The American Conservative

Many of us in Foreign Policy Wonk-land have felt that New START is the perfect fault line dividing sober-minded Republicans and reflexive, unabashed, unthinking, ideological obstructionists. Senator Kyl has been the center-of-attention swing vote and had been trying to straddle the line. Now having pushed his luck by trying to further postpone a vote, he got called out. ~David Schorr

As much as I sympathize with Sen. Lugar’s arguments, I have to wonder if the critique of his Senate colleagues that he issued earlier this week will have much of an effect. Some of them have drunk so deeply of the Heritage Kool-Aid that they may have convinced themselves that their bogus objections to the treaty are serious defenses of principle, and others will simply dismiss Lugar as a RINO and leave it at that. Over the summer, Mitt Romney took up the anti-START cause, and Lugar directly and publicly refuted his op-ed. Lugar dismissed Romney’s op-ed as a “hyperbolic attack” that repeated “discredited objections.” This did not change Romney’s behavior in the least. He kept repeating the same “discredited objections” in other articles, and Lugar’s warning shot evidently had no effect on most of his Republican colleagues in the Senate. As I wrote in a column afterwards, Lugar’s criticism was more likely to hurt Lugar within the GOP than it was likely to damage Romney’s credibility on national security:

The ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar, issued a statement that completely dismantled Romney’s argument against ratification, but the clash between Romney’s demagoguery and Lugar’s expertise seems likely only to secure Romney the sympathy of neoconservatives who distrust Lugar for his foreign policy realism and movement activists who dislike Lugar as a moderate. Unfortunately, all signs suggest that Romney represents the future of the party and Lugar represents the past.

Nothing I have seen in the last week suggests that this assessment from July is wrong. I saw one report in The Wall Street Journal that Lugar’s colleagues were offended that he was actively aiding the administration push for the treaty:

But it is Sen. Lugar’s stance on New START that went over badly with Republican colleagues. When Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl on Tuesday announced his opposition to a ratification vote this year, the other members of the GOP caucus took their cue from him to push the issue into the new Senate. The lame duck docket is full as is, and Sen. Kyl wants firmer promises from the Administration on nuclear modernization and missile defense before taking up the treaty with Russia.

Sen. Lugar, who prides himself on his non-proliferation work over the years, came out in favor of New START early on. That wasn’t surprising. But Republicans were taken aback by his willingness to join the White House PR push this week, and especially his harsh words for the GOP caucus.

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.

“There was a lot of passion in that room,” one senator said. “The reason is because the public is with us on our policies, but they’re not getting the message.” ~The Politico

Have you heard the argument made this way? Anywhere? My point is not that pressing this point would suddenly get everyone to vote for the treaty. But it’s folly to assume they’re going to budge if you’re not applying any real pressure, with an actual argument, in the political context. This is not unrelated to the way Democrats lost the public argument on Health Care Reform while they spent almost a year in a Capitol Hill debate about the innards of health care policy and how to leverage two or three Republicans senators. It’s a broader problem. But for right now, can the White House start making a public case on this? Start raising the temperature at least a touch on the opponents? ~Josh Marshall

Poor messaging could conceivably be a problem when it comes to domestic policy, but I am not persuaded that the resistance to New START would be any less had the administration launched a public campaign for ratification or applied more pressure to the opponents. What would that pressure look like? Ridiculing the GOP for neglecting national security? This is already being done extensively in the press, and the GOP already has Sen. Lugar upbraiding them for their “inexcusable” behavior. They are very clearly on the wrong side of a significant security issue, a lot of people are calling them on it, and their resistance is becoming stronger than it was a few weeks ago.

