Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates had an op-ed in The Washington Post yesterday urging prompt Senate approval of the New START treaty.

Their message to the Senate is clear and simple: It’s time to get your act together because “our national security depends on it”.

Clinton and Gates highlight three key national security objectives that will fall by the way side without New START:

1.    Essential data about and verification of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, which we have not had since the START I Treaty expired last December , just over 340 days ago.

2.    A “reset” in the relationship between Russia and the United States that has important benefits far beyond the issue of nuclear stability.

3.    A reduction in the U.S. deployed strategic arsenal to an acceptable level that in no way hurts our national security interests

Last week Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen also spoke out about the importance of New START…   At a gathering at Stanford University, Mullen explained that militarily, this treaty, “allows us to retain a strong and flexible American nuclear deterrent.” Mullen added that, “it [also] strengthens openness and transparency in our relationship with Russia.”

Mullen also noted: “as I have said many times, in many different contexts, in this fast-paced, flatter world of ours, information and the trust it engenders, is every bit as much a deterrent as any weapon we deploy.” As Clinton and Gates point out, “Ronald Reagan’s favorite maxim was ‘trust, but verify.’” Without New START, all we have is trust.

Other national security heavyweights have also recently spoke to the consequences of failing to ratify New START.

Senator Lugar stated in a November 8th speech in Madrid re: the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction program, which has been protecting the U.S. from the threat of Russian “loose nukes” for twenty years, “it is unlikely that Moscow would sustain cooperative efforts indefinitely without the New START Treaty coming into force.”

No New START means no verification of Russia’s still enormous deployed nuclear arsenal, no future agreement to increase transparency over or reduce Russia’s tactical nuclear arsenal, and perhaps no future cooperative efforts to safeguard Russian nuclear materials, warheads, and delivery systems from potential loss or theft by terrorists.

And that is just what would happen to our relationship with Russia. We must remember that the world is watching the U.S. Senate’s deliberations on the treaty. If we fail to ratify New START, we’re essentially telling the rest of the world that we’re incapable of leadership on nonproliferation and that we’re unwilling to adhere to our obligation under the NPT to take steps to reduce our own nuclear arsenal.  As former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel explained:

[Failure to ratify New START] would set in motion the disintegration of any confidence in the leadership of the two   major nuclear powers to deal with this [nonproliferation] and it would set in motion a disintegration of any structural boundaries and capacities to deal with this. This would be devastating not just for arms control but for security interests worldwide.

So the question is simple: Are we really willing to give up verification of Russia’s nuclear arsenal and future arms control treaties, and hurt our relationship with not only Russia but all nuclear and non nuclear weapon states, all at a time when the threat of proliferation and nuclear terrorism pose the greatest threat to our national security?  You certainly don’t need me to tell you what the answer should be.      

North Korea is constructing an experimental light-water reactor (LWR) capable of generating 25 to 30 megawatts of electricity, according to Stanford University’s Siegfried Hecker on Saturday. After a North Korea trip, Hecker told reporters in Beijing that Pyongyang informed him in March of its plans to build a LWR power plant that uses its own nuclear fuel. In September, David Albright with the Institute for Science and International Security disclosed satellite images of construction work underway in the Yongbyon complex where the North’s cooling tower was demolished in 2008 as a symbolic gesture to denuclearize. David Albright has not yet disclosed conclusions to his findings, but one Washington nuclear expert initially suspected that North Korea could be building a cooling facility to provide the same function of a cooling tower needed to produce nuclear weapons.

It is too early to sound alarm bells or to be overly concerned. Still, if the North is in fact building a LWR, then some initial thoughts that come to mind are that Pyongyang again has a domestic and international agenda. It appears to be a sign that the North will continue to pursue uranium enrichment even though it will take years to complete the reactor and will have difficulty receiving outside help for its construction due to a series of UN Security Council sanctions resolutions and export bans.  The only way to receive outside help is to smuggle in reactor parts, centrifuges and other technology under the radar of export controls. In realistic terms, the envisioned reactor can only be small in size. Even China is unable to safely build large reactors on its own.

The move also seems to be a part of the “mighty and powerful nation by 2012” equation and to prepare for a leadership succession. The LWR construction could also have an element of eliciting negotiations from the U.S. despite an apparent decision to rely on big brother China for life support. And then of course, it could be a show to grab international attention.

One thing is clear, if the US wants to address the rising deficit, the entire budget must be on the table. What, you say? But that means I’ll have to make some really tough choices and deal with some really tough realities. Well, you can’t always get what you want.

That is the message delivered by the two chairmen of the President’s Deficit Commission on Wednesday. The pragmatic approach, penned by former GOP Senator Alan Simpson and Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, attempts to put partisan politics aside and address that fact that, “America cannot be great if we go broke.”

