Resetting the Reset? Relations with Russia and the Party of “No” on American National Security
If twelve secretaries of the State and Defense Departments serving under five presidents of both political parties agree on any issue, that must make it bipartisan, right? Well, sort of. When it comes to ratification of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia, the overwhelming chorus of support by national security professionals over the last thirty years is being drowned out by the dissenting voices of congressional Republicans.
The New START treaty is rooted in a bipartisan tradition that dates back to Ronald Reagan. The history of cooperation on arms reduction treaties has transcended party lines – with over 85 senators voting for ratification of all past measures – and served as a rare point of consistent harmony between the United States and Russia. U.S.-Russian leadership on nuclear security has also had a positive reverberating effect on the international stage and greatly contributed to a global movement to constrain nuclear proliferation. This important alliance is now facing a frontal assault from Senate Republicans.
New START contains two main pillars: first, the treaty calls for Russia and the U.S. to reduce their long-range deployed warheads by up to 30 percent – from 2,200 to 1,550. More critically, it would restore a verification system between the two countries which permits inspectors to monitor each side’s nuclear arsenal, ensures no secret accrual of weapons and mandates the exchange of information.
But for the first time in 15 years, U.S. and Russian inspectors are no longer directly monitoring each other’s stockpiles as a result of the first START treaty’s expiration in 2009. And the one man standing in the way of New START is Republican Sen. Jon Kyl. The Arizonan is the leading the opposition to New START with a bevy of arguments to justify the GOP’s obstructionism. But not everyone is convinced. In fact, the conservative Financial Times has summed up Kyl’s arguments as “so weak as to call into question [his] good faith.”
And that’s a shame, because most Americans want New START to succeed. According to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey, nearly three out of four Americans – or 73 percent – say lawmakers should ratify the nuclear treaty signed by President Obama and Russia. Echoing the frustration of many in the national security community, Republican Senator Richard Lugar – the Senate’s leading expert on arms control – chided his own party for failing to support ratification and warned that failure to act would place the country “in some national security peril.”
President Obama, however, is not willing to let New START go without a fight. The president has made ratification of the treaty a leading priority during the lame duck session of Congress, which convened this week. Failure to ratify New START would serve as a major setback for the Administration’s goals of “re-setting” its foreign policy with Russia. Given Russia’s support for sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, its refusal to deliver the S-300 air defense system to Tehran, and agreement to permit the U.S. military to haul material to Afghanistan across Russian territory, this new era in U.S.-Russian relations has delivered laudable successes.
All of this is at stake. And more. As the Washington Post observed, “[w]ithout New START, it will be difficult to carry through on Obama’s plans to hold follow-up talks on reducing the thousands of smaller Russian nuclear weapons within range of Eastern and Central Europe…New START deals only with long-range weapons aimed at the United States.” Lithuania’s foreign minister Audronius Azubalis highlighted this fear by noting that Europeans see the New START treaty “as a prologue, as an entrance to start talks about sub-strategical weaponry, which is much more even dangerous” than the bigger weapons.
And the latest WikiLeaks scandal only confirms the need for stronger U.S.-Russia ties. The document dump of classified U.S. State Department cables revealed new information on how North Korea assisted Iran in obtaining advanced missiles that could allow it to strike Moscow and major Western European cities. Cooperation between U.S. and Russia will be pivotal in confronting this threat.
With such far-reaching international implications hinging on the ratification of the New START treaty, the pressure is on the Party of “No” to say “Yes” on national security.
Robert Friedman is the Managing Editor of Foreign Policy Digest, a non-resident Fellow at the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law and a Principal in the Truman National Security Project.
