FEW people were excited by the New Strategic Arms Reduction
Treaty (START) that was signed by America’s Barack
Obama and Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev in Prague in April. It
is a sensible, incremental treaty that will cut America’s and Russia’s
deployed strategic nuclear warheads by about a third,
from the current maximum of 2,200 to 1,550, and the number
of deployed missiles and bombers to 700 apiece. Compared
with Mr Obama’s rhetoric about seeking the peace and security
of a world without nuclear weapons and agonising over
how to stop a nuclear Iran, New START looks, well, a bit dull.
Yet failure to ratify it would be a serious setback.
That, sadly, is a possibility. The treaty needs to win the support
of two-thirds of the Senate, so at least eight Republicans
must vote for it. Given its support from the Foreign Relations
Committee (on a 14-4 vote), a chorus of generals and senior Republicans
from previous administrations, you might expect it
to pass easily. The only big names to have spoken against it are
John Bolton, an ultra-hawkish former UN ambassador, and
Mitt Romney, a ip- opping presidential candidate now desperately
courting the right. But the tea-partiers seem to have
got it into their heads that the treaty is a bad one, and Republicans
are stalling. Time is running out before the mid-term
elections on November 2nd. (The lame duck session before
the end of the year might well not vote on such an important
matter, and the Republicans in the next Senate will probably
be even less inclined towards bipartisanship.)
The case against New STARTis a mixture of political opportunism,
ignorance and perfectionism. Shamefully, some Republicans,
disregarding the convention that you should not
play politics with nuclear missiles, just can’t face giving Mr
Obama a win before the mid-terms. They have also done too
little to correct the myths on the right about New START. It
does not betray eastern Europe: most leaders there would
rather Russia had fewer weapons. It does not stop America deploying
anti-ballistic missile defences, developing strategicrange
non-nuclear weapons systems or updating its nuclear
weapons infrastructure (indeed, Mr Obama has promised to
spend $80 billion on this over the next decade).
What’s not to like?
It is true that New START does not include Russia’s huge stockpile
of ageing tactical nuclear weapons. It was never intended
to. But New START does explicitly open the door to further
arms cuts, including those 2,000-3,000 warheads, which represent
both a big proliferation risk and a tempting target for terrorists.
The new treaty’s rati cation could also embolden Mr
Obama to revive the long-stalled Comprehensive Test-Ban
Treaty, which would do more than anything to show that
America was holding up its end of the fraying nuclear nonproliferation
regime. And New START is a powerful symbol of
the reset of relations with Russia, not least to boost America’s
hopes of getting a helping hand in dealing with Iran.
And there is a more pressing reason. The inspection and
veri cation regime of the old START was suspended when
that treaty expired last December. On-site inspection of Russia’s
nuclear facilities, which has been at the heart of all big
arms-control agreements for over 20 years, is critical not just to
ensure compliance but to gain knowledge of Russia’s forces,
operating procedures and even, to some extent, intentions.
The longer it takes to ratify the new treaty and resume bootson-
the-ground inspections, the more that knowledge erodes,
increasing mistrust and the risk of misunderstandings.
Momentum is vital; delay potentially lethal. The Senate
should approve New START now.
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