Foreign Policy In Focus

"Senator Kyl's recent statements begin to seriously call into question where the cat and mouse game between the administration and Kyl's office will end," writes Chris Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in an indispensable post. Minority Whip Kyl (AZ), to whom Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), has granted final say on whether Senate Republicans will vote to ratify New START, has been stringing along the Obama administration.

Either he's trying to extort the very last penny from it that he can for the nuclear weapons industry and its vaunted "modernization" program before giving the go-ahead to Republicans to vote yes. Or, failing that, he seeks to squeeze what funding he can from the administration before ordering the bill shot down. 

Kyl's coyness has become tiresome -- even to the Senate's next most respected voice on nuclear weapons issues, Richard Lugar (IN). Jones links to Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy:

In a stunning rebuke to members of his own caucus [Lugar] said on Wednesday that the GOP is intentionally trying to put off a vote on the New START treaty with Russia, and avoiding a serious discussion about the treaty within the caucus. . . . Kyl told [Rogin] that negotiations were going forward "in good faith," but Lugar suggested that's all a smoke screen and that the Republican leadership is committed to avoiding completion of the treaty for the foreseeable future.

In other words, not during the lame duck session. Jones also links to Elizabeth Weingarten at the Atlantic, who writes:

Matthew Rojansky, the deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says . . . Kyl may be waiting until the next Congress to make sure the. . . . promised funds to appear in a spring appropriations bill.

Or, Kyl and the Senate Republicans are stalling "just to make the president look ineffective and weak," writes Center for American Progress president John Podesta at Politico (another link courtesy of Jones). But, in their rush to make the president look weak, they may, many believe, be weakening national defense. Rogin quotes Lugar: "Every senator has an obligation in the national security interest to take a stand, to do his or her duty."

What Lugar means is that, in the year since the original START expired, the United States has been sorely lacking one of its provisos -- the right to inspect and monitor Russia's nuclear program. Podesta also writes: 

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) must recognize that most Republicans have little interest in killing the treaty. He should schedule a vote in this lame-duck session. . . .  Though a handful of GOP senators outright reject New START and are ideologically opposed to arms control, the majority are likely to support the treaty if it comes to a vote.

Apparently, most Republican senators get the national security angle, which also includes ensuring Russia's help pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear program. Hard to believe, but there actually appears to be a Democratic bill that Republicans, however much they're opposed to helping Obama "reset" U.S.-Russian relations, don't want to vote no on.

Along with Richard Lugar (R-IN), Jon Kyl, the Republican Senate whip from Arizona, is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (KY) go-to guy on nuclear issues. We wrote yesterday:

"After Republicans picked up six seats in the Senate earlier this month, prospects for the passage of the new START began to diminish (not that this author minds). Barron YoungSmith at the New Republic writes that last week 'chief of staff to Senator Bob Corker -- a key vote on the treaty -- said that it should not be considered during the lame-duck Congress, and the Republican Policy Committee released a memo urging a similar delay.'"

Kyl is known as a staunch supporter of nuclear weapons who made his mark as a freshman senator in 1999 when he blew up passage of the Comprehensive (nuclear) Test Ban Treaty. But, writes YoungSmith in the article I cited yesterday, "bizarrely enough, he seems to want [new START] to go through." I continued: 

Turns out, not so bizarrely. Desmond Butler for the Associated Press writes:

In a bid to win approval of [new START] before newly energized Republicans increase their clout in the Senate, the Obama administration is offering to add billions of dollars in funding for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. [To wit] a boost of $4.1 billion . . . between 2012-2016 . . . that will go to maintaining and modernizing the arsenal and the laboratories that oversee that effort. The additional money comes on top of an additional $10 billion the administration had already agreed to over 10 years. 

And that additional $10 billion, YoungSmith explains, is "on top of" . . .

. . . an initial massive $80 billion appropriation in Obama's 2011 budget proposal [that Kyl demanded be] guaranteed over ten years. [In the end] Kyl's proposal would pair New START with a huge cash bonanza for programs that would make it easier to maintain and upgrade our nuclear weapons in the future. 

In other words, according to YoungSmith, Kyl "seems to think that securing long-term funding for nuclear modernization outweighs whatever qualms he might have about reducing our present arsenal."

Writing for Time, Massimo Calabresi is wary of Kyl, though. Of his perceived openness to New START, Calabresi writes:

Maybe. But if Kyl's primary characteristic as a Senator is subterfuge, his secondary characteristic is a tough devotion to his ideological positions. . . . And convincing Kyl to accept a large cut to the cap on U.S. strategic warheads runs counter to positions he has taken over 16 years in the Senate. That said, the administration has accurately identified something Kyl wants in exchange for accepting a "relatively benign treaty." 

