Senate Foreign Relations Committee Approves New START

Good new on the nuclear disarmament front. Yesterday, in a 14-4 vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to approve the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with the Russian Federation. As we have discussed previously, this treaty would require both sides to reduce their deployed nuclear arsenals by 30% and, perhaps more importantly, create a strict inspection regime allowing each side to verify that the other is fulfilling its treaty obligations.

The treaty will now be sent to the full Senate for a ratification vote. Considering the upcoming mid-term elections, it is unlikely that the vote will take place before early November, although not impossible. The most likely scenario at this point is for a vote during the lame duck Senate term, after the fall elections but before the new Senate has been seated. Democrats don't want to be accused of trying to gain a diplomatic victory for President Obama in the weeks leading up to the mid-term election, while Republicans don't want to be put in a position of placing politics before national security.

Prospects for ratification appear good. It requires a two-thirds majority to ratify a treaty in the Senate; if we assume that all Democrats and the two independent senators who caucus with them remain supportive, this means that eight Republicans will need to cast votes in favor. On the Senate Foreign Relations Committee itself, three Republicans voted with the Democratic favor in favor of New START: Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), and Senator John Isakson (R-GA). All three are to be commended for their favorable votes, and Senator Lugar in particular is to be commended for the outstanding work he has done on behalf of nuclear disarmament throughout his Senate career.

Assuming these three senators vote in favor of ratification when it comes to the floor of the full Senate, five additional Republican votes are needed. Of Republicans who do not sit on the Foreign Relations Committee, only Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) has indicated that he is supportive of the treaty. But considering how nearly half of the Republican delegation on the Foreign Relations Committee ended up voting in favor of the treaty, we can rest easy that it will be successfully ratified if even close to that proportion of Senate Republicans comes out in favor of it.

All Global Citizens in the United States need to contact their senators immediately and let them know that ratification of New START is an urgent necessity both for the United States of America and for the world as a whole.