One year ago today, President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, which was given in large part because of his commitment to nuclear arms reduction. Today, the administration’s signature foreign policy achievement, the successful negotiation of a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia, which has been essential to rehabilitating relations between the two countries, is languishing in the Senate. Why? Republicans have consistently sought to delay and obstruct the treaty, but this opposition has now faded. It is now a question of time and whether Majority Leader Harry Reid will bring New START to the floor of the Senate. The treaty, if brought up, likely has the 67 votes to achieve ratification. But thus far, START has been put off. Meanwhile, the Senate is taking the weekend off with just one week left to go until the scheduled end of the session. START is critical for our national security and advances a major progressive priority of reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world. Today, leaders from the national security, scientific, and religious communities are sending a letter to Reid urging him to “take up and approve New START now, if need be by extending the Senate in session beyond December 17.”

IT HAS THE VOTES:  Early in the lame duck session, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ)  “blindsided” the White House when he broke off months of negotiations and insisted on a delay of New START. Instead of caving,  the White House fought back. The reaction was fierce. In the last month, more than 40 editorial boards from newspapers around the country urged ratification and ripped Kyl for putting politics above America’s national security. Republican threats to delay also exposed a   deep rift within the Republican establishment, as a who’s who of Republican officials have come out urging ratification now, including this week   President George H.W. Bush and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who joined Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, James Baker, among others, in support of New START. These Republican officials join the U.S. military establishment and our Eastern European allies that live in the shadow of Russia in support of START. A recent CBS News poll found that  82 percent of the American people support the treaty. Against this wave of support, Republican intransigence has softened and now a split has emerged with a significant number of the Republican caucus favor a vote on START in the lame duck session — more than enough to ratify the treaty. Just this morning Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins said they will support START.

REID CAN FORCE A VOTE:   Unlike normal Senate legislation, which can be blocked by a filibuster that requires 60 votes to overturn, a treaty only requires 50 votes to proceed to debate and a vote. The New START treaty was therefore  not included in the letter from the Senate GOP caucus that threatened to block any legislation that was brought up before tax cuts. Unlike Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,  where Republican senators who claimed to support repeal voted to filibuster on process grounds, on START, Republicans will have to vote on the actual treaty and can’t hide behind procedure. However, Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin reported last night that some Republicans attempt to offer a number of  “treaty killing” amendments that would alter the treaty and therefore require renegotiating with Russia. Yet, these amendments can be voted down by 50 votes and were  already overcome during the vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee through the work of Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN). Republicans could use the amendment process in an effort to drag out the process, but this is why Reid should make clear that they would only be delaying their Christmas vacation.

DANGER OF DELAY:  Some Republicans  have suggested that START should be delayed for just a few months until January or February when a new Senate is sworn in. This is a ruse. At every step of the ratification process, Republicans — led by Kyl — have urged delay. Kyl was actually for holding a vote during the lame duck session, until, of course the lame duck session arrived. Furthermore, the willingness to offer treaty-killing amendments only further casts doubt on Kyl’s intentions. At the very least a delay in the treaty ratification process, which has taken nine months, would start from scratch. The  new make up of the Senate would also make getting the 67 votes for ratification much harder and would make the ratification process much more dependent on Kyl, likely leading to only  more leverage to extort nuclear pork funding. In the end, a delay would in all likelihood mean the death of the New START treaty. This would have huge consequences for our relationship with Russia, which is critical to dealing with Iran and supplying our troops in Afghanistan. Furthermore, the collapse of the verification measures that monitor Russia’s nuclear arsenal were in place under the original treaty, could eventually upset nuclear stability and lead to  significant uncertainty in nuclear relations. Failure to ratify START would also  send shockwaves around the world and would be seen as the U.S. putting a knife in the back of the whole nuclear non-proliferation regime. The consequences of delay and defeat of New START are grave.