The public already supports ratification by a 2-to-1 margin, so it’s not as if there is a skeptical public that needs to be won over. The Republicans who are throwing up obstacles to ratification, including Senator-elect Mark Kirk, are already going against the consensus of the military, most arms control experts, and most prominent former national security officials. There are others, such as George Voinovich, trying to haggle with the administration for Polish visa waivers in exchange for supporting the treaty when the government of Poland strongly supports ratification and has no interest in trying to tie the visa issue to the treaty. What this means is that resistance to New START is not just purely political and “totally without merit,” but that there seems to be no way to make the relevant Senate Republicans see that they are actively working against something strongly endorsed by the institutions and allies they would normally support. Here we have the spectacle of Mark Kirk, who made much (indeed too much) of his military career during his campaign for Senate, trying to throw a major wrench into the works and declaring that he can’t support the treaty overwhelmingly endorsed by the military until his unrealistically large demands for information are met. George Voinovich is dragging his feet on supporting the treaty ostensibly for the sake of the security of eastern Europe, while the Polish government unequiovocally supports the treaty Voinovich is currently helping to block. Thus a treaty that serves American and Polish security interests is being partly held hostage to Voinovich’s anachronistic view of Polish-Russian relations and his mistaken belief that he is serving the security interests of eastern Europe, when he is effectively working to harm them. This is what the Polish FM, Radoslaw Sikorski, wrote in support of the treaty (via Rozen):

Without a treaty in place, holes will soon appear in the nuclear umbrella that the US provides to Poland and other allies under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, the collective security guarantee for NATO members. Moreover, New START is a necessary stepping-stone to future negotiations with Russia about reductions in tactical nuclear arsenals, and a prerequisite for the successful revival of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE).

While we in Poland do not perceive an immediate military threat from Russia, most of the world’s active tactical or sub-strategic nuclear weapons today seem to be deployed just east of Poland’s borders, in speculative preparation for conflict in Europe. The cataclysmic potential of such a conflict makes it essential to limit and eventually eliminate this leftover from the Cold War.

This was the reasoning behind the Polish-Norwegian initiative aimed at addressing the issue of tactical nuclear weapons within the larger arms-control framework that was launched in this past April. In effect, New START is the sine qua non for effective US leadership on the arms-control and non-proliferation issues that matter to Europe – from reviving the CFE treaty to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

More broadly, New START will cement the new, more positive tone in relations between Russia and the West. Indeed, we in Poland have adopted our own way of reconciliation with Russia, one based on dialogue and reciprocity.

As a result, Polish-Russian relations have improved significantly over the last three years – no easy feat, given the burden of our shared history. Though difficulties still lie ahead, Poland is determined to build a relationship with Russia based on mutual respect.

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.

Like James, I generally support the START Treaty and think the Senate should pass it, but I don’t think it would be a travesty if the current Senate were to let the next one make the call on ratification. ~Doug Mataconis

I’m not sure that it would be a travesty, but I am quite sure that it would be a mistake. It is true that the treaty isn’t “emergency legislation.” It is a treaty that has been exhaustively studied and discussed for the last six months. The “assurances” skeptics have asked for have all been given, and the “concerns” they have raised have been addressed so many times that one might suspect those “concerns” are really just delaying tactics. The lame-duck argument is just the latest in a string of delaying tactics, which is another reason why it shouldn’t be taken that seriously.

Presuambly, having inspectors in Russia who can monitor Russia’s arsenal rather than not having them is valuable, and without ratification in the next month we won’t have inspectors there for the better part of another year at best. As Republican numbers go up, the chances of the treaty’s ratification go down. We all know this. This isn’t a choice between ratifying in December and ratifying in January. It is a choice between voting on the treaty, and delaying consideration of the treaty on the Senate floor for months or even longer. If the treaty is worth supporting and should be ratified, it really does matter that this happen now. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs The Politico

“>describes the treaty as “essential” to national security. Maybe he’s exaggerating for effect, but I don’t think that’s true in this case. I don’t know of other things that are deemed “essential” to national security that can be put off until much later and perhaps indefinitely.

There are other security matters that will be affected by the treaty’s fate. Ratification or the promise of it would probably improve the chances of NATO-Russian cooperation on missile defense. In the absence of that, the upcoming Lisbon summit will probably produce nothing on this. Sen. Lugar has talked about the importance of ratification for continued cooperation in securing Russian nuclear materials. As Rogin reported yesterday:

Lugar also warned that the failure to ratify the treaty could have drastic consequences for other facets of U.S.-Russia nuclear cooperation — especially the Nunn-Lugar effort to secure loose nuclear materials throughout the former Soviet Union.

