This past weekend, Sen. Harry Reid (R-NV) told a rally of immigration activists that Congress would start work on immigration reform as soon as lawmakers returned from recess. In what appeared to be a turnabout this afternoon, Reid stated that immigration reform wouldn’t be on the Senate’s agenda this “work period,” or before Memorial Day. Many were as quick to assume that Reid’s comments spelled immediate doom for immigration reform as those who jumped to the conclusion that immigration was next on Congress’ docket based on the Majority Leader’s statements this weekend.

However, Reid’s Press Secretary Rodell Mollineau told Wonk Room in an email this afternoon that Reid was specifically referring to immigration reform not making it to the actual Senate floor for a vote before the end of May. Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have been working on a bill that would first be introduced in the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It won’t be on the floor in the next seven weeks,” wrote Mollineau. “I can’t speak to the committee though.” The Reform Immigration for America Campaign also seemed confident that Reid’s remarks today had no effect on the prospects for immigration reform, indicating that the “path for comprehensive immigration reform remains unchanged.” Ali Noorani, Chair of the campaign, stated:

The legislative path forward to enactment of comprehensive immigration reform requires Senators Schumer and Graham to introduce their draft legislation by May 1st, allowing the Senate Judiciary Committee to “mark up” the legislation in May. This will clear the way for Senator Reid to take a bi-partisan bill to the Senate floor in the next Senate work period which begins after the Memorial Day recess.

Today’s remarks by Senator Reid about what items will be slated for action during the current work period referred to Senate floor action. Senator Reid cannot bring a bill to the floor until it is drafted, introduced, and marked up by the Senate Judiciary Committee. That is the urgent work that is required during the current work period.

We call on Senators Schumer and Graham to complete their bill so that the Senate can act.

Though Reid has by no means tabled immigration reform, getting a bill won’t be easy. The legislative calendar is packed and leaves little room for obstacles or distractions. Reid seems confident that he already has 56 votes, but he may be pressed to find the last few supporters he’ll need to get a piece of legislation past cloture. And while his statements seem to have left the prospects for reform unchanged, of more significance might be the fact that Graham was quoted today saying: “immigration is going nowhere this year.”

The holding of a Nuclear Security Summit on the scale of the gathering that created the United Nations, is an event that should have happened immediately after 9-11, almost a decade ago. Despite claims that such a summit would merely be a talking shop, the fact is that tangible and far-reaching results were achieved.

Bilateral deals were struck with the Ukraine, Chile, Canada, Mexico — all agreeing to give up their stockpiles of highly-enriched uranium. Furthermore, Russia agreed to eliminate 68 tons of weapon grade plutonium, enough for 17,000 nuclear weapons. Other countries agreed to additional steps to improve port security and to address nuclear trafficking.

Additionally, the final communique from the summit achieves a consensus on the dangers of nuclear terrorism and it gets nations to make commitments to secure all their vulnerable nuclear materials within four years. Importantly, it lays out a “work plan” for countries to follow and to ensure countries live up to these pledges, South Korea will hold a follow-up nuclear summit in two years to put pressure on countries to follow through.

This is a monumental first step, a step that should have been taken nine years ago. Graham Allison has called nuclear terrorism the “ultimate preventable catastrophe.” This is because the way Al Qaeda would develop a nuclear bomb is by stealing or buying weapons-grade uranium or plutonium and these materials can be locked down and eliminated if all countries that possessed these materials made the effort. Yet, until this Nuclear Security Summit, a far-reaching effort, despite the devastating terror attacks after 9-11, was not made. The question is why wasn’t it?

The Bush administration inexplicably failed to aggressively prioritize nuclear security. Following the 9-11 attacks, the United States had a unique opportunity where it had the overwhelming support of almost every nation in the world to push for aggressive multilateral action on this front. Yet this moment not only was not seized, but was quickly squandered through the invasion of Iraq. Instead, of focusing on the real and present nuclear danger of a nuclear terrorist attack, the Bush administration manufactured a nuclear threat and took the United States to war to remove nuclear weapons from a regime that had none.

Fundamentally, advancing nuclear security requires a concerted multilateral effort. The US cannot unilaterally eliminate or secure nuclear materials. Instead, it requires US global leadership in order to convince countries to treat this issue as a major global priority. Yet the Bush administration’s approach was built around unilateralism — whether that was the creation of a “coalition of the willing” in Iraq or by sending UN hater John Bolton to be America’s ambassador to the world. Thus nuclear security was an issue that the Bush administration was not ideologically built to tackle.

As a result, years have gone by, more nuclear materials have gone missing, and the dangers of nuclear attack against the United States has grown.

In an interesting twist, the Wall Street Journal oped page today chose to highlight the split between moderates and extremists within the Republican foreign policy establishment.

The WSJ published the thoughts of six former senior Nixon, Reagan, and Bush W. national security officials on Obama’s nuclear agenda. The result was a debate that clearly demonstrates that opposition to Obama’s nuclear agenda is only really coming from the far-right neoconservatives. Half the authors were firmly in support (George Schultz, Richard Burt, and Fred C. Iklé), one was lukewarm (James Schlesinger), and two were negative (Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle). Collectively, these pieces expose a conservative national security movement that is completely cracking.

On the one hand, the traditional realist conservatives, such as Schultz, Kissinger, Powell, Scowcroft, Lugar, have all come out in support of Obama’s nuclear agenda. This has left conservative opponents to Obama’s agenda — either motivated by political or ideological reasons — scrambling to find an adequate response. The result has been a completely incoherent and divided lines of attack, with opponents making two contradictory arguments: that Obama’s efforts are either so effective that they are destroying US security and endangering America or that they are entirely insignificant.

Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle in the Journal both essentially go for the latter approach, arguing that the actions on the nuclear agenda insignificant and argue that the focus should be on Iran. Wolfowitz writes that:

The relatively modest additional reductions agreed to by Presidents Obama and Medvedev do little to change that fundamental picture… To be serious about a world without nuclear weapons, we must face some serious questions—questions that have nothing to do with U.S. or Russian numbers.

Richard Perle echoed:

But no one believes the threat we face today comes from Russia’s arsenal. It simply does not matter how many weapons Russia has. What does matter, as we face increasing danger from nuclear powers like North Korea now, and Iran all too soon.

Arguing