President Change and his party in Congress continue to cause trouble, even though most of us have turned our attention to happier things during this holiday season. For the first time ever in our nation's history, a lame-duck Senate confirmed a major arms treaty, defying convention and tradition and the historical role of the Senate to give due deliberation to treaties of this sort in favor of a quick ratification in recognition of the fact that the treaty is a bad one and the next Senate would never ratify it because it is bad. The AP and media though hail the win without thought or criticism:
The Senate on Wednesday ratified an arms control treaty with Russia that reins in the nuclear weapons that could plunge the world into doomsday (suggests the writers of the AP story), giving President Barack Obama a major foreign policy win in Congress' waning hours. Thirteen Republicans broke with their top two leaders and joined 56 Democrats and two independents (a Socialist and a Democrat) in providing the necessary two-thirds vote to approve the treaty. The vote was 71-26.Most major arms control treaties are passed by votes of 98-2 or 100-0, but this one (which is claimed to be 'bipartisan' under the AP policy that 1 GOP member voting on the bill makes it bipartisan) had a quarter of the Senate rejecting it because it was a bad treaty. Oh, I know Obama needs a victory, and the Democrats are desperate to make it look like Obama is doing a good job, and during the campaign season everyone is going to say 'Obama passed a major arms control treaty', but it is a bad treaty.
Well, to be correct, it isn't a bad treaty, it just is one that my six-year old daughter could have negotiated, if she did a bad job. It is a treaty that gives everything away with getting little in return, and a fair and honest assessment of the treaty leads one to lead to a 'no' vote on it and to be critical of Obama. Of course, politics and scoring wins are very important to Democrats, so they don't really care about the reality of the treaty, but I do, and so I think Obama did a bad job with this treaty, 71 Senators voted incorrectly to confirm it, and those who celebrate its passage are weak-minded fools.
The treaty does restart the verification process, so Obama can correctly claim that he has restored 'trust but verify' and the media can celebrate his restoration, but the verification process that he restored is a watered down form of it, weaker and easier to circumvent than the verification processes established in previous treaties. Inspectors are barred from more facilities, have fewer inspections, and there are few barriers to the Russians increasingly MIRVing their missiles under this new treaty (thus negating any benefit of less missiles).
The US and Russia both do lower the number of missiles under this treaty, but the US and Russia were both going to lower their numbers regardless- the US under Obama was planning to let our nuclear forces wither away and atrophy, while Russia under Putin was planning to retire older missiles and modernize their nuclear forces with fewer but vastly better missiles. Agreeing to this arrangement therefore is not really any sort of victory, but rather an acknowledgement of what is happening with additional clauses that are bad, like the worse verification process and the barriers to missile defense.
The missile defense clauses are the most controversial. These clauses bar any more development in missile defense systems, the kind that would give the US some sort of protections from a rouge nation threatening or (god forbid) firing a missile at the US. Although Obama has already slashed funding for these sorts of operations, agreeing with enemies and terrorists abroad that it is unfair of the US to protect itself from attacks from terrorists and rouge nations, determined scientists in the US do continue to make advancements on this front. The US claims that the clauses are not binding, but the Russians claim they are- this sort of disagreement means that the Russians could feel that we are breaking the treaty and thus they don't have to follow other important provisions in it. This is just the sort of disagreement that leads for treaties to be considered poorly done.
Let's look at what this treaty does in the wider scope of international affairs. Under this treaty, the US becomes a weaker nuclear power, less able to defend itself from attacks, less able to keep tabs on its main nuclear rival, and less able to attack other nations using nuclear weapons. Of course no one wants to ever attack anyone using nuclear weapons, but the main way this is done is to be just crazy enough to threaten overwhelming nuclear attacks (for evidence see the continued existence of the world after US adopted this policy). Russia knows this is the best way to get things done too, and is letting its conventional forces weaken while it strengthens its nuclear weapons (at lower numbers) (under Obama's watch), because then it will continue to wield international power without having to maintain all those conventional forces. Iran and North Korea both also see that the US is weaker and less able to check their advances and so will continue building up their nuclear forces (under Obama's watch) free from the threat of nuclear annihilation (although we all know it never would have happened, the possibility was always there).
Under my analysis, this treaty is not a very good one. Obama did a poor job in negotiating it and Senators, like the two from my state, should not have voted to confirm it. Our nation and the world is lessened by their actions.
See The new START Treaty: central limits and key provisions.(Treaty on the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, 2010, United States-Russia)(Report): ... Service (CRS) Reports and Issue Briefs for more research.
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