If START fails, the cooperation between the United States and Russia on securing loose nukes could be imperiled, representing an even bigger risk for national security, Lugar said.

As Lugar is one of the architects of this effort, his opinion should count for something. Since Russian nuclear materials are the most likely source of weapons proliferation, securing them would seem to be a fairly high priority, and putting that effort in jeopardy seems unwise. Failing to ratify New START, or putting it off for months or years, will have the added unfortunate consequence of eating up time that could conceivably be spent on beginning to work out agreements with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. As I mentioned earlier this week, several European governments are eager to have the U.S. remove its tactical nuclear weapons from their soil, and START ratification could be the first step to realizing that end. This would be desirable for American, European, and Russian security. As former Sen. Nunn explained in an op-ed yesterday, the physical security of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe is not very good, which makes their presence there a real threat. Hastening the day when the U.S. and Russia can agree to reduce significantly or eliminate these weapons would therefore be in the interests of all parties. The idea of reducing or eliminating tactical nuclear weapons will go nowhere if the U.S. cannot ratify a strategic arms agreement in a timely fashion. The longer that this is put off, the worse it will be for American security.

“On Election Day we were elected to represent the constituents of our respective states in the Senate,” the incoming Republicans wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), in a letter (PDF) obtained by The Cable. “Out of respect for our states’ voters, we believe it would be improper for the Senate to consider the New START Treaty or any other treaty in a lame duck session prior to January 3, 2011.”

The letter was organized by Senator elect Roy Blunt (R-MO) and was signed by both moderate and conservative incoming senators such as Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Rob Portman (R-OH), and Rand Paul (R-KY). ~Josh Rogin

Of all the lousy arguments for delaying the consideration of New START, this has to be one of the worst and most laughable. The treaty was brought up this year, and voted out of committee this year. The Senators serving in this session were duly elected to serve a full six years. By calling for them to delay consideration of an important treaty, these new Senators are not only starting off their Senate careers by making a terrible mistake and effectively aiding in the defeat of that treaty, but they are trying to prevent their constituents’ current representatives in Congress from doing their jobs. Of course, they are banding together to delay nothing else in the lame-duck session. The only thing they believe absolutely must not be considered in the lame-duck session is the one unobjectionable item that has near-universal support from the military, arms control experts, and former national security officials.

This is a pointed act of disrespect toward the voters of their respective states. Several of the new Senators don’t even represent new Republican seats. Kansas, New Hampshire, Florida, Kentucky, Ohio, and Missouri* are all currently represented by Republicans, and the voters in those states can be represented just as well by their retiring Senators as they can be by the newly-elected ones next year. It’s not as if the outgoing Republicans and the newcomers have dramatically different views on the treaty. Ayotte, Moran, Paul, Portman, Rubio and Blunt have no excuse for signing this ridiculous letter. The entire thing is embarrassing for the new Senators, but it is particularly shameful for those seven. Since the treaty enjoys overwhelming public support, it is absurd to claim that a delay in ratification shows respect for what their voters want. It certainly doesn’t, the new Senators must be aware that it doesn’t, and we all understand that they are doing this for to maximize partisan advantage for no other reason than to make ratification virtually impossible.

Update: James Joyner is correct that the new Senators are doing nothing illegal or unconstitutional by asking Reid for a delay. I understand Steve Clemons’ frustration with these antics, but he’s wrong on this point. James goes on to say this:

My preference would be for politicians in these circumstances to limit themselves to uncontroversial matters and responses to genuine emergencies.

