Senate ratification of the renewal of the START nuclear arms reduction treaty may be stalled by domestic politics. As you will recall, the old treaty expired in December and the U.S. and Russia worked to put together a new treaty that will continue their decades-long commitment to draw-down their nuclear arsenals. The heavy-lifting has already been done by the negotiating teams and all that remains is for the U.S. and Russian legislative bodies to ratify the treaty. Russia has signaled a willingness to act in harmony with U.S. efforts, which means a failure to ratify on the U.S. side will almost certainly derail Russian ratification. In practical terms this would mean an end to limits on nuclear weaponry as well as on-site inspections. And while no one seriously expects Russia to embark on a mad drive to expand their arsenal and create new classes of nuclear weapons, the fact remains that without the treaty, they could do so easily and the U.S. would have no right to send inspectors to find out what was going on.
As you will remember for your Cold War history, arms control treaties traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support. Now, opposition leaders are making statements in public that the treaty is dead, at least for this session of Congress. How did we get here? This NBC News video examines the political variables that are complicating an issue which used to enjoy bipartisan support:
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It should probably be noted that the treaty is all about the weapons, the kinds of weapons each side has (launchers, warheads, missiles), the numbers of weapons to be draw-down, and the process for monitoring and verifying that each side is in compliance. The treaty does not address how each side manages the internal structure of their respective national nuclear weapons programs and how much money is budgeted for maintenance and upkeep. The treaty assumes that these matters are domestic decisions and it’s these domestic matters that seem to be an issue for the opposition party. The Republicans have raised important concerns about maintenance and modernization, but such issues are normally part of the military appropriations and budget debate, not treaty ratification. President Obama tried to address these concerns by allocating more money for modernization but so far this has not satisfied Republican objections.
If you would like to look at the treaty in greater detail the State Department has put together a great introductory website that features the full text of the treaty along with fact sheets, press releases, and an archive of remarks and speeches about the treaty. I was looking over the archive and found this op-ed in which Secretary Clinton and Secretary Gates make the case for ratification.
And how about those Republican objections? In “New START Shouldn’t Be Stopped,” Brookings Institution fellow Michael O’Hanlon argues that GOP senators should join Democrats in supporting the New START treaty. Given that the re-start of U.S – Russian relations may be hanging in the balance, we can only hope that the Republican opposition will remember Ronald Reagan’s wise view on arms control – trust but verify. There’s no trust or verification without this treaty.
