The Hill is reporting that Democrats are confident they have the votes to ratify:
Senate Democrats appear to have the nine Republican votes they need to ratify the New START nuclear treaty this week and give President Obama his third major victory of the lame-duck session.
Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) told reporters Monday afternoon that he would vote to ratify the treaty and also support a motion to end debate, which the Senate will consider Tuesday.
“I believe it’s something that’s important for our country and I believe it’s a good move forward,” Brown said after emerging from a classified briefing in the Old Senate Chamber…
There is still a very slight chance that Democrats will come up short, but it looks like a done deal. My question: why on earth would any Republican want to vote for this? I realize that Democrats, servile and devoted to Obama, will just vote for anything he sends down…but Republicans are supposed to think about things before voting for them. What possible benefit does the United States gain by entering in to an arms control agreement with Russia?
Does anyone fear a war with Russia? Russia has 21 million males fit for military service, the United States has 60 million. Fully mobilized, we’d outnumber them at least three to one, and probably more than that because our much more productive economy can afford to spare more manpower for military service than Russia can. They do have more nuclear weapons in being than we do, but we have more than sufficient to utterly destroy Russia – and what could Russia hope to gain by a nuclear attack on us? Meanwhile, China has 382 million military aged males – which exceeds the entire population of the United States (true, with 40% of China’s population engage in agriculture they can’t even begin to deploy all those men…but if we ever went to war with them, it would be us outnumbered three to one). If there’s any nation we should seek arms control treaties with it is China.
But, even then, when has an arms control treaty really done any good for the world? Arms control didn’t prevent World War Two. Arms control didn’t bring down the USSR. Arms control is only good in theory when a free people is faced with a nation governed by a wicked tyranny – but the tyrants running such governments always cheat on whatever treaties they enter, so there’s simply no point in having them. This START treaty is an exercise in futility – a policy acting in a void; a continuation of something we used to do because our foreign policy “experts” can’t break free of habit and routine.
If we want fewer nuclear weapons in our arsenal, then let’s reduce our numbers. I only want enough to ensure that any possible combination of foreign powers knows that a nuclear attack on us will result in the execution of their nation. Beyond that, I don’t care how many nuclear weapons anyone else has, per se – though, of course, I am concerned when potentially insane regimes (Iran and North Korea, eg) have them. But even there I don’t want an arms control agreement – I want to force them to surrender their nuclear weapons.
Furthermore, by tying our nuclear security to Russia, we are hamstringing our own policy. Suppose, in the future, our nuclear needs require us to build and deploy nuclear weapons not allowed under this treaty? Because we’ve made a deal with Russia, we might not be able to meet threats from other nations. This is just so incredibly asinine – and it looks like we’re going to do it.
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