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December 1, 2010

Has the Obama Administration Been Lying About New START's Effect on Our Missile Defense?

The short answer to the question is that at the very least ... the Obama administration has been purposefully misleading Senate opponents to the bill all along, and if one wishes to be perfectly accurate - the Obama administration has indeed been lying about the New START treaty's potential negative effect on U.S. missile defenses.

From Steven Groves at the Corner: On New START, the White House Is Playing a Shell Game (emphasis added):

[...] Now comes news that the Obama administration did, indeed, engage in secret talks with the Russians earlier this year regarding missile defense ... something previously denied by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Of course, the administration has been in denial about missile defense since the day President Obama signed the flawed pact. Before the ink was dry, the Russians announced they would withdraw from New START in the event of "a build-up in the missile defense system capabilities of the United States of America such that it would give rise to a threat to the strategic nuclear force potential of the Russian Federation." The administration lamely responded that it "intends to continue improving and deploying its missile defense systems in order to defend itself against limited attack."

So that there would be no doubt of Moscow's understanding of the agreement, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov stated that "linkage to missile defense is clearly spelled out in the accord and is legally binding." The administration countered, "This preambular language is not legally binding."

It seems that the administration and its Senate allies are willing to say anything to get the 67 votes needed for ratification. Any day now, we may hear Harry Reid announce that "we have to ratify this treaty so that you can find out what is in it."

The administration is playing a shell game here. It promises on one hand that it will not agree to any limitations or constraints on U.S. missile defenses, but on the other hand that the U.S. will take no action that will affect the strategic balance with Russia. The fact is, any missile-defense system capable of defending America and its allies against non-Russian ballistic missiles will necessarily affect the strategic balance with Russia. One cannot exist without the other.

Groves goes on to aptly point out that the Senate needs to get to the bottom of this "shell game" and have a full understanding of how this treaty will affect U.S. missile defenses before it allows itself to be stampeded into making uninformed decisions on existential issues regarding the U.S. nuclear arsenal and missile defenses in a truncated lame-duck session. As Baker Spring has discussed in detail at The Heritage Foundation, the New START is based on a bias against missile defense, it imposes direct restrictions on U.S. missile defense options, and that even New START advocates on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee no longer believe the Obama Administration's assertions regarding the treaty's impact on missile defense. In other words, there's little to no doubt that New START, either directly or indirectly, imposes restrictions on the U.S. missile defense options against limitations that could be imposed on it by the treaty.

"Shell game"? Hardly. What the Obama administration and their supporters in the Senate have been saying goes beyond simple slight of hand.

Posted by Richard at December 1, 2010 1:56 PM

• Has the Obama Administration Been Lying About New START's Effect on Our Missile Defense? - Dec 01, 2010