By Steve Gutterman
MOSCOW
Mon Feb 7, 2011
(Reuters) - Russia's chief negotiator on a new nuclear arms treaty with the United States outlined tough conditions for further reductions on Monday, stressing Moscow's demand for an equal say in creating a European missile shield.
Speaking two days after the United States and Russia put the New START treaty into force, Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov made clear that deeper cuts in the world's largest atomic arsenals would not come easy.
He suggested the Kremlin's mood for more disarmament -- and the overall tone of ties between the former Cold War foes -- will depend greatly on whether Western powers give Russia a satisfactory role in a system to protect Europe against missile threats.
Missile defence is "a kind of litmus test that will allow us to see whether NATO nations and the United States are ready for open, honest and equal, parity-based cooperation," Antonov told a news conference.
New START, signed by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in April and put into force on Saturday after approval by U.S. and Russian lawmakers, limits each nation to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and 800 delivery systems by 2018.
The pact is the linchpin of a "reset" -- initiated by Obama and embraced by Medvedev -- that has improved ties between Moscow and Washington, which hit a post-Cold War low with Moscow's 2008 war against pro-Western Georgia.
"New START really is a new start in our relations," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the same news conference. "Now it is important for us not to slow the pace, and to move further on this positive agenda."
But before making any more nuclear cuts, Ryabkov and Antonov said, Russia would like reassurances on an array of potential security threats from conventional arms to weapons in space and the nuclear arsenals of other nations like Britain and China.
TOP THREAT
Antonov put missile defence developed without Russian participation at the top of a list of potential threats to Russian security.
Obama pleased Moscow by revising a Bush-era plan for a European missile shield that Russia vehemently opposed, but Moscow says the new plan still could eventually weaken Russia's offensive arsenal and upset the balance of power.
Antonov reiterated a Russian statement that that it could withdraw from New START if that happens. He expressed confidence that it would not come to that, but said cooperation on missile defence was essential.
The United States and NATO are trying to avert confrontation by offering Russia a role in the creation of a European missile shield. Medvedev welcomed the invitation at a November summit and outlined a proposal giving Russia a robust role.
"It must be a joint system, with certain agreements on division of responsibility, with data exchanges, with decision-making in such as way that we are an equal, responsible participant on a level with the others," Ryabkov said.
Ryabkov reiterated Russia's call for the United States to withdraw its remaining tactical nuclear weapons from Europe as a starting point for negotiations on cutting the shorter-range arms.
Showing posts with label New START. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New START. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
United States to hold talks on tactical nuclear weapons with Russia
The United States expects to hold talks with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) within a year after the New START arms reduction treaty comes into force, President Barack Obama said in a message to the Senate on Wednesday.
"The United States will seek to initiate, following consultation with NATO Allies but not later than 1 year after the entry into force of the New START Treaty, negotiations with the Russian Federation on an agreement to address the disparity between the non-strategic (tactical) nuclear weapons stockpiles of the Russian Federation and of the United States," the message reads.
Earlier on Wednesday, Obama signed ratification papers for the New START - a keystone of his painstaking effort to reset relations with Russia.
When ratifying the New START deal in December, the United States Senate adopted a resolution obligating the government to start bilateral talks on cutting the TNW stockpiles - landmines, artillery shells and short-range missiles. Washington says Moscow has a larger number of these systems.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said January 29 that it is too early to discuss limiting TNW with the United States because Russia needs to see the way the U.S. fulfills the undertaken commitments.
The new deal, replacing START 1, which expired in December 2009, was signed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Obama in Prague in April 2010. The document slashes the Russian and U.S. strategic nuclear arsenals to a maximum of 1,550 warheads, down from the current ceiling of 2,200.
The U.S. Senate ratified the deal on December 22, 2010, but added several amendments to the resolution on ratification, including a demand to build up U.S. global missile defenses.
Medvedev signed the ratification documents January 28 after both houses of the Russian parliament ratified the new treaty adding some provisions to the ratification document and issuing two supplementary statements to the resolution on the treaty ratification.
The deal will formally come into force when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exchange the instruments of ratification at a security conference in Munich on February 5. In his message to senators, Obama officially notified them that he signed the ratification papers and will implement the decisions of legislators that the ratification resolution contains.
WASHINGTON, February 3 (RIA Novosti)
"The United States will seek to initiate, following consultation with NATO Allies but not later than 1 year after the entry into force of the New START Treaty, negotiations with the Russian Federation on an agreement to address the disparity between the non-strategic (tactical) nuclear weapons stockpiles of the Russian Federation and of the United States," the message reads.
Earlier on Wednesday, Obama signed ratification papers for the New START - a keystone of his painstaking effort to reset relations with Russia.
When ratifying the New START deal in December, the United States Senate adopted a resolution obligating the government to start bilateral talks on cutting the TNW stockpiles - landmines, artillery shells and short-range missiles. Washington says Moscow has a larger number of these systems.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said January 29 that it is too early to discuss limiting TNW with the United States because Russia needs to see the way the U.S. fulfills the undertaken commitments.
The new deal, replacing START 1, which expired in December 2009, was signed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Obama in Prague in April 2010. The document slashes the Russian and U.S. strategic nuclear arsenals to a maximum of 1,550 warheads, down from the current ceiling of 2,200.
The U.S. Senate ratified the deal on December 22, 2010, but added several amendments to the resolution on ratification, including a demand to build up U.S. global missile defenses.
Medvedev signed the ratification documents January 28 after both houses of the Russian parliament ratified the new treaty adding some provisions to the ratification document and issuing two supplementary statements to the resolution on the treaty ratification.
The deal will formally come into force when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exchange the instruments of ratification at a security conference in Munich on February 5. In his message to senators, Obama officially notified them that he signed the ratification papers and will implement the decisions of legislators that the ratification resolution contains.
WASHINGTON, February 3 (RIA Novosti)
Thursday, December 23, 2010
After Bruising Session, Congress Faces New Battles
December 22, 2010
By CARL HULSE and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
WASHINGTON — The 111th Congress ended as it began two years ago, with a burst of legislative productivity, as Democrats forced through a historic social change by lifting the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military and a major foreign policy achievement in approving the New Start arms control treaty with Russia.
Along the way, they enacted a landmark health care law and a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street rules, bookended by a $787 billion economic stimulus package at the start of 2009 and an $858 billion tax-cut package at the end of 2010.