If ratification is indeed a “no-brainer,” as James says, and if the substance of the treaty is unobjectionable, which it is, what could better qualify as uncontroversial than the ratification of an arms reduction treaty that enjoys broad public support and the consensus of the military and national security figures across the spectrum? New START would normally be the sort of thing that can be saved until lame-duck sessions because ratification is obviously desirable. The Senate delayed until now out of deference to the concerns of the minority, so Republicans have some nerve to say that there is a “rush” to consider the treaty. There has most certainly been no “rush” because of previous Republican requests for more time. Having frittered away all of the time available in the regular session this year, and not wanting to bring the treaty to a vote ahead of the elections for fear of giving Obama an important victory, Republicans now want to wait some more until their numbers increase. We can all see why they are doing this, but why should this self-serving grandstanding be rewarded?

* Mike Lee of Utah is also a signatory to the letter and is replacing a Republican incumbent, but obviously he and Bob Bennett do have significantly different views on the treaty, since Bennett’s is an informed view and Lee’s is not.

I cannot in good conscience determine my support for the treaty until the administration assures me our ‘reset policy’ with Russia is a policy that enhances rather than diminishes the national security of our friends and allies throughout Europe. ~Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH)

Voinovich has a reputation as a “moderate,” but this statement is a useful reminder that on national security questions there is incredible, mind-numbing uniformity among virtually all Republicans in Congress. Improved U.S.-Russian relations naturally enhances the security of “friends and allies” by not making them into front-line states against Russia. Polish-Russian relations have gone through a dramatic change between late 2008 and now thanks in part to the administration decision to cancel the missile defense installation planned for Poland. The administration has repeatedly assured critics of the “reset” that this is the case, but they keep coming back with demands for more assurances.

During much of the speech, Voinovich dwelled on the theme of the former “captive nations” and his past support for NATO expansion. He claimed that history always seems to repeat itself, when in reality history never repeats itself. Voinovich is concerned about future Russian expansionism, and he was very alarmed by the idea that the Russians view NATO expansion as a threat to Russian security. Of course, there is no other way for them to view the expansion of a major military alliance right up to their borders, and it is incredible that a leading proponent of NATO expansion believes that Russian expansionism is the most likely source of insecurity and instabilty in the region. He somehow thinks that an arms reduction treaty that could pave the way for future negotiations on Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons could imperil eastern Europe. Voinovich wants to make sure that there are no “side agreements” giving Russia a sphere of influence, when it is the stated policy of the current administration that it does not accept the idea of a Russian sphere of influence anywhere. The man is obsessed with Yalta, which has absolutely nothing to do with what we’re discussing. These are arguably even less serious reasons to oppose the treaty than the bogus reasons treaty critics usually bring up.

When you have to start out by arguing for the thing on the merits, that’s a really bad sign. ~Spencer Ackerman

Ackerman was noting the complete lack of any political argument for ratifying New START, and he’s right that the administration has done nothing to make that argument. One political argument that they could have made and might still make is that ratifying the treaty is overwhelmingly popular. Not only is the treaty unobjectionable, as Ackerman says, but its ratification is widely regarded as desirable. According to the latest CNN poll, 59% of Republicans favor ratification. The administration could point to this to show how wildly out of touch with their own voters Republican opponents of the treaty are. Even 51% of self-identified conservatives favor ratification. There is not one demographic that clearly wants to see this treaty defeated, but in all likelihood the treaty is going down to defeat. If conservatives are split down the middle, this is not simply a question of the GOP appealing to its political base. I won’t pretend that arms control is an issue that can move a lot of votes by itself (it can’t), but the larger symbolism of wrecking an agreement that enhances American security and ignoring the wishes of an overwhelming majority of Americans would normally be very politically damaging for the responsible party. Obama has apparently managed to lose this fight, and he doesn’t seem to be making the argument that could at least allow him to turn that defeat into a political problem for his opponents.

The death of New START is a useful lesson in just how irrelevant public opinion is to the shaping of foreign policy and national security. Relatively small numbers of activists that are better organized, more engaged and more intense in their views can wield disproportionate influence on policy debates. When they are allied with the relevant interest groups and some members of Congress, a small number of dedicated activists can determine policy to a remarkable degree, especially when their opposition is disorganized and largely passive. The side of the debate that has greater intensity and organization will certainly prevail when their opponents simply trust that the inherent worthiness of the initiative or policy will somehow trump political calculation and influence.

