Condoleezza Rice Urges Senate GOP to Ratify New START Soon
Condoleezza Rice Urges Senate GOP to Ratify New START Soon
By Sara Sorcher
National Journal
WASHINGTON — As Senate Republicans continue their standoff over the New START treaty until disputes over tax cuts and spending are resolved, Condoleezza Rice yesterday urged them to give priority to approving the treaty during the lame-duck session (see GSN, Dec. 6).
Rice’s public call for Senate GOP support for the treaty, made in an opinion column in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, makes her the last of six living Republican former secretaries of State to press for action on the arms pact, which would reduce the nuclear weapons stockpile in the U.S. and Russia by roughly a third.
Rice, who served in former President George W. Bush’s Cabinet, said that all senators should ratify a treaty she asserted is vital to national security, partly because it “helpfully reinstates on-site verification of Russian nuclear forces” that lapsed after the original START treaty expired last year. She said the Senate also should signal to Moscow that the pact won’t limit U.S. missile defenses.
“I have personally witnessed Moscow’s tendency to interpret every utterance as a binding commitment,” Rice wrote. “The Russians need to understand that the U.S. will use the full-range of American technology and talent to improve our ability to intercept and destroy the ballistic missiles of hostile countries.”
Rice joins five former GOP secretaries of State: Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker III, Lawrence Eagleburger and Colin Powell, who all said in a Washington Post op-ed last week that the Obama administration has made important concessions to appease the treaty’s critics.