Investor's Business Daily - Not Much To Celebrate On Russian Treaty's Third Birthday

Op-Ed

By John Barrasso

As the world focuses on the Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, the third anniversary of the New START arms treaty between the U.S. and Russia deserves similar attention. The treaty is a vivid reminder of Russian games with much higher stakes.

Since that treaty went into effect, events have confirmed just how bad a deal it was. Any future reduction in U.S. nuclear capabilities President Obama may try to make should be carefully scrutinized.

The treaty limits each side to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed delivery vehicles. In the first data exchange required under the treaty, Russia claims to be under the limit already. The U.S, on the other hand, is not. Only the U.S. will be required to cut our deployed nuclear forces.

You might expect the Obama administration to see this as evidence that its Russia reset has been one-sided. The benefits continue to go to Vladimir Putin, while the costs are borne by the American people.

The president refuses to acknowledge this. Following his re-election, he said he would negotiate further cuts with Russia. His goal now is to reduce our nuclear forces by up to one-third.

As he famously told Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, he believes he has "more flexibility" to negotiate on arms control issues now that his election is over.

When the Senate was considering New START, military commanders and defense experts testified that the nuclear numbers set by that treaty were "exactly what is needed" to provide nuclear deterrence. The American people deserve to hear from the president a much more substantial explanation of why we need to cut our arsenal again.

The president must explain how he will ensure that the U.S. actually gets something from the Russians in return for our reductions. In New START, our negotiators gave away cuts for nothing and agreed to a limit on our missile defense. Three years later, we're left with fewer missiles and less defense.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the administration's promoter in chief for that treaty. She testified that ratifying the treaty would "continue our progress toward broader U.S.-Russia cooperation."

Obama Stays Home

It's safe to say that things have not worked out as Secretary Clinton predicted. Our relations with Russia are now so cold that the president did not send a single high-ranking representative of his administration to support Team USA in the Olympics.

Russia continues to send weapons to President Bashar Assad in Syria. Russia is a serial violator of past arms-control treaties. The Russians continue to violate longstanding commitments under the previous Presidential Nuclear Initiatives. There also have been allegations of Russia's substantial violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

The president should start holding Russia to its old promises before he makes new ones for us.

There are serious questions that need to be answered before our country cedes any more of its nuclear capability. These questions should be addressed in public. The president should pursue them only as part of a treaty, but he has failed to commit to that process.

He might negotiate cuts in an agreement less binding than a treaty. He could even take steps to cut our nuclear arsenal unilaterally. The president's recent rhetoric shows he's looking for ways to act on his own, without receiving the advice and consent of Congress.

If the president thinks America should further reduce its nuclear forces, let him negotiate a new treaty. Any cuts must be tied to real reductions in Russia's stockpiles. Then bring the treaty to the Senate, so we can debate the wisdom of those reductions -- just as our Constitution demands.

Our founders specifically required two-thirds of the Senate to ratify treaties. This was partly to make it more difficult to enter into them. It is also what the Obama administration promised it would do. During the New START negotiations, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta assured Congress that further arms reductions would take place only through an arms control treaty process.

The president was frustrated by the long process of ratifying New START. His administration wants to avoid that kind of scrutiny in the future. With New START, the administration negotiated poorly. The treaty's predicted flaws have become readily apparent over the past three years. Clearly the president's ideas need more scrutiny, not less.

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