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.