START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was a bilateral treaty between the US and the USSR which entered into force on 5 December 1994. Its final implementation in late 2001 resulted in the removal of about 80 percent of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence. The START I treaty expired 5 December 2009. On 8 April 2010, the newSTART treaty was signed in Prague by U.S. President Obama and Russian President Medvedev. The next step is Senate ratification.
Foundation for Defense of Democracies head honcho Cliff May wrote:
I’m now hearing from more than one source on the Hill that the Obama administration has just added a new argument in favor of lame-duck ratification: failure to adopt START will “hurt Israel.”
Both the ADL and the National Jewish Democratic Council cited the importance of passage of the treaty in order to counter the Iran nuclear threat. “We are deeply concerned that failure to ratify the New START treaty will have national security consequences far beyond the subject of the treaty itself,” the ADL said in a letter sent to every Senator Friday.
The New START treaty may indeed be a necessary step for global security, but questions should be raised about linking it to Iran...Something is truly amiss when a treaty to limit nuclear proliferation is being sold as the way to defend and protect a country that has an ever expanding — and clandestine — nuclear arsenal.
11-22-10 Earlier today on National Review’s The Corner blog, Foundation for Defense of Democracies head honcho Cliff May wrote:
I’m now hearing from more than one source on the Hill that the Obama administration has just added a new argument in favor of lame-duck ratification: failure to adopt START will “hurt Israel.”
May demurs, naturally (the New START is an Obama Administration initiative, after all), then tells a joke, sets up a straw man, and knocks it down. May thinks the Obama administration scare tactic will be that without START, Russia’s nukes will start “somehow leaking out and getting into the hands of Iran’s bad boys or other terrorists.”
But that wasn’t the Israel angle played by Jewish groups later in the day — though their tack does have something to do with Iran.
Laura Rozen reports for Politico:
Both the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) cited the importance of passage of the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reduction treaty in order to maintain American-Russian cooperation in countering the Iran nuclear threat.
“We are deeply concerned that failure to ratify the New START treaty will have national security consequences far beyond the subject of the treaty itself,” the ADL said in a letter sent to every Senator Friday.
“The U.S. diplomatic strategy to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons requires a U.S.-Russia relationship of trust and cooperation,” ADL continues. “The severe damage that could be inflicted on that relationship by failing to ratify the treaty would inevitably hamper effective American international leadership to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”
The New START treaty may indeed be a necessary step for global security, but questions should be raised about linking it to Iran. This support by pro-Israel groups may prove to haunt U.S. policy towards Iran in the future.
One might compare this tack in pushing START to the sort of message Benjamin Netanyahu took away from meeting with Barack Obama about engaging in Palestinian-Israeli peace talks: that getting the job done (or at least getting to the table) will help the U.S. isolate Iran and contain its nuclear ambitions.
How many of these bargains can Obama enter into before he must pay the piper and make the ultimate escalation against Iran? If the diplomatic strategy fails, then what?
Perhaps this is pointing out the obvious: Something is truly amiss when a treaty to limit nuclear proliferation is being sold as the way to defend and protect a country that has an ever expanding — and clandestine — nuclear arsenal.
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ECI blasts Dem Sens and AIPAC for Supporting START
Where does the Emergency Committee for Israel get off complaining that AIPAC shouldn’t support New START because it’s outside of the “pro-Israel” purview? Who knows. But that’s exactly what they did.
ECI, the partisan “pro-Israel” group set up by Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer and Rachel Abrams (wife of Elliott), sent a letter to Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Carl Levin (D-MI), slapping them on the wrists for asking AIPAC to take a public stance on the New START treaty (for it).
Several Jewish groups recently came out in favor of New START because they think a rocky U.S.-Russia relationship is bad for putting pressure on Iran. According to Laura Rozen at Politico, AIPAC has even reportedly been pushing for the treaty behind closed doors (with Republicans, and maybe even successfully).
