Uncertainty on New START

The US Senate foreign relations committee's approval in September of the New START treaty came as good news to the Obama administration, which is pushing the Senate to ratify the accord with Russia before the end of this year. The committee's affirmative votes included those of three Republicans, two more than had previously announced their approval of the treaty.

The US Constitution requires that the Senate ratify treaties with a two-thirds super-majority - meaning that, assuming all Democrats in the current Senate stick together and support the treaty, the White House will need eight Republican senators to vote aye in a "lame duck" session of Congress that convenes this week. Once the 112th Congress is seated in January, Democratic losses in the recent midterm elections dictate that the administration will require the votes of 14 Republicans in the new Senate.

In normal times, attracting votes for an arms control treaty from the opposition party would not be a tall order. The Senate approved the last such agreement, the 2003 Moscow Treaty, unanimously.

But these are not normal times. By all accounts the White House is still scrambling for Republican votes to assure the treaty's passage. Ellen Tauscher, the US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, at a recent gathering at the US Institute of Peace, a government-funded think tank, said that divining the chances for passage would require the skills of "a Las Vegas bookmaker."

"It used to be that issues of national security were non-partisan," Tauscher added. "Politicians became statesmen" when it came time to consider matters such as international treaties.

Impeding missile defense?

But the New START treaty has become mired in politics, presidential and otherwise. Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in a external pageWashington Post op-edcall_made, called the pact "Obama's worst foreign-policy mistake."

Topping the list of Romney's objections to the accord is his argument that "New START impedes missile defense." "Its preamble links strategic defense with strategic arsenal," Romney wrote. "It explicitly forbids the United States from converting intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos into missile defense sites. And Russia has expressly reserved the right to walk away from the treaty if it believes that the United States has significantly increased its missile defense capability."

Many Republican and conservative opponents of the treaty have latched on to this objection. Senator Jim DeMint, a Republican of South Carolina, writing in external pageUS News and World Reportcall_made, argued that the treaty could render the US unable to defend against a missile attack. "The treaty...makes America and her allies vulnerable to rogue nations while receiving nothing for our concessions," he wrote. "Any reduction in missile defense...would be a big mistake."

Administration supporters acknowledge the missile defense language in the treaty but argue that those provisions are of no consequence to US ballistic missile defense plans.

"I find [the argument on missile defenses] deeply disappointing and surprising," Morton Halperin, a former official in the US Departments of State and Defense told the ISN. "In this area the administration followed precisely the recommendations of the Perry-Schlesinger Commission."

The commission's report, more formally the external pageFinal Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United Statescall_maderecommended that the US focus on regional missile defenses while avoiding stepping on the toes of Russia or China.

"For more than a decade the development of U.S. ballistic missile defenses has been guided by the principles of...protecting against limited strikes...," the report said. "Defenses sufficient to sow doubts in Moscow or Beijing about the viability of their deterrents could lead them to take actions that increase the threat to the United States and its allies and friends."

Gentlemen's agreement

The US ballistic missile defense program, Halperin argued, is directed against threats from Iran and North Korea. "If we stick to those plans, it poses no threat to the Russians and will not lead to withdrawal," he said.

The Americans and Russians have an understanding, Halperin said, that it is not in the interests of either to build large defenses against the capabilities of the other, since this would lead only to the proliferation of greater offensive capabilities.

"At the end of the day, each of us will have the same capability to destroy the other as we had before, but the forces will simply be much larger and much more unstable," said Halperin.

This, according to Halperin, explains the statement in the treaty's preamble about the connection between offensive and defensive capabilities. "That connection," he said, "is one that we need to accept."

As for the ban on placing missile defenses in offensive missile launchers, Halperin said the US military has discarded that option. "This is no longer considered a sensible option," he said. "The military is unanimous in its view that we can build antimissile launchers faster, more effectively, and more efficiently by building them from scratch rather than trying to put them in missile silos."

Nor is Halperin worried about Russian threats to withdraw from the treaty if the US builds up its missile defenses. "The United States, while it hasn't said it, also reserves the right to withdraw from the treaty if the Russians build up their defenses," said Halperin. "And either of us would withdraw if there was a very large buildup. The Russians' threat to withdraw will not have any impact on the US program. I think it is clear to the Russians that that line has been drawn."

Ratification with reservations

Naysayers say the position taken by Halperin paints the US into a corner. The point, noted a paper published by the conservative Heritage Foundation, is not "whether New START contains limits on missile defense" but "whether this administration finds the limits New START does contain to be burdensome. The administration's claims regarding the new treaty dismisses the possibility that a future administration could find that these limits on ballistic missile defense preclude important defensive options."

Heritage research fellow Baker Spring has also urged the Senate to postpone consideration of New START on the grounds the administration has yet to finalize a mandated report to Congress on its plans for the modernization of the US nuclear arsenal.

Postponing a vote on the treaty does not necessarily kill the treaty. A delay could give senators time to work out a deal, which could mean passing a resolution ratifying the treaty while articulating reservations about some of its provisions.

The conventional wisdom, with which Ellen Tauscher concurs, is that the upcoming lame duck Senate session is Obama's last shot to get the accord ratified. Here is an alternative scenario: the Republicans may be reluctant to hand Obama a foreign policy victory right now, in the immediate aftermath of the Republican victory in the Congressional elections. But once the new Congress is sworn in, and the Republicans must evolve from opposition to governing party, a traditional bi-partisan foreign policy consensus could coalesce to pass the treaty.