The Wonk Room

700 Questions, One Purpose: Delay START

The logic behind Sen. John Kerry and the Obama administration’s decision to delay the Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote on New START was not — as was widely reported — because START lacked support. Conversely, it was because they felt that they were very close to getting two Republicans Senators — Bob Corker (R-TN) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA) to vote for the treaty, as both seemed genuinely supportive. Getting these two might have meant game over, as it would have given more moderate Republican Senators plenty of political cover to vote for the treaty.

Yet the prospects for Lucy taking the football away on this are pretty apparent. The principle reason for the delay was that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee couldn’t actually dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s on the treaty process such that Republicans would be satisfied. And as we all know, if there is one thing the GOP cares about it is process. But much of the reason for the process issue was due to the submission of more than 700 questions from GOP Senators on the committee to the Administration. Now asking questions is fine. Asking a lot of questions is also fine. But asking such a quantity of questions so late in the game after months of hearings frankly reeks of duplicity.

Even if you take the motivations behind these questions at face value – that GOP Senators genuinely had questions about the treaty — what has also become clear since the vote was delayed is that there is a concerted political strategy on the part of the GOP leadership, led by Senator Jon Kyl, to delay and stall the floor vote on the treaty until next year after the Administration submits its next budget. Kyl wrote this in the Wall Street Journal and said as much to Politico yesterday:

If they want to schedule Senate floor time for the Senate treaty ratification in September, they can figure a) it’s going to take a long time to get done, and b) some of these conditions would not have been fully satisfied.

Time Magazine also quoted a Senate Republican Aide (hmm… I wonder who he works for) who said:

This notion that [ratification] is going to happen before November is completely absurd… It reeks of politics.

In other words, if this is brought to the floor in September Kyl is going to make this long and painful. Kyl has roped his troops in line and Senators McConnell (R-KY), Corker, Isakson, Alexander (R-TN), and Bennett (R-UT) have all basically said they are Kyl lemmings. Therefore, it is quite possible that even if Corker and Isakson vote for the treaty in committee in September, they could still support Kyl’s efforts to delay the vote on the floor by noting their continued support is conditional on the Administration meeting Kyl’s demands for nuclear modernization funding.

But the demands from Kyl (as well as Corker) that the Administration lavish billions of dollars more of unpaid for pork on the nuclear weapons complex are so vague that the Administration likely couldn’t even meet these demands if they wanted to. Instead these demands seem to be about just as much about kicking the New START can into next year, where Kyl – with likely more GOP Senators to work with – will have even more leverage over the Administration.

What makes this all the more pernicious is that Kyl basically supports the treaty. He called it benign and others have said he is leaning toward supporting it. Last year he even warned of the dangers of the Administration not getting a START deal. So why is Kyl holding the treaty hostage? Simple, as an extreme nuclear hawk, Kyl is attempting to use START to extract as many concessions as possible from the Administration such that he in effect kills off any chance of further action on the President’s larger nuclear agenda. Kyl is essentially trying to make the Administration chose between START and its Prague Agenda.

In summation, Kyl is taking a very modest treaty, one that he supports, and one that he knows if it failed would have disastrous consequences for US national security, and holding a gun to its head threatening to pull the trigger unless the President commits to building and explosively testing new nuclear weapons – something that would kill the President’s whole agenda.

Delaying the vote, may have made sure that Senator Kerry and the Administration couldn’t be accused of “rushing” the process, but in the end it probably only strengthened Kyl’s hand and got him closer to his goal of blocking the treaty this year. In the end, the only way the treaty probably gets passed this year is if the Obama administration and the Senate leadership call Kyl out and force a vote. As Senator Lugar said, after the vote was delayed:

We ought to vote now and let the chips fall where they may. It’s that important.

Is John McCain An ‘Apologist’ For Terrorism?

Eric Trager has a thoughtful piece on the Ground Zero Mosque, in which he calls out the stark idiocy of his erstwhile Commentary colleague Jennifer Rubin’s comparison of Cordoba House to a monument at Pearl Harbor to the Japanese Emperor Hirohito, and Newt Gingrich’s suggestion that the U.S. shouldn’t allow any more mosques until Saudi Arabia allows synagogues and churches:

Never mind that, whereas Hirohito was singularly responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, American Muslims had nothing to do with 9/11 (and, in fact, many American Muslims were murdered in the attacks). And never mind that America is not Saudi Arabia, and hence does not aspire to Saudi standards of religious tolerance.

The real outrage is that these opponents of the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” apparently agree with Osama Bin Laden that Al Qaeda’s way is the true Islamic way, rightly understood. It is only through this leap of logic that the institutions of a billion-strong faith become synonymous with the greatest crimes of its most radical adherents.

I think Trager steps wrong, however, when, in what I suppose is an attempt at even-handedness, he identifies “a second, equally disturbing trend” in the debate over Cordoba House: “the prominence of apologists for acts of Islamist terrorism within the American Muslim community”:

As critics of the Islamic center rightly noted, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, one of the project’s principals, parroted the Saudi line immediately following the 9/11 attacks, telling “60 Minutes,” “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but the United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.” [...]

The real outrage is that the imam of an Islamic organization that aims to “improve Muslim-west relations” rationalized the 9/11 attacks, rather than condemning them outright.

First, can the statements of one person really be a “trend”? Second, Rauf’s comments (while admittedly inelegantly and dodgily phrased) don’t seem to me to “rationalize the 9/11 attacks” as much as to explain and put them in an historical context (though I understand that there are those who simply refuse to admit any distinction there).

