Opinion: A Fresh START Between US and Russia

(Aug. 3) -- In the long history of arms control treaties between the U.S. and Russia, the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty is a modest affair.

It sets a limit for the U.S. and Russia of 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads -- down from 2,200 under a 2002 pact. Russia is already at or below the limit of 800 delivery vehicles. Even if START is ratified, the U.S. and Russia can still destroy each other -- and for that matter, the entire world -- several times over.

Plus, the biggest nuclear menace to mankind today isn't a doomsday scenario of battling superpowers, but that a small group of fanatics might somehow obtain a bomb and detonate it in a major population center -- most probably in a car or a suitcase, not carried on an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Still, START is crucial for other reasons, and it's unfortunate that Democrats are struggling to win GOP support, a struggle that caused Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., to push back this week's planned vote on the treaty until the fall.

START is the main achievement so far of the "re-set" of U.S.-Russia relations begun by the Obama administration and lays the groundwork for broader cooperation in this and other fields. Among them:

Iran: While the U.S. and Russia remain at odds over Russia's treatment of former Soviet republics, such as Georgia, and Russia's poor record on human rights, the two are increasingly cooperating on restraining Iran's nuclear program.

Investment: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is eager to diversify his country's economy, which currently relies on energy exports, and is seeking U.S. investment, particularly in high tech. U.S.-Russia trade last year was a mere $24 billion and needs to grow to give the relationship a solid footing.

Afghanistan: Russia is facilitating the U.S. war in Afghanistan by providing transit corridors for supplies and wants the U.S. to succeed in stabilizing the country that was the graveyard for so many Soviet troops in the 1980s and is the source of drugs that kill ordinary Russians every day.

However, some prominent Republicans have targeted the new treaty and seem intent on preventing its ratification.

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has called START Obama's "worst foreign policy mistake." In a Washington Post op-ed, Romney asserted that the treaty would impede U.S. missile defense programs and that Russia, through a variety of loopholes, would get to keep more warheads that can be mounted on missiles that could target Europe.

However, the treaty does not limit missile defense -- its only mention is in a nonbinding preamble. The Obama administration is already putting in place a new system in southern Europe to deter or defeat Iranian medium-range missiles. The White House is also promising a multibillion-dollar effort to modernize remaining U.S. nuclear weapons.

Ratification of START would send a message to Iran and other potential proliferators that the world's two main nuclear powers are serious about their own nonproliferation obligations. It would also allow a new round of talks dealing with areas where Russia maintains an edge, such as its much larger arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons.

Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control, noted at the State Department July 29 that in the past, arms control has been a bipartisan enterprise and that successive Republican and Democratic administrations have been able to win ratification of such agreements by wide margins. In keeping with that history, several venerable Republicans -- including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and James Baker -- declared their support for the new treaty.

In today's heated political atmosphere, however, every issue seems to become a zero sum game. There are plenty of grounds for criticizing the Obama administration's record over the past 18 months, and this new treaty is not perfect. But it is better than the status quo of no limits and no verification -- the situation since a previous agreement expired in December.

Most important, START will solidify a relationship that remains crucial to the security of our planet.