New START Treaty Edges Closer to Senate Vote

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

Stories we're following today: Tuesday, September 14, 2010.

 A GOP Legacy at Risk – John B. Rhinelander of The Boston Globe [link]

• This commendable GOP legacy is now in jeopardy because Republican senators as a bloc may refuse to support the new START treaty.
• Republicans have a proud history of taking the lead on nuclear arms control treaties with Russia — treaties that have made America safer. President Nixon signed the SALT I agreements in 1972, President Reagan signed the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, President George Bush signed START I in 1991, and President George W. Bush signed the Moscow Treaty in 2002. All were approved with strong bipartisan support — a necessity since treaties require a two-thirds vote in the Senate.
• Over the last five months, Senate committees have held more than 20 hearings and built a formidable, bipartisan case for the new START treaty. Military leaders and former senior officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations have testified that the new START treaty would increase US security by reducing the nuclear threat from Russia, providing transparency about Russian strategic forces and bolstering US efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorist groups and additional states…Nonetheless, some senators and skeptics continue to raise questions and seek to delay a floor vote on the treaty until next year.
• Past nuclear arms control treaties have won broad bipartisan support, and it should be no different for this treaty. New England’s GOP senators should follow Republican tradition and push to get the new START treaty approved.

Backers of Nuke Treaty Push for Republican Support – Desmond Butler of The Associated Press 

• The proposal by Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar came as Obama administration officials made a last-minute push for the New START agreement ahead of a vote Thursday in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
•  Delays in negotiating the treaty and moving toward ratification have pushed consideration into the political season ahead of November's elections, when Republicans are reluctant to allow a policy victory for the Obama administration.
• Lugar, the Foreign Relations Committee's ranking Republican and a longtime advocate of arms control, was circulating an amendment to the resolution of support for the treaty offered by the committee's chairman, Democrat John Kerry of Massachusetts.
• The amendment says it is the sense of the U.S. Senate that the treaty does not limit U.S. missile defense except for a provision that forbids converting existing offensive missile launchers into missile defense assets.
• Because some Republicans have said that before ratifying the treaty they want to be sure that the Democrats will pass a big boost in money for maintaining and modernizing the U.S. nuclear stockpile, the Lugar amendment also includes provisions that would require the White House to consult with the Senate on funding levels to ensure adequate funding.
• The resolution also says that a unilateral statement by Russia after the treaty was signed in April, in which Moscow made clear that it could withdraw from the treaty if it should feel threatened by a U.S. missile defense systems, "does not impose a legal obligation on the United States."

START Vote Scheduled for This Week – J. Taylor Rushing of The Hill [link]

• A long-awaited showdown vote on the START arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia will be held this week by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
• The committee will take up the treaty at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, in a room to be determined. Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) had postponed the vote just before the Senate’s August recess.
• “After hours of testimony from some of the most knowledgeable people in and out of government, as well as public statements of support from countless experts, we can say with great confidence that the Senate’s ratification of the START treaty is in our national interest,” [Senator] Cardin said.
• “I think a majority [of Republicans], in fact, do favor the treaty nominally and will eventually vote for the treaty," [Senator] Lugar said in an interview with C-SPAN. If it is brought up, "a large number of Republicans will be in favor of the treaty, but not all of them," he said.

IAEA Can't Confirm All Iran's Nuclear Activity Is Peaceful – Korva Coleman from NPR [link]

• The UN's nuclear watchdog agency says since Iran won't work with its nuclear inspectors, the agency can't say with certainty that Iran's activities are entirely peaceful.
• Speaking at the start of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board meeting in Austria, chief Yukiya Amano repeated his agency's position that Iran is blocking full disclosure, most recently by revoking permits of IAEA inspectors and withholding key information.
• Reports say Amano has named Herman Naeckarts to the post of deputy director general in charge of Safeguards.

U.S. Holding 324 Metric Tons of Bomb-Grade Uranium, Report Says – Ralph Vartabedian of The LA Times [link]

• The Energy Department is holding 324 metric tons of bomb-grade uranium at the same time the Obama administration is urging nations to reduce or eliminate their stores of the material, according to a report to be released Tuesday by the nuclear watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.
• The inventory began to swell years ago after the U.S. agreed to a series of nuclear arms accords resulting in the decommissioning of thousands of nuclear warheads. The U.S. stopped making highly enriched uranium after the end of the Cold War.
• "The U.S. would be on higher moral ground if we clearly articulated that we are working to minimize our use of highly enriched uranium," said Joan Rohlfing, president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonpartisan group. "It should be the norm that every country with these materials publishes their status."

View from the Dark Side

New START: What’s the Hurry? – Robert Joseph & Eric Edelman in The National Review Online [link]

• This Thursday, Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, intends to force a vote on New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), moving the resolution of ratification to the Senate floor for a final vote. Although only a handful of witnesses requested by the Senate minority have been called to testify on the treaty’s merits (we were among them), serious criticisms of the treaty’s shortcomings have nonetheless emerged.
• To date, treaty supporters have relied on the argument that U.S. security is strengthened simply by having “U.S. boots on the ground” conducting inspections at Russian operational facilities. However, as we know from our experience with North Korea, the fact that inspectors are allowed into a country does not mean we can detect or deter cheating.
• The more effective path to addressing the now-acknowledged flaws of the treaty would be to include these references not as declarations, but as understandings and conditions, which would make clear both to the administration and to the Russians the baseline position of the Senate in its advice and consent.