START the Damage Control

Last week’s rushed vote on New START in the lame-duck session of the Senate represented that body’s abandonment of its constitutional obligations to provide to “advise and consent” on treaties, despite the best efforts Sen. Jon Kyl and some of his colleagues to prevent the Senate from being reduced to such a “rubber stamp”. The vote cannot be undone, but the damage can be mitigated if our leadership exercises the political will to do so.

START has serious defects, which did not receive adequate consideration in the Senate. Just some of those defects include: 1) giving Russia a veto over U.S. missile defense; 2) failing to address tactical nuclear weapons, on which Russia is thought to outnumber the U.S. by a ratio of 10-1, according to the bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission; 3) providing flawed “counting rules” that allow Russia easily to bust through the nominal 1,550 ceiling on strategic nuclear warheads; and 4) failing to provide adequate verification measures to ensure that Russia does not cheat, which its track record suggests is a strong possibility.

The one upside to the New START treaty is that it gives us a way out. Article 14, paragraph 3 reads: “Each Party shall, in exercising its national sovereignty, have the right to withdraw from this Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this Treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests.”

Supporters of this treaty will no doubt argue that the bar for “extraordinary events” meriting our withdrawal from New START should be set high, lest we jeopardize our “reset” with Russia, the results of which have so far been lackluster, to say the very least. Truly responsible national security leaders, however, should act now to define “extraordinary events” in a way that allows us to withdraw from New START before it is too late. The reality, of course, is that such events are already unfolding, and every day that passes without our withdrawal from New START leaves us and our allies more vulnerable to the very threats that New START proponents claim this treaty will help prevent.

• According to diplomatic cables, Iran has apparently obtained advanced missiles from North Korea with the range to strike Western Europe. Those same cables have indicated that missile and perhaps nuclear cooperation between Iran and North Korea was deeper than previously thought. Meanwhile, Russia has shown no signs of backing down from its decision to assist with the functioning of Iran’s only nuclear power plant, at Bushehr.

• North Korea recently has undertaken several acts of aggression towards South Korea, including artillery attacks, and recently disclosed to a visiting American scientist that it is constructing a previously covert uranium enrichment facility – the sophistication of which apparently “stunned” the scientist, who formerly served as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

• German daily Die Welt reported recently that Iran and Venezuela are cooperating to place Iranian missiles on Venezuelan soil, and to establish a military base to be manned jointly by Iranian and Venezuelan missile officers.

Surely these are “extraordinary events” that should prompt a recalculation of whether now is the time to allow Russia to hamstring our missile defenses and limit the capabilities of our arsenal in other critical ways.

It is also worth noting that the United States has withdrawn from an arms control agreement with Russia once before. In 2001, President Bush announced the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty with Russia, precisely because it adversely affected our ability to deploy missile defenses in alignment with our national interests. The world did not end, and was arguably made safer – until last week’s vote.

We were careless going into START. We should not be so careless as to remain in this arrangement when circumstances clearly warrant our withdrawal – and we need our leaders to say so.