A Call for Transparency: Provide the Senate with the Negotiating Record
Ricky Trotman /
The administration is launching a full-scale defense of the new START Treaty, as evidenced by two days of testimony in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an op-ed out this morning in The Wall Street Journal by Michele Flournoy and Ashton Carter.
Ms. Flournoy and Mr. Carter rightly point out the successes of the missile defense program over the past few years. Over 10 tests conducted since 2006, the Standard Missile (SM)-3 interceptor has had a 90% success rate. Missile defense is effective and a key component in our national defense arsenal. Each official testifying before the Senate and the authors of today’s op-ed insist that the new START Treaty will not hamper the current and future plans of the US Missile Defense Agency. In essence, they argue that the US can continue its plans for the phased adaptive approach in Europe and build upon it if necessary, without any response from Russia. Nevertheless, the Russians have made it abundantly clear that any “quantitative or qualitative” advancement in the US missile defense system will be grounds for withdrawing from the treaty. This seems like a pretty big divergence of views between the two parties of the treaty.