McConnell: Treaty a Non-Starter

Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell won't vote for the START treaty:

The Senate’s Republican leader came out Sunday against a nuclear arms treaty with Russia, warning Democrats not to rush through President Barack Obama’s foreign policy priority in the final days of the postelection Congress. Top Democrats still expressed confidence the Senate would ratify the accord by year’s end.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., made no prediction about the treaty’s success or failure if it came to a vote, but he said many Republicans were just now getting deeply involved in the issue.

“Members are uneasy about it, don’t feel thoroughly familiar with it, and I think we would have been a lot better off to take our time,” McConnell said. “Rushing it right before Christmas strikes me as trying to jam us. … I think that was not the best way to get the support of people like me.”

Hopefully he can hold the GOP caucus together enough to stop this thing.

I had some previous thoughts on these kinds of treaties:

There's no reason to ratify any arms agreement with Russia. Why? Because when we do we restrict and reduce our own defense capabilities while the Russians just go on doing whatever they like. They lie. It's in their nature.

The concept of M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction) served us well when both sides had massive amounts of nuclear weapons. Nobody was going to start a war with the other guy knowing it could not possibly be survivable. The more we reduce our stockpiles the more the other guy begins to think that he might just be able to get away with something.

And, of course, if we negotiate away our ability to create a missile defense, we just play right into their hands.

No more treaties - they make politicians and diplomats feel good but they're meaningless in terms of our actual national security.

Stop it, toss it, and don't bother negotiating anything else.