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Tomorrow, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) will expire. The treaty has been in place for the past 18 years and signaled the end of the Cold War, as it reduced U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and helped prevent Russian nuclear materials from falling into the rogue hands. While it is unfortunate that a follow-on agreement could not be reached and ratified prior to the Dec. 5 deadline, the limited timeframe that the Obama administration had to complete a treaty, as well as the dithering and dangerous approach of the Bush administration over the last eight years, has led to this critical juncture. The Obama administration has been racing against the clock to negotiate a new follow-on START treaty and looks set to complete negotiations by the end of the month at the latest. The new treaty will provide verifiable reductions in the number of nuclear weapons and limit the risk of them falling into the wrong hands. This accomplishment would represent a big step toward the realization of the President's ambitious vision of a world without nuclear weapons -- an effort that was one of the primary reasons the Nobel committee decided to award President Obama with its peace prize. Recognizing that the Cold War is over, Obama laid out a vision of a world without nuclear weapons last spring in Prague. A new START agreement is the first big step on the path toward achieving this goal.
WHAT START DOES: START was initiated by President Reagan in order to begin reducing the vast and excessive nuclear arsenals held by the U.S. and Russia. Charles Ferguson of the Council on Foreign Relations explained that START "heralded the end of the Cold War, the end of the Soviet Union, and a new era in which both countries agreed to slash their arsenals pretty much in half." The new START follow-on treaty now being finalized seeks to build on Reagan's effort, by locking in additional cuts in nuclear weapons. Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association explains, "The new START deal promises to enhance U.S. and global security by further locking in deeper, verifiable reductions in excess Cold War strategic nuclear weapons." In this new agreement, the U.S. and Russia will further cut "deployed strategic warheads to somewhere between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads each -- a 30 percent cut from current levels," as well as reduce the vehicles that delivery nuclear weapons, such as bombers, submarines, and land based missile silos. This effort has wide bipartisan support, with former Secretaries Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and William Perry, as well as former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Sen. Sam Nunn all vocally in favor of a new treaty and further arms reductions. Importantly, this treaty will further move the U.S. away from the past approaches of the Cold War. As Kimball notes, "We're 20 years after the Cold War. ... The only reason most of these weapons exist is to deter the use of them by the other." Furthermore, this treaty will strengthen other nonproliferation efforts and help further Obama's nuclear agenda. According to Stephen Pifer of the Brookings Institution, "By cutting their strategic arms, the United States and Russia can lead in strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime."
U.S.-RUSSIA RELATIONS RESURRECTED: Last year around this time, many commentators and analysts feared that the U.S. and Russia were on the verge of a new Cold War. To move relations back from the brink, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed that the U.S. and Russia hit the reset button in their relations, recognizing that there were key issues requiring cooperation between the two countries. Chief among these issues, according to a report from the Center for American Progress, is cooperation on nuclear arms and negotiating a new START agreement. Both Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev have suggested that the new treaty will mark the foundation for better relations. Negotiators from both sides have been feverishly at work over the course of the year and now appear on the verge of reaching a new follow-on agreement. National Security Adviser Jim Jones, commenting on the negotiations currently taking place in Geneva, noted, "It's a very complex issue. We're down to the last few paragraphs and sentences. And if we can get it done by (December) 5th, fine, maybe it'll be one or two days later." Jones added, "I think the attitude of both countries and all negotiators and both presidents who are driving the process is that we're headed towards having some success here." Obama has been highly engaged in the negotiating effort, speaking with Medvedev on Monday. National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer noted that Obama and Medvedev told their "negotiators to redouble their efforts to resolve outstanding issues." Jones also said that Obama will "will speak again" with Medvedev on Monday to push toward a deal. The progress in nuclear negotiations led Obama during his trip to Asia to note that hitting the "reset button has worked."