But ECI, which was birthed at Sarah Palin advisor Randy Scheunemann’s shop, says that for Schumer and Levin to ask AIPAC to go public with their support of New START is “unSenator-like conduct” — “public bullying,” as the ECI directors put it in the letter.
Jennifer Rubin, the neoconservative blogger who just moved from Commentary — where she worked with now-ECI director Noah Pollak — to the Washington Post, wrote from her new perch that Kristol, Bauer and Abrams “would no doubt claim, the actions of these two senators…would set a dangerous precedent.”
First of all, I’m not exactly sure it’s even sure it’s “unSenator-like conduct.” Aren’t politicians supposed to play politics to make what they think is good public policy?
Secondly, don’t you wonder what a pro-Israel group is doing defending its turf against the evils of the New START if it’s “a matter far outside its expertise and area of concern,” as ECI put it?
Well, the letter has a hedge that says, “needless to say, the Emergency Committee for Israel takes no position” on New START. But, hey, why is the Emergency Committee for Israel weighing in on Senate ethics?
Furthermore, the notion that AIPAC — or other Jewish or Israel lobby groups — shouldn’t support Congressional action (in this case, Senate ratification of a treaty) is ridiculous. For years, groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) worked against Congressional resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide because Turkey was considered a strategic ally of Israel (the support ended when the relationship went icy over the Gaza War of Winter 2008/09).
It’s not as if the legitimacy of the Armenian genocide is exactly within the scope of “pro-Israel” activity. But, before the Israeli-Turkish alliance fell apart, a happy Turkey was good for Israel. Just like how the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) supports New START because a happy Russia makes it easier to confront the “Iranian nuclear threat.”
AIPAC and other Jewish groups also joined the Greek lobby to support a Congressional resolution about Cyprus (also to stick it to Turkey). So this really is business as usual for Israel lobby groups — they play geopolitics in ways they think will be good for Israel.
The mysterious part is why ECI felt compelled to jump into this at all. Was it to protect the purity of “pro-Israel” advocacy? A partisan shot against two powerful Democrats to pry AIPAC away from them? Or could it be because the faltering opposition to New START (which the, needless to say, don’t oppose)? Or was it just to weaken Obama to make room for anti-START Sarah Palin (who was pushed onto the national stage by Kristol)?
What’s funny — though predictable — is the charge of “public bullying” from a group that employs the likes of Kristol, Bauer, Abrams, Pollak and another Scheunemann employee, Michael Goldfarb.
http://www.lobelog.com/eci-blasts-dem-sens-and-aipac-for-supporting-st...
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Re: START for Israel; START against Iran
Obama Pushes START Treaty to Top of Legislative Agenda
By Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON, Dec 2, 2010 (IPS) - With time running out before he faces a much more hostile and Republican Congress, President Barack Obama appears to have made Senate ratification of the pending New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia his top legislative priority.
Not only has he bowed to Republican demands to allocate more money for Washington's nuclear arms programme, but he has suggested that he's also willing to cave in to Republican demands to extend tax cuts for high-income households - despite record federal deficits - in order to gain START ratification.
And he's getting considerable help from big guns in what remains of the Republican foreign policy Establishment, including five former secretaries of state whose service spanned the last five Republican administrations.
In an op-ed heralded by the White House on the eve of its publication in Thursday's Washington Post, former secretaries Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger and Colin Powell concluded that the New START was "clearly in our national interest" and should be ratified.
The five men who, respectively, served under Presidents Nixon and Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, argued that their former bosses "recognised that reducing the number of nuclear arms in an open, verifiable manner would reduce the risk of nuclear catastrophe and increase the stability of America's relationship with the Soviet Union and, later, the Russian Federation."
Nonetheless, the treaty's fate remains uncertain. Hard-line neo-conservatives and far-right Republicans, whose ranks will be swollen in the Congress that will be sworn into office one month from now, remain adamantly opposed to START, which requires, among other things, a reduction in the nuclear arsenals of both countries of deployed, long- range missiles from 2,200 to 1,550.
