Obama secures Republican votes for nuclear deal
Barack Obama locked up enough Republican votes to ratify a new arms control treaty with Russia that will cap the former Cold War foes’ nuclear warheads and restart on-site weapons inspections.
Eleven US Senate Republicans joined Democrats in a 67-28 proxy vote yesterday to wind up the debate and hold a final tally today.
They broke ranks with the Senate’s top two Republicans and were poised to give President Obama a victory on his top foreign policy priority.
“We are on the brink of writing the next chapter in the 40-year history of wrestling with the threat of nuclear weapons,” Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, a Democrat, said after the vote.
Ratification requires two-thirds of those voting in the senate and Democrats needed at least nine Republicans to overcome the opposition of minority leader Mitch McConnell and Jon Kyl, the party’s pointman on the pact.
The Obama administration has made arms control negotiations the centrepiece of resetting its relationship with Russia and the treaty was critical to any rapprochement.
Momentum for the treaty accelerated earlier yesterday, the seventh day of debate, when Lamar Alexander, the number three Republican in the Senate, endorsed the accord.
The treaty will leave the US “with enough nuclear warheads to blow any attacker to kingdom come”, Mr Alexander said on the senate floor, adding: “I’m convinced that Americans are safer and more secure with the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) treaty than without it.”
Mr Obama has insisted the treaty is a national security imperative that will improve co-operation with Russia, an argument loudly echoed by the nation’s military and foreign policy leaders, former presidents George Bush senior and Bill Clinton and six Republican secretaries of state.
“We know when we’ve been beaten,” Republican senator Orrin Hatch told reporters hours before the vote.
In a fresh appeal for ratification, defence secretary Robert Gates said the treaty would “strengthen our leadership role in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons and provide the necessary flexibility to structure our strategic nuclear forces to best meet national security interests”.
Vice President Joe Biden and secretary of state Hillary Clinton made a rare visit to the US Capitol to win over politicians.
Later in the day, Democrats turned back Republican efforts to change the treaty, rejecting an amendment to add mention of rail-based launchers on a 63-32 vote and another to delay the treaty until US military equipment confiscated during Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia was returned. That measure failed, 61-32.
Any changes to the treaty would effectively kill the pact and send it back to negotiators.
Conservatives against the accord – among them possible Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty – argue that the treaty would restrict US options on a missile defence system to protect America and its allies and lacks sufficient procedures to verify Russia’s adherence.
“The administration did not negotiate a good treaty. They went into the negotiations, it seems to me, with the attitude with the Russians just like the guy who goes into the car dealership and says, ’I’m not leaving here until I buy a car’,” Mr Kyl said.
Mr Obama, who delayed his Christmas holiday, lobbied hard for the Senate to complete the treaty before January when Republicans increase their numbers by five and the accord’s outlook would be bleak.
Weeks after Republicans routed Democrats at the polls – seizing control of the House of Representatives and strengthening their numbers in the Senate – Mr Obama has prevailed in securing overwhelming bi-partisan approval of a tax deal with Republicans and repealing the 17-year-old ban on openly gay military members, a crucial issue with the party’s liberal base.