CONSERVATIVE DITHERING: The Obama administration is in a "race against the clock" due to dithering and inaction over eight years by the Bush administration. A new report from the Century Foundation explained that, with the end of the Cold War, the Bush administration believed that "nuclear arms control was no longer necessary." With Bush confidently peering into Putin's soul, his administration believed this new close relationship meant that complex arms control agreements that required extensive monitoring and verification measures were unnecessary. Yet now, certain conservatives -- who said nothing during the Bush administration and oppose arms control efforts in general -- are on the attack, blaming the Obama administration for not getting a deal before the deadline. The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes called this "another Obama diplomatic failure." Politico's Laura Rozen reported that "Senate Republicans are sounding the alarms." Led by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the Senate GOP knows "that there's no way for the follow-on treaty, which negotiators are hammering out in Geneva, to be ratified this year. So the GOP is warning about what could happen to the verification and inspection activities now ongoing under START when the deadline passes." This is the height of hypocrisy. Senate Republicans raised no concerns over the Bush administration's inaction and showed little interest in verification measures in previous treaties. Blogger Kingston Rief wrote that Kyl's "inconsistency knows no bounds," noting that Kyl "was against verification before he was for it. What's the cause of his new-found verification religion? Has it something to do with a Democrat being in the White House?" Furthermore, Kyl and other GOP senators held up the nominations of key U.S. arms control negotiators. Kyl's newfound concern about getting a treaty in place before the Dec. 5 deadline is belied by his efforts earlier this year to stall Obama's nominations for key negotiating positions. Kyl, for instance, put a "hold" on Ellen Tauscher, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, not allowing her to take office until the middle of the summer. 
RADICAL RIGHT -- SEN. GREGG AUTHORS OBSTRUCTION MANUAL TO KILL HEALTH REFORM: Earlier this week, Politico obtained a copy of a memo authored by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) outlining exactly how Senate Republicans can kill health reform using various parliamentary tactics. The memo amounts to an "obstruction manual" for Senate Republicans and includes tactics like demanding a new legislative day, forcing "hard" quorum calls, bringing a "point of order" up for debate "with or without cause," and recommending GOP senators offer an "unlimited number of amendments -- germane or non-germane -- on any subject" to the health bill. Gregg's reliance on the "Byzantine process of the Senate" to kill reform represents a continuation of the obstructionist strategy followed by the GOP in committee, where senators offered dozens of frivolous amendments to bog down the debate. But back in 2006, Gregg sang a very different tune about appropriate Senate procedure. At the time, Gregg wanted to form an Entitlement Commission to recommend cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Facing opposition, Gregg blasted Democrats for what he perceived as "obstruction for the purpose of obtaining power." Given Gregg's previous comments deploring Senate obstruction, his current obstruction memo reveals how disingenuous he is willing to be in order to stop health care reform. Rather than argue the merits of the legislation, Gregg and his Republican colleagues continue their campaign of resorting to parliamentary gimmicks to kill the bill.
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A new Labor Department report released this morning shows the nation's unemployment rate has fallen to 10 percent. Employers cut 11,000 jobs in November, the smallest decline since the recession began. Experts had predicted the unemployment rate would "hold steady at 10.2 percent." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is remaining burrowed in his office this week as the Senate debates health care on the floor. Reid is "looking past the daily political drama playing out and, as he said recently, 'getting my deals done.'" "Breaking a three-day stalemate," the Senate voted 61 to 39 to approve "an amendment to its health care legislation that would require insurance companies to offer free mammograms and other preventive services to women." A new USA Today/Gallup poll found that 51 percent support President Obama's new strategy in Afghanistan. However, the poll also found "broad concerns that the costs of the war will sap the government's ability to address problems at home." To coincide with President Obama's troop increase plan in Afghanistan, the White House has authorized an expansion of the CIA's drone program into Pakistan's tribal regions. Pakistani and U.S. officials are discussing "the possibility of striking in Baluchistan for the first time -- a controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas -- because that is where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to hide." A key U.N. panel has decided to examine the evidence in the case of hacked emails related to climate science at the University of East Anglia. "We will certainly go into the whole lot and then we will take a position on it," said Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has reportedly come around to the idea of a global transaction tax. Pelosi discussed the tax with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner yesterday. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced bills that would impose a .25 percent tax on securities transactions the same day. The "national battle over abortion" has "erupted" in suburban Omaha, NE, where the late Dr. George Tiller's long-time colleague, Dr. LeRoy H. Carhart, has taken up his cause of providing late-term abortions to women in need of the service. Anti-choice activists, such as Operation Rescue founder Randall Tiller, are now "turning their efforts to stopping Dr. Carhart." And finally: Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's (R) office has been sending people interested in children's health insurance to a sex chat line. "In a message callers hear when they get put on hold after calling Gov. Charlie Crist, Crist transposes a couple of numbers and turns the phone number for Florida KidCare into the number you'd call for 'hot, horny girls.'" The governor's office has since fixed the error. |
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"[O]nly 8 percent of the [Obama White House] senior appointees have a private sector background."
-- Fox News' Newt Gingrich, 12/02/09
VERSUS
"[I]f you examine a larger group of senior Obama administration appointees, you'll find that more than one in four have experience as business executives."
-- PolitiFact.com, 12/02/09
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