Treaty ratification is broadly popular, but there don’t seem to be that many activists working in support of it. Its ratification has been taken for granted for so long that there was never much of an effort to mobilize support for it when Republican leaders began railing against it earlier this year. One reason for that was that the arguments against the treaty were so ignorant and ridiculous that many supporters may have mistaken the intellectual weakness of the anti-START position for the political weakness of the opposition. If nothing else, the midterms have made clear that intellectual vacuity is no impediment to political strength. Supporters of ratification have been losing strength with every week that has gone by without a debate and vote on the treaty. Voting on the treaty in the lame-duck session was the last chance to stop the bleeding.

Meanwhile, Republican officeholders who want to explain why they acted to prevent the collapse of the U.S. banking system can get no hearing from voters seized with certainty that a bank collapse would have done no harm to ordinary people. Support for TARP has become a career-ender for Republican incumbents, and we shall see what it does to Mitt Romney, the one national Republican figure who still defends TARP.

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Whatever the reason, the intellectual right accords a deference to the wants and wishes of the financial industry that is seldom accorded to agriculture, manufacturing, transport or retailing.

But it’s not always true that what’s good for Goldman Sachs is good for the economy, or vice versa. Nor is what “the markets” want the same as what free-market economics require. Finance plays with other people’s money: financial disasters damage people and businesses who never participated in the fatal transaction. For that reason, financial firms are justly regulated in ways that other firms are not. And yet nearly 80 years after the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, influential conservatives — including The Wall Street Journal editorial board — argued that trillions of dollars of derivatives trading should be exempt from regulation. ~David Frum

In other words, deferring to the interests of the financial sector is an intellectual disgrace and a compromise of free market principles, but shamelessly throwing public money at financial institutions as part of an unaccountable, outrageous power-grab by the executive was an important and necessary thing to do. I’m glad we sorted that out.

Many influential conservatives, including The Wall Street Journal editorial board, also argued for appropriating hundreds of billions of dollars to purchase toxic assets that were never purchased to prevent the collapse of the banking system that wasn’t actually in danger of collapse. This has since been hailed as a great victory and a triumph of wise policymaking, when it was even more true in September and October 2008 that “what “the markets” want the same as what free-market economics require.” There was broad Republican support in Congress for the TARP partly because “the intellectual right accords a deference to the wants and wishes of the financial industry that is seldom accorded to agriculture, manufacturing, transport or retailing.” Granted, it isn’t just the intellectual right that accords deference to these wishes. Republican leaders have made a point for the last two years to defer to those wishes as much as they possibly can. The problem in this case is not a failure to learn lessons, but the corruption that follows from actively supporting collusion between government and financial interests.

French Ambassador Pierre Vimont said recently that after diplomats cabled home that the treaty could run into problems, “People ask us, ‘Have you been drinking?’ ” ~The Washington Post, August 3, 2010

Via Steve Benen

One of the things that that has not received very much attention in connection with New START is the probable reaction to the treaty’s failure in Europe. European governments support U.S. and Russian arms reduction, and as the quote from August indicates it did not seem possible to them that the treaty might not succeed. The treaty was particularly important to non-nuclear European states that want to remove remaining U.S. nuclear weapons from their countries. As Bruno Lete’s report for the German Marshall Fund explained:

Any U.S.-Russian arms control agreement brings new opportunities to denuclearize the European continent. The strongest advocates of this idea are the European “non-nuclear weapon states” who are hosting U.S. warheads under a NATO flag. These countries—Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Turkey—together host an estimated total of 150 to 220 U.S. tactical nuclear weapons. In 2006, the Belgian Senate passed a bill to remove U.S. weapons from Kleine Brogel Air Force Base. Last year, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle singled out the issue of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Germany during his first visits to NATO and the United States. Parliamentarians of all host countries have urged Obama to withdraw U.S. warheads from Europe, and foreign ministers have written to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen asking for the issue to be placed higher on the alliance’s agenda. These European “abolitionists” fear that, without New START, Russia will be more reluctant to negotiate further arms limitations, giving fewer reasons for Washington to remove its weapons from Europe.

