“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.