The Tough Road to Ratification
April 13th, 2010 by adetschThis week, President Obama put his signature on perhaps the hallmark foreign policy achievement of his young presidency - a renewed START treaty agreement with Russia that calls for dramatic bilateral cuts in the nuclear stockpiles of both countries. This is a huge political victory in the international arena for Obama, breathing life into a souring relationship with Moscow, and way-siding the lack of progress in Israel-Palestine peace talks throughout the last year. This is undoubtedly a massive step toward the President’s eventual (and yes, perhaps idealistic) goal of a nuclear-free world.
The only obstacle left in the way of this ambitious initiative is ratification in the US Congress. Simple, right? Not so much. Political gridlock in Washington pervades not on domestic, but also these paramount and seemingly non-controversial foreign issues and initiatives.
Ratification of the treaty in the Senate requires 67 votes as per the constitution, and it will be extremely difficult for the President and Harry Reid’s Democratic leadership to find 8 Republican “yes” votes, or even corral the conservative Democrats (such as Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln, among others) whose constituents may be wary of the scale and speed of disarmament that this treaty calls for. Many on the right side of the aisle are irrationally afraid of Nuclear attacks from rogue states such as Iran (eventually) and North Korea, and that diminishing missile shields in Europe will enable Russia to gain more strategic initiative throughout Europe, as Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) suggested in a Sunday interview on Fox.
These counts seem patently wrong: The vast majority of those weapons this treaty eliminates are archaic and ineffective, of the Cold War era. North Korea is a proliferation threat, not a military threat, as Pyongyang is well aware that they would theoretically be annihilated in a retaliatory attack. Iran is probably of the same flock: its uranium enrichment levels are not particularly high, and domestic institutional instability would disallow the Islamic Republic from using such offensive force against another nation. Perhaps Iran’s missiles are capable, as some suggest, of striking Europe, but it’s hard to imagine them being so bold (despite the vehemence of Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric). Furthermore, Russia’s strategic leverage over mainland Europe is primarily economic (in petrol dollars), and domestic stockpiles in the UK and France, among other EU nations, should be deterrent enough.
But the Senate is an irrational place where hypothetical political objectives often rule out common sense. This treaty, while not as transformative as some would hope, is a phenomenal start to Obama’s diplomatic resume (he’s beginning to earn that Nobel). Let’s hope he can capitalize on it.
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