START ratification becomes major test for Obama
By Mimi Hall and David Jackson
USA TODAY, 11/21/2010
WASHINGTON — President Obama, back from his second overseas trip in two weeks, now faces a foreign policy predicament at home that some national security experts warn could undermine improved U.S.-Russian relations and his leadership around the globe.
Obama, who attended a weekend NATO summit in Portugal on global security concerns, has about a month to persuade reluctant Senate Republicans that it is in the nation’s and world’s best interests to approve a new nuclear arms treaty he negotiated with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last spring.
After that, the Senate goes on vacation for the holidays. When a new Senate takes over in January and Democrats have a slimmer majority, Obama’s task will become more difficult.
So the White House is pushing for passage before year’s end the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as START, which would reduce each country’s nuclear arsenal by a third. To take effect, the treaty must be approved by at least two-thirds of the Senate — 67 votes — and the Russian Parliament. The 100-member Senate now has 59 Democratic votes; next year, it will have 53.
Military leaders overwhelmingly support the treaty.
If the treaty isn’t ratified, “the U.S. would be forfeiting leadership in the nuclear arena,” says retired lieutenant general Dirk Jameson, the former deputy commander of U.S. nuclear forces, and “the world is quite desperate for that leadership.”
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The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has held 18 hearings on the treaty’s merits since it was signed by Obama and Medvedev in April. The committee approved the treaty by a 14-4 vote in September, with strong support from the top Republican on the panel, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana.
Obama’s frustration clear
Opposition in the Senate has intensified since Republicans narrowed the Democrats’ majority in the Nov. 2 elections. Now, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, a GOP leader key to rounding up or quashing votes, says consideration of the treaty should wait until next year because the Senate has too much other work on its plate between now and Christmas break.
Kyl says the nation needs to focus on “complex and unresolved issues” related to maintaining and modernizing its aging arsenal before it starts reducing warheads.
The White House so far has committed $85 billion to that task over the next decade, but Kyl has remained non-committal.
Obama’s frustration was clear over the weekend in Portugal.
“We’ve got the national security advisers and the secretaries of Defense and generals from the Reagan administration, the Bush administration—Bush one and Bush two — as well as from the Clinton administration and my administration saying this is important to our national security,” he said Saturday. “This is an issue that traditionally has received strong bipartisan support. We’ve gone through 18 hearings; we’ve answered 1,000 questions. We have met the concerns about modernizing our nuclear stockpile with concrete budget numbers. It’s time for us to go ahead and get it done.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hit the Sunday shows to lobby for the treaty. She invoked the name of Republican icon Ronald Reagan, who said “trust, but verify” when it came to arms control; Clinton said on Fox News Sunday that without START, “we have no verification.”
Three major problems
Linton Brooks, the former George W. Bush administration head of the National Nuclear Security Agency, says there are three major problems with stalling ratification of the treaty: It signals to Russia that the U.S. is an unreliable negotiating partner, it further delays inspections of Russia’s arsenal, which have been on ice since the last treaty expired a year ago, and it will only get harder to win approval of the treaty under a new Congress.
The treaty “is an example of the United States and Russia being able to work together on a complicated and contentious issue to reach a result that both sides could accept,” Brooks says. “If this comes apart, it will be harder next time.”
Others say this would be a terrible time for the United States to allow relations with Russia to slip.
In part because of Obama’s effort to “reset” those relations since he took office, Russia has supported United Nations sanctions against North Korea and Iran, allowed troops and supplies to cross its borders on the way into Afghanistan and participated in Obama’s 50-nation Security Summit last spring.
“Our cooperation with Russia and other world powers on isolating and sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program is critical,” says Andy Johnson, director of the National Security Program at Third Way, a moderate Democratic think tank.
Those who want to kill the treaty “are on the wrong side of history. … Arms control agreements with Russia have improved our security and global security as well.”
