Senate Ratification of New START: What's At Stake

By David Shorr
October 14, 2010, 12:05PM
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/14/senate_ratification_of_new_start_whats_at_stake

The only thing standing between the New Strategic
Reductions Treaty (New START) and its ratification by
the Senate is a purely ideological far right opposition
to any form of nuclear arms control. (You can follow
the legislative drama at Josh Rogin's Cable blog.) As a
political issue, arms control has become the foreign
policy equivalent of the federal departments of energy
and education -- something the right wing can be
against, without needing to know anything about what it
actually does. It is also the foreign policy evidence
for Jon Stewart's thesis that Presidents Reagan and
Nixon would be too moderate for today's Republican
party, since both viewed arms control as necessary and
important.

The argument on the merits has been thoroughly aired.
The near-universal consensus of support is clear, and
here I'd like to applaud Senators Richard Lugar, Bob
Corker, and Johnny Isakson for their bipartisan support
for the treaty in the Foreign Relations Committee. As
we await a vote in the full Senate, let's look at the
costs of a failure to ratify the agreement. What will
it mean for US foreign policy and national security if
the extreme-Right's histrionics succeed in holding the
treaty hostage?

1  The nations with the world's two largest nuclear
   arsenals won't have clear mutual understandings and
   rules for those forces. Arms control's fundamental
   value is to give the nuclear superpowers basic
   predictability. It allows the two sides to know what
   to expect of each other; it sets parameters for the
   size and composition of these hyper-lethal forces. I
   think most people would prefer this kind of clarity
   and rules, as opposed to pure stand-off and
   suspicion.

2  The US will lose its best and most intrusive
   measures to verify what Russia is doing with its
   strategic nuclear forces. The next time you hear an
   arms control opponent fulminate about the importance
   of verification, don't believe them. Without New
   START, we won't have the transparency measures and
   inspections that arms control agreements provide.
   Sorry, that's only half the story. We actually lost
   those when the previous START treaty expired TEN
   MONTHS AGO!

3  The United States won't have a moral authority leg
   to stand on, when it comes to nuclear
   nonproliferation. Time for a very quick tutorial in
   Nonproliferation 101. The Nuclear Nonproliferation
   Treaty of 1970 (NPT) calls for countries without
   nuclear weapons never to get them; those that have
   n-weapons are supposed to disarm. Not hang onto the
   things -- which the NPT effectively ruled taboo --
   but get rid of them. Realistically, there's a long
   road between here and getting rid of our last
   nuclear weapons. Also realistically, we can do a lot
   more, and the world expects us to. Which is the
   point of New START, as an overdue disarmament next
   step (it's been nearly 20 years since the last START
   agreement).

   It's worth lingering on the point. According to the
   40- year-old nuclear nonproliferation norm,
   disarmament by the nuclear powers is every bit as
   mandatory (even if hazy as to the time frame) as the
   requirement of the have-nots to forswear acquiring
   weapons. So, for all of those who don't think
   America should disarm, I'd like to know how the
   United States will maintain any credibility in
   pressing other countries not to develop n-weapons.
   This is the point arms control opponents continually
   misrepresent (eventually one starts to suspect
   they're doing so on purpose). No one thinks the
   moral example of New START by itself will get Iran
   to be more cooperative. But yes, it absolutely helps
   play offense rather than defense as we press Tehran.
   Put it this way, if you don't think America's
   blowing off arms control and disarmament makes it
   harder to keep the pressure on Iran, you're not
   living in the real world. (For good ideas of what
   the US can/should do beyond New START's modest
   reductions, see Joe Cirincione at Foreign Policy.)

4  Is the world's biggest power even capable of
   sigining international agreements any more? While
   we're on the subject of credibility and moral
   authority, I want to ask, how should the world
   interpret an inability by the US Senate to ratify a
   mild incremental set of reductions in strategic
   nuclear forces? Which I guess goes to the heart of
   the bewildering far-Right worldview. Here's how I
   interpret the message: "the rest of you can think
   what you want, but the United States will do as it
   damn well pleases." How do you think that's going to
   cut it in the 21st Century?

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