Ellen Tauscher had an interesting comment in the press yesterday when she quipped

“From a distance, it could look like, ‘How do you do all that?’” said Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher. “It’s like the operation of a very high-end restaurant kitchen. It may look chaotic, but beautiful things come out of it.”

While Tauscher seemed to be referring to the larger set of policy priorities the Obama administration is dealing with beyond just arms control issues, such as health care and climate, there's another arms control issue quickly coming up on the horizon for the Obama kitchen that has been a hot topic of discussion in back channel correspondence with some nuclear folk over the past few days: CTBT. As some of the cooks scramble to finish "New START" by 5 December, the focus will begin to shift towards planning the elusive CTBT ratification recipe. Unfortunately for the administration, it has to cope with both domestic and international forces pulling it in somewhat opposing directions. Internationally, the looming question is the ever important May 2010 Review Conference. Obviously, the administration would love to have CTBT ratification in its pocket heading into the RevCon so it can further highlight good faith efforts to move toward Article VI. Domestically, however, it is trying to cook a host of complicated dishes, including the Health Care reform Clinton was unable to get and passing climate legislation during the greatest economic downturn in a century without even mentioning "New START." Getting CTBT ratified in time for the Review Conference is going to be a tough task. Assuming the administration doesn't win the quickfire challenge and get CTBT before May, there's two looming questions:

What does the administration serve at the 2010 Review Conference?

In light of Prague, there's suddenly renewed momentum for arms control and disarmament that hasn't been seen in some time as evidenced in the past couple of news cycles by the new group in Britain supporting disarmament and the surprisingly optimistic quotes in GSN's article about Obama's momentum being able to bring the CTBT into force. This new momentum has many eyes focused on the 2010 Review Conference, particularly given how poorly the 2005 Conference went, as a major indicator of whether the international community can move away from the "tipping point" of proliferation referred to in the Strategic Posture Commission Interim Report. And while the administration does have a number of things going for it this time around thanks to Prague (and perhaps a "New START" by that time), the U.S. and the rest of the nuclear powers will still be vulnerable to many of the arguments consistently made at Review Conferences. If the PrepCom was any indicator, Iran will show up with a number of papers in an effort to put the pressure back on the U.S./P5. The U.S. (and Russia) will still be blamed for having the most weapons and moving too slowly on Article VI. Egypt, a major spoiler in 2005, will still play the Israel card. The tough task for the Obama team, including many of the major players on this at State like Ellen Tauscher, Rose Gottemoeller, and probably most directly Susan Burk, is to figure out how the U.S. is going to position itself at the Review Conference to respond to the series of criticisms that will inevitably be made (which includes CTBT if they show up sans it). Emphasizing reductions and steps taken towards zero is important but as a senior scholar said in an off the record meeting: that's like Warren Buffet saying he gave up $1000. The U.S. also has to walk a tough line when it comes to taking the offensive against countries and problems they want to deal with. They didn't mention Iran by name at the PrepCom, likely in an effort to be consistent with Obama's unclenched fist, but at what point might respect just buy them more time as reports swirl about their ability to build a bomb if they opted for one. Israel is another touchy subject. Gottemoeller's letter read the PrepCom made a reference to all countries joining the NPT which clearly includes Israel (and which some took an extreme) but how much can the administration reasonably lean on its long time partner given how tumultuous the relationship currently remains? The Chinese have tactfully managed to duck criticism underneath the P5 umbrella when it comes to issues like transparency but also get play as a partner to the NAM. None of these will be easy questions solve. Bruno Tertrais rightly pointed out recently that getting on the same page with the P3 is a step in the right direction but these a lot to be done to figure out how the U.S. wants to position itself heading into the RevCon.

Can they get enough votes in the Senate to vote for their dish as they conceive it?

This is probably the more vexing question for the administration. The first question is a basic one: are the votes there? At this point is seems like that answer is a pretty clear no. Minority whip McConnell has less than kind things to say about the CTBT and is outflanked on the issue by his assistant Kyl. Not long after Prague, John Isaacs had a great read detailing the difficulties in trying to get to 67:

That brings the number of treaty supporters to 60 if a new vote were held today. But getting from 60 probable votes to 67 sure votes is like forging a raging river at the finish line of a 10-mile hike. As I wrote in an earlier piece, Republicans in Congress have been unified in their opposition to the bulk of Obama's agenda. Only three Senate Republicans voted for the economic stimulus package, and that was three more than voted for the annual budget resolution. It will be tricky to break this pattern of Republican unity against the Obama administration's goals. The anti-treaty forces are led by two key Republican senators: John Kyl of Arizona and Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Both were in the Senate in 1999; both voted against the CTBT at that time, with Kyl leading the anti-treaty forces; both have made it clear that they remain adamantly opposed to the treaty; and both are in key positions in 2009--Kyl as Republican whip and Sessions as the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee . . . It will be difficult to pick off Republican votes one by one. Senators studiously avoid taking positions if an issue isn't expected to reach the Senate floor for many months, or even years. And any GOP member who might think of voting for the test ban treaty will face strong party pressure to stay neutral or outright defiant. Thus, the easiest way out for any senator who might be "persuadable" is to stay quiet at the moment.

