WASHINGTON — A new arms-reduction treaty between the United States and Russia seemed headed for certain ratification after Republican opposition crumbled Tuesday beneath a torrid campaign of White House pressure and persuasion.
Eleven Republican senators joined Democrats on Tuesday in cutting off debate over the treaty, and more could join when the Senate votes to ratify the treaty today, a snowballing effect that would hand the White House a rare major foreign-policy victory.
Republican support for the agreement, known as the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, came in defiance of top GOP leaders, who opposed ratification but did not insist that the conference remain in lockstep on the issue.
That freed a handful of moderate Republicans to abandon Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and join the party’s respected foreign-policy sage, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, in support of the treaty.
Underscoring the schism among Republicans, the party’s No. 3 leader, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, announced his support for the treaty, saying it would make Americans safer and more secure. Other Republicans followed suit.
“We know when we’ve been beaten,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, before Tuesday’s procedural vote, which he opposed.
The administration exerted pressure by assembling a phalanx of national-security officials from four decades of Republican and Democratic administrations to support the treaty, including former Republican Secretary of States Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, as well as former President George H.W. Bush.
The effort intensified in recent days, with President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lobbying senators. Obama also issued promises to seek billions of dollars to modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal and follow through on U.S. missile-defense programs abroad, a potential source of jobs at home.
Capitol office established
White House staffers set up operations in a Capitol office to better respond to questions and address concerns about the treaty, a full-court press rare for the Obama administration but welcomed by Democratic congressional leaders.
“We are on the brink of writing the next chapter in the 40-year history of wrestling with the threat of nuclear weapons,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, after the 67-28 vote.
Adoption of the treaty would be another bipartisan victory for Obama in the lame-duck session, which has already adopted a White House-supported package of tax cuts and unemployment benefits, and legislation to allow gays to serve openly in the military.
Democrats next will try to dislodge a GOP blockade of legislation to provide aid to ailing Sept. 11 rescuers. Republicans face growing criticism over that stance, which could be tested in a Senate vote today.
The New START treaty confronted Senate Republicans with a painful split in their leadership, between Lugar and the party’s No. 2 leader, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the GOP whip who was a critic of the treaty and opposed bringing it up for a vote during the year-end, lame-duck session.
Conservative opposition
McConnell, the GOP Senate leader, publicly sided with Kyl, but did not use his political capital to force Republican colleagues to desert Lugar.
While McConnell had kept the GOP together in opposing a massive government funding bill, it had become increasingly clear that halting the nuclear pact appealed to a narrow slice of the population, mainly those on the conservative right.
Lugar began with support from moderate Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio and others. On Monday, Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., publicly declared his support for the treaty.
After Alexander’s announcement of support Tuesday, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.; Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; and Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., also said they would back ratification.
All of those senators, along with Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., and Robert Bennett, R-Utah, voted Tuesday to cut off debate on the treaty.
Others, including Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., may vote in favor of ratification.
Despite the growing GOP support, administration officials are taking few chances, remembering that McConnell last week was able to void Republican support for an omnibus government funding package. That package was important to the White House because it contained funding for the administration’s health care and financial regulation initiatives.
Obama administration officials have been working to win the support for the treaty from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., reasoning his support would trigger backing from still more Republicans and provide the overwhelming show of support the White House believes is needed to signal its resolve to address global disarmament issues.
To peel off GOP support, the administration in the past week has firmed up its commitments to seek more than $80 billion in funding for nuclear modernization. Much of that money stands to be spent at U.S. nuclear installations, including in Tennessee. Obama wrote senators Monday promising to seek the money.
Obama also wrote to senators over the weekend to assure them he would pursue U.S. missile-defense programs abroad, a key concern of congressional Republicans.
The New START treaty would reduce the ceiling on U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear warheads by up to 30 percent, a centerpiece of the agreement.
While the effect on the two countries’ arsenals is considered modest, the administration has argued that it can greatly strengthen the security relations with Russia and help persuade other nations to cooperate in reducing the nuclear threat.
A failure to approve the treaty, supporters have argued, would badly damage relations with Russia and probably reduce its cooperation on key issues, starting with the effort to limit Iran’s nuclear program.
When it was submitted to Congress last spring, the treaty was expected to encounter little GOP resistance. But over the summer, Republicans focused increasingly on what they saw as its deficiencies. They argued that it could limit U.S. missile-defense efforts and said the verification system was too weak.
No leadership agreement
Passage of the treaty would mark the first time a major arms-control treaty had not won the support of the leaders of both parties. The three last nuclear-arms treaties with Russia all had bipartisan leadership support, and passed with lopsided support of at least 87 senators.
Alexander, in announcing his support Tuesday, said he would vote for it because the last six Republican secretaries of state support doing it and the pact “leaves our country with enough nuclear warheads to blow any attacker to kingdom come.”
“I’m convinced that Americans are safer and more secure with the New START treaty than without it,” Alexander said.
What’s in the arms accord
The 10-year treaty between the United States and Russia — formally the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty — is a successor to the first START nuclear arms-reduction pact signed in 1991. It expired last year.
• The treaty would cap the number of deployed, long-range nuclear warheads on each side at 1,550, down from 2,200.
• It would reduce the number of deployed nuclear-carrying submarines, long-range missiles and heavy bombers to a maximum of 700, with 100 more in reserve. (The U.S. currently has about 850 deployed; Russia has an estimated 565.)
• It would re-establish a system in which each of the nuclear giants monitors the other’s arsenal. That system ended last year.
The arms reduction is not significant, and the treaty doesn’t mandate that the warheads be destroyed — they will be added to the thousands the United States keeps in storage.
But it is a first step in President Barack Obama’s nuclear agenda, which envisions moving on to a second round of more ambitious negotiations.
The Washington Post
