New Start Treaty

Updated: Dec. 20, 2010

The New Start treaty is an arms control pact that would force the United States and Russia to pare back nuclear arsenals and resume mutual inspections that lapsed in 2009 for the first time since the cold war. It was signed by President Obama and Russia's president, Dmitiri A. Medvedev in April 2010. Its ratification has become one of the most contentious issues of the current lame-duck Congressional session, with a large number of Republicans say they plan to vote against it.

Under terms of the treaty, both countries would be prohibited from deploying more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads or 700 launchers each starting seven years after final ratification. Perhaps just as significantly, the treaty would establish a new inspection and monitoring regime to replace the longstanding program that lapsed in 2009 with the expiration of the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991, or Start.

The New Start treaty won approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September 2010 with the support of three Republicans. But it hit a roadblock in November 2010 when Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican senator essentially deputized by his party to negotiate on the subject, came out against holding a vote during the lame-duck session of Congress that had just begun. He declared there was no time to reach agreement in 2010 on a nuclear modernization program that he wanted as the price for ratification.

Mr. Kyl’s announcement blindsided and angered the White House. Its strategy had hinged entirely on winning over Mr. Kyl.

Mr. Kyl had been seeking to secure tens of billions of dollars to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex in exchange for approval of the treaty. Over many months of negotiations, the administration committed to spending $80 billion to do that over the next 10 years, and then offered to chip in $4.1 billion more over the next five years. As a gesture of commitment, the White House had made sure extra money for modernization was included in the stopgap spending resolution now keeping the government operating, even though almost no other program received an increase in money.

Mr. Obama then decided to push for a vote on his signature foreign policy issue despite whta appeared to be long odds, daring Republicans to block the arms-control treaty at the risk of disrupting relations with Russia and the international coalition that opposes Iran’s nuclear program. Mr. Obama has received support from former president George H.W. Bush in addition to Henry A. Kissinger, James A. Baker IIIand Brent Scowcroft, all of whom served Republican presidents.

Republican critics have zeroed in on what they consider important flaws, including its verification program, the failure to address smaller, tactical nuclear bombs and some language in the preamble that they argue would inhibit future American missile defense plans. Democrats have responded that the verification program is a step forward, that tactical weapons are not covered in the treaty but would be the subject of future negotiations if New Start is ratified and that language in the preamble is nonbinding.

What makes the fierce showdown over this treaty so surprising is that compared with most of its predecessors, it is a relatively modest agreement. But it became entangled in a struggle over a budget resolution and the anger Republicans felt over Democratic victories on issues like the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell'' policy. Another political subtext was whether the pact’s approval would rejuvenate a weakened president after his party’s midterm election defeat.

The president's hopes of winning Senate approval for the treaty with Russia by the end of the year were encouraged in late November by two Republican senators, including John McCain.

Mr. McCain, one of his party’s leading voices on national security, said he thought that Republican concerns over missile defense and nuclear modernization could be resolved in time to vote on the treaty during the lame-duck session of Congress, as Mr. Obama has sought.

In mid-December, the Senate opened debate on the treaty and an early test vote showed that President Obama is right on the edge of securing approval.

The Senate voted 66 to 32 to bring the treaty to the floor for consideration, normally just a procedural vote, but Republicans made a show of force in voting against it. When it comes to a final vote, the pact will need one more yea to meet the 67-vote required by the Constitution to pass.

Since one of the two lawmakers who did not vote was Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, a Democrat counted on to support the treaty, that would suggest that at least 67 senators are willing to hear debate on it. But voting on a procedural motion does not commit a senator on the final vote, and the tally underscored just how precarious the treaty’s chances are as Mr. Obama presses to win consent before the next Senate takes office in January with five more Republicans.

Background

Almost from the moment the first atomic bomb was detonated in New Mexico in July 1945, the menacing aura of the nuclear age has inspired hopes for a world free of nuclear weapons. But since the end of the cold war, the focus of concern has shifted from the vast arsenals of the United States and China to worries about terrorism and the rise of new nuclear states like North Korea, which detonated a nuclear device in 2006, and Iran, which Western officials believe is working to build one.

Tactical nuclear weapons were developed during the cold war as generally lower-yield, shorter-range explosives that could be used on the battlefield. The United States and its NATO allies relied on them as a deterrent to any invasion of Western Europe by what were presumed to be superior Soviet and Warsaw Pact land forces. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Russia has come to view tactical nuclear weapons as a bulwark against American conventional supremacy.

Washington and Moscow emerged from the cold war determined to reduce tactical nuclear arms, and both sides announced unilateral cuts in 1991. As a result, 17,000 tactical nuclear weapons were withdrawn from service, but no treaty ever imposed legally binding limits. In 1993, President George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin of Russia signed the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as Start II, which called for the elimination of almost three-quarters of the nuclear warheads and all the multiple-warhead land-based missiles held by the United States and the former Soviet republics.

That treaty expired in late 2009 while Russian and American negotiators were hammering out the last details of what became known as the New Start treaty, which was signed by Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev.

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