Sen. Jon Kyl has gone against President Obama, US military leaders and National Security Officials to reject Senate consideration of the New START treaty in the current session of Congress.
As a leading conservative, Republican Whip Kyl is willing to risk the security of the United States in order to deny President Obama any success in foreign policy. Senate committees have had 18 public hearings on the treaty. The vast majority of military and senior government officials have supported the treaty, but that is not enough for Senator Kyl.
In addition to minor cutbacks in our deployed nuclear weapons, the treaty provides for continuing mutual inspections of Russian and American nuclear facilities.
“If we don’t get the treaty, [the Russians] are not constrained in their development of force structure and … we have no insight into what they’re doing. So it’s the worst of both possible worlds.” – Gen. Kevin Chilton, Commander of US Strategic Command, June 16, 2010.
“My sense is that the START Treaty ought to be ratified and ought to be ratified as soon as possible,” said Lt. Gen. Frank G. Klotz, Commander of Air Force Global Strike Command (in charge of AF nuclear weapons), on November 9, 2010.
Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, James Baker and Henry Kissinger have all supported ratification of the treaty.
Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Adviser, George Ford and George H.W. Bush administrations, emphasized the significance of the treaty. “The principle result of non-ratification would be to throw the whole nuclear negotiating situation in a state of chaos, and the reason this treaty is important is over the decades we have built up all these counting rules, all these verification procedures and so on, so that each side feels, ‘Yes, we can take these steps.’ If you wipe those out, you’re back to zero again …”
Obviously Senator Kyl doesn’t agree with these outstanding military leaders. He has his Republican agenda – and that comes first.
Quotations are from Arms Control Association, November12, 2010.