New START Proponents Should Stick to Policy, not Politics

Conn Carroll / August 04, 2010

You can always tell you’re winning a policy debate when your opponent starts name-calling. Now that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) has pulled New START off his Senate Foreign Relations Committee schedule, that’s exactly what the treaty’s supporters are doing.

So Brent Scowcroft, U.S. National Security Advisor under President Gerald Ford, tells The Washington Post that the treaty is losing support because “some just don’t want to give Obama a victory” before the midterm elections. And Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) tells The Associated Press: “We are in the midst of an election campaign which is bitterly partisan, and it could be difficult to move legislation of any sort.”

Lugar ought to spend more time addressing the substantive policy claims of his colleagues than impugning their motives. Specifically, he, Scowcroft and other treaty supporters have failed to address the following major concerns: (more…)