Morning Bell: The New Myths of New START

Conn Carroll / November 22, 2010

What do Senators Jon Kyl (R–AZ), Scott Brown (R–MA), and George Voinovich (R-OH) all have in common? One Senator is from a blue state, one from a red state, and the other is retiring from office all together. But last week each of them told the White House that, despite their belief in the need for a nuclear treaty with Russia, this lame duck is not the right time to vote on President Barack Obama’s New START.

Faced with these setbacks, the Obama Administration has gone into campaign mode, throwing out any argument they can think of to browbeat Senators into voting on the treaty now. Their favorite talking point is that none other than President Ronald Reagan himself would have supported this treaty. The President invoked Reagan’s name three times at a White House event last Thursday. And this Saturday he mentioned Reagan’s name five times in his weekly radio address. The problem is that Reagan would never have signed on to President Obama’s New START.

While President Reagan did negotiate and sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with the Soviet Union, that does not mean he would have signed any agreement that reduced U.S. nuclear weapons. As Heritage Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies Kim Holmes notes, Reagan would never sacrifice our missile defense capabilities for treaty concessions: “Why did Ronald Reagan walk away from Mikhail Gorbachev’s offer to eliminate nuclear weapons if only we gave up the Strategic Defense Initiative? Why did Reagan not take him up on that offer? The reason is that Reagan believed strategic defenses were the essential ingredient in disarmament—the exact opposite of what Gorbachev’s vision was then and President Obama’s vision is today.” (more…)