Passage of new START only a matter of time
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The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) has become an annoyance for U.S. President Barack Obama, simply because his unwavering and aggressive push for its passage this year in the Senate has met stiff resistance from some Republicans.
Yet, compromise is possible in the end for the treaty to pass. It is merely a matter of time.
New treaty will be ratified
"I believe the new START treaty will be ratified, either this year or in the first part of 2011," Steven Pifer, director of the Arms Control Initiative at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, told Xinhua Monday.
"The arguments for the treaty and its contribution to U.S. national security are compelling," explained Pifer, who was deputy assistant secretary of state under the Bush administration.
"Moreover, it is difficult to see how serious Republican senators would explain blocking a treaty that has the unanimous support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of the commander of U.S. strategic nuclear forces and seven of his predecessors, and of every senior Republican statesman who has spoken on the treaty," said Pifer.
Pifer went to great lengths to list the prominent Republicans from previous administrations who back the deal, among them former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker and Colin Powell, former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft.
All but one of the big guns were invited to the White House last Thursday by Obama to drum up support for his unrelenting efforts to push through the new START treaty this year. He signed the treaty in Prague this April with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev to replace the 1991 START treaty, which expired in December 2009.
"It is a national security imperative that the United States ratify the new START treaty this year. This is not about politics, it's about national security. This is not a matter that can be delayed," Obama stressed at the time.
Negotiation underway
Yet, party politics came to the fore after Republicans won control of the House and gained strength in the Senate in the Nov. 2 midterm elections.
A lame-duck session of Congress began last Monday and will last until the start of the new Congress in early January next year. Now, for the passage of the treaty in the Senate, Democrats need at least eight Republican votes. If the matter is delayed until next year when the new Congress opens, at least 14 Republican votes are needed.