It was a dizzying, maddening, agonizing, exhilarating, arduous, bruising and, for scores of Democrats, ultimately career-ending journey from the stimulus to Start — and the party paid a devastating price for its accomplishments, losing control of the House and six Senate seats.
It is a period that will no doubt be pored over by historians for years.
But it is already clear that much of the next two years will be spent fighting over what was done in the past two.
“They have been enormously successful in one sense in passing their legislative agenda,” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said of Democrats. “The problem is the country just doesn’t like it very much.”
The Democrats’ biggest victories were secured on party-line or near-party-line votes, and some lawmakers predicted partisan animosity would spill over into the 112th Congress, raising a question of whether it would be characterized by deal-making or deadlock.
As many Democrats cast their last votes on Wednesday, top lawmakers said that most of them considered their defeat well worth the price considering the legislative victories they wrote into the history books, accomplishments that have prompted comparisons to the progressive glory days of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.
“Almost every member who lost, without fail, has said, ‘I am proud of the work,’ ” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader. “They say, ‘If it cost me my election, I can point to the fact that I was a member of the productive Congress that did health care, did credit cards, did student loan reform, just go through the entire list.’ ”
Democrats also disputed that the election results were a repudiation of their agenda and pointed instead at the hard times many Americans are suffering through. “The economy has been awful all over the country,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. “The economy is the reason you had the uproar from the Tea Party. That’s all it was.”
At a news conference on Wednesday, just as the House and Senate were wrapping up, President Obama — the catalyst for much of what happened, substantively and politically — called the 111th Congress the most productive in generations and said the postelection legislative blitz proved that the two parties could work together.
“If there’s any lesson to draw from these past few weeks, it’s that we are not doomed to endless gridlock,” Mr. Obama said. “We’ve shown in the wake of the November elections that we have the capacity not only to make progress, but to make progress together.”
The ability of Congressional Democrats, in concert with Mr. Obama, to push through a string of major initiatives in some sense conflicted with the notion that Congress is broken and dysfunctional.
But the advent of divided government next month will test the ability of Congress anew. Even Democrats happy with the outcome of the past two years say the process was often ugly and allowed Republicans to cast much of the legislation as flawed.
Measures that have almost become afterthoughts — pay equity for women and the new power of the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco, for instance — could have been signature achievements in other Congresses. And the Senate confirmed two of Mr. Obama’s nominees to the Supreme Court — both women, one Hispanic.
“You’re president of the United States and you get two women on the Supreme Court? Bang, bang,” said Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington. “That’s historic.”
But the fights over the stimulus, health care, financial regulation and, most recently, tax policy, dominated the landscape and obscured how Congress failed in other respects.
Because of the time those fights consumed — and the eagerness of lawmakers to avoid tough votes in a charged partisan atmosphere — the Congressional spending and budget process completely collapsed this year for the first time in a quarter-century and Congress did not fulfill its most basic responsibility, allocating money to federal agencies.
That lapse sets up a spending fight early in the next Congress over financing the government for the remainder of the fiscal year while House Republicans try to carry out their plan to cut $100 billion in domestic spending.
Returning for the lame-duck, Democrats put an exclamation point on the session, squeezing through a raft of priorities despite concerted Republican resistance, particularly in the Senate where Democrats were forced to thread the procedural needle time after time.
Republican leaders discovered that the power of the minority only extended so far if Democrats were tenacious and were able — as with the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the Start treaty — to lure decisive numbers of Republicans away from the leadership’s opposition.
Many Republicans complained bitterly in recent days that Democrats were ignoring their rejection in the election and abusing their last weeks of Congressional control to jam through a final flurry of expensive, intrusive programs. And they said efforts by Democrats to score political points by forcing a vote on an immigration measure they knew would fail had angered Republicans and diminished their interest in a major immigration overhaul in the next Congress.
“I think it has hurt,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.
Republicans did score some some victories of their own in the final days. The compromise that extended Bush-era tax cuts even on the highest incomes and provided a generous exemption for the estates of affluent families was embraced by wide Republican majorities. And they managed to derail a giant $1.2 trillion spending plan that was stuffed with tens of millions of dollars of pet spending projects, delaying crucial spending decisions until early next year when they will run the House and have more clout in the Senate.
At the same time, House and Senate Republicans have pledged to work to repeal the health care law and deny financing for other newly passed initiatives, like the tighter financial regulation.
But Republicans also say the new dynamic on Capitol Hill will put them in a much stronger position to take the offensive and challenge Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats by initiating conservative bills in the House and pushing for Senate floor votes. Even if they fail on some bills, Republicans say, they will make the case to expand their control from the House to the Senate and the White House in 2012.
“The big part is showing America what we stand for,” said Senator Jim DeMint, the conservative South Carolina Republican.
Even as he celebrated the successes, Mr. Obama acknowledged the obstacles ahead. “I’m not naïve,” he said. “I know there will be tough fights.”
By CARL HULSE and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
WASHINGTON — The 111th Congress ended as it began two years ago, with a burst of legislative productivity, as Democrats forced through a historic social change by lifting the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military and a major foreign policy achievement in approving the New Start arms control treaty with Russia.
Along the way, they enacted a landmark health care law and a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street rules, bookended by a $787 billion economic stimulus package at the start of 2009 and an $858 billion tax-cut package at the end of 2010.
It was a dizzying, maddening, agonizing, exhilarating, arduous, bruising and, for scores of Democrats, ultimately career-ending journey from the stimulus to Start — and the party paid a devastating price for its accomplishments, losing control of the House and six Senate seats.
It is a period that will no doubt be pored over by historians for years.
But it is already clear that much of the next two years will be spent fighting over what was done in the past two.
“They have been enormously successful in one sense in passing their legislative agenda,” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said of Democrats. “The problem is the country just doesn’t like it very much.”
The Democrats’ biggest victories were secured on party-line or near-party-line votes, and some lawmakers predicted partisan animosity would spill over into the 112th Congress, raising a question of whether it would be characterized by deal-making or deadlock.
As many Democrats cast their last votes on Wednesday, top lawmakers said that most of them considered their defeat well worth the price considering the legislative victories they wrote into the history books, accomplishments that have prompted comparisons to the progressive glory days of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.
“Almost every member who lost, without fail, has said, ‘I am proud of the work,’ ” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader. “They say, ‘If it cost me my election, I can point to the fact that I was a member of the productive Congress that did health care, did credit cards, did student loan reform, just go through the entire list.’ ”
Democrats also disputed that the election results were a repudiation of their agenda and pointed instead at the hard times many Americans are suffering through. “The economy has been awful all over the country,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. “The economy is the reason you had the uproar from the Tea Party. That’s all it was.”
