I’d like to follow up on my recent post regarding the new arms control treaty announced last week. As you know, the treaty will have to be approved by the U.S. Senate and given the current environment in Washington, that may prove difficult. This report in The Washington Post notes that the Senate could begin considering the treaty in a matter of weeks:
The Obama administration plans to send the new arms-control treaty package with Russia to Congress by the end of April, hoping for ratification by year’s end, officials said Monday as they laid out details of the proposed agreement […] Despite the administration’s hopes for Senate ratification this year, several Republican senators have expressed concern about moving too quickly on a vote.
One of the key concerns will center on missile defense and whether the treaty will limit U.S. options. As this analysis notes, Senate Republicans have already established red lines:
Sen. John Kyl, a leading Republican advocate of missile defense, wrote in a letter to Obama last week that he was worried by recent Russian statements about the treaty’s making a legally binding linkage of offensive weapons and missile defense. Kyl said it was unlikely the Senate would ratify a treaty with such links.
The Obama team therefore faces an interesting dilemma, will they be able to frame the issue of missile defense in a way that satisfies the Russians as well as the Senate Republicans? Republican concerns may be reflected in this blog post by The Heritage Foundation, which faults the treaty for being weak on verification issues, not addressing nuclear modernization issues, and of course, limiting missile defense.
In this essay posted to the Brookings Institution website, Strobe Talbott, former Deputy Secretary of State during the Clinton administration, and Steven Pifer, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, suggest three key questions that the Senate should ask in evaluating the treaty: Will it enhance U.S. security? Will it allow the United States to maintain an effective nuclear deterrent? Can it be verified? After reviewing each of these questions they conclude that the answer to each is yes and they recommend Senate approval.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out and I hope the ensuing political drama is nothing more than posturing and grandstanding for the cameras. After all, we recognize that the U.S. and Russia together have more nuclear weapons than all the other countries in the word combined, we are merely reducing our surplus. Even after the planned reductions we will still have enough weapons to act as a deterrent. In this I am reassured by the notion that we are not really pursuing the elimination of all nuclear weapons, despite the rhetoric to the contrary, and that the U.S. and Russia will be able to maintain their strategic (and stabilizing) stockpiles of nuclear weapons for years to come.