It will also permit the resumption of mutual inspections by both parties. They were halted last year when the previous START Treaty, which was signed by the senior Bush in 1991 and ratified shortly thereafter, expired.
The treaty's foes object most strongly to what they claim are inadequate verification provisions and implicit limitations on Washington's ability to develop and deploy missile defences against possible strikes by Iran, North Korea, or other foes, including Russia itself.
"President Reagan knew that in arms control, the U.S. should play to win, and negotiate from a position of strength," wrote Ed Meese of the far-right Heritage Foundation and Richard Perle of the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in an op-ed also published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal.
Meese served as attorney-general and political adviser to Ronald Reagan, while Perle worked in the same administration as an assistant secretary of defence with some responsibility for arms control negotiations.
"With all the concessions the U.S. made to the Russians to secure this flawed agreement," they argued, the invocation of Reagan's memory both by Obama and the Republican luminaries who have called for ratification was "a brazen act of misappropriation".
Under the U.S. constitution, ratification of a treaty requires two-thirds of the Senate – or 67 of 100 senators – to vote in favour. In the current Senate, Democrats hold 58 seats, so Obama needs only nine Republicans to prevail.
So far, however, only Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has come out in strong support of the treaty, although at least half a dozen others have hinted they are prepared to back it, too, under the right circumstances.
When the new Congress is seated, however, the Democratic majority will be substantially reduced, and Obama will have to persuade at least an additional six Republicans to cross the aisle to gain ratification. While most analysts believe that ratification will still be possible, the president will have to spend much more political capital to prevail.
Because of the evident importance he accords to his nuclear agenda, Obama has already spent quite a lot.
In negotiations with the chief Republican interlocutor on the accord, Sen. John Kyl, last month, the White House agreed to add 4.1 billion dollars to 80 billion for a proposed five-year nuclear arms modernisation programme, a key demand of the arms control sceptics.
The administration was stunned when Kyl and other Republicans announced last month that he still had questions about the modernisation programme and missile defence and that there wasn't enough time left in the year to take up the treaty.
In a letter released Wednesday, the directors of the country's three national nuclear laboratories wrote to Lugar and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry that they were "very pleased" with the plans which, they went on, would "provide adequate support to sustain the safety, security, reliability and effectiveness of America's nuclear deterrent within the limit of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads established by the New START Treaty with adequate confidence and acceptable risk."
While the treaty's supporters insisted that the scientists' assurances should be adequate to gather sufficient support for ratification now, it appears that Obama is willing to pay much more to secure ratification.
Indeed, Republicans, whose top priority at the moment is securing extensions of the sweeping Bush-era tax cuts on the country's wealthiest citizens, appear now to be holding out for Obama's concessions on that front before committing themselves to a vote on New START. The tax cuts, which were enacted shortly after the 9/11 attacks, are due to expire at the end of the month.
Obama, who had promised during the 2008 election campaign not to raise taxes on households earning 250,000 dollars a year or less, had hoped that allowing the cuts to expire on those earning more than that would help cut the federal deficit by several hundred billion dollars over the next few years.
His apparent willingness to compromise on this issue in order to secure START is causing growing dismay among his supporters.
"(Y)es, the Senate should ratify the New START treaty with Russia before the end of the year," wrote E.J. Dionne in his weekly Washington Post column Thursday, "though what does it say about us as a country when the president has to offer a tax-cut payoff to get a key foreign policy initiative through."
As Obama has suggested flexibility on the tax-cut issue, however, a growing number of Senate Republicans, including Kyl, have suggested that there may yet be time to ratify START before the Congress adjourns.
Indeed, a sufficient number of Republicans have indicated their support that Congressional aides were confidently predicting Thursday that the treaty will be brought up before the Senate as early as late next week, once the tax issue is resolved.
"It's a two-step process," Lugar said Wednesday. "We do taxes and then we do START."