On July 23, after two weeks of debate, the Senate passed the FY 2010 National Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 87-7.  While the fight over the F-22 early in the week garnered most of the media attention, there was also an important development on nuclear weapons.  

Arms control advocates have worried for months that Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) would use the floor debate as a way to undermine the START follow-on process and further lay the groundwork for opposition to the CTBT.  Sure enough, on July 22, Senator Kyl offered an amendment to place limitations on spending to implement a START follow-on treaty unless (1) the treaty is verifiable; (2) places no limitations on missile defense, space capabilities or advanced conventional weapons, and (3) the Obama Administration’s FY 2011 budget will be sufficiently funded to maintain the reliability, safety and security of U.S. nuclear weapons and modernize and refurbish the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.  Kyl’s amendment was basically identical to an amendment Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH) offered to the National Defense Authorization Act on the House floor, which eventually passed by voice vote on June 25 as part of a managers amendment offered by House Armed Service Committee Chariman Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO).

But thanks to the due diligence of Sen. Levin, Sen. Kerry, and their staff, Sen. Kyl was forced to offer a considerably weaker amendment to his original amendment, which passed on July 23.  The new version calls for a report from the President on the Administration’s plans to enhance the safety, security and reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, modernize the nuclear weapons complex, and maintain nuclear weapons delivery systems. The revised amendment also includes a sense of the Senate that the START follow-on treaty not include limitations on ballistic missile defense, space capabilities, or advanced conventional weapons.

Though the new version is far from perfect, it’s a significant upgrade over the original amendment (and the Turner amendment that passed in the House), which included explicit budget limitations and requirements. (Update 7/28: Ky’ls demand for a report on enhancing the safety, security, and reliability of the stockpile and modernizing the complex within 30 days is particularly befuddling, since these are issues the Nuclear Posture Review is already analyzing and will present conclusions on later in the year in any event. In previous statements, Kyl has attacked the Obama administration for seeking a START follow-on agreement before the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is fully completed, but now he wants to prejudge the results of the NPR by requiring a report on enhancing the safety, security, and reliability of the stockpile and modernizing the complex before the NPR is fully completed! I’m confused.)

Sen. Kyl likely had to retract his original amendment because he couldn’t find 33 additional Republicans (or hawkish Dem’s such as Liebermann, Ben Nelson, or Begich) willing to aid him in his efforts to sabotage the START follow-on negotiations while they’re still ongoing (34 votes will be required to defeat the Treaty).  This bodes well for the prospects of a START follow-on treaty when it comes to the Senate floor, likely sometime next spring.

Here’s to hoping the Obama administration took notice of Kyl’s mischief making.  So far its efforts to make the case that a new arms control treaty with Russia will enhance U.S. security have been less than stellar.  The White House needs to do a better job of knocking down the kind of arguments skeptics of the START follow-on process have been making before they begin to generate serious momentum.  For example, below are possible responses to the three conditions Sen. Kyl sought to pre-impose on a START follow-on treaty.  The administration needs to be making them forcefully and repeatedly:

(1) Will the treaty provide for sufficient mechanisms to verify compliance with the treaty or agreement? Response: As President Ronald Reagan repeatedly said, “trust but verify.” The United States has long-established techniques and facilities for verifying Russian compliance with its treaty obligations.  The existing START agreement provides a comprehensive set of monitoring and verification provisions that have greatly facilitated the efforts of the American intelligence community to verify Russian nuclear actions.  The START follow-on treaty will rely heavily on this infrastructure.

(2) Will the treaty place reductions or limitations on the ballistic missile defense, space, or advanced conventional weapon capabilities of the United States? Response: It is clear that the Obama administration is not ready to abandon the proposed European deployment and will keep missile defense on a separate track from reductions in strategic offensive arms.  In fact, Obama and Medvedev have previously stated that the START follow-on agreement will deal only with offensive strategic forces (for more on this, see my post from last Thursday).

(3)Will the fiscal year 2011 budget request for programs of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration be sufficiently funded to  increase the reliability, safety, and security of the remaining strategic nuclear forces of the United States; and modernize the nuclear weapons complex? Response: First, the bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States drew a clear dividing line between “tak[ing] a modest first step to ensure that there is a successor to START I when it expires at the end of 2009” and “the challenges of deeper nuclear reductions.”   The Commission did not hinge “taking a modest first step” upon modernizing the stockpile.  Second, the Secretaries of Defense and Energy have annually certified the reliability of the U.S. nuclear warhead stockpile even though the United States last tested in 1992.  Today, we know more about and have greater confidence in our nuclear warheads than when testing.

To my knowledge, no Senator has yet to come forward and say that he/she will vote against the START follow-on treaty when it comes to the Senate floor (likely sometime early next year).  However, some (mostly Republican) Senators have raised concerns about the trajectory of the START follow-on process.  

For example, in a July 2 letter to President Obama, Senators Inhofe, Lieberman, Kyl, Ben Nelson, McCain, Begich, Sessions, Johanns, Wicker, and Hatch urged the President “to not combine discussions about U.S. missile defense efforts and the ongoing START negotiations….We feel strongly that linking missile defense plans to offensive force negotiations in this way runs contrary to America’s strategic interests and would undermine our security.”

