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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > May > 14 > Entry
Guest column: GOP politicking puts New START at risk
This commentary was written by Stephen Herzog, of Butler County’s Liberty Twp., a research associate with the Federation of American Scientists, an organization founded by former Manhattan Project scientists in 1945. The federation advocates eventual global nuclear disarmament.
On May 5, U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, unveiled legislation to press the Obama administration on nuclear weapons modernization.
The bill aims to ensure that the White House complies with a pledge it made alongside Senate ratification of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia. However, Turner’s New START Implementation Act (H.R. 1750) isn’t necessary and could threaten our national security.
President Barack Obama won support for New START from undecided Republicans by promising an extra $85 billion of funding for the U.S. nuclear weapons complex during the next decade.
This would supplement the more than $50 billion a year that the United States already spends on the arsenal and related nuclear-security activities. It will help to upgrade the national weapons labs and the warheads themselves.
Among other things, H.R. 1750 would require the administration to certify that modernization plans are on track before the reductions required by New START take place.
The treaty, which took effect in February, is valid for 10 years. It limits both the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear weapons and 700 missile and heavy-bomber delivery systems.
But Turner’s bill doesn’t stop there. It seeks to undercut the treaty with a series of three arbitrary and politically motivated conditions:
• It would prevent a quick withdrawal of controversial U.S. short-range nuclear weapons in Europe, which have drawn the ire of NATO allies like Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway.
• It would tie the president’s hands when trying to formulate agreements on missile defense.
• It would prevent dismantlement of any of the approximately 2,850 non-deployed U.S. nuclear weapons in storage until new facilities for processing weapons-grad uranium and plutonium are operational.
With a solid GOP majority in the House of Representatives, prospects for passage of H.R. 1750 are strong. But to become law, such provisions will have to make it through the Senate, where Democrats have a majority. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., has assumed a leadership role for the upcoming fight in the Senate.
Despite the efforts of Turner and Kyl to block New START’s implementation, the battle about the treaty ended in December.
The Senate ratified the treaty by a vote of 71-26, with 13 Republicans voting in favor of the accord. Just before ratification, polls showed that 73 percent of Americans supported the treaty.
Quite simply, opponents like Turner and Kyl lost. Now they are trying to block a legally binding treaty with conditions only marginally related to its actual text.
The name of the game in Washington is politics, but political grandstanding should never undermine U.S. security. If the administration is forced to stop its arms-control reductions, the Russians will surely follow suit.
This would leave many of the Kremlin’s estimated 2,430 long-range nuclear weapons pointing at American cities.
U.S. abandonment of its treaty obligations would also hinder inspections of Russian nuclear facilities that both Republicans and Democrats know are critical to our national security.
Top Republicans acknowledge that there are no signs that the White House has retreated from its pledge. In fact, back in February, fiscal conservatives in the House of Representatives tried to cut funding for several Department of Energy nuclear-security programs.
If Turner and Kyl are truly concerned about the status of the arsenal, they ought to be lobbying their colleagues instead of posing threats and ultimatums to the administration.
Perhaps most important, even if some funding for updating the arsenal were withheld, this would not decrease the reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons. Even before the Obama administration’s modernization pledge, the stockpile was safe, secure, and reliable.
The secretaries of Defense and Energy, as well as the directors of the national labs, have certified this for the past 15 years and counting.
Nuclear weapons are meticulously maintained with advanced computer-testing simulation programs, warhead and missile life-extension initiatives, and other elements of science-based stockpile stewardship.
As the reductions of New START take place, the United States will continue to maintain the most sophisticated nuclear weapons in the world.
But if Turner still has concerns about arsenal upkeep, he should express them in more constructive ways. Arms-control treaties with other countries are serious business and should not be taken hostage by political bluster and linkage to other issues.
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