START Treaty mini-roundup

[Winehole23]

Mr. Bond, who is retiring this year, is leading the charge, and while other senior Republicans have merely suggested a delay in a ratification vote, the Missouri senator said in an interview that the New START is a bad deal.

First, he said, it forces the U.S. to cut its strategic nuclear forces to get to the cap of 1,550 deployed warheads, while Russia is allowed to build up its usable nuclear arsenal to that level.


Second, its verification measures are “much weaker” than the original START, signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1991 but which expired last December. That means the Russia could secretly build up its nuclear arsenal, then “break out” of the treaty in a rush of new nuclear warhead deployments.


“I’d like to see renewal of the first START,” he said. “The Obama administration fell for [the Kremlin’s] negotiating tactic of giving them a treaty that enabled them to do anything they wanted.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/1...rap-new-start/

Partisanship in Washington has reached a new level, infecting not just longstanding domestic-policy disputes, but also foreign policy and national security issues. There was nothing anti-Russian in Kyl's move -- it was purely anti-Obama. To that end, he succeeded: The United States' allies and enemies abroad will probably pay more attention to the foreign-policy players in Congress and hold the president in somewhat lesser esteem.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...e_pause_button

For some reason, Senate Republicans find it surprising that their leading expert on arms control would want to try to keep arms control alive rather than see it die a slow, agonizing death on account of his colleagues’ preposterous opposition. Apparently, they can play games with national security issues, and he is supposed to sit there quietly and not point out what they are doing. As the report explains, Lugar is running for re-election in 2012, and he has compiled quite a record on domestic issues that marks him as a moderate-to-liberal Republican. This record would have made him very vulnerable had he been up for re-nomination this year, and he could face a primary challenge in 2012, especially if he continues (correctly!) to berate other Republicans for their irresponsibility. It wouldn’t surprise me if Lugar ends up choosing to go the Hagel route and retires. As out of step with the public and the military as treaty opponents are, Lugar is equally out of step with most of the elected officials and activists in his party. It is generally bad news for the quality of Republican thinking on foreign policy and national security that Lugar is increasingly the odd man out in the GOP.

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2010...r-and-the-gop/

The message is quite clear, and it’s not as if Republican opponents haven’t received it. Delaying and effectively blocking this treaty will harm American and allied European security. Causing the treaty to fail means letting down all those European allies that have been counting on ratification. After two years of crafting a storyline that the administration has been “abandoning” U.S. allies, the Senate GOP appears prepared to do just that. It is doubtful that any amount of pressure could be great enough to make them reverse course and recognize their folly.

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2010...essage-across/

[Winehole23]

So Republican opposition is difficult to comprehend, but perhaps a recent blog post from Commentary’s John Podhoretz can help us understand the mindset of the treaty's naysayers. Brushing by the arguments of Mr Kagan and Mr Boot, Mr Podhoretz finally settles on the following as the "worst thing" about the agreement: New START creates "a parallelism between American strength and Russian strength that is a very, very bad precedent in terms of how we ourselves think about American power."
"How we ourselves think about American power." That is the withered remnant of neoconservative thinking about foreign policy—a remnant that today, through Fox News and the other organs of right-wing opinion-formation, increasingly dominates the Republican Party. It has no interest in understanding the complicated world beyond American shores—a world filled with nations we cannot simply manipulate and control for our own ends, a world in which the United States is very powerful but far from free to do whatever it wants without constraint. Instead of realistically reflecting on the challenges confronting America in the emerging multi-polar world, Mr Podhoretz and his ideological compatriots are interested only in us—in bucking up our will and resolve, in inoculating us against self-doubt, in leading an endless pep rally in our own honour during which we are repeatedly told how exceptional we are in both power and virtue. So exceptional, in fact, that we will not deign to sit at a negotiating table, entertain a mutually beneficial compromise, or ratify a treaty with any nation that would dare to pursue interests contrary to our own in any region of the world.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democ...w_start_treaty

[boutons_deux]

"Republican opposition is difficult to comprehend"

Wrong. Why does anyone still think the Repugs are adults, are serious about governing, are operating in good faith?

