The end of the 'lame duck' Congress is quickly approaching but its agenda is overwhelming. Numerous skeptics doubt if all the items on this agenda will have a chance to come to the vote.
One such item is ratification of the START treaty. Obama makes no secret of the fact that this is going to be his top priority. The list of those who want him to succeed reads like Who's in Who in America, in Europe, and for that matter across the world. Republicans and Democrats, Pentagon and NATO top brass, conservatives, liberals and even some neocons, left and right, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, all of them have made a strong case for ratification, insisting that this treaty is in the best interest of the United States. Even the leadership of countries that are hardly on the list of Russia lovers - like Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania - also want this treaty to be ratified. So what's the problem? Shouldn't the whole process be a piece of cake?
Unfortunately, no. None of those highly influential folks mentioned here vote, while among people who do some Republican senators are trying to derail it at any cost.
Obama and his administration went all the way to meet their demands, throwing additional funds - which, incidentally, the country does not have - into nuclear modernization, answering hundreds of questions and clarifying treaty positions during the endless series of congressional hearings. But the resistance is still very strong. Richard Lugar, the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has rebuked his party's leaders over the delay, calling for an immediate vote to ratify the treaty.
However, those who emphasize the financial and security benefits of smaller nuclear stockpiles and those who warn that at stake are 'reset' relations with Russia, the resumption of the verification regime and the credibility of the US administration in international negotiations, do not take into account the obvious: the main reason for killing the treaty or delaying its ratification is to stop Obama scoring any points and recapturing the White House in 2012 - even if it damages the country's security.
Now, in the ironic twist of politics the right wingers in US Senate got an unexpected support on the other part of the globe from the far left - the Communists in the Russian Duma who announced that they too are unhappy with START-III and will vote against its ratification.
Well, extremes regularly meet, this seems to be a universal law which applies not only to notoriously messy human affairs but even to physics - you can get a burn both from extreme heat and extreme cold. Yet one never ceases to wonder at the spectacle of a couple of the strangest bedfellows (who would gleefully strangle each other, should they really find themselves in the proverbial bed) in such touching concord on an issue absolutely crucial to their countries' security and one might even say survival, of their chances of avoiding a nuclear Armageddon.
Even the arguments of U.S. and RF opponents of the Treaty dovetail so neatly as to make one wonder about the possibility of a touch of plagiarism. Both insist that the new START will undermine the security of their respective countries, and the arguments coincide in the smallest detail. Both talk of insufficient verification procedures incorporated in the Treaty. The logic of this comes straight out of 'Alice in Wonderland': it now appears that no verification procedures at all, that's much better than not quite sufficient verification. You do away with the Treaty and its poor verification procedures, and your security is rock firm and even firmer.
There is one big difference between the opposition to the treaty in Congress and the Duma: the Communists do not have the chance of a snowball in hell of derailing the ratification, while their Republican bedfellows are now strong enough to cut off their noses to spite Obama's face. That is to say, unless they grow too ashamed of actually voting with the Communists and do the decent thing: Ratify the Treaty.
Edward Lozansky is president of American University in Moscow.
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