The argument that the United States should not agree to further cuts in its nuclear arsenal so long as Russia insists on linking reductions in offensive strategic forces with missile defense has emerged as the key Republican talking point on the START follow-on process (so far).  Yet the reality is that offensive strategic forces and missile defense have always been linked, and for good reason.  John Isaacs recently penned an excellent memo on this issue, the key portion of which I’ve pasted below the jump.  

In point of fact, President Obama, in agreeing to [the U.S.-Russia Joint Understanding for the START Follow-On Treaty], was reaffirming a long-standing U.S. position when he acknowledged the interrelationship between offensive and defensive systems.

That was most certainly true during the administration of President George. W. Bush.

A July 22, 2001, Joint Statement by Presidents Bush and Putin stated: “We agreed that major changes in the world require concrete discussions of both offensive and defensive systems.”

The preamble to the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions (Moscow Treaty), signed by Presidents Bush and Putin on May 24, 2002, notes that the parties were “proceeding” from this joint statement in reaching their agreement.

In an August 13, 2001, press conference with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov conducted after a meeting with President Putin, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated:  “We agreed that it is perfectly appropriate to discuss offensive and defensive capabilities together.”

Or take the interrelationship as proposed by Republican icon President Ronald Reagan at the Reykjavik summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev on October 11-12, 1986.

The official U.S. proposal was all about linkage:

“Both sides would agree to confine themselves to research, development and testing, which is permitted by the ABM Treaty, for a period of 5 years, through 1991, during which time a 50% reduction of strategic nuclear arsenals would be achieved. This being done, both sides will continue the pace of reductions with respect to all remaining offensive ballistic missiles with the goal of the total elimination of all offensive ballistic missiles by the end of the second five-year period. As long as these reductions continue at the appropriate pace, the same restrictions will continue to apply. At the end of the ten-year period, with all offensive ballistic missiles eliminated, either side would be free to deploy defenses.” (“Post-Reykjavik Follow-Up, National Security Decision Directive, NSDD 250, November 3, 1986,” Top Secret, declassified on March 19, 1996, Digital National Security Archive item PR01574.)

Or go back to another Republican President:  President Richard M. Nixon.  There most certainly was linkage when on May 26, 1972, when President Nixon and General Secretary Brezhnev signed the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Interim Agreement on strategic offensive arms.

Linkage between offensive and defensive weapons?  Never, except under Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon.

Clearly Russia is concerned about U.S. missile defense plans, which is why the joint understanding notes a linkage between offensive and defensive systems.  Yet it’s also clear that the Obama administration is not ready to abandon the proposed European deployment and would prefer to keep missile defense on a separate track from reductions in strategic offensive arms.  In fact, Obama and Medvedev have previously stated that the START follow-on agreement will deal only with offensive strategic forces.  As Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak noted in early April “whether…absence of agreement…on BMD, whether it’s a showstopper for the follow-on to START, I would say no.”

The Senate today voted 58 to 40 to approve a Levin (D-MI) – McCain (R-AZ) amendment to eliminate $1.75 billion for seven F-22s that was added by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The vote was significant because if those supporting more aircraft had prevailed even though the plane has no utility in Iraq or Afghanistan, is egregiously expensive, is strenuously opposed by Secretary of Defense Gates, and elicited a veto threat from President Obama, it would have been widely interpreted by the media as a crushing defeat for the Obama administration.  

The administration is already facing great challenges over the still faltering economy and difficult bills dealing with health care legislation and climate change.

The F-22 vote was also significant because it provided an opportunity for DOD and Armed Services Committee chairman Levin to rev up their vote counting operations. They set up procedures to count noses, persuade the undecideds, and win over those who started out supporting the F-22.

This vote counting operation, co-operated with Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA), will be vital when the Senate gets to later votes on a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) follow-on agreement and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The administration has already proved adept at winning close Senate votes on the economic stimulus package and the children’s health care bill. Now it has proved adept in the first significant national security test in the Senate.

The F-22 battle is a long way from over. The House approved funds in its authorization bill and congressional appropriators look sympathetic to the F-22.

Nevertheless, this victory is important both for the Obama administration and for those interested in winning Senate approval for arms control treaties in the near future.

Head over to the Center’s website to see the new factsheet Kingston and I co-authored on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT).

The proposed FMCT is one of the many nonproliferation initiatives that languished during the Bush years. It was first discussed in the 1946 Acheson-Lilienthal Report on the international control of atomic energy and the Baruch Plan. President Obama breathed new life into the idea in his Prague speech on April 5.  

In short, the FMCT would ban the production of all fissile material suitable for use in nuclear weapons. It could also address existing stockpiles earmarked for blend-down or for use in nuclear powered subs. All five Nuclear Weapons States stopped production of weapons-grade fissile material by 1996, and all five support a verifiable FMCT.  

Discussions on the FMCT are carried out through the UN Conference on Disarmament (CD). The initiative has been stalled several times since the official resumption of talks in 1995. Israel has said that it opposes any FMCT that doesn’t address the Iranian nuclear threat. Pakistan opposes an FMCT without limits on stockpiles because it is concerned that India’s current stockpile is larger than its own.

With so many seemingly immovable roadblocks, agreement on the FMCT is a ways off. But it has been a fixture in nonproliferation circles since the inception of nuclear weapons technology and efforts to bring it to fruition will continue, particularly now that Obama is in charge.

This week, the Senate began debating an amendment, backed by Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin and Ranking Member John McCain, which would strip $1.75 billion for seven additional F-22s from the 2010 Defense Authorization bill. A vote on th…