Michael Krepon at ACW also had a great read on the politics of arms control ratification (followed up by NOH here) on why the support of those two positions historically has been vital to passing arms control agreements and despite indications McCain and Lugar are willing to reconsider the AFP notes today:

Members of the British group expressed concern that six months after a key speech in Prague -- when Obama called for a world free of nuclear weapons -- he may lack votes in the US Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) . . . With Obama's agenda topped by his ambitious plan to overhaul the US health care system and growing violence in Afghanistan, his administration has narrowly focused its arms control policies on obtaining a new nuclear arms reduction pact with Russia to replace a treaty that expires in December.

The worry about prematurely sending out the CTBT dish to the Senate before it is ready should not be underestimated. There's a strong chance it would be "pack your knives and go" for the Prague agenda, at least for quite some time, if the United States can't even get CTBT ratified. CTBT is one of the more basic steps on the Prague agenda, relatively speaking. It is a fully agreed upon international treaty that has been ratified by a host of countries and signed by even more. If the United States can't get that done domestically after over a decade of consideration (albeit 8 of those years with an administration that had no interest in ratification) on the heels of an historic speech for moving the world toward a world without nuclear weapons, how in the world is it going to take some of the other necessary steps towards zero like negotiating and implementing verifiable caps on military fissile material (FMCT) or engaging in much bolder reductions in START 3.0 that require tackling a number of very thorny issues?

That begs the obviously question: what can the Administration do to get the votes it needs? There seems to be two major strategies. The first is to convince 7 folks that the times have changed. LEP/SSP worked better than we thought it would. Verification technology is greatly improved in the last decade. Etc. [Former National Security Advisor Samuel] Berger, [Former Secretary of Defense Bill] Perry, and [CSIS Co-Chairman Sam] Nunn optimistically explain:

A methodical and deliberate approach like this - involving hearings in the Foreign Relations, Armed Services, and Intelligence Committees - can not and should not be rushed. It must be conducted in a way that allows individual Senators to approach the issue of CTBT ratification with an open mind, and to reassess the pros and cons in light of developments over the past decade, such as progress in maintaining our nuclear deterrent through science-based stockpile stewardship and the ongoing deployment of new monitoring stations to detect any cheating. Moreover, it must be designed with time and space for concerns to be raised and creative solutions to emerge, not to push Senators of either party into a premature vote. Senator John McCain has suggested we should take "another look at the CTBT to see what can be done to overcome the shortcomings that prevented it from entering into force." We believe Senator McCain is right: there needs to be an investment of time and trust-building to gain the support of key Senators, like Richard Lugar. And there are signs that such a process would bear fruit: former Secretary Shultz recently noted that Republicans "might have been right voting against it some years ago, but they would be right voting for it now, based on these new facts."

The second strategy is one focused on making the concessions necessary to get the necessary buy-in from key republicans who will then allow the party doors to be opened and let the treaty receive the high number of votes past arms control agreements received as detailed in Krepon's post. The worry with this tactic is that in the same way Biden is worried m word efforts will undermine nonproliferation efforts CTBT becomes a stumbling block rather than an enabler for the Prague vision. Greg Mello explains:

The high price of closing today’s 7-vote gap could set limits on U.S. disarmament diplomacy for years to come, and could also forestall the gradual budgetary disinvestment in nuclear weapons that quietly began in 2006. To buy the votes needed, the CTBT will have to become, as far as the U.S. is concerned, a nuclear sustainment treaty. Any ratification deal would be aimed, in part, precisely at negating the treaty’s disarmament impact. At a minimum, any such deal would attempt to inoculate the nuclear weapons establishments of the Department of Defense and Department of Energy against institutional decline, as much as possible. Elements of any deal might include floors under nuclear weapons budgets, commitments to develop new missiles, submarines, and reentry vehicles, promises to re-open the prospect of new warheads (as a Council on Foreign Relations panel recommended last week), commitments to new warhead factories (the fate of which is currently hanging in the balance), commitments to creating nuclear weapons educational and training programs and scholarships to ensure the availability of skilled workers, and so on

These strategies aren't exclusive of one another and the administration will probably pursue aspects of both in trying get the 7 precious votes. The chefs will have to work on convincingly persuading key senators enough of their objections can be sufficiently assuaged this time around (hence actions like commissioning the NAS Study) as well as starting to figure out what sort of concessions it might be able to live with if it had to and which would be too much for the nonproliferation regime to swallow. That will be a challenge.