Susan Shaer: Partisan politics should not get in the way of new START
The partisan split in politics is getting old and stale. Real people want real solutions to real issues, and one of the gravest is within our grasp to solve. For decades, we have been under a nuclear cloud, but world and U.S. leaders have risen to the occasion to provide safeguards.
The United States and Russia maintain over 90 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal of some 23,000 nuclear weapons. The original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) between our two countries that has provided for inspections and monitoring of these weapons expired nearly a year ago. The Senate now must ratify the New START treaty by a 2/3 margin (67 votes) to preserve the security protections of on-the-ground intelligence we have relied upon.
You may well ask what is taking our Senators so long? Sometimes the only solutions can be provided by government at the highest levels. The old START treaty was backed by Ronald Reagan, Bush I, Clinton. and now President Obama backs New START. Kennedy and Nixon supported efforts to curb nuclear proliferation. Bush II relied on START verification issues for his treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation on Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT), better known as the Moscow Treaty. The mandate for strategic arms reduction appears to be bi-partisan and firm.
With such mighty support from the presidential level, why the delay? Nine months without a treaty? Nine months without safeguards and verification?
Legitimate questions have been asked and answered through 21 open and classified hearings. The testimony of more than 20 expert hearing witnesses has been heard, and New START has overwhelming support from across the political spectrum. Presidents and America’s military leadership (flag officers, former and current) support the treaty. Yet, Republicans are fence sitting, balking, or pushing it off.
We have now gone months without critical intelligence from on-site verification and monitoring in Russia. With the expiration of the START Treaty, our inspectors lost access to dozens of Russian sites. If the new treaty is not ratified we will lose this critical information and American national security will be at greater risk.
Failure to ratify New START would send a message of indifference to Russia and the rest of the world, voiding decades of arms control policy. Failure to ratify would be a warning sign to the world that the U.S. no longer stands behind its nuclear commitments.
Standard-bearers and negotiators for nuclear weapons controls in the United States span the spectrum from conservative to liberal. This is a subject so momentous it defies partisan politics. Or, it should.
This time, our negotiating team has the distinction of being led by very accomplished women. In decades past, Russian negotiators balked when there was a woman on the U.S. negotiating team. Today the issue for the Russians is not U.S. chief negotiator Rose Gottemoeller’s gender, it is her formidable credentials. According to the Washington Post, “one Russian military newspaper warned of the ‘danger’ in striking a deal with a woman who had run the Moscow Carnegie Center and had an ‘inside knowledge of Moscow’s logic.’”
While there is the sharp partisan divide in the Senate these days, in the past Senators have left politics at the water’s edge and risen to the occasion to address pressing national security issues. The threats posed by nuclear terrorism, the proliferation of nuclear materials, and a lack of transparency and access to Russia’s nuclear weapons program is too dangerous to delay action any further.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the New START treaty on September 16th. It is now up to the whole Senate.
Susan Shaer is executive director of Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND), a national nonpartisan peace and security group, and national co-chair of Win Without War.
John Castellaw: Listen to the military leadership on START
President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently signed the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START), a measure designed to mutually and verifiably reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Specifically, it would reduce U.S. and Russian warheads by approximately one third and would continue and strengthen the verification regime that has allowed the inspections and surveillance that have informed U.S. intelligence about Russian nuclear forces for decades.
The treaty is now before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and may come before the full Senate for a vote on ratification this summer.
Over the last several months, America’s military leaders and national security experts—from both Republican and Democratic administrations—have testified before Senate committees, all with the same message: the treaty’s modest mutual reductions and strengthened verification regime improve our national security, and the Senate should ratify the treaty.
On the benefits afforded by the treaty, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen was clear: “Through the trust it engenders, the cuts it requires, and the flexibility it preserves, this treaty enhances our ability to do that which we have been charged to do: protect and defend the citizens of the United States.”
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made it clear that Admiral Mullen was not alone: “The New START Treaty has the unanimous support of America’s military leadership,” he wrote.
Testimony in favor of the treaty has also come from former Secretaries of Defense James Schlesinger and William Perry, former Secretaries of State James Baker and Henry Kissinger and former National Security Advisors Brent Scowcroft and Stephen Hadley.
In fact, 30 high-level national security experts from across the political spectrum – including Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Frank Carlucci, Chuck Hagel and John Danforth – published an open letter in support of the treaty.
One of the most compelling reasons for ratifying the treaty is the enormous risk involved in failing to do so. Rejection of this treaty would amount to voluntarily giving up our decades-old capacity to keep tabs on the Russian arsenal.
As General Kevin Chilton, STRATCOM commander, testified, “If we don’t get the treaty, [the Russians] are not constrained in their development of force structure and … we have no insight into what they’re doing. So it’s the worst of both possible worlds.”
Some who oppose the treaty have repeatedly raised concerns that the treaty somehow limits U.S. missile defense capabilities. Again and again, Secretary Gates, Admiral Mullen and others have assured Senators that those concerns are unfounded and that the treaty does not limit missile defense.