At a news conference on Wednesday, just as the House and Senate were wrapping up, President Obama — the catalyst for much of what happened, substantively and politically — called the 111th Congress the most productive in generations and said the postelection legislative blitz proved that the two parties could work together.
“If there’s any lesson to draw from these past few weeks, it’s that we are not doomed to endless gridlock,” Mr. Obama said. “We’ve shown in the wake of the November elections that we have the capacity not only to make progress, but to make progress together.”
The ability of Congressional Democrats, in concert with Mr. Obama, to push through a string of major initiatives in some sense conflicted with the notion that Congress is broken and dysfunctional.
But the advent of divided government next month will test the ability of Congress anew. Even Democrats happy with the outcome of the past two years say the process was often ugly and allowed Republicans to cast much of the legislation as flawed.
Measures that have almost become afterthoughts — pay equity for women and the new power of the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco, for instance — could have been signature achievements in other Congresses. And the Senate confirmed two of Mr. Obama’s nominees to the Supreme Court — both women, one Hispanic.
“You’re president of the United States and you get two women on the Supreme Court? Bang, bang,” said Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington. “That’s historic.”
But the fights over the stimulus, health care, financial regulation and, most recently, tax policy, dominated the landscape and obscured how Congress failed in other respects.
Because of the time those fights consumed — and the eagerness of lawmakers to avoid tough votes in a charged partisan atmosphere — the Congressional spending and budget process completely collapsed this year for the first time in a quarter-century and Congress did not fulfill its most basic responsibility, allocating money to federal agencies.
That lapse sets up a spending fight early in the next Congress over financing the government for the remainder of the fiscal year while House Republicans try to carry out their plan to cut $100 billion in domestic spending.
Returning for the lame-duck, Democrats put an exclamation point on the session, squeezing through a raft of priorities despite concerted Republican resistance, particularly in the Senate where Democrats were forced to thread the procedural needle time after time.
Republican leaders discovered that the power of the minority only extended so far if Democrats were tenacious and were able — as with the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the Start treaty — to lure decisive numbers of Republicans away from the leadership’s opposition.
Many Republicans complained bitterly in recent days that Democrats were ignoring their rejection in the election and abusing their last weeks of Congressional control to jam through a final flurry of expensive, intrusive programs. And they said efforts by Democrats to score political points by forcing a vote on an immigration measure they knew would fail had angered Republicans and diminished their interest in a major immigration overhaul in the next Congress.
“I think it has hurt,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.
Republicans did score some some victories of their own in the final days. The compromise that extended Bush-era tax cuts even on the highest incomes and provided a generous exemption for the estates of affluent families was embraced by wide Republican majorities. And they managed to derail a giant $1.2 trillion spending plan that was stuffed with tens of millions of dollars of pet spending projects, delaying crucial spending decisions until early next year when they will run the House and have more clout in the Senate.
At the same time, House and Senate Republicans have pledged to work to repeal the health care law and deny financing for other newly passed initiatives, like the tighter financial regulation.
But Republicans also say the new dynamic on Capitol Hill will put them in a much stronger position to take the offensive and challenge Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats by initiating conservative bills in the House and pushing for Senate floor votes. Even if they fail on some bills, Republicans say, they will make the case to expand their control from the House to the Senate and the White House in 2012.
“The big part is showing America what we stand for,” said Senator Jim DeMint, the conservative South Carolina Republican.
Even as he celebrated the successes, Mr. Obama acknowledged the obstacles ahead. “I’m not naïve,” he said. “I know there will be tough fights.”
Obama Gamble Pays Off With Approval of Arms Pact
The New York Times
December 22, 2010
By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — The final approval of a new arms control treaty with Russia may have been a foregone conclusion by the time senators stepped onto the floor on Wednesday. But that was not the way it looked one afternoon last month when White House officials rushed to the Oval Office to tell President Obama that his treaty might be dead.
The president and his team had built their entire strategy for obtaining approval of the treaty on winning over a single Republican senator deputized by his caucus to negotiate an accord — and that Republican, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, had just shocked the White House by pulling the plug on a deal for the year.
Some aides counseled Mr. Obama to stand down. Losing a treaty vote, as one put it, would be “a huge loss.” But Mr. Obama decided that afternoon to make one of the biggest gambles of his presidency and demand that the Senate approve the treaty by the year’s end. “We’ve just got to go ahead,” he told aides, who recounted the conversation on Wednesday.
Along the way, he had to confront his own reluctant party leadership and circumvent the other party’s leadership. He mounted a five-week campaign that married public pressure and private suasion. He enlisted the likes of Henry A. Kissinger, asked Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to help and sent a team of officials to set up a war room of sorts on Capitol Hill. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had at least 50 meetings or phone calls with senators.
When a wavering Republican senator told Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the president needed to address concerns about missile defense, the senator quickly received a letter from Mr. Obama reaffirming his commitment to develop the system.
Other senators who were worried about the condition of the nation’s nuclear stockpile received a letter from the president vowing to stick by a 10-year, $85 billion modernization plan.
Even in the final 10 days, the effort appeared in danger of collapsing. The insistence of Democrats on passing unrelated legislation allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military upset the Republican conference and may have cost the White House five or more votes on the arms treaty. Administration officials worried last week that they did not have the required two-thirds majority in the Senate, and as late as Sunday, the president’s aides wondered whether to call off the vote.
In the end, the gamble paid off on Wednesday with a 71-to-26 vote in the Senate to approve the treaty, called New Start, with Russia, culminating what turned out to be the biggest battle over arms control in Washington in more than a decade.
No Russian-American arms treaty submitted for a Senate vote ever squeaked through by a smaller margin. But for a president seeking his way after a crushing midterm election, it was welcome validation that he could still win a battle.
“The president made a gutsy decision that he was willing to lose it, and that was a gutsy decision,” said Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who was Mr. Obama’s chief ally in the Senate. “Everybody said it wasn’t going to happen. Even colleagues on our side said it wasn’t going to happen.”
The treaty took on such importance to Mr. Obama because he had invested so much in it.
While it will not reduce nuclear weapons as much as previous treaties have, he has made it the centerpiece of his foreign policy — “the Jenga piece,” as one aide puts it, critical to a variety of priorities, including a better relationship with Russia, international solidarity against Iran’s uranium enrichment program and the president’s larger vision of eventually ridding the world of nuclear weapons.
