Now that President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have signed the nuclear disarmament treaty, the Senate must approve it with a supermajority vote, but it’s not clear that can happen this year as the Obama administration hopes.
It will take 67 senators to ratify the new treaty, a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which means at least eight Republicans must endorse it, assuming it wins the support of all 57 Democrats and two independents.
The GOP reception has so far been lukewarm at best, with hints from the Senate Republican leadership that ratification could be difficult.
The treaty calls for cutting the strategic nuclear arsenals of both nations by 30 percent in the next seven years.
“The Obama administration will need to meet three requirements if it expects favorable consideration of the START follow-on treaty,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. “The Senate will assess whether or not the agreement is verifiable, whether it reduces our nation’s ability to defend itself and our allies from the threat of nuclear armed missiles, and whether or not this administration is committed to preserving our own nuclear triad.”
Republicans say they have not yet been thoroughly briefed on the treaty but they are particularly interested in whether it would weaken America’s ability to use missile defense technology. In a letter McConnell and his deputy, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., sent to Obama on March 15, they warned against linking offensive weapons and missile defense in the new agreement.
“As you know, it is highly unlikely that the Senate would ratify a treaty that includes such a linkage, including a treaty that includes unilateral declarations that the Russian Federation could use as leverage against you or your successors when U.S. missile defense decisions are made,” McConnell and Kyl wrote.
Senate Republican leaders also want a commitment from Obama that he will restore funding cut from the National Nuclear Security Administration and the national weapons laboratories and facilities.
Senate Democratic leadership aides have not set a date for consideration of the treaty and say they are first waiting for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to act on it.
Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., said he will push for ratification “this year,” and pointed out that past treaties have always passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.
But the GOP is hardly in the mood to cooperate after Democrats last month passed a bill to overhaul the nation’s health care system using a rarely employed parliamentary tactic to bypass Republican opposition.
The treaty will also have to compete with a packed legislative calendar as senators try to take on jobs legislation, a financial regulatory reform bill, and potentially an energy and climate measure.
Still, arms reduction advocates are optimistic.
“I think the prospects are better than they appear on the surface,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “I don’t think anyone in the Senate is interested in rejecting a treaty that makes modest reductions in nuclear weapons, requires verification and monitoring of the two largest arsenals, and caps Russia’s arsenal.”
