Bipartisan Support for Non-Proliferation Programs
Health care is a partisan issue. Economic stimulus is a partisan issue. Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has been a partisan issue. One of the few issues that rises to genuine non-partisanship is support for nuclear non-proliferation funding and the fight against nuclear terrorists. It was Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar who joined with Georgia Democratic Senator Sam Nunn to initiate the Cooperative Threat Reduction program in the 1990’s and the program has received bipartisan support ever since.
While the Bush Administration was restrained in its enthusiasm for the program, Lugar and a bipartisan group of Members of both parties and both houses of Congress rallied support to restore funding. When the program became encumbered by various bureaucratic hurdles, Lugar offered a Senate floor amendment in 2005 to expand the programs and remove the hurdles that won 78 – 19, including the support of 34 GOP Senators.
Similarly, when Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ) offered a House floor amendment to increase funding for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, he secured the votes of 39 Republicans.
All this background explains why President Obama’s goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear weapons and materials in four years and convening the Nuclear Security Summit is widely backed. The Administration hopes that the summit will agree on strengthening the international effort to prevent nuclear terrorism. If it goes well, the summit will generate new international commitments to meet the President’s goals an increase the capacity of government and international institutions to address the problems – hopefully with deadlines for goals and actions.
Whatever the outcome, bipartisan majorities are almost surely ready to support the most concrete actions that are adopted. There is a recognition by politicians of both parties that nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists are the greatest threat to the United States today. Efforts to fight this threat, even increase funding in a tight fiscal environment, are likely to be supported in this country.
John Isaacs is the Executive Director of the Council for a Livable World and a member of the Fissile Materials Working Group.
This is the third and last post in a three-part series on the Nuclear Security Summit. The first post in the series, Nuclear Security Summit Offers Unprecedented Opportunity, written by Vlad Sambaiew, was published on April 6. The second post, Will U.S. Inaction on its own Nuclear Security Issues Compromise Summit Success?, by Peter Stockton and Ingrid Drake, was published on April 7.
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Comment on April 9, 2010 @ 11:15 am