A Senate start for New START?

The Obama administration’s push to ratify the New START treaty , which would reduce the number of strategic nuclear warheads held by the US and Russia, will finally go to the Senate floor after that chamber’s Foreign Relations Committee votes on it this Thursday .

Although the Democrats have enough votes in committee to get the treaty to the floor, says John Kerry (D-MA) who chairs the committee, and despite overwhelming support of New START among the military and national security establishment, the Democrats do not have enough votes yet for ratification.

A lack of republican support

Currently, the votes of 8 Republican senators are required to reach the 67 needed to pass New START in the Senate, but only Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) has expressed any support of the treaty. In an effort to delay passage, since May the Republicans have submitted to the administration more than 700 questions regarding the treaty. The lack of Republican support is keeping Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) from scheduling the treaty for a floor vote.

The key issue for Republicans, says Sen. Jon Kyl (AZ) , the Republican whip in the Senate, is not the treaty, but the linking of its passage to increased funding of the nuclear weapons program above current levels in a time of deep budgetary constraints. This is despite the Obama adminstration’s proposal to spend $80 billion upgrading and refurbishing nuclear weapons facilities over the next few years. Kyl and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) want to add another $10 billion to that total.

Moreover, with the November elections fast approaching, the Republicans are looking to block any significant legislation now to put themselves in a strong bargaining position, assuming they gain more seats in the Senate.

A risky strategy

The foreign policy fallout if the treaty fails to pass or is delayed until after the new year could be considerable, particularly between the US and Russia. Currently, Russia is planning to ratify the treaty before the end of the year, said Boris Gryzlov , speaker of Russia’s State Duma, as he opened that body’s autumn session. Gryzlov implied, however , that ratifying the treaty will depend on how close the US Senate is to ratifying it.

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D) has stated that if ratification fails, “American credibility on nuclear issues would evaporate,” and that every country having signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty would ask itself, “If the US is unwilling to live up to its commitments, why should we live up to ours?”

Playing for keeps

Some older statesman in both parties are applying pressure in an effort to guarantee passage: Former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Madeleine Albright and former Senators Chuck Hagel and Gary Hart released a statement last week, published in the Washington Post , in which they say that the treaty should pass for one reason: “It increases US national security.”

But the real risk of delaying passage was neatly summed up by Brigadier Gen. John Adams in a recent editorial . “By the time the Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes in mid-September on whether to send it to the floor for ratification,” he wrote, “it will have been more than 280 days since US on-site monitoring of Russia’s nuclear weapons and facilities was suspended.”

Paul Guinnessy