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Fred Kaplan has a good article summing up the political results of the treaty debate: And so the Republican leadership made this a purely political battle and—fresh off what had seemed a triumphant election season—suffered an astonishingly egregious defeat. It is extremely doubtful, for instance, that the Obama administration will ever again bargain over national-security [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
The motion to invoke cloture on the treaty passed 67-28. There were no big surprises in terms of the supporters, as all of the ayes came from Senators who had stated their support for ratification, but it is still interesting to look at where the Republican support came from. Two of the ayes on cloture [...]
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“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.” “I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.” ~The [...]
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I see no reason to attribute conservative opposition to New START to anything other than conservative opposition to all treaties. ~Jonathan Bernstein As Patrick Appel says, Senate Republicans have not always been so reluctant to support arms control treaties. Kyl is a good example of this. The Moscow Treaty negotiated and signed by George W. [...]
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So here’s a thought experiment: If the same treaty had been negotiated by President John McCain, what would the final vote in the Senate have been? My sense is that it would’ve been very different indeed. And that means that even on something like a nuclear-arms treaty with Russia, partisan incentives trump policy considerations. There’s [...]
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As I mentioned the other day, treaty opponents have a very curious attitude towards the Russian government right now. On the one hand, they are deeply suspicious of it. The moment that the treaty is ratified, Moscow will somehow use the irrelevant, non-binding language of the preamble to pressure the U.S. to “constrain” missile defense [...]
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A month ago, Anne Applebaum urged a new round of NATO expansion, which I pointed out was a terrible idea. These were her closing words: We could continue that process [NATO expansion]. The stakes are lower – 2010 is not 1990, and the countries outside NATO are poorer and more turbulent than even those that [...]
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As usual, the new January issue of TAC has many excellent articles and columns that I recommend to everyone. There were a couple of these that especially caught my attention. Bill Kauffman writes on Bob La Follette and Bob Dylan in the context of Upper Midwestern antiwar activism, and bids adieu to outgoing Wisconsin Sen. [...]
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Amid Mitch McConnell’s whining about a lack of time and the need for delay, it is worth saying a few words on why consideration of the treaty in the current session was necessary. Especially because the vote will be very close, and ratification will hinge on a handful of votes, it is important to counter [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
In sum, the Republicans — who have been denied access to the negotiating history — suspect (correctly, I think) that the Russians don’t share the administration’s understanding of the treaty. For, if President Putin [sic] would readily agree that the preamble is not binding and there is no linkage between offensive and defensive weapons, then [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics