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…

The Defense Authorization bill being considered by the Senate this week would buy taxpayers seven shiny new F-22 Raptors for the paltry sum of $1.75 billion. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has shed doubt on the utility of the F-22s in security terms and suggested a cap of 187 stealth jets. Yet Senators Carl Levin and John McCain, who introduced an amendment to strip the F-22 funds, are up against the formidable will of the oldest of American institutions: the Military Industrial Complex.

The appeal of the F-22 lies not in its much-hyped stealth capabilities or its combat-tested credentials. Indeed, it has not been used in Iraq or Afghanistan. The appeal of the F-22 lies in the fact that it is manufactured in 44 states by Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and an army of lesser subcontractors. Senators have lashed out because of their concern that ending F-22 production will mean the loss of skilled manufacturing jobs.

Lo and behold, the Center for Responsive Politics published a list of Boeing and Lockheed’s PAC contributions to members of Congress for the 2009-2010 election cycle. You don’t have to look too closely to see that members representing key production sites for the F-22 – like Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss – are among the top recipients of campaign dollars. Members who serve on the Armed Services and Defense Appropriations committees are also top beneficiaries of defense contractors’ limitless generosity.

Thanks to CRP for this timely airing of dirty laundry.