In today’s Washington Post there is a terrible op-ed by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) railing against the ratification of the New START Treaty.
While Romney is off politicizing what should be a nonpartisan argument, he ignores the facts and replaces them with illusion.
Romney attempts to scare readers by eluding to misinformation, like stating that Russia has more “tactical” nuclear missiles when in reality, most of those are antiquated and in terms of modern warfare, archaic. Truth be told, the United States has more operational weapons – over 5,000 to the estimated 2,000+ controlled by Russia. The Obama Administration knew what it was doing when Obama signed the new START Treaty with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and what it was getting into.
Romney was also off the mark when stating that the treaty forced the US to abandon a missile defense mechanism in Eastern Europe, the Administration abandoned this idea last year in an effort to improve relations with Russia because in the world of international relations, there aren’t one way roads.
According to The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, instead of placing long-range missile interceptors in Eastern Europe, the US will “use Standard Missile SM-3 interceptors, at first based on our Aegis ship destroyers, supported by a more wide-ranging network of radars and sensors.” This makes more sense because it is not Russia that poses a nuclear threat to Europe or the US, it is Iran, where President Ahmadinejad has made many snide remarks about both areas and where the threat comes mostly from short and medium-range ballistic missiles, not long-range as would be intercepted in Eastern Europe.
Even thought the Cold War is over and the United Sates is the most powerful country in the world, it cannot be militarily aggressive towards states that also grasp substantial military and economic power, like Russia, and there is no need for it.
In addition to improving relations with Russia, the signing (and hopefully ratification) of the New START Treaty also improves US strategy in concern to other countries, if only tactically, while building up nuclear arsenals or keeping our arsenal as is, as Romney seems to invoke, would only provoke other states to continue to build.
For example, if North Korea sees the United States building up its nuclear arsenal or pushing for less nuclear restraint, wouldn’t they see it in their best interest to speed up their research and build upon their arsenal?
The same goes for Iran.
While taking a hard-line against the North Korean and Iranian governments are a must, tactics must also be deployed - lowering our nuclear arsenal gives them less of a reason to build theirs.
Russia is the largest country in the world by land mass and has the second largest operational nuclear arsenal, in other words, they are not a country to jerk around and to try to “out negotiate” because it will get us nowhere.
Unlike what Romney would have you believe, this new START Treaty does not lessen the power of the United States; instead it equally reduces the nuclear arsenal of both Russia and the US without affecting the power game at play.
The START Treaty does nothing to make the United States less safe.
This is not a zero-sum world and there isn’t a one-line method to obtaining the goals of the United States, but if peace is one goal the US is attempting to achieve, than ratifying the START Treaty is definitely the right move.
The START Treaty is a step in the right direction for the United States and Russia in securing this world from nuclear catastrophe, and while it isn’t close to the be-all-end-all, the way Romney writes off the treaty and conceals hard facts concerning its implementation is irresponsible.
Mitt, nuclear treaties are a policy issue but the ratification of any treaty that lowers the number of nuclear weapons in this world should never be made into a Democrats vs. Republicans or Republicans vs. Obama argument because in this case, if Obama fails, then we’ve failed to improve the safety of the citizens of this country and the world.
Of course, Romney, as governor of Massachusetts for four years, has more foreign policy expertise than any of these guys who have expressed their support for the New START Treaty in a recent ad by the Partnership for a Secure America that ran in Politico, I mean Massachusetts is kind of close to Canada:
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT Secretary of State 1997-2001
HOWARD BAKER US Senator (R-TN) 1967-85
SAMUEL BERGER National Security Advisor 1997-2001
LINTON BROOKS Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration 2002-07
HAROLD BROWN Secretary of Defense 1977-81
FRANK CARLUCCI Secretary of Defense 1987-89
WARREN CHRISTOPHER Secretary of State 1993-97
WILLIAM COHEN Secretary of Defense 1997-2001
JOHN C. DANFORTH US Senator (R-MO) 1977-95
KENNETH M. DUBERSTEIN White House Chief of Staff 1988-89
CHUCK HAGEL US Senator (R-NE) 1997-2009
LEE HAMILTON US Congressman (D-IN) 1965-99; Co-Chair, PSA Advisory Board
GARY HART US Senator (D-CO) 1975-87
RITA E. HAUSER Chair, International Peace Institute
CARLA HILLS US Trade Representative 1989-93
NANCY KASSEBAUM-BAKER US Senator (R-KS) 1978-97
THOMAS KEAN Governor (R-NJ) 1982-90; 9/11 Commission Chair
RICHARD LEONE President, The Century Foundation
DONALD MCHENRY US Ambassador to the UN 1979-81
SAM NUNN US Senator (D-GA) 1972-96
WILLIAM PERRY Secretary of Defense 1994-97
THOMAS PICKERING Under Secretary of State 1997-2000
COLIN L. POWELL Secretary of State 2001- 05
WARREN RUDMAN US Senator (R-NH) 1980-92; Co-Chair, PSA Advisory Board
ALAN SIMPSON US Senator (R-WY) 1979-97
GEORGE SHULTZ Secretary of State 1982-89
THEODORE SORENSEN White House Special Counsel 1961-63
JOHN WHITEHEAD Deputy Secretary of State 1985-88
TIMOTHY E. WIRTH US Senator (D-CO) 1987-93
FRANK WISNER Under Secretary of State 1992-93
But don’t take my word for it or any of these guys, listen to Mitt, he knows what he’s talking about.
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