Director of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, was even more emphatic, stating that, “Relative to the recently expired START Treaty, the New START Treaty actually reduces constraints on the development of the missile defense program.”
Despite the remarkable bipartisan consensus in support of the treaty, its fate in the Senate is hardly assured.
Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee may well set the tone in determining whether the bipartisan support the treaty enjoys among the military leadership and national security experts is reflected in the Senate. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., Ranking member of the committee, has announced his support for the treaty and called for its prompt ratification. Sens. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., have announced their opposition. Those undecided are Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., James Risch, R-Idaho, John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Roger Wicker, R-Miss.
The importance of the treaty demands a statesmanlike approach to this debate. As the vote approaches, the pressure to politicize the issue will increase. But this is an issue that should be above politics. The expert consensus is clear, and those who would disregard the facts and the advice of our nation’s military leadership in an attempt to make political hay do so at the risk of our national security.
The undecided members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee deserve recognition for the seriousness with which they have approached this debate. Having weighed the issue, let us hope they, along with the rest of the Senate, decide to stand with our nation’s military leadership and the combined experience of security experts from Republican and Democratic administrations alike when it comes time to vote.
As Secretary Gates noted, “For nearly 40 years, treaties to limit or reduce nuclear weapons have been approved by the U.S. Senate by strong bipartisan majorities. This treaty deserves a similar reception and result – on account of the dangerous weapons it reduces, the critical defense capabilities it preserves, the strategic stability it maintains, and, above all, the security it provides to the American people.”
John Castellaw is a 36-year retired U.S. Marine Corps general, now living on his family farm in Crockett County, Tenn.
All 100 senators should agree START is vital first step
Column by Susan Shaer
Submit columns and letters: freepress2@ntelos.net
A flu pandemic is nasty, brutish, and a global danger. All U.S. senators and other leaders agree, and leap to keep everyone safe and healthy.
Another nasty, brutish and global danger, which additionally is outrageously expensive and out of synch with today’s defense needs, is the continued maintenance of our huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons. All our senators should agree on this.
However, since there are threats and plotters, the U.S. needs to have a strong and effective defense. Continue reading “All 100 senators should agree START is vital first step” »
Lt. Gen. John Castellaw: Put the inspectors back to work
Posted by afp on December 2, 2010 · 1 Comment
The New START Treaty, signed by the United States and Russia in April, renews and makes major improvements in on-site inspections. This is one of the most important reasons why New START has the overwhelming support of America’s national security leadership, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen, six former secretaries of state, and seven former U.S. strategic commanders.
These national security professionals all see this issue in context. During the Reagan Administration, U.S. negotiators were committed to securing on-site inspections of the Russian nuclear arsenal. As the Reagan team saw it, on-site inspections were an absolute prerequisite for reducing the deadly and expensive stockpiles that both sides had acquired. Without inspections, there could never be absolute confidence, and both sides would hedge their bets, under-cutting any progress that might be made. The President himself summed up the issue with the now famous phrase, “trust, but verify.”
After countless hours of negotiations, the Russians finally agreed. The first U.S. on-site inspection of Soviet nuclear-armed missiles took place 22 years ago, in July 1988. While previous treaties had relied upon satellites, the new gold standard, established by the Reagan negotiators, was boots-on-the-ground intrusive inspections. Satellites, valuable as they are, cannot look under roofs or inside missiles like human inspectors can. And the resulting intelligence has been of unquestionable benefit to
U.S. national security.
But today, politics is threatening those gains. If the Senate drags its feet on START and doesn’t complete work on the treaty by year’s end, the best case scenario will be an indeterminate delay in America’s ability to monitor Russia’s arsenal and the worst case scenario will be the loss of on-site inspections altogether. Both of these outcomes would represent an irresponsible and dangerous failure to act in the national security interest.
As General Kevin Chilton, U.S. Strategic Forces commander testified in June, without renewed verification “we would rapidly lose insight into Russian strategic nuclear force developments and activities, and our force modernization planning and hedging strategy would be more complex and more costly.”
The Senate has done their due diligence. They’ve spent six months hearing testimony on the treaty. They have heard from Secretary Gates, from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mullen, from General Chilton, and from a who’s who of Republican and Democratic officials from the past seven administrations, all of whom have testified that the New START Treaty makes the U.S. safer and advances our national security objectives. While various concerns have been raised, each and every one has been persuasively addressed by our military leadership. Not surprisingly, at the conclusion of the hearings the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 14 to 4 in favor of the treaty.
At this point there is simply no good reason to delay a full vote on ratification.
Ever since the Reagan administration, on-site inspections have paved the way for steady reductions in the nuclear threat, for improved planning on the part of the U.S. military, and for better relations with Russia. All of these outcomes are squarely in our national security interest. And every arms reduction treaty since the Reagan era has won overwhelming bipartisan support in the US Senate. New START should be no different. This is a nonpartisan treaty.
The Senate should ratify the New START and build on the pattern of success that was begun more than twenty years ago.
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