Repugs will do anything to block Magic Negro and Dems from making any progress on anything, no matter what the costs, no matter what the pain, until 2012. This strategy worked to win the House, so the Repugs expect it will work to win the White House.

[Winehole23]

(SECDEF Gates) said that Russia could also respond to a failure to approve the treaty by scaling back its assistance for the war in Afghanistan. Russia has allowed the U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization to ship supplies through its territory to Afghanistan, including a recent decision to permit transport of so-called mine resistant ambush protected vehicles, the heavily armored troop carriers used to guard against hidden bombs.

In addition to Gates' comments, President Obama devoted his weekend radio address to the treaty.

"Without ratification this year, the United States will have no inspectors on the ground, and no ability to verify Russian nuclear activities," Obama said in the address.


"Without ratification, we put at risk the coalition that we have built to put pressure on Iran, and the transit route through Russia that we use to equip our troops in Afghanistan," the president continued.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov...reaty-20101121

[Winehole23]

"Republican opposition is difficult to comprehend"

Wrong. Why does anyone still think the Repugs are adults, are serious about governing, are operating in good faith?

You should stress points of similarity, rather than denouncing the prosody of speakers who essentially agree with you. JMO.

(Have you ever heard of understatement?)

[Winehole23]

Or, did you not read past the lede again? Dummy.

[Winehole23]

Whatever happened to listening to our military chieftains? The Joint Chiefs are all for it.

[Winehole23]

(Love how boutons chastised the subtlety of the lead in of an article that basically agrees with him and never got to the critique of magical thinking he probably shares.)

[MannyIsGod]

As much as I probably shouldn't be given the way the GOP has pretty much blocked anything associated with Obama, I am surprised politics has infected this. This stands to weaken the Presidency in the one arena I think it shouldn't be weakened which is foreign policy and international relations.

The history books will remark on how stupid this version of the GOP actually is.

[Winehole23]

As much as I probably shouldn't be given the way the GOP has pretty much blocked anything associated with Obama, I am surprised politics has infected this. This stands to weaken the Presidency in the one arena I think it shouldn't be weakened which is foreign policy and international relations.

Not too long ago, it was considered treasonous to do so, or even give the appearance of doing so.

Now it is merely de rigueur.

The history books will remark on how stupid this version of the GOP actually is.

It ain't much to brag on right now.

[MannyIsGod]

It ain't much to brag on right now.

I'm not a rich man but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy the only two dollars I have.

[Winehole23]

(beer)

[EVAY]

"It is generally bad news for the quality of Republican thinking on foreign policy and national security that Lugar is increasingly the odd man out in the GOP."

And no greater indicator of just how bad that thinking is than having Kit Bond lead the effort to derail it.

[EVAY]

Every living Secretary of State since from Kissinger on has recommended this treaty be approved. Most of them have been Republicans. But still this Republican congressional leadership is out to destroy the U.S.' ability to keep inspectors on the ground in Russia.

Way to go, GOP!

[CosmicCowboy]

Cutting BACK to 1550 warheads each.

Think about that for a minute. .

Not that it matters to SA...We'd be one of the first places hit in an exchange.

However, signing ANY treaty that weakens inspections/verification?

Sorry, no thanks.

[MannyIsGod]

Inspection bull is just playing politics. The number of warheads after this treaty would be all send and done is MORE than enough to nuke the out of each other many times over. How many times do you need to nuke Moscow to make sure its a pile of black glass?