The news that U.S. tactical nuclear weapons will remain in Europe means that relations these governments are about to become more difficult. The leaked document ahead of the Lisbon summit means that the Europeans that had hoped New START would lead to the withdrawal of these weapons would have been disappointed no matter what happened in the Senate here.

On the treaty, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told The Financial Times in an interview published today: “We are counting on its being ratified by the US and Russia.” European governments are going to be unpleasantly surprised that this may not happen after all. The failure of New START will ensure that there will be no discussion of tactical nuclear weapons with the Russians, who will have no reason to negotiate new arms reduction agreements if the U.S. cannot ratify this agreement. U.S.-Russian relations are going to take a hit because of Republican opposition to the arms reduction treaty, and our relations with Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Turkey are also going to suffer.

Has the New START been lurking in the shadows? Kurt Volker seems to think so, since he wants the Senate to take it up in “full daylight,” which apparently doesn’t begin until 2011. I understand that treaty opponents are arguing that the Senate shouldn’t “rush” the treaty through because they want to see the treaty fail, but what I can’t quite understand is someone who thinks the treaty is important and that it should wait until it can’t possibly be ratified.

Volker’s proposals are also a bit maddening:

Congress and the administration should:

• agree on a program for modernization of US nuclear forces to ensure maximum safety, effectiveness, and reliability;

• reach a clear understanding that nothing in the treaty limits US missile defense efforts, and agree on a program of continued development of missile defenses, including in Europe to cover the territory of all NATO allies; and

• agree that there will be no unilateral US withdrawal of the small number of remaining US nuclear weapons from Europe, and that there will be no further nuclear treaties submitted to the Senate for ratification, until we have addressed the problem of the thousands of Russian tactical nuclear weapons based on the borders of Europe.

The first part is what the administration has been trying to do all year. Treaty supporters already have a “clear understanding” that the treaty doesn’t limit missile defense, and the administration has already committed to the continued development of missile defense in Europe. Our NATO ambassador, Ivo Daalder, was just promoting a NATO missile defense program just yesterday! This is the missile defense program that Russia and NATO will be discussing at Lisbon for the next NATO summit. Republicans have had several opportunities to acknowledge that Obama supports missile defense programs, but they have chosen instead to pretend that he does not. Nothing in the new year is going to change that. The tactical nuke issue is the greatest red herring of them all. There is no way to address the tactical nuclear weapons in Russia’s arsenal until this treaty is ratified. Delaying ratification of New START puts off addressing that issue even longer.

Volker becomes more myopic as he turns to the “reset” itself. Claiming that the “reset” has yielded nothing that wouldn’t have been achieved anyway, he goes on to say:

Second, the argument that failure to ratify would endanger the reset policy is essentially an argument that Russia is blackmailing the United States: that it is poised to resume destructive behavior unless the US does what it wishes and ratifies the treaty. I doubt that this is true, but regardless of merit, it is certainly no argument to make to a United States senator.

Well, no, this isn’t what the argument means. The treaty should be ratified solely on its merits, but there certainly is a political argument in favor of ratification as well. One has to assume that the “reset” was necessitated by “destructive behavior” on the part of Russia rather than repeated, endless provocations by the U.S. Not only is this not true, but it is obviously not the way the Russians see things. As the Russian government looks at it, the “reset” has provided absolutely nothing for Russia, and Russia has scrapped defensive missile sales to Iran while it is being berated for “occupying” South Ossetia. Ratifying New START is the only thing that the administration has pledged to do that actually serves Russian interests as well as American interests. The point isn’t that Russia is going to engage in “destructive behavior” if the treaty isn’t ratified, but that Russia has no incentive to sacrifice its own interests for the sake of good relations with the U.S. if the U.S. cannot even do something as simple as ratify a modest arms reduction treaty that is clearly in the American interest.