Nuclear modernization and missile defense, that is. Those issues aside, writes Kelsey Hartigan at Democracy Arsenal, New START will be "the first test of whether the GOP can be trusted to lead. [Sen. Lugar] recently wrote that 'the Republicans can't just be the Party of No.' [And as] Robert Kagan recently explained to his fellow conservatives, ratifying New START is a 'good first step toward governing.'" Besides, writes Hartigan, "Screw up New START and you can kiss your nuclear pork goodbye." 

To what extent, should New START be shot down, remains to be seen. But we might find out. Yesterday at Politico, Laura Rozen reports that Kyl may be getting cold feet.

Seemingly shutting the door on one of the Obama administration's key goals for this lame-duck session of Congress, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday that he does not think the Senate should vote to ratify the START treaty before the end of the year. . . .

"If the Republicans' lead negotiator says we shouldn't consider START during a lame duck, I think we have to take him at face value," a leadership aide told POLITICO Tuesday. "Having said that, we are going to continue to try and get it ratified in the lame duck." 

Also, Kyl is due to speak with either -- reports vary -- Vice President Biden or Secretary Gates tomorrow. Remember: however pro-nuclear those opposed to New START may appear to be, they're voting against a measure that Secretary Gates and the Pentagon support. A no vote would also keep U.S. access to Russia's nuclear program via inspections closed as it has been for a year. More to the point, as Ms. Rozen reports, "The move could be a blow to the Obama's administration's 'reset' of relations with Russia, and for U.S.-Russian cooperation on countering Iran's nuclear program, among other areas." 

In regards to Kyl's statement that the Senate should wait until after the lame-duck session to address New START, she writes: 

"Issuing a press statement while sensitive private talks are ongoing strikes me as an act of bad faith," the nonproliferation hand said. "It only reinforces those who believe that Kyl is playing the administration for a fool, stringing out a series of concessions before abruptly calling the whole thing off." 

The Obama administration: played by the Republicans again?

After Republicans picked up six seats in the Senate earlier this month, prospects for the passage of the new START began to diminish (not that this author minds). Barron YoungSmith at the New Republic writes that last week "chief of staff to Senator Bob Corker -- a key vote on the treaty -- said that it should not be considered during the lame-duck Congress, and the Republican Policy Committee released a memo urging a similar delay."

Of powerful Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, YoungSmith writes: "Kyl's position as Republican whip enables him to command enough Senate votes that he can determine whether New START is ratified or not." Nor has Kyl demonstrated a fondness for treaties in the past. "I submit that we have to be very careful to avoid relying on treaties to safeguard our security, since the reality is they are rarely enforced," he said in 2000 of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. But, writes YoungSmith, "bizarrely enough, he seems to want [new START] to go through." 

Turns out, not so bizarrely. Desmond Butler for the Associated Press writes:

In a bid to win approval of [new START] before newly energized Republicans increase their clout in the Senate, the Obama administration is offering to add billions of dollars in funding for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. [To wit] a boost of $4.1 billion . . . between 2012-2016 . . . that will go to maintaining and modernizing the arsenal and the laboratories that oversee that effort. The additional money comes on top of an additional $10 billion the administration had already agreed to over 10 years. 

And that additional $10 billion, YoungSmith explains, is "on top of" . . .

. . . an initial massive $80 billion appropriation in Obama's 2011 budget proposal [that Kyl demanded be] guaranteed over ten years. [In the end] Kyl's proposal would pair New START with a huge cash bonanza for programs that would make it easier to maintain and upgrade our nuclear weapons in the future. 

In other words, according to YoungSmith, Kyl "seems to think that securing long-term funding for nuclear modernization outweighs whatever qualms he might have about reducing our present arsenal."

Then,  a couple of odd statements by YoungSmith. First: "Given Kyl's apparent passion for securing this funding, it's no surprise that the White House seems to have decided to threaten the senator." Most likely, the author and editor failed to notice the absence of the word "not" preceding "threaten."

Next: "One senior administration official told the Financial Times that 'not moving ahead … could shatter the fragile consensus on modernizing the nuclear complex.' Presumably that would put at risk not just the extra $10 billion Kyl has been requesting, but possibly the entire $80 billion proposed appropriation.

Doesn't the official mean "shatter the fragile consensus on ratifying START"? Because, as the statement stands, it sounds as if he's more concerned with securing funding for the nuclear-weapons industry than ratifying new START. Maybe he is.