The Senator misunderstands statistics and the purpose of inspections: he says that the 10 inspections a year will only check on 2 percent of the Russian forces, the implication being that 98% will be a complete mystery to us so we really don’t have any idea what is going on. This is not true: with just a sampling provided by inspections, we can have extremely high confidence in compliance.
As he says, “…these inspections cannot provide conclusive evidence of whether the Russians are complying with the warhead limit.” True, checking on 10 weapons sites is not enough to develop a statistical picture of Russian forces. But the treaty requires data exchanges to declare how many warheads are on which missiles. The data exchanges include the entire arsenal on both sides. The inspections are not really to inspect the weapons themselves so much as to confirm the data exchanges. Say the Russians wanted to cheat by putting more warheads than allowed on, say, 10% of their missiles. (I pick 10% because I don’t think anyone is arguing that 10% more or fewer weapons will make any discernable military difference. The number of warheads we have ready to launch changes by about 10% every time a ballistic missile submarine goes on or off patrol.) They would have to put the warheads on missiles and then lie on the data exchange and hope they don’t get caught. So, if we pick our inspection sites randomly, then there is a 10% chance they will get caught in one inspection and a 90% chance they will get away without detection on that one inspection. But there is only an 81% chance of getting past two inspections, 73% chance away with three, and so on. If we do 10 inspections, there is a 2/3 chance we will catch a violation of only a 10% cheat, hardly odds that would appeal to a prospective cheater. There is a 90% chance we would catch a 20% cheat. Just in the first 10 inspections. Remember that inspections continue over the years and our confidence will increase over time, approaching near certain that even small violations will be detected by the time the warhead limits are reached. Compare this to our complete lack of knowledge of warhead numbers without inspections.
Note that the important number is the number of inspections, not the fraction of sites inspected. The statistics are essentially the same whether we inspect ten out of a hundred sites or ten out of ten thousand. Therefore, the Senator’s point that the inspections look at only 2-3% of the sites is wholly irrelevant from a mathematical perspective.
It is also important to understand that, contrary to Senator Bond’s implication, our National Technical Means, that is, overhead satellites, do not suddenly disappear. If the Russians tried to quickly load more warheads on missiles, we would see it.
Senator Bond’s objections are not simply politically motivated hysteria but his objections have been addressed and met. The treaty will reduce the nuclear threat and the verification is carefully tailored to meet the provisions of the treaty. Ratify.

http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2010/11/...-new-start.php

[Winehole23]

Props to CC, Manny and EVAY for weighing in clearly and emphatically.

Props even to boutons, despite his apparent obliviousness to the topic and his obvious incoherence.

Apparently, no one else gives a flip.

[boutons_deux]

Cutting BACK to 1550 warheads each.

Think about that for a minute. .

Not that it matters to SA...We'd be one of the first places hit in an exchange.

However, signing ANY treaty that weakens inspections/verification?

Sorry, no thanks.

The Russian kleptocratic plutocracy, as corrupt as the American version, has a great game going, why would they ever nuke the US and be nuked in return? Ignorant fear-mongering, and it's the same fear-mongering with Iran.

Boo, The Boogey Man's Gonna Get Ya!

[RandomGuy]

Cutting BACK to 1550 warheads each.

Think about that for a minute. .

Not that it matters to SA...We'd be one of the first places hit in an exchange.

However, signing ANY treaty that weakens inspections/verification?

Sorry, no thanks.

Currently, there is NO inspection and no verification, as all the inspectors packed up when the previous treaty lapsed.

Contrary to what you seem to believe here, the language for both is stronger in this treaty than in the treaty it replaces.

I would be very curious to see the source of your information. I get the sense you have sucked up some bull Fox "news" commentary as fact without questioning it, but hey, I'm game.

Who said this treaty "weakens" inspections/verification? Link?




... or did you pull this out of your ass?

[RandomGuy]

Props to CC, Manny and EVAY for weighing in clearly and emphatically.

Props even to boutons, despite his apparent obliviousness to the topic and his obvious incoherence.

Apparently, no one else gives a flip.

When Republicans do something really, truly, obviously stupid, like opposing this treaty, the board Republicans/conservatives will avoid the topic like the plague.

Board Democrats/liberals do the same service generally for instances of Dems/libs doing something truly, obviously stupid.