The proposal totals nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction by 2020 and would:

1) Enact tough discretionary spending caps and cut discretionary spending in fiscal year 2015 to $200 billion below the requested (fiscal 2015) levels in the President’s budget request. Cuts are evenly spread across domestic and defense spending.

Further, the proposal would set up a “firewall” between defense and non-defense (or, they say, security and non-security – which is very different) spending, so money cannot move between the two. This way, as Newsweek points out, “a failure to cut defense could not be made up for with cuts to, say, food stamps.”

Defense Cuts ($bn)
Apply Gates’ promised overhead savings to deficit reduction $28
Freeze federal salaries, bonuses, and other compensation at the Dept. of Defense for three years $5.3
Freeze noncombat military pay at 2011 levels for 3 years $9.2
Double Gates’ cuts to defense contracting $5.4
Reduce procurement by 15 percent $20

This 15 percent reduction would end procurement of the V-22 Osprey; cancel the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle; Substitute F-16 and F/A-18Es for half of the Air Force and Navy’s planned buys of F-35 fighter aircraft; cancel the Marine Corps version of the F-35; Cancel the Navy’s Future Maritime Prepositioning Force; Cancel the new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), the Ground Combat Vehicle and the Joint Tactical Radio; and reduce planned levels for “other procurement,” a category that includes communications and electronic equipment, tactical vehicles, and other support equipment and spares.

Reduce overseas bases in Europe and Asia by one-third $8.5
Modernize Tricare, Defense health $6
Replace military personnel performing commercial activities with civilians $5.4
Reduce spending on RDT&E by 10 percent $7
Reduce spending on base support $2
Reduce spending on facilities maintenance $1.4
Consolidate the Department of Defense’s retail activities $0.8
Integrate children of military personnel into local schools in the US $1.1

TOTAL $100.1

Domestic Cuts ($bn)
Reduce Congressional & White House budgets by 15 percent $0.8
Freeze federal salaries, bonuses, and other compensation at non-Defense agencies for three years $15.1
Cut the federal workforce by 10% (2-for-3 replacement rate) $13.2
Eliminate 250,000 non-defense service and staff augmentee contractors $18.4
Reduce unnecessary printing costs $0.4
Create a Cut-and-Invest Committee charged with trimming waste and targeting investment $11
Terminate low-priority Corps construction projects $1
Slow the growth of foreign aid $4.6
Eliminate a number of programs administered by the Rural Utility Service (formerly REA)$0.5
Eliminate all earmarks $16
Eliminate funding for commercial spaceflight $1.2
Sell excess federal property $1
26 other options of $2 billion or less $17

These 26 other options include a cut in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS; a reduction in funds for the Smithsonian and National Park Service, to be offset by visitor fees; and the elimination of the Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools.

TOTAL $100.2

2) Pass tax reform that dramatically reduces rates, simplifies the code, broadens the base, and reduces the deficit.

3) Address the “Doc Fix” not through deficit spending but through savings from payment reforms, cost-sharing, and malpractice reform, and long-term measures to control health care cost growth.

4) Achieve mandatory savings from farm subsidies, military and civil service retirement.

5) Ensure Social Security solvency for the next 75 years while reducing poverty among seniors.

You can see more of the specifics for options 2-5 in the CoChairs’ Proposal, and read over the finer details of the discretionary savings outlined above in the document titled, $200 Billion in Illustrative Savings. Both are posted here.

Of course, none of this is final – not even close. It will take the support of 14 out of 18 commission members for Congress to even consider the proposal.  Congressional leaders have promised they will do so regardless, but limited support from the commission will likely serve to justify limited support from Congress.

By now you all know that arms control bulldozer John Bolton and torture apologist John Yoo penned a mendacious op-ed attacking the New START treaty in Wednesday’s New York Times.  Though Bolton and Yoo have less credibility on national security issues than a three dollar bill, it’s still important to set the record straight.  

Enter Slate’s Fred Kaplan.  As he did with Mitt Romney’s disingenuous diatribe against New START, Kaplan patiently and cogently takes apart Bolton and Yoo’s claims.  Here’s how he begins:

You can read Kaplan’s full response here.  Ben Loehrke and Page van der Linden put together nice replies as well.

Though I don’t have much to add to Kaplan’s magnificent rebuttal, I want to quickly highlight the opening paragraph in the Bolton/Yoo op-ed.  They write:

As John has noted, New START (or any foreign policy issue for that matter) did not play a role in the recently concluded election.  In any event, the will of the voters appears to point in exactly the opposite direction of what Bolton and Yoo suggest.  According to an AP-GfK poll conducted just after last weeks elections:

It’s nice to know that a large majority of Americans are listening to our military, which has been telling them that New START is a good thing for the country.  It’s too bad that Bolton and Yoo would prefer to reject that advice.