Dead on delivery

The GOP's midterm gains are certain to kill Obama's arms-control deal with Russia

Daniel Larison

The significant Republican gains in the Senate in Tuesday’s election are likely to undermine one of the administration’s greatest foreign policy successes, and in the process they will worsen U.S. relations abroad and harm U.S. security interests. After the Republican gain of six seats in the Senate, including Mark Kirk of Illinois, who will be seated immediately, the arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, known as START, has much less of a chance of passing during the lame-duck session before January.

Many Republican Senators are reluctant to vote on the treaty before next year, and despite President Obama’s hopes for ratification, there are almost certainly not enough Republican votes right now. After the start of the new Congress, the treaty will be as good as dead. While foreign policy had essentially no role in the midterm-election debates, victorious Republicans will mistakenly see Democratic losses as a popular repudiation of both Obama’s domestic and foreign agendas, and some Republicans will interpret the result as support for their own brand of confrontational and aggressive policy overseas.

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Daniel Larison has a Ph.D. in history and is a contributing editor at The American Conservative. He also writes on the blog Eunomia.