The challenge of Senate approval always played into the administration’s thinking, even while the treaty was being negotiated with the Russians. At several pivotal moments, American officials like Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Under Secretary of State Ellen O. Tauscher; Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller; and Michael McFaul, the president’s Russia adviser, used the need to win Senate approval to leverage Russian negotiators into making concessions.
Even before Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia signed the treaty in April, the administration had tried to woo Mr. Kyl, the No. 2 Republican and his party’s leading conservative voice on arms control. The White House strategy was to meet Mr. Kyl’s concerns on modernizing the nuclear complex, knowing that if he embraced the treaty, it would sail to approval.
Mr. Obama was coming under pressure from multiple sides as the end of the year neared. During a meeting in Japan in mid-November, Mr. Medvedev pressed Mr. Obama on the treaty. “Are you going to get Start done?” the Russian president asked, according to an administration official, who like others interviewed insisted on anonymity to share private moments.
Soon after Mr. Obama returned, his negotiations with Mr. Kyl suddenly disintegrated. On Nov. 16, the senator issued a statement saying he did not think there was enough time to deal with the issues surrounding New Start before the end of the year. That would mean waiting until the new Senate took office with five more Republicans.
White House officials learned about Mr. Kyl’s statement shortly after noon when a reporter sent it by e-mail. They instantly realized the peril. Mr. Biden; Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser; his deputies Denis McDonough and Ben Rhodes; and the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, informed Mr. Obama.
“There were people here who thought that was it, we were going to call it a day,” recalled one White House official. There was no Plan B. But Mr. Obama, who often disappoints supporters by not responding to Republicans more aggressively, decided this was a moment to fight. “He decided that he would settle on nothing short of full Senate ratification,” said another official.
Starting in that meeting, they laid out a strategy. Mr. Biden was supposed to meet two days later with several Republican luminaries. Instead, Mr. Obama would host the meeting and make a public pitch for the treaty. The White House ripped up plans for the weekly radio and Internet address to make it about New Start. Then Mr. Obama flew to Lisbon for a NATO meeting, where he encouraged European leaders to speak out for the treaty.
Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and Mr. Kerry decided to show nothing but public respect for Mr. Kyl and to stick by the offer to spend $85 billion modernizing the nuclear weapons complex. But they gave up hope of winning over Mr. Kyl, who said he felt “jammed” by the White House. Instead, they began bypassing him to work with other Republicans. The assiduous efforts by Mr. Kerry and Mr. Biden to accommodate Republican concerns proved critical.
Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee was one important target. He said in an interview that he had “multiple, multiple, multiple calls” with Mr. Biden and also heard from Mrs. Clinton and Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military endorsements were particularly important. “For folks who are looking for additional support, that’s powerful,” Mr. Corker said. “For all the secretaries of state to say the things they said, that is powerful.”
Senator George V. Voinovich of Ohio, another Republican who received attention, said the more he learned about the treaty, the more comfortable he felt. “As people were able to gain more and more information about it and started to pay attention to the people who were supportive of it, its validity and need became more apparent,” he said.
Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who voted for the treaty, said Republican pressure by Mr. Kyl and others produced a better result. “Even most senators who vote against the treaty would say both the treaty and the nuclear modernization program are better as a result of this,” he said.
But Mr. Obama had problems with Democrats more focused on immigration and gays in the military. Mr. Obama had to call Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, to emphasize how important the treaty was to him, and even then, the decision to call a vote on the gay rights bill last weekend provoked a reaction among Republicans who thought they had been misled.
“Biden about had a heart attack” when Mr. Reid scheduled the vote, said a senator who talked with him. At that point, the senator said it appeared there were 78 to 80 votes for the treaty. Mr. Alexander said that anger over unrelated legislation cost the treaty 5 to 10 votes.
“It was very tricky, and it almost broke it apart,” Mr. Kerry said. “That was part of the overall high-stakes poker. A lot was hanging on different things.”
On Sunday, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, joined Mr. Kyl in declaring that they would vote against the treaty. At the White House, there was worry. “People think this means we’re dead,” one White House aide said in an e-mail message to colleagues.
Mr. Donilon convened a conference call with Mr. Biden and White House officials to talk about whether to file a motion to end the debate. Once the motion was filed, there was no turning back. “As you know, there are some doubts,” Mr. Donilon told Mr. Biden, according to notes taken by a participant.
Mr. Biden cut him off. “We’ve got the votes,” he said. “Period.”
Other aides expressed doubts.
“Look,” Mr. Biden said, “I’m not saying I think we have the votes. I’m telling you, we have the votes. I have personally spoken to 12 Republican senators yesterday or today. Personally. One on one. We have the votes.”
And so they did. With Mr. Biden in the presiding officer’s chair and Mr. Kerry on the floor, the vote was called. Afterward, Mr. Obama gathered his team again in the Oval Office. This time he toasted them with Champagne.
December 22, 2010
By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — The final approval of a new arms control treaty with Russia may have been a foregone conclusion by the time senators stepped onto the floor on Wednesday. But that was not the way it looked one afternoon last month when White House officials rushed to the Oval Office to tell President Obama that his treaty might be dead.
The president and his team had built their entire strategy for obtaining approval of the treaty on winning over a single Republican senator deputized by his caucus to negotiate an accord — and that Republican, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, had just shocked the White House by pulling the plug on a deal for the year.
Some aides counseled Mr. Obama to stand down. Losing a treaty vote, as one put it, would be “a huge loss.” But Mr. Obama decided that afternoon to make one of the biggest gambles of his presidency and demand that the Senate approve the treaty by the year’s end. “We’ve just got to go ahead,” he told aides, who recounted the conversation on Wednesday.
Along the way, he had to confront his own reluctant party leadership and circumvent the other party’s leadership. He mounted a five-week campaign that married public pressure and private suasion. He enlisted the likes of Henry A. Kissinger, asked Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to help and sent a team of officials to set up a war room of sorts on Capitol Hill. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had at least 50 meetings or phone calls with senators.
When a wavering Republican senator told Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the president needed to address concerns about missile defense, the senator quickly received a letter from Mr. Obama reaffirming his commitment to develop the system.
Other senators who were worried about the condition of the nation’s nuclear stockpile received a letter from the president vowing to stick by a 10-year, $85 billion modernization plan.
