It's all over, but for the signing: The New START nuclear arms reduction treaty has been ratified by the U.S. Senate; Russia's legislative Duma will finalize its own multi-step ratification process in the new year. In contrast to the U.S. Senate contretemps, it appears Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has no fear he'll find the votes he needs.
In some respects, the New START debate ends not a moment too soon. In recent days, news coverage devolved from substantive reporting into just another Washington tic-toc story concerning how many Republican senators would ultimately vote for the treaty, and whether "70 is the new 95" - Senate-speak for the fact that prior nuclear-arms treaties commanded ratification votes ranging from squeakers like 88-2 (President Nixon's SALT I in 1972) to 95-0 (President Bush's Moscow Treaty in 2002).
Based on a read of the past week's Beltway-bylined coverage, neophytes to the nuclear arms issue could be forgiven if they took New START to be a treaty between Democrats and Republicans to reduce their nuclear arsenals. (My own careful research confirms that the nuclear weapons belong to Russia and the United States, and the warfare between Republicans and Democrats is thus far nuclear-free.)
Treating the New START debate as a partisan dust-up obscured the serious national security issue at the core of the Senate controversy: The meaning of the few lines of language in the treaty preamble linking nuclear missile arsenals and ballistic missile defenses. From the moment New START was signed at Prague Castle in April, Russian officials asserted that the preamble barred U.S. missile defense efforts, which, if continued, would gut the treaty and spark a new arms race.
New START's U.S. negotiators insisted the language does nothing of the kind - and, in any case, preamble language is non-binding. Senate Republicans took a "call and raise" approach, seeking to have the non-binding language struck out (the tack taken, unsuccessfully, by Senator John McCain, a New START "No" vote) - or at least to build into the resolution of ratification a strong statement that New START does not constrain missile defenses (Senator Jon Kyl's Amendment 4904, which passed).
So now that the treaty is the international law of the land, who's right?
Would New START allow the development of a mobile Ballistic Missile Defense system capable of engaging up to 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles simultaneously - a significant improvement over the Patriot 3 BMD system? Or would this be the kind of provocative activity that would justify abandoning New START, as more than one high-level Russian official warned in the run-up to ratification? And how about ringing the nation's capital with a missile defense system: Would that violate New START?
The answer in both cases is "no" - at least if we take seriously Russian actions as distinct from Russian rhetoric, because the upgraded BMD system described above is Russia's S-500, currently scheduled to go operational in 2012, when it will become a critical node in the Russian ABM system that encircles Moscow. (Courtesy of Google Earth, it's possible to see a good many of the 68 missile interceptor systems ringing the Russian capital right now.)
So, either maintaining a major strategic missile defense system will not abrogate New START, or the Russians are preparing to bolt the treaty in 2012.
Loose reporting that Russian officials oppose missile defense have the story only half right: Russia, like its Soviet predecessor, opposes American missile defenses. From Brezhnev to Putin, Moscow has consistently maintained and modernized its missile defense program, electing to keep the single system allowed under the original ABM Treaty - protecting Moscow (the U.S. maintained a rudimentary system at Grand Forks, N.D., before abandoning it in 1977).
Russia's actions are entirely consistent with Russia's interests: Every state has a sovereign right and solemn duty to defend itself. Equally true - but less diplomatic to note - is the sovereign right to press policies that will render a powerful rival less safe and more vulnerable. Simply put, it's not Russia's job to defend the U.S. against rogue missiles from a crazed North Korean dictator or a nuclear-armed Iran.
To that end, the fractious Senate debate did have some salutary effect. It yielded unequivocal statements by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that New START will not limit U.S. missile defense efforts, culminating in the days driving up to ratification in a letter from President Obama himself stating that New START "places no limitations on the development or deployment of our missile defense programs." Those declarations, plus the ratification resolution that traditionally governs treaty interpretation, will come in handy when Russian officials insist that the U.S. is offsides for doing what Moscow allows itself to do.
Read and re-read the preamble as often as you like: New START's language is sufficiently ambiguous to allow the U.S. to move forward with missile defenses should it choose to do so, or to argue itself into a semantic straight-jacket if that suits the political powers-that-be.
So celebrate New START for making a modest but real reduction in the number of strategic offensive nuclear warheads the U.S. and Russia aim at each other. But if a future U.S. president finds him or herself defenseless against imminent nuclear missile attack, let's be clear: The blame for failing the most fundamental task of government won't lie with Russia, but with ourselves.
Russia's rulers, for their part, have no intention of leaving themselves defenseless.