While one can agree or disagree with that context — that is, agree or disagree with the idea that U.S. policies contributed in any way to 9/11 — it’s important to note that this is a central contention of the post-9/11 neoconservative critique: That the U.S. was, in a sense, paying a price for decades of reliance on autocratic Middle East rulers for the maintenance of an illusive “stability.”

This was pretty clearly elucidated by Sen. John McCain in his big foreign policy speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in March 2008. “For decades in the greater Middle East,” McCain said, “we had a strategy of relying on autocrats to provide order and stability“:

[The United States] relied on the Shah of Iran, the autocratic rulers of Egypt, the generals of Pakistan, the Saudi royal family, and even, for a time, on Saddam Hussein. In the late 1970s that strategy began to unravel. The Shah was overthrown by the radical Islamic revolution that now rules in Tehran. The ensuing ferment in the Muslim world produced increasing instability. The autocrats clamped down with ever greater repression, while also surreptitiously aiding Islamic radicalism abroad in the hopes that they would not become its victims. It was a toxic and explosive mixture. The oppression of the autocrats blended with the radical Islamists’ dogmatic theology to produce a perfect storm of intolerance and hatred.

We can no longer delude ourselves that relying on these out-dated autocracies is the safest bet. They no longer provide lasting stability, only the illusion of it.

So was John McCain “rationalizing” terrorism and extremism? Or was he simply recognizing that short-sighted U.S. policies had contributed to the problem?

Or is it only permissible to say such things if you follow it up with “…and that’s why we need to invade and occupy their countries”?

Obviously it’s important to recognize the sensitivities around this, but it seems that Rauf and McCain were making very similar critiques. Yet only one of them is labeled an apologist for terrorism.

Managing Tensions On The Korean Peninsula

Our guest bloggers are Winny Chen, a Policy Analyst and Manager of China Studies, and Anne Paisley, an intern with the National Security and International Policy Team at the Center for American Progress.

Earlier this week, the United States announced additional sanctions aimed at cutting off funding to North Korea’s nuclear program and its affluent ruling class. The effectiveness of the sanctions will depend significantly on cooperation from China, which supports North Korea’s struggling economy and denies the international investigation that blamed North Korea for the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan last March. China, South Korea and the United States all support regional stability, but differences on how to respond linger, as another act of aggression from Pyongyang potentially looms over the region. The United States must make clear that stability is a responsibility of all parties in the region, and it should continue to push hard for China’s support of sanctions in order to prevent another provocative move by North Korea.

Pyongyang’s aggressive behavior demanded a strong international response, which unfortunately China blocked using its permanent position on the United Nations Security Council. The U.N.’s watered-down statement in July condemned the sinking of the Cheonan but did not specifically blame North Korea, which Beijing and Pyongyang viewed as a “great diplomatic victory.” In the absence of a robust international response, the United States stepped up its presence in the region last month by conducting joint military exercises with South Korea and reestablishing ties with Indonesia. North Korea vowed a “physical response” to the joint military exercises in the Sea of Japan, but by the end of the drills on June 28, North Korea had not followed through on its threats and even signaled that it may be interested in returning to six-party talks on its nuclear program, though doubts remain about Pyongyang’s true commitment to talks.

While Washington and Beijing both want regional stability, the two countries disagree on how best to achieve it in the aftermath of the Cheonan sinking. The Obama Administration has adopted a three-part strategy for dealing with North Korea — engaging the U.N., strengthening our alliance with South Korea and targeting North Korean leadership responsible for aggressive behavior and nuclear proliferation through sanctions. As part of that plan, Washington imposed economic sanctions on North Korea to block money that could be used for missiles and nuclear bombs and to keep money from Pyongyang’s wealthy ruling class.

China, on the other hand, wishes to preserve North Korea as a buffer state between itself and South Korean and U.S. troops stationed along the North and South Korean border, so it remains reticent on taking measures against its ally. Beijing also fears that sanctions could cause Pyongyang to collapse and a failed North Korean regime would send thousands of refugees into Northern China. China ultimately did not support international sanctions against the North in order protect its own borders and security concerns and prevent a potential humanitarian crisis on the peninsula.

This poses a significant challenge, as China’s cooperation is vital for the sanctions to be effective in North Korea. China’s refusal to support strong U.N. actions against North Korea or to take any meaningful actions against its rogue neighbor is a step back from the responsible positions China had taken in the last year, such as passing and enforcing sanctions on North Korea and allegedly denying Kim Jong-Il’s request for aid after North Korea shot ballistic missiles over South Korea in 2009. Some analysts surmise the North is planning more missile tests and a strong response is needed now to deter more provocative acts from the peninsula and to prevent an escalation. The U.S.–South Korea joint military exercises are a good start, but more is needed on the Chinese side.

Convincing China to pressure Kim Jong Il’s government is a challenging task for the Obama administration, especially as U.S. involvement in the South China Sea and Korean Peninsula continue to irritate U.S.-China relations. China holds strategic and diplomatic clout over the struggling country but does not see North Korean de-nuclearization as essential to global or even regional stability, as the United States does. Nonetheless, the United States must continue to its diplomatic and military presence in the region to press Beijing to return to a responsible path regarding North Korea. The United States must make clear that preservation of stability in region is the responsibility of all parties, and that it hinges in large part on China’s willingness to support sanctions.

The Obama Administration has not given up hope of achieving regional stability through the resumption of the Six-Party Talks. Secretary Clinton has stated that if North Korea could commit to de-nuclearization, the “door remains open for North Korea.” For the talks to resume, the North Korean government would have to halt its provocative behavior, agree to comply with international law and end belligerence towards its neighbors. China has argued that the issue must be solved through “peaceful measures and direct talks” between North and South Korea, yet it prevaricates on a response. And that benefits no one in the long-run.