Even in the final 10 days, the effort appeared in danger of collapsing. The insistence of Democrats on passing unrelated legislation allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military upset the Republican conference and may have cost the White House five or more votes on the arms treaty. Administration officials worried last week that they did not have the required two-thirds majority in the Senate, and as late as Sunday, the president’s aides wondered whether to call off the vote.
In the end, the gamble paid off on Wednesday with a 71-to-26 vote in the Senate to approve the treaty, called New Start, with Russia, culminating what turned out to be the biggest battle over arms control in Washington in more than a decade.
No Russian-American arms treaty submitted for a Senate vote ever squeaked through by a smaller margin. But for a president seeking his way after a crushing midterm election, it was welcome validation that he could still win a battle.
“The president made a gutsy decision that he was willing to lose it, and that was a gutsy decision,” said Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who was Mr. Obama’s chief ally in the Senate. “Everybody said it wasn’t going to happen. Even colleagues on our side said it wasn’t going to happen.”
The treaty took on such importance to Mr. Obama because he had invested so much in it.
While it will not reduce nuclear weapons as much as previous treaties have, he has made it the centerpiece of his foreign policy — “the Jenga piece,” as one aide puts it, critical to a variety of priorities, including a better relationship with Russia, international solidarity against Iran’s uranium enrichment program and the president’s larger vision of eventually ridding the world of nuclear weapons.
The challenge of Senate approval always played into the administration’s thinking, even while the treaty was being negotiated with the Russians. At several pivotal moments, American officials like Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Under Secretary of State Ellen O. Tauscher; Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller; and Michael McFaul, the president’s Russia adviser, used the need to win Senate approval to leverage Russian negotiators into making concessions.
Even before Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia signed the treaty in April, the administration had tried to woo Mr. Kyl, the No. 2 Republican and his party’s leading conservative voice on arms control. The White House strategy was to meet Mr. Kyl’s concerns on modernizing the nuclear complex, knowing that if he embraced the treaty, it would sail to approval.
Mr. Obama was coming under pressure from multiple sides as the end of the year neared. During a meeting in Japan in mid-November, Mr. Medvedev pressed Mr. Obama on the treaty. “Are you going to get Start done?” the Russian president asked, according to an administration official, who like others interviewed insisted on anonymity to share private moments.
Soon after Mr. Obama returned, his negotiations with Mr. Kyl suddenly disintegrated. On Nov. 16, the senator issued a statement saying he did not think there was enough time to deal with the issues surrounding New Start before the end of the year. That would mean waiting until the new Senate took office with five more Republicans.
White House officials learned about Mr. Kyl’s statement shortly after noon when a reporter sent it by e-mail. They instantly realized the peril. Mr. Biden; Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser; his deputies Denis McDonough and Ben Rhodes; and the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, informed Mr. Obama.
“There were people here who thought that was it, we were going to call it a day,” recalled one White House official. There was no Plan B. But Mr. Obama, who often disappoints supporters by not responding to Republicans more aggressively, decided this was a moment to fight. “He decided that he would settle on nothing short of full Senate ratification,” said another official.
Starting in that meeting, they laid out a strategy. Mr. Biden was supposed to meet two days later with several Republican luminaries. Instead, Mr. Obama would host the meeting and make a public pitch for the treaty. The White House ripped up plans for the weekly radio and Internet address to make it about New Start. Then Mr. Obama flew to Lisbon for a NATO meeting, where he encouraged European leaders to speak out for the treaty.
Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and Mr. Kerry decided to show nothing but public respect for Mr. Kyl and to stick by the offer to spend $85 billion modernizing the nuclear weapons complex. But they gave up hope of winning over Mr. Kyl, who said he felt “jammed” by the White House. Instead, they began bypassing him to work with other Republicans. The assiduous efforts by Mr. Kerry and Mr. Biden to accommodate Republican concerns proved critical.
Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee was one important target. He said in an interview that he had “multiple, multiple, multiple calls” with Mr. Biden and also heard from Mrs. Clinton and Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military endorsements were particularly important. “For folks who are looking for additional support, that’s powerful,” Mr. Corker said. “For all the secretaries of state to say the things they said, that is powerful.”
Senator George V. Voinovich of Ohio, another Republican who received attention, said the more he learned about the treaty, the more comfortable he felt. “As people were able to gain more and more information about it and started to pay attention to the people who were supportive of it, its validity and need became more apparent,” he said.
Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who voted for the treaty, said Republican pressure by Mr. Kyl and others produced a better result. “Even most senators who vote against the treaty would say both the treaty and the nuclear modernization program are better as a result of this,” he said.
But Mr. Obama had problems with Democrats more focused on immigration and gays in the military. Mr. Obama had to call Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, to emphasize how important the treaty was to him, and even then, the decision to call a vote on the gay rights bill last weekend provoked a reaction among Republicans who thought they had been misled.
“Biden about had a heart attack” when Mr. Reid scheduled the vote, said a senator who talked with him. At that point, the senator said it appeared there were 78 to 80 votes for the treaty. Mr. Alexander said that anger over unrelated legislation cost the treaty 5 to 10 votes.
“It was very tricky, and it almost broke it apart,” Mr. Kerry said. “That was part of the overall high-stakes poker. A lot was hanging on different things.”
On Sunday, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, joined Mr. Kyl in declaring that they would vote against the treaty. At the White House, there was worry. “People think this means we’re dead,” one White House aide said in an e-mail message to colleagues.
Mr. Donilon convened a conference call with Mr. Biden and White House officials to talk about whether to file a motion to end the debate. Once the motion was filed, there was no turning back. “As you know, there are some doubts,” Mr. Donilon told Mr. Biden, according to notes taken by a participant.
Mr. Biden cut him off. “We’ve got the votes,” he said. “Period.”
Other aides expressed doubts.
“Look,” Mr. Biden said, “I’m not saying I think we have the votes. I’m telling you, we have the votes. I have personally spoken to 12 Republican senators yesterday or today. Personally. One on one. We have the votes.”
And so they did. With Mr. Biden in the presiding officer’s chair and Mr. Kerry on the floor, the vote was called. Afterward, Mr. Obama gathered his team again in the Oval Office. This time he toasted them with Champagne.
Arms treaty approval a win for Obama, but GOP critics are gaining momentum
By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 23, 2010; 12:00 AM
Eleven days after the bruising midterm elections, President Obama got a stark reminder of how his political shellacking at home could undermine his standing abroad.
Obama was meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev at a hotel in Yokohama, Japan, after an economic summit. The improved relationship with Russia was one of Obama's main foreign policy achievements, and its centerpiece was a new nuclear-weapons agreement the two had signed in April.