The New York Times saw fit to provide valuable op-ed space to John Bolton and John Yoo on November 9. You'd think the latter, especially, best known for providing the Bush administration with legal justification for torture, would be reluctant to show his face -- or byline -- in public again. In this instance Bolton and Yoo are turning their collective wisdom to the new START treaty.

"The sweeping Democratic midterm losses last week raise serious questions for President Obama and a lame-duck Congress," they write. "Voters want government brought closer to the vision the framers outlined in the Constitution" -- laying it on a little thick, guys -- "and the first test could be the fate of the flawed New Start arms control treaty [which] awaits ratification. The Senate should heed the will of the voters and either reject the treaty or amend it so that it doesn't weaken our national defense." 

In his November 8 column for the Week, Daniel Larison of (the libertarian) American Conservative also addressed the fate of new START. 

After the Republican gain of six seats in the Senate, including Mark Kirk of Illinois, who will be seated immediately, the arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, known as START, has much less of a chance of passing during the lame-duck session before January. . . . After the start of the new Congress, the treaty will be as good as dead.  

When he then warns that such a course of action will "harm U.S. security interests," he means something entirely different from Bolton and Yoo when they call for rejecting or amending new START in order that "it doesn't weaken our national defense." Larison is referring to the danger that "it will wreck the one mechanism available to the United States for verifying the nature and extent of Russia’s nuclear arsenal." 

In fact, there's no love lost between this author and new START. For starters, as explained in April by Michael Bohm in the Moscow Times . . . 

. . . Russia and the United States have agreed to apply "creative accounting" to pad the reductions on both sides to get to the much-desired 30 percent figure. . . . one trick was to count the 20 warheads on B-52 bombers as only one. At the end of the day, the real net cuts, according to Hans Kristenson of the Federation of American Scientists, will be only 100 U.S. deployed warheads and 190 Russian ones. [Another trick was revealed when] the two sides announced the final number -- 1,550 deployed warheads -- the key qualifier is "deployed." The roughly 2,000 non-deployed warheads stored in U.S. military warehouses were not included in the New START.

More to the point, if Republicans truly reject or further water down new START, what becomes of the $80 billion for the next 10 years that the Obama administration promised to the nuclear-weapons industry in part to win Republican votes for ratification? Not to mention funding for, as Greg Mello writes in the latest bulletin of the Los Alamos Study Group, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility planned for Los Alamos, the cost of which "per square foot of useful space has grown to more than 100 times what [Los Alamos's] existing plutonium facility cost in 1978, in constant dollars." In fact, "it's the biggest project ever proposed for Los Alamos -- six times the size of the whole Manhattan Project in New Mexico," also in constant dollars. (I've still yet to digest that last revelation.)

Obviously concerned about losing that funding, Bolton and Yoo write, "Congress should pass a new law financing the testing and development of new warhead designs before approving New Start." If it's rejected or neutered, does the Obama administration plan to retract some or all of that funding? Unlikely, I know, but were that to occur it would look a lot more like disarmament than new START.

No doubt you heard about the engineering failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming which knocked 50 nuclear ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) offline last Saturday. Then, on Thursday, Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic reported:

Senate Republicans plan to seize on the news [of said failure] to delay or even block ratification of the new strategic arms reduction treaty (START).

"The recent failure reinforces the need for the United States to maintain 450 ICBMs to ensure a strong nuclear defense," said Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY). "If new START had been in place on Sunday, we would have immediately been below an acceptable level to deter threats from our enemies." . . . 

"We're talking about one hour, and 50 missiles from one part of our triad . . ." a senior administration official said. . . . "And nothing in START prevents us from upgrading that part of the nuclear deterrent."

Needless to say, we personally derive no consolation from the news that "nothing in START prevents us from upgrading that part of the nuclear deterrent." At first we thought this was an attempt on the part of the Republicans to extort even more money from the Obama administration, already generous to a fault towards the nuclear-industrial complex. But, as you may have noticed above, Senator Barrasso is an "R-WY." As Tom Z. Collina, writes in an Arms Control Association press release:

It should be noted that Sen. Barrasso's state is host to Warren Air Force Base and its 150 ICBMs, and that New START could reduce that force. 

The Obama administration has pledged a staggering amount of money -- ballpark figure: $11 billion over the next decade -- to the nuclear-weapons industry for "modernization," in part to convince Republican senators to ratify START. But, in this instance, Sen. Barrasso is more concerned with a holding action in his own backyard.