What has been learned from New START?

As I’m typing this very sentence, it looks like the New START treaty will be passed.  This happened even though GOP arms control pointman Senator Jon Kyl acted like a petulant child for the last month came out in opposition to the treaty (along with Mitch McConnell). 

Slate’s David Weigel Fred Kaplan has an excellent summary of why the GOP leadership failed to halt ratification, even though the threshold for blocking it was only 34 senators: 

If a Republican were president, the accord would have excited no controversy and at most a handful of diehard nays. As even most of its critics conceded, the treaty’s text contains nothing objectionable in substance.

There were two kinds of opponents in this debate. The first had concerns that President Barack Obama would use the treaty as an excuse to ease up on missile defense and the programs to maintain the nuclear arsenal. In recent weeks, Obama and his team did as much to allay these concerns as any hawk could have hoped—and more than many doves preferred.

So that left the second kind of opponent: those who simply wanted to deny Obama any kind of victory. The latter motive was clearly dominant in this debate (emphasis added)

Let’s step back here for a second and contemplate the truth and meaning of that last sentence.  Is it true?  Kevin Drum and Greg Sargent clearly think the answer is yes, and they’ve got some damning quotes to back up their argument.  Rich Lowry is particularly revealing on this point: 

As the sense builds that ratification is inevitable, Republicans are lining up to get on the “right side.” Lamar Alexander’s support, noted below, is a crucial sign of which way the wind is blowing, although he’ll probably be the only member of the Republican leadership to vote for it. At least Jon Kyl was able to get more money for modernization and that letter from President Obama making assurances on missile defense. Otherwise, this is a dismaying rout (emphasis added)

Um… at best, this is a dismaying rout for the GOP, not the USA.   As Weigel Kaplan points out, however, it’s not elements of the GOP didn’t favor the treaty:  

The task of Obama and the Democratic floor managers, Sens. Harry Reid and John Kerry, was to convince enough Republicans to view the issue not as political gamesmanship but as an urgent matter of national security. Hence their rallying of every retired general, former defense secretary, and other security specialist—Republican and Democrat—that anyone had ever heard of. (At one point, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she might vote for the treaty if former President George H.W. Bush endorsed it. A few days later, Bush released a statement doing just that.)

A few other things happened as well.  Beyond the U.S. foreign policy establishment, the Eastern European foreign policy establishment got behind the treaty.  There’s also the fact that some GOP senators are still nursing a grudge against other GOP senators.  Josh Rogin also points out that the treaty always had GOP supporters.  And, finally, the Obama administration wisely decided to go to the mat on what was a rather unobjectionable treaty, no matter how hard John Bolton bloviates on the matter.  

What does this mean going forward?  In my bloggingheads with Matthew Yglesias last week, I was optimistic that Kyl’s blatant obstructionism was a step too far, and that maybe this will lead to a little less needless obstructionism when it comes foreign policy.  There’s also the fact that the American people seems to really like what’s happened during the lane duck session.  Perhaps the GOP legislators that want to get re-elected will take note of that fact and decide that some cooperaion with the Obama administration on things like KORUS and arms control are a decent idea (there’s also the fact that more GOP legislators from Democrat-friendly territory means more moderate Republicans). 

That said, the nuclear negotiations with Russia only get harder from here.  Plus, my gut tells me that the GOP leadership will become even more obsteperous going forward in order to bolster their reputation as the really tough bargaining party and eliminate the bitter aftertaste they’re feeling from the lame duck session. 

What do you think?