It is a year and a half since Hilary Clinton proposed to ‘overload’ reset U.S.-Russian relations and issues loom, like the ever more ridiculous ratification process of the New START treaty in the Senate and the first meeting of the Russia-NATO Council since the 2008 war in Georgia. Heady shit, which is why Biznesslanch thought it was time to hold forth on the state of U.S.-Russian relations today as it relates to these issues.
New START
It seems sense to start with New START (and no, that is absolutely not a pun) simply because it is the more frustrating of the two issues mentioned above.
Just ratify the damn thing already, alright (photo courtesy of Reuters)
Earlier this week Senate minority whip (the guy who tells other party members how to vote) Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) said that debate on the treaty would almost certainly not happen this year, pushing the process, which requires 67 out 100 votes in the Senate to pass, to the 2011 session. Kyl said that his concerns about the treaty and modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal mean that there isn’t enough time to deal with the issues related to the treaty in the lame-duck session after the recent elections. Of course, the treaty was signed almost seven months ago in Prague in April and the Senate Foreign Relations committee held nine separate hearings on the subject before approving the treaty.
The treaty itself, as is by now well-known, sets the ceiling for nuclear warheads at 1,550 on both sides, down from 2,220, and 700 deployed delivery systems (i.e. ballistic missiles and bombers). It also allows both sides to inspect each other’s nuclear facilities, an aspect vociferously touted by Defense Secretary Henry Gates and Clinton in their various advocacy pieces. I don’t want to get further into the details of the treaty because a) there are better places to read about it, like here and here and b) I’d like to focus on the political aspects of the treaty.
The Republicans holding up the ratification basically fall into three categories. The first; those that have no clue what they’re talking about. This is where the Mitt Romney “they can mount a nearly unlimited number of ICBMs on bombers” editorial fits in; that editorial also runs through all the mistaken assertions or logical fallacies about the treaty – namely that it restricts missile defense systems and forces the U.S. to make bigger cuts in its arsenal than Russia has to. To the latter, mind-boggling point, a relatively larger reduction in deployed U.S. warheads does not really marginally reduce the effectiveness of the U.S. arsenal. Put another way, 1,550 nuclear warheads is still way more than the U.S. could conceivably use for anything, including reducing the planet to a radioactive ash heap. To the former, everyone and their mother on the U.S. side of the negotiations has asserted that the treaty doesn’t stop the U.S. from developing ballistic missile defenses.
The second group – the largest – consists of those people who want to score political points off of Obama by throwing a monkey wrench into his foreign policy works. The third includes people like Kyl, who seems to be using the process (and his ability to slow it down) to extract concessions from the Obama administration for programs he wants. So far, Kyl has gotten the administration to pledge $84 billion in funding to update the U.S. nuclear arsenal, but as long as he can continue to project the image of a dealmaker/breaker, he can hold out to something else he wants. So far, the Obama administration has caved because it desperately wants to chalk up a success somewhere, but this perception of desperation on their side only encourages people like Kyl to hold out, thinking they can squeeze more out of the White House.
The issue has galvanized just about everyone else other than the public at large and should. Ratifying the treaty won’t suddenly make the U.S. and Russia go all lovey-dovey, but not ratifying it would send a pretty negative signal to Russia. These kinds of agreements by themselves tend to only incrementally improve relations, but not having them can make relations turn for the worst. Let’s examine the case of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense treaty. It would be difficult to argue that treaty’s existence made a substantive, lasting improvement on the U.S.-Soviet/Russian relationship; relations between the countries fluctuated pretty dramatically in the time between 1972 when the treaty was signed and 2002, when the Bush Administration unilaterally withdrew from the treaty. Withdrawing from the ABM treaty, however, substantively contributed to, and arguably began, the downturn in U.S.-Russian relations during the Bush Administration. The same is possible if New START is not passed; with its passage, there probably won’t be a great immediate improvement in relations, but if it goes down in the Senate, it could throw a completely unnecessary monkey wrench in the spokes of the U.S.-Russian relationship.
Sorry, I think I have the wrong door (photo courtesy of The Moscow Times)
Russia-NATO Council meeting
The very fact that this meeting happened at all on Saturday at the NATO Summit in Lisbon is a positive step. The Georgia war put the kibosh on previous meetings, but time - or at least the prospect of
being formally taken off NATO’s hit list - heals all wounds. At the meeting, Medvedev and the various heads of NATO members agreed to a number of things, most of which involved minor issues like fighting piracy and other stuff we’d all be better off without, but the most surprising was Medvedev’s expressed interest in participating a proposed NATO-led ballistic missile shield.
That the Kremlin didn’t instinctively begin foaming at the mouth over the idea of missile defense in any form is probably a good sign, although it still doesn’t resolve that other nagging problem of the missile defense concept, which is whether it makes sense to throw money after an
unproven program aimed at an unclear threat. Still, talking about cooperating on missile defense and then actually doing it are two completely different things.
First, it seems to me that there is nowhere near the level of trust needed for the two sides (namely U.S. and Russian) to work together concretely on the issue. Presumably, a bulk of the technological expertise would come from the U.S., if for no other reason than that they have been the ones working on this problem the longest. It is extremely difficult to imagine U.S. generals or whoever willingly allowing a Russian delegation into the control room and getting an up close look at the cutting edge of U.S. military technology. If the tables were turned, it would be equally unrealistic to assume the Russian high command would leap at such an opportunity. If the U.S. refuses to share some F-35 fighter jet technology with the UK, then what are the chances for a joint NATO-Russia missile shield? In any event, this idea came up before and it completely flopped.
Second, despite the pessimism expressed above, it probably doesn’t matter whether they actually create a missile defense system. For now, the very process of cooperating should be beneficial for both sides in so far as it could help reduce the pathological mistrust of each other amongst the elites of both countries. Baby steps, like trying to come to a shared understanding of what such a system would potentially entail, are important. Also, the end goal of the cooperation is important; fighting Somali pirates together doesn’t attract high-level attention in the same way missile defense does. Even if, as mentioned above, nothing substantive comes of it, seriously examining the issue creates the time and space where future cooperation in various other, more practical, areas becomes more realistic. This is, for Biznesslanch, the main cause for optimism on what came out of Lisbon over the weekend.
None of this, however, carries same kind of optimism that led Angela Merkel to exclaim that the Cold War is finally over. As Aleksandr Golts aptly points out in a Moscow Times editorial, this has all happened before. This meeting can only be considered some kind of turning point with the benefit of several years hindsight. NATO might have explicitly stated that the alliance isn’t a threat to Russia, but as Golts reminds us, the Kremlin has not done likewise. Even if it were to do so, NATO and Russia need to try to figure out a way to work around basic problems that underpin their relationship and that would take years. I am more positive about the impact of words than Golts is, but future actions more than anything will actually determine how the Lisbon summit is remembered.
U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia relations are still on a bit of a knife’s edge. It is unrealistic to predict a massive uptick in relations based on this weekend or on the hopeful ratification of New START, but progress in both areas keep relations from falling off that edge. That is valuable, if for no other reason, because it allows both sides to figure out where to go from here. Building the kind of trust, or at least mutual understanding, that creates room for both sides to focus on some of their other problems should be the goal and that is going to take a long time to develop.