Now the Russian leader wanted to know whether the treaty was in trouble in the U.S. Senate.
"President Medvedev was wondering what the election would mean, in terms of ratification. It's fair to say they were nervous," said one U.S. official who was in the meeting.
"That had an impression" on Obama, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
On the plane back to Washington, Obama told aides he was determined to get the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) through the Senate by year's end. "We've got to go for it," the official recalled Obama saying.
The next few weeks marked a remarkable resurgence for a White House demoralized by Democratic losses in the elections. On Wednesday, the Senate approved New START by a vote of 71 to 26, seven more than the 64 required for ratification but well short of the resounding approval that most nuclear-arms treaties have received.
Republican critics cited concerns about the treaty's language on missile defense, verification and other issues. But what appeared to tip a number against the treaty was Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid's (D-Nev.) decision to shoehorn issues dear to the Democratic base into the waning days of the session, which infuriated Republicans.
The White House strategy ultimately proved successful, but the rise of partisan passions may complicate Obama's future arms-control efforts.
Lining up the GOP
Even before his Nov. 13 meeting with Medvedev, Obama had turned his attention away from the midterm elections and to New START. On Nov. 5, while flying to India, he gathered national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon, press secretary Robert Gibbs and senior aides Valerie Jarrett and Ben Rhodes to ensure they had a strategy to win ratification of the treaty in the lame-duck session.
They did - or so they thought.
For months, Vice President Biden had been coordinating negotiations with Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the point man on the Republican side, who was demanding extra money to fix up the aging U.S. nuclear weapons complex as a condition of giving Republicans the green light to approve New START.
While Obama was in Asia, the administration had secretly sent a high-level team including Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of U.S. nuclear forces, to Arizona to tell Kyl the administration would commit an extra $4.1 billion for nuclear modernization, on top of an earlier pledge of $10 billion.
Kyl seemed happy with the offer, officials said.
But three days after Obama's meeting with Medvedev, White House aides were astonished to learn from a news release by Kyl that he believed there wasn't enough time to consider the treaty during the lame-duck session.
"That was one of the lowest moments of our time in government," said the senior official.
There had always been what another White House official called a "healthy skepticism" about whether Kyl, the second-ranking Republican, had been negotiating in good faith. A savvy conservative steeped in arms-control issues, Kyl had helped defeat the 1999 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, dealing a blow to the Clinton administration.
But Kyl's main concern this time hadn't seemed to be the treaty's central issues, such as the number of warheads allowed, but instead modernization of the remaining nuclear weapons.
Officials believed that pushing the treaty into the next Congress would jeopardize its passage, since Republicans had picked up six seats in the midterm elections.
Now, the administration had to decide whether to proceed without Kyl.
The Kyl statement arrived as Biden was meeting with senior officials in the White House Situation Room to discuss Iraq. Talk turned immediately to New START. Later, senior aides huddled with Obama in the Oval Office.
"Both the president and vice president said to us, 'Look, this is too important to let die like this,' " Rhodes said.
The next day, Obama called Kyl to say he would push for New START.
The offensive moved on both public and private tracks. Obama and Biden appealed openly for passage of the treaty, with Obama saying there was "no higher national security priority for the lame-duck session."
On Nov. 17, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joined Sen. John F. Kerry, (D-Mass.) who led the Senate ratification effort, and Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the top Republican supporter, at a news conference at the Senate following a breakfast with lawmakers. Lugar made an emotional appeal for the treaty. "We're talking about thousands of warheads that are still there - an existential threat to our country," he declared loudly.
A day later, Obama appeared with four former Cabinet secretaries from both parties to press the case for the pact. At the White House's urging, other public appearances and endorsements followed from former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, former president George H.W. Bush and others.
The treaty had the support of much of the traditional Republican foreign policy establishment because it continued a pattern of mutual U.S.-Russian nuclear reductions and guaranteed inspections of each side's arsenal. That monitoring had lapsed in 2009 when the first START treaty expired.
Down to the wire
The behind-the-scenes effort to woo senators intensified. For months, Clinton and Biden had been calling lawmakers from airplanes, their offices and homes, and sending teams to brief them on the treaty's contents.
"It was real shoe-leather vote-by-vote work," said a senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Many of the senators' concerns were about the substance of the treaty. Some feared that the treaty's references to missile defense could constrain the U.S. government from building such a shield.
A few senators had pet issues. Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) stunned the White House on Nov. 17 by declaring he couldn't support the treaty until he had assurances it wouldn't harm U.S. allies in the Baltics and Eastern Europe.
Within days, Obama used a NATO summit in Lisbon to highlight international support for the pact - including from a group of Eastern European and Baltic leaders who called for treaty passage at a news conference.
Voinovich's concerns were assuaged by the speeches, as well as by a vow by Obama to consider allowing Poles to travel visa-free to the United States.
But the treaty's prospects remained uncertain.
Kerry said in an interview that it wasn't clear supporters had the votes or "knew this thing could really happen until these last few days."
One reason: A brawl had erupted over the schedule for the lame-duck session. The administration had anticipated lengthy debates over New START and complicated spending and tax bills during the session.
But Reid also wanted to bring up other priorities dear to his constituents and the Democratic base. He announced he would push forward a bill to allow gays to serve openly in the military, and go ahead with immigration legislation.
"The administration was definitely caught off guard" by Reid's announcement, said one Senate source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It was very unsettling."
Republicans were angered at what they saw as partisan maneuvering, and some decided they couldn't go along with the nuclear treaty. "We lost a number of senators' votes because of the complications of the schedule," Kerry acknowledged, adding that Republicans had told him the figure could be as high as 10.
In the past few days, treaty supporters poured on the pressure. A "war room" was set up in the Senate, with experts from the departments of State, Defense and Energy available to answer questions.
Obama produced a letter requested by Republicans asking for a firm commitment to fully develop a missile defense system in Europe. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly urged lawmakers to pass the treaty.
At 3 p.m. Wednesday, Biden, who was presiding over the Senate, read out the vote, to cheers from supporters.
"The president made a gutsy choice," Kerry said. "He decided he was prepared to lose the treaty, but he thought it was important to fight for."
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 23, 2010; 12:00 AM
Eleven days after the bruising midterm elections, President Obama got a stark reminder of how his political shellacking at home could undermine his standing abroad.
Obama was meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev at a hotel in Yokohama, Japan, after an economic summit. The improved relationship with Russia was one of Obama's main foreign policy achievements, and its centerpiece was a new nuclear-weapons agreement the two had signed in April.
