US And GOP Cave On START

Strategy: The heirs of Ronald Reagan abandon his legacy and dream of defending America from nuclear attack. Our security will rest on ambiguous language and vague assurances, not on the genius of U.S. technology.

Peace in our time, or should we say appeasement in our time, as a sufficient number of GOP senators signed on the New START treaty to give the Democrats and President Obama the 67 votes needed for ratification.

The Hill reported that Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., became the 10th Republican to support the treaty on Monday. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was No. 9, saying on Monday afternoon, "I believe it's something important for our country and I believe it's a good move forward."

Outgoing Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, says he supports the treaty as does another lame duck, Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Ohio, who said a letter from President Obama brought him on board.

Obama sent a letter to Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday assuring him that we "will continue to develop and deploy effective missile defenses to protect the United States."

That letter needs to be sent to Medvedev and Putin, not to the U.S. Senate, for that is not the Russian understanding. "Russia will have the right to opt out of the treaty if ... the U.S. strategic missile defense begins to significantly affect the efficiency of Russian strategic nuclear forces," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on April 6.

This effectively gives Russia a veto over the defense of the American people against nuclear attack.

As we've shown, the Russian strategic arsenal is old and poorly maintained. It will fall below treaty limits even if we do nothing.
From Investors Business Daily:
The same Russia that threatened Poland with the deployment of SS-26 Iskander missiles in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad if it accepted the U.S. ground-based Interceptor missile system desperately needs U.S. missile defense neutered.

State Department documents published by WikiLeaks document how the Russians told the Obama administration they would not cooperate with the U.S. on any issue as long as we pursued a robust missile defense. This is why on Sept. 17, 2009, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion, the Poles received a midnight phone call telling them we were pulling the plug.

This past weekend, 59 senators voted to reject the McCain-Barrasso amendment, which would have stripped from the treaty preamble language linking offensive and defensive systems. That language gives the Russians cover to withdraw from the treaty if we enhance our missile defenses in the slightest.