Richard G. Lugar, Statesman of the Senate: Crafting Foreign Policy from Capitol Hill

11 Arms Control in the Twenty-First Century

11 Arms Control in the Twenty-First Century I Richard Lugar has made a career of measuring his words carefully, of expressing even frustration and anger with restraint and understatement . But in November 2010, Lugar decided he had had enough and that it was time to speak out forcefully to his fellow Republicans. He had been consulting closely for almost a year with the Obama administration regarding the New START treaty. For more than 6 months, from March through September, he had been the only Republican senator to publicly declare his support for the arms control treaty with Russia. Even though he is the acknowledged arms control expert in the Senate, Lugar’s role within the Senate Republican caucus on the arms control treaty had been eclipsed by Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a hardedged conservative with a history of disliking most arms control treaties .Kyl,thesecondrankingSenateRepublicanwithclosetiestoSenate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and the party’s conservative base, was designated by McConnell as the Senate GOP’s lead negotiator with the White House on the treaty. But Lugar, given his senior position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and experience on arms control issues, remained very involved in helping the Obama administration devise a strategy to win approval of the treaty in the Senate. The Obama administration consulted closely with Lugar throughout 2009 and 2010 about moving the treaty through the Senate, but they x Richard G. Lugar, Statesman of the Senate 174 negotiated with Kyl, especially regarding Kyl’s demand for additional funds to modernize the U.S.’s nuclear weapons infrastructure. Modernization consisted of allocating more money to upgrade the country’s nuclear laboratories, nuclear weapons, and delivery systems. Given his long history of opposing most arms control treaties, some questioned whether Kyl really wanted to reach an agreement with the Obama administration .Andthroughouttheadministration’slengthynegotiations with Kyl on modernization funds, it was never clear if Kyl would agree to support the treaty even if he won commitments for the funding level he wanted for modernization. Then on November 16, the day after Congress’s 2010 lame duck sessionbegan ,Kylconfirmedthesuspicionsof manywhenhesaidtheNew START treaty should be set aside. Too many other issues had to be resolved in the relatively brief postelection session, and the treaty was too complextodealwithandaccomplishanythingduringtheshortsession, Kyl said in a statement after participating in a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Kyl said the Senate should take up the treaty in 2011.1 Kyl’s call to delay the treaty until the following year was seen by many, including Lugar, as a backdoor attempt to kill it. With a larger conservative group of Republican senators coming to Washington in the next Congress, the administration appeared to have little chance of securing the 67 votes required to pass a resolution of ratification in the next Congress. Kyl’s comment, after months of assiduous courtship by the Obama administration, was widely interpreted as a bombshell that would derail the president’s top national security goal. Reeling from the Kyl statementandtryingtoreshapethedebate ,Secretaryof StateHillaryClinton traveled to the Capitol on November 17 to meet with a bipartisan group of senators and congressmen in the ceremonial suite of the Senate Foreign RelationsCommitteeonthefirstfloorof theCapitol,ostensiblyfor awide-rangingdiscussionof foreignpolicy.ButClintonwastheretotalk aboutarmscontrolandtojump-startthebeleagueredNewSTARTtreaty. After the closed door meeting with the lawmakers, Clinton, Senate ForeignRelationsCommitteeChairmanJohnKerry,andLugarstepped before a large throng of reporters and TV cameras to make a public case for Senate approval of the treaty in the coming weeks. Both Kerry and Arms Control in the Twenty-First Century 175 Clinton said it was imperative to pass it before the end of the year. “This is not an issue that we can afford to be postponed. Once we take that message with the urgency you’ve heard from the three of us, we will get the votes and we will pass this treaty,” Clinton said. Kerry remarked that there was “no substantive opposition to the treaty” and said it was time to move ahead.2 Lugar spoke last. “We’re talking today about the national security of the United States of America,” he said, observing that about 20 years earlier the Soviet Union had more than thirteen thousand nuclear warheadsaimedattheUnitedStates ,anyoneof whichcouldhavedestroyed Indianapolis. America’s relationship with Russia was far less confrontational now, but thousands of Russian warheads were still pointed at the American homeland. “The American public might have forgotten about it. The senators may have forgotten about it,” Lugar said, observing that policymakers...