Lake: Senate Prepares to Ratify START Treaty

Eli Lake reports:

The Senate voted Tuesday to limit debate on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), paving the way for final ratification of the arms-control pact as key Republicans defied their party leadership and announced support for the accord.

The move to invoke cloture passed by a 67-28 vote after several days of debate and unsuccessful Republican attempts to add amendments to the U.S.-Russia arms agreement.

The Senate could take a final vote to formally ratify the treaty as early as Wednesday.

Democrats need the votes of nine Republicans to reach a two-thirds majority of 67 to ratify the agreement, if all Democrats vote in favor.

Still, it appears the treaty will garner significantly fewer votes than past arms-control treaties that were approved by the Senate with large, bipartisan majorities of 90 votes for more.

“Today’s bipartisan vote clears a significant hurdle in the Senate,” said Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of theSenate Foreign Relations Committee. “We are on the brink of writing the next chapter in the 40-year history of wrestling with the threat of nuclear weapons. We’ve spent months building toward this moment.”

If the treaty passes, it will be a victory for the White House in a year of political setbacks. President Obama has made passage of New START during the postelection lame-duck session of Congress a top priority, even though he also needed to negotiate a deal on the budget and tax-cut extensions.

Mr. Obama also made the treaty, which limits Russian and U.S.strategic nuclear arsenals to 1,550 warheads for each side, a central focus of U.S. efforts to reset relations with Russia.

Additionally, the White House has said the treaty is important for Mr. Obama’s program to curb the spread of nuclear arms as part of a plan to ultimately rid the world completely of nuclear weapons. Further arms talks are planned for limits on tactical or battlefield nuclear missiles, limits on the production of fissile material, and cooperation on missile defenses.

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Dems Prepare Votes on START Treaty

Politico reports:

Senate Democrats appear to have enough votes to overcome a Republican filibuster on the new START arms-control treaty, though it’s unclear if they will have the 67 votes needed for ratification.

At least four Republicans have committed to supporting the U.S.-Russia treaty or are leaning that way, including two who say they will vote for cloture. If Democrats can hold their 58-member caucus together, that would likely put them at or over the 60-vote threshold required to end debate on the treaty and move forward.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid?(D-Nev.) filed a cloture motion Sunday night that would set up a cloture vote Tuesday and a final vote for ratification Wednesday.

“As we move ahead, I look forward to continuing to debate amendments. But soon this will come down to a simple choice: you either want to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists, or you don’t,” Reid said.

Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has been urging START ratification in the lame-duck session, is expected to vote for cloture. So will Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).

“I’ve said that I’ve supported START and a vote for cloture to proceed to the consideration of it, because I do think it is critical to always engage in reducing our respective arsenals,” Snowe told reporters Sunday at the Capitol. “Wherever we can engage in that with Russia, it is absolutely essential that we do so.”

But she said it’s crucial that her GOP colleagues have the ability to offer amendments. “If we work this process through, we may come to an ultimate conclusion,” Snowe said.

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Krauthammer: START Treaty is Irrelevant

The Washington Post reports:

It’s a lame-duck session. Time is running out. Unemployment is high, the economy is dangerously weak and, with five weeks to go, no one knows what tax anyone will be paying on everything from income to dividends to death when the current rates expire Jan. 1. And what is the?president demanding that Congress pass as “a top priority”? To what did he devote his latest?weekly radio address? Ratification of his New START treaty.

Good grief. Even among national security concerns, New START is way down at the bottom of the list. From the naval treaties of the 1920s to this day, arms control has oscillated between mere symbolism at its best to major harm at its worst, with general uselessness being the norm.

The reason is obvious. The problem is never the weapon; it is the nature of the regime controlling the weapon. That’s why no one stays up nights worrying about British nukes, while everyone worries about Iranian nukes.

In Soviet days, arms control at least could be justified as giving us something to talk about when there was nothing else to talk about, symbolically relieving tensions between mortal enemies. It could be argued that it at least had a soporific and therapeutic effect in the age of “the balance of terror.”

But in post-Soviet days? The Russians are no longer an existential threat. A nuclear exchange between Washington and Moscow is inconceivable. What difference does it make how many nukes Russia builds? If they want to spend themselves into penury creating a bloated nuclear arsenal, be our guest.

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