Will Senate GOP sell out U.S. national security?

This past April, the Obama administration signed the controversial New START Treaty with the Russian Federation. It is pushing the U.S. Senate to vote on the treaty during the "lame-duck" session as early as next week before a dozen newly-elected Republicans can be sworn into office. Disturbingly, it appears Senate Republicans are now considering selling out our national security and ratifying this defective treaty for a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts.

Many Republican policymakers have rightly argued that U.S. Senate ratification of this nuclear disarmament treaty would pose an unacceptable risk to America's national security. The New START Working Group, which includes some of America's top nuclear experts, recently issued a report concluding that "if Russia exploits the legal lapses in New START, there is no actual limit in the new Treaty on the number of strategic nuclear warheads that can be deployed." In contrast, the administration could be expected to strictly adhere to treaty limits on warheads and launchers potentially putting the U.S. at a huge disadvantage against Russia, which already has a nuclear arsenal nearly three times larger than our own.

Former Governor Mitt Romney was absolutely correct when he warned, "The president's New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia could be [Obama's] worst foreign-policy mistake yet. New START impedes missile defense" and "gives Russia a massive nuclear-weapons advantage over the United States." Furthermore, this treaty does nothing to limit the size of the Chinese nuclear arsenal, which has been expanding precipitously during the past decade.

The failure of the administration to negotiate effective verification measures utilized in previous nuclear arms control treaties with Russia is troubling and would make it difficult, if not impossible, for us to ensure that Russia is complying with the terms of the treaty. In addition, many experts have testified that America's aging nuclear arsenal is in dire need of modernization, but Obama has repeatedly refused to commit to fund it.