Now the Russian leader wanted to know whether the treaty was in trouble in the U.S. Senate.
"President Medvedev was wondering what the election would mean, in terms of ratification. It's fair to say they were nervous," said one U.S. official who was in the meeting.
"That had an impression" on Obama, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
On the plane back to Washington, Obama told aides he was determined to get the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) through the Senate by year's end. "We've got to go for it," the official recalled Obama saying.
The next few weeks marked a remarkable resurgence for a White House demoralized by Democratic losses in the elections. On Wednesday, the Senate approved New START by a vote of 71 to 26, seven more than the 64 required for ratification but well short of the resounding approval that most nuclear-arms treaties have received.
Republican critics cited concerns about the treaty's language on missile defense, verification and other issues. But what appeared to tip a number against the treaty was Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid's (D-Nev.) decision to shoehorn issues dear to the Democratic base into the waning days of the session, which infuriated Republicans.
The White House strategy ultimately proved successful, but the rise of partisan passions may complicate Obama's future arms-control efforts.
Lining up the GOP
Even before his Nov. 13 meeting with Medvedev, Obama had turned his attention away from the midterm elections and to New START. On Nov. 5, while flying to India, he gathered national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon, press secretary Robert Gibbs and senior aides Valerie Jarrett and Ben Rhodes to ensure they had a strategy to win ratification of the treaty in the lame-duck session.
They did - or so they thought.
For months, Vice President Biden had been coordinating negotiations with Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the point man on the Republican side, who was demanding extra money to fix up the aging U.S. nuclear weapons complex as a condition of giving Republicans the green light to approve New START.
While Obama was in Asia, the administration had secretly sent a high-level team including Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of U.S. nuclear forces, to Arizona to tell Kyl the administration would commit an extra $4.1 billion for nuclear modernization, on top of an earlier pledge of $10 billion.
Kyl seemed happy with the offer, officials said.
But three days after Obama's meeting with Medvedev, White House aides were astonished to learn from a news release by Kyl that he believed there wasn't enough time to consider the treaty during the lame-duck session.
"That was one of the lowest moments of our time in government," said the senior official.
There had always been what another White House official called a "healthy skepticism" about whether Kyl, the second-ranking Republican, had been negotiating in good faith. A savvy conservative steeped in arms-control issues, Kyl had helped defeat the 1999 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, dealing a blow to the Clinton administration.
But Kyl's main concern this time hadn't seemed to be the treaty's central issues, such as the number of warheads allowed, but instead modernization of the remaining nuclear weapons.
Officials believed that pushing the treaty into the next Congress would jeopardize its passage, since Republicans had picked up six seats in the midterm elections.
Now, the administration had to decide whether to proceed without Kyl.
The Kyl statement arrived as Biden was meeting with senior officials in the White House Situation Room to discuss Iraq. Talk turned immediately to New START. Later, senior aides huddled with Obama in the Oval Office.
"Both the president and vice president said to us, 'Look, this is too important to let die like this,' " Rhodes said.
The next day, Obama called Kyl to say he would push for New START.
The offensive moved on both public and private tracks. Obama and Biden appealed openly for passage of the treaty, with Obama saying there was "no higher national security priority for the lame-duck session."
On Nov. 17, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joined Sen. John F. Kerry, (D-Mass.) who led the Senate ratification effort, and Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the top Republican supporter, at a news conference at the Senate following a breakfast with lawmakers. Lugar made an emotional appeal for the treaty. "We're talking about thousands of warheads that are still there - an existential threat to our country," he declared loudly.
A day later, Obama appeared with four former Cabinet secretaries from both parties to press the case for the pact. At the White House's urging, other public appearances and endorsements followed from former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, former president George H.W. Bush and others.
The treaty had the support of much of the traditional Republican foreign policy establishment because it continued a pattern of mutual U.S.-Russian nuclear reductions and guaranteed inspections of each side's arsenal. That monitoring had lapsed in 2009 when the first START treaty expired.
Down to the wire
The behind-the-scenes effort to woo senators intensified. For months, Clinton and Biden had been calling lawmakers from airplanes, their offices and homes, and sending teams to brief them on the treaty's contents.
"It was real shoe-leather vote-by-vote work," said a senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Many of the senators' concerns were about the substance of the treaty. Some feared that the treaty's references to missile defense could constrain the U.S. government from building such a shield.
A few senators had pet issues. Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) stunned the White House on Nov. 17 by declaring he couldn't support the treaty until he had assurances it wouldn't harm U.S. allies in the Baltics and Eastern Europe.
Within days, Obama used a NATO summit in Lisbon to highlight international support for the pact - including from a group of Eastern European and Baltic leaders who called for treaty passage at a news conference.
Voinovich's concerns were assuaged by the speeches, as well as by a vow by Obama to consider allowing Poles to travel visa-free to the United States.
But the treaty's prospects remained uncertain.
Kerry said in an interview that it wasn't clear supporters had the votes or "knew this thing could really happen until these last few days."
One reason: A brawl had erupted over the schedule for the lame-duck session. The administration had anticipated lengthy debates over New START and complicated spending and tax bills during the session.
But Reid also wanted to bring up other priorities dear to his constituents and the Democratic base. He announced he would push forward a bill to allow gays to serve openly in the military, and go ahead with immigration legislation.
"The administration was definitely caught off guard" by Reid's announcement, said one Senate source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It was very unsettling."
Republicans were angered at what they saw as partisan maneuvering, and some decided they couldn't go along with the nuclear treaty. "We lost a number of senators' votes because of the complications of the schedule," Kerry acknowledged, adding that Republicans had told him the figure could be as high as 10.
In the past few days, treaty supporters poured on the pressure. A "war room" was set up in the Senate, with experts from the departments of State, Defense and Energy available to answer questions.
Obama produced a letter requested by Republicans asking for a firm commitment to fully develop a missile defense system in Europe. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly urged lawmakers to pass the treaty.
At 3 p.m. Wednesday, Biden, who was presiding over the Senate, read out the vote, to cheers from supporters.
"The president made a gutsy choice," Kerry said. "He decided he was prepared to lose the treaty, but he thought it was important to fight for."
The Senate passed New START. What's next?