Not much to discuss, sadly.

To me, it simply further demonstrates that Republican rank and file membership is not only dangerously ignorant (Palin), but outright delusional when it comes to foreign policy.

Given how important foreigh policy is to our economy, it scares the crap out of me that these child-minds of the right might ever get close to having the keys to the car again.

[boutons_deux]

btw, Magic Negro gave Kyl his $80B gift/earmark for nuke modernization, and Kyl still blocks.

MN never learns. Don't give anything, you get nothing in return.

[CosmicCowboy]

Currently, there is NO inspection and no verification, as all the inspectors packed up when the previous treaty lapsed.

Contrary to what you seem to believe here, the language for both is stronger in this treaty than in the treaty it replaces.

I would be very curious to see the source of your information. I get the sense you have sucked up some bull Fox "news" commentary as fact without questioning it, but hey, I'm game.

Who said this treaty "weakens" inspections/verification? Link?




... or did you pull this out of your ass?

You are such an ignorant ass.

The old treaty provided for 28 annual inspections and the new treaty only calls for 18.

Check it out numbnuts. If anything needs to be pulled out of an ass it's your head.

[CosmicCowboy]

And I would vote to ratify the treaty if I was in the senate as long as inspections at least matched the old treaty.

[Wild Cobra]

I'm not even going to attempt to make heads or tails out of any of this. As a civilian for almost 20 years now, I have such a small percentage of info as I used to have when I was in the nuclear theater. I have to say I find if useless for us normal citizens to discuss it in any meaningful way. Having so much more information available in the past, I know how pitifully little we, the public, really knows on the topic.

[RandomGuy]

You are such an ignorant ass.

The old treaty provided for 28 annual inspections and the new treaty only calls for 18.

Check it out numbnuts. If anything needs to be pulled out of an ass it's your head.

Given I could have been nicer, but if you had bothered to do a *little* bit of checking into the details beyond what you seem to have been spoon fed:

http://www.armscontrol.org/issuebrie...aysInspections

Friday, Oct. 1 [2010], will be the 300th day since the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) expired, ending direct, on-site inspections of thousands of nuclear weapons in Russia for the first time since the Cold War.

As former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and former Utah Republican Sen. Jake Garn wrote in The Washington Times Sept. 22: "Each side, as a result, has lost an important element of transparency into the other's strategic forces. Transparency enhances predictability; predictability enhances stability. Without transparency, distrust and su ion grow."

Verification: The resolution conditions ratification of New START on presidential certification, prior to the treaty's entry into force, of the U.S. ability to monitor Russian compliance and on immediate consultations with the Senate should there be questions about Russian compliance with the treaty.

Skeptics have noted that START I called for 28 on-site inspections a year, while the new treaty allows just 18. "But," wrote Scowcroft and Garn, "the critics don't point out that under the original START treaty, there were 70 inspectable locations across the width and breadth of the Soviet Union, whereas today there are just 35 inspectable locations in Russia." In short, New START actually allows for the United States to inspect a higher percentage of Russian storage locations than START I.

In Scowcroft and Garn's words, "the Departments of State and Defense and the intelligence community were correct in assessing that the 18 inspections a year, in combination with our intelligence assets, will permit the United States to have confidence that Russia is abiding by the treaty--or will provide the evidence we need that it is not."

Foreign Relations Committee member Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said Sept. 16 that the intelligence community (IC) had revealed "very serious information" that in his view should have held up committee approval of New START. Sen. Kerry replied that the new information "in no way alters [the IC's] judgment, already submitted to this committee, with respect to the [New] START treaty and the impact of the START treaty. It has no impact, in their judgment."

When I read that the verification was said to be stronger, my numbnuts went in search of the source of that claim, one repeated by several analyses.

While you are indeed correct that the total number of inspections has fallen, you miss the context of the smaller number of sites, among other things, and have formed an erroneous conclusion.

(edit)

Took the snark out.