trip should not be seen as a change in U.S. policy toward Pyongyang and will likely not yield any breakthrough in what most see as a diplomatic stalemate between the two sides.