All of this is academic, since delaying the vote virtually ensures the treaty’s defeat. There aren’t fourteen Republican votes for this treaty, especially not when several incumbent Republicans who may face primary challenges from the right are up for re-election in 2012. The treaty has been awaiting ratification all year, and it was voted out of committee two months ago. There has been more than enough time to determine whether the treaty merits ratification. The lame-duck session exists to conclude important business that could not be or was not addressed earlier. To argue that the treaty vote should be delayed until next year is another way of saying that it isn’t very important or shouldn’t be ratified at all. Volker can’t actually bring himself to say it, but in effect he is making an argument that the treaty ought to be shelved. With supporters like this, the treaty hardly needs opponents.

President Obama’s hopes of ratifying a new arms control treaty with Russia this year appeared to unravel on Tuesday as a Senate Republican leader moved to block a vote in what could be a devastating blow to the president’s most tangible foreign policy achievement.

Mr. Obama had declared ratification of the New Start treaty his “top priority” in foreign affairs for the lame-duck session of Congress that opened this week. But the chances of winning the two-thirds vote required for passage of the treaty appeared to collapse with the announcement by Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and the party’s point man on the issue, that the Senate should not vote on it this year. ~Peter Baker

One of the things ratification optimists kept coming back to was that Kyl was the key to success. As long as the administration could buy him off with enough money for nuclear modernization, Kyl would back the treaty and the party would follow his lead. I hardly discussed Kyl in my previous posts about the treaty because I assumed that he was not going to provide the administration with the needed support to put the treaty to a vote and pass it this year. My guess is that his idea of what counts as sufficient funding for nuclear modernization is much greater than the administration is willing to pay, but we will find out next year.

There was a significant problem with placing hopes for ratification in Kyl. First, the negotiations have had the dynamic of a hostage-taking: Obama will pay what Kyl wants, or the treaty dies. Obama went along with this. I’m not sure that there was anything else he could do at this point, but there it is. Kyl may have realized that a lame-duck vote won’t get him as much as he can get if he delays the vote. If the administration has been desperately trying to win Kyl over for the lame-duck session, they will be even more accommodating in the new year. Of course, once the treaty vote is delayed, the entire process has to start over. That increases Kyl’s leverage, which becomes even more crucial in the next Congress because of reduced Democratic numbers.

Another part of this is that Republican opposition to the treaty definitely hardened after the midterms, and it became even more intense after Obama made a point of declaring ratification in the lame-duck session a “top priority.” This was the equivalent of telling hostage-takers which hostage was most valuable to him, and so they made a point of delaying and thereby effectively sinking the treaty.

My fear is that the impulse to deal Obama a significant defeat on a treaty that conservative activists already hate will be stronger than any quid pro quo the administration can make with Kyl. For his part, Obama must feel as if he has been played for a fool, which may make him unwilling to offer Kyl anything more. Leaving aside the politics for a moment, it is a rather depressing thought that one of the least substantively controversial treaties of the last two decades is most likely not going to pass and may never even be voted on. More depressing is the realization that the treaty was already having a demonstrable effect on improving relations with the other major nuclear power in the world, and once ratified it would have enhanced American security and served as the basis for future negotiations on other arms control issues not addressed by this treaty. So much for that.

P.S. Though it was written before Kyl’s announcement, Stephen Blank’s anti-START, anti-Russian article in World Affairs Journal is practically a victory celebration for the fundamentally dishonest arguments that have contributed to the treaty’s delay and probable defeat.

Update: For those who would like to understand what prompted Kyl’s call for a delay, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis had the explanation last week:

Senator Kyl, prompted by sources inside NNSA [National Nuclear Security Administration], is now mulling over whether to demand another delay in ratification, followed by a multiyear design/construction appropriation next year to guarantee that the money will be available in future years. Did you know Congress could do that? Yes, they can! (Here is a nice primer on the topic.) But Congressional appropriators almost never do, since the annual appropriations process is an essential element of Congressional oversight.

The House and Senate Appropriators are going to refuse such an obvious usurpation of their prerogatives. That means that the little birds at NNSA probably can’t win the battle over multiyear appropriations, but it can blow up the entire deal.

This doesn’t make what Kyl is doing any better, but it helps explain why this is happening.