New START, Post Hoc
During the debate over the New START Treaty with Russia a few weeks ago, the best-case scenario that was being peddled from certain corners of the right was that the treaty, while not particularly helpful, wouldn’t be actively harmful either. After Republicans got concessions from the White House on missile defense and the maintenance of America’s current nuclear resources, this position seemed to calcify. But only a few weeks later, the rationale is already looking threadbare.
One of the few things that New START actually accomplished was subsidizing the Russian sense of entitlement to be treated as one of the world’s great powers. While it would be foolish to deny Russia’s importance in world affairs, it also bears noting that there are at least three nations in the world whose nuclear status is more pressing than the former Soviet Union’s by orders of magnitude (Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan). Despite that fact, Democratic rhetoric made it sound as if we had just avoided another Cuban Missile Crisis.
Now, in the treaty ratification’s wake, we see Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (why hasn’t “Vlad the Impaler” become the nickname of choice yet?) back to his old KGB ways (he’s tried to stop, but it’s essentially muscle memory at this point).
Russian courts have found former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a political enemy of Putin’s, guilty of stealing $25 billion of oil from his own company, a charge that the prosecution never came close to proving, that no one in Russia actually believes, and that contradicts the charges that put Khodorkovsky in jail in the first place in 2003. Expectations are that the conviction will find Khodorkovsky spending an additional six years in the Siberian prison camp where he's currently held -- which will conveniently keep him sidelined during the next Russian election.
In a Tuesday editorial, the Washington Post rightly frets over whether there will be any consequences for Putin’s shameless exercise of raw power. They endorse sanctions for those who prosecuted Khodorkovsky (an unclear and probably impractical suggestion) and suspension of U.S. support for Russia’s entry into the WTO. But where were they a few weeks ago, when we actually had a bargaining chip that the Russians cared about?
Oh, that’s right. They were endorsing its ratification.
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Oct '10
Re: New START, Post Hoc
Obama took the Republican to the cleaners with the START treaty, and Russia did the same to the US.
Dec '10
Re: New START, Post Hoc
Ratification of this treaty was a political victory for the administration. That fact alone proves it was a bad idea. International treaties should be to the benefit of the nation, not to a political party. The administration did not support it because it was a good treaty; rather, they supported it as a demonstration of the ability to get something (anything really) done and to show some muscle over the opposition party. Neither are valid reasons to enter into an international agreement that carries constitutional weight at home.