Is New START a new start with Russia?

Barack Obama has finally “earned his Nobel Peace Prize,” said Christoph von Marschall in Germany’s Die Zeit. The New START disarmament treaty with Russia, which the U.S. Senate ratified in its lame-duck session after intense pressure from Obama, reduces U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals by a third and makes the world “just a little bit safer.” That alone is an achievement. But the treaty also demonstrates to other countries that the U.S. is committed to nonproliferation. Pushing it through could help win Obama international support for curbing the nuclear aspirations of Iran and North Korea.

New START is also a huge political success for the U.S. president, said France’s Le Monde in an editorial. None of his Democratic presidential predecessors ever managed to get their nuclear treaties with Moscow ratified: Carter failed, with SALT II, as did Clinton, with a test-ban agreement. Obama has shown that he is “not at all the defeated man too often presented in the aftermath of the November 2010 election.” Instead, he’s entering 2011 on a high note, with plenty of optimism.

Optimism, though, is hardly the best mind-set for dealing with Russia, said Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Obama may consider Russia a “partner” for the purposes of concluding an arms treaty, but he’d do well to remember that the country dominated by authoritarian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has a cavalier approach to the rule of law. Just last week, after a two-year “show trial,” a Russian court sentenced former Yukos Oil head Mikhail Khodorkovsky—already serving time after a 2005 conviction on politically motivated tax-fraud charges—to an additional six years in prison for defrauding stockholders. This new verdict is blatantly bogus, especially since those stockholders were making profits until the Kremlin nationalized Yukos and threw Khodorkovsky in prison. The charges against the oil tycoon weren’t really about any breach of law; rather, they were brought as “revenge” because Khodorkovsky had dared to finance Putin’s political opponents. Such a travesty of justice shows that Russia is a mafia state.

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In fact, Russia’s thuggish behavior could jeopardize New START, said Benedikt von Imhoff in Germany’s Aachener Zeitung. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev desperately wants a role for Russia in NATO’s planned missile-defense system, and he has already signaled that he’s “willing to hold START hostage” to get his way. If Russia is not allowed to join Europe’s arms shield, it could scuttle the hard-won treaty altogether. Obama can’t rest on his laurels just yet.