By Robert Kagan
Thursday, December 23, 2010;
The Senate's passage of the resolution of ratification of the New START treaty should be greeted as good news by sensible people interested in a sound American foreign and defense policy. The administration's willingness to accommodate Republican concerns on missile defense and modernization of the aging nuclear force has significantly strengthened the original modest agreement. In exchange for Republican acceptance of relatively small cuts in nuclear weapons, President Obama is now on record supporting missile defense in a way that he had not been before and has committed more than $80 billion to modernizing the nuclear arsenal. Republicans ought to be delighted with the deal.
And while bipartisanship is not always a virtue, in this case it has positive ramifications in the real world. Other nations need to know, at a moment when there are doubts, that the American political system can pull itself together and make a decision. Note how many of America's allies weighed in before the vote in favor of passage. This was not just about the merits of the treaty. It was an implicit plea for the United States to show some domestic unity as a necessary foundation for world leadership. The idea that Washington could tie itself in partisan knots over such a small matter was disturbing to those who are finding themselves once again in need of a strong and capable United States. Even Obama-hating Republicans need to remember that we have only one president at a time, and it's in our national interest that he be regarded around the world as someone who can speak and act with broad national support. In this case, he earned that support by working hard to address the legitimate concerns of the other party.
The internationalist coalition that passed this treaty will be critical in advancing U.S. interests over the coming years: in dealing with Iran; China; the continuing war in Afghanistan; the stabilization of Iraq; the ratification of free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama; and the maintenance of adequate defense and foreign affairs budgets. With the right presidential leadership, this muscular internationalism ought to, as it has in the past, provide the center of gravity for American foreign policy.
Those concerned about the administration's "reset" policy toward Russia should also be glad about passage. Relations with Moscow are about to grow more challenging. This is partly because some of the easy pickings - including this treaty - have already been harvested. The problems that lie ahead are going to be a tougher test of the reset: what to do about Russia's continued illegal occupation of Georgia; how to handle Russia's increasingly authoritarian domestic behavior, its brutal treatment of internal dissent and its squelching of all democratic institutions. Nor are we likely to see much Russian enthusiasm for a round of tougher sanctions on Iran. Had the treaty been defeated, any failures and setbacks on those issues would have been blamed on Republicans. Passage of New START means that responsibility will fall where it belongs: on Moscow and on the limitations of reset.
Republicans and Democrats who care about these issues should start thinking about how to hold Moscow and the Obama administration accountable. How should the United States provide strategic reassurance to Eastern European allies nervous about Moscow's intentions? How can we help Georgia maintain its independence and begin the process of regaining sovereignty over Russian-occupied territories? What kind of legislation can be useful in putting pressure on the Russian government to ease repression and allow democratic institutions some breathing room?
There are considerations beyond the U.S-Russia relationship as well. Republicans made a big show of their concern about the administration's attitude toward missile defense. Fair enough. But have they demanded more funding for missile defense programs with the same determination that they demanded more funding for nuclear modernization? Republicans are right to claim that at a time when nuclear proliferation seems on the verge of spiraling out of control, missile defenses are more necessary than ever. But this needs to be more than a talking point. Will the next, more Republican Congress put money where its mouth is?
These issues were always more important than the cutting of a few hundred warheads. Many observers believe the fight over New START was just about politics. Now that the fight is behind us, let's hope that the president and his opponents prove otherwise.
Thursday, December 23, 2010;
The Senate's passage of the resolution of ratification of the New START treaty should be greeted as good news by sensible people interested in a sound American foreign and defense policy. The administration's willingness to accommodate Republican concerns on missile defense and modernization of the aging nuclear force has significantly strengthened the original modest agreement. In exchange for Republican acceptance of relatively small cuts in nuclear weapons, President Obama is now on record supporting missile defense in a way that he had not been before and has committed more than $80 billion to modernizing the nuclear arsenal. Republicans ought to be delighted with the deal.
And while bipartisanship is not always a virtue, in this case it has positive ramifications in the real world. Other nations need to know, at a moment when there are doubts, that the American political system can pull itself together and make a decision. Note how many of America's allies weighed in before the vote in favor of passage. This was not just about the merits of the treaty. It was an implicit plea for the United States to show some domestic unity as a necessary foundation for world leadership. The idea that Washington could tie itself in partisan knots over such a small matter was disturbing to those who are finding themselves once again in need of a strong and capable United States. Even Obama-hating Republicans need to remember that we have only one president at a time, and it's in our national interest that he be regarded around the world as someone who can speak and act with broad national support. In this case, he earned that support by working hard to address the legitimate concerns of the other party.
The internationalist coalition that passed this treaty will be critical in advancing U.S. interests over the coming years: in dealing with Iran; China; the continuing war in Afghanistan; the stabilization of Iraq; the ratification of free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama; and the maintenance of adequate defense and foreign affairs budgets. With the right presidential leadership, this muscular internationalism ought to, as it has in the past, provide the center of gravity for American foreign policy.
Those concerned about the administration's "reset" policy toward Russia should also be glad about passage. Relations with Moscow are about to grow more challenging. This is partly because some of the easy pickings - including this treaty - have already been harvested. The problems that lie ahead are going to be a tougher test of the reset: what to do about Russia's continued illegal occupation of Georgia; how to handle Russia's increasingly authoritarian domestic behavior, its brutal treatment of internal dissent and its squelching of all democratic institutions. Nor are we likely to see much Russian enthusiasm for a round of tougher sanctions on Iran. Had the treaty been defeated, any failures and setbacks on those issues would have been blamed on Republicans. Passage of New START means that responsibility will fall where it belongs: on Moscow and on the limitations of reset.
Republicans and Democrats who care about these issues should start thinking about how to hold Moscow and the Obama administration accountable. How should the United States provide strategic reassurance to Eastern European allies nervous about Moscow's intentions? How can we help Georgia maintain its independence and begin the process of regaining sovereignty over Russian-occupied territories? What kind of legislation can be useful in putting pressure on the Russian government to ease repression and allow democratic institutions some breathing room?
There are considerations beyond the U.S-Russia relationship as well. Republicans made a big show of their concern about the administration's attitude toward missile defense. Fair enough. But have they demanded more funding for missile defense programs with the same determination that they demanded more funding for nuclear modernization? Republicans are right to claim that at a time when nuclear proliferation seems on the verge of spiraling out of control, missile defenses are more necessary than ever. But this needs to be more than a talking point. Will the next, more Republican Congress put money where its mouth is?
These issues were always more important than the cutting of a few hundred warheads. Many observers believe the fight over New START was just about politics. Now that the fight is behind us, let's hope that the president and his opponents prove otherwise.
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