Don’t get your nukes in knot, says Robert Kagan in the Washington Post:

New START: Too modest to merit partisan bickering

It’s hard to believe that ratification of the New START treaty is turning into a pitched battle between some Republicans and the White House. It’s even harder to believe that advocates for and against the treaty are trying to turn it into a stand-in for some imagined ideological contest over arms control and nonproliferation. It’s not. This treaty is simply too unexceptional to carry such heavy freight.

The proposed cuts in nuclear arsenals are modest. The START I agreement cut deployed strategic nuclear weapons on both sides roughly 50 percent, from between 10,000 and 12,000 down to 6,000. The never-ratified (but generally abided-by) START II Treaty cut forces by another 50 percent, down to between 3,000 and 3,500. The 2002 Moscow Treaty made further deep cuts, bringing each side down to between 1,700 and 2,200. And New START? It would bring the number on both sides down to 1,550.

This is hardly the revolution that either side claims. Take the favorite argument of many New START proponents. They insist the treaty represents a critical commitment by the nuclear superpowers to abide by the grand bargain of the Non-Proliferation Treaty: The nuclear states move toward zero in exchange for the non-nuclear states forgoing the weapons altogether. Ratification is essential, they claim, to gaining greater worldwide support for nuclear nonproliferation efforts.

Really? If this causal logic existed, why wasn’t this the happy result of the massive cuts in superpower arsenals from 1989 to 2002? Instead, throughout those years, Iran and North Korea, as well as Iraq, worked determinedly to build nuclear weapons, and neither India nor Pakistan felt constrained from testing their nuclear devices. It’s hard to see why the smaller cuts proposed in New START should suddenly produce a global commitment to nonproliferation.

But it’s equally hard for the treaty’s critics to argue that these cuts represent a great leap toward zero and the end of the American nuclear deterrent. The three previous arms control treaties, all negotiated by Republican presidents, and two of which were ratified with full Republican Party support, cut deployed nuclear weapons from near 12,000 down to around 2,000 — about 80 percent. If anyone deserves credit, or blame, for moving the United States in the direction of zero, the two Bushes deserve a lot more than President Obama…

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.

Somewhat related:

How the CIA Got It Wrong on Iran’s Nukes
In 2007, U.S. intelligence said Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. Analyst policy bias and disinformation from Iranian double agents may explain the mistake.

Mark
Ottawa