Sec Fear: Problems with New START Treaty

American workers are building our anti-balistic missile defense system.

DoF has serious concerns about New START and we fully support the efforts of a few Senate Republicans to kill the treaty by amending it.   Malcolm P. Stag III, Secretary of Fear, explained the department's opposition to New START during a speech Monday at the US Chamber of Commerce:

Failure to ratify New START will make it more difficult to prevent other states from building up nuclear arsenals of their own. Even if killing New START doesn't spark a three-way nuclear arms race between the Russians, the Chinese, and ourselves, it is certain to curtail support for the NPT. Presently, the rationale for America's strategic defense initiative depends on the indefinite continuation of the rogue regimes ruling Iran and North Korea. Yet, both of these unpopular regimes could collapse at any time, depriving us of our strongest sales pitch for anti-ballistic missile technology.   Even nuclear proliferation has an upside: it opens up an array of new markets for our anti-ballistic missile defense systems. 

It has been correctly pointed out that Russia's poorly defended nuclear weapons stockpile will not be easy for the US to monitor should New START fail. This situation also has an economic upside: It will provide an incentive for greater investment in an array of counter-terrorism measures. Also, emergency preparedness, including bomb-shelter design and construction. Tolerating higher risk in one area has the advantage of stimulating more investment in other areas, creating new jobs and boosting the US economy. 

Arms control is fundamentally incompatible with the sustained growth of the security and defense sectors.... Let us not forget that the New Start treaty was negotiated during a decade of economic prosperity and jobs growth. Given the recent slowdown in the US economy, ratification of New START can no longer be justified on economic grounds.

DoF is optimistic that geo-politically speaking, killing New START ought to be sufficiently destabilizing to spur the US economy for decades to come.   From the perspective of the DoF, the economic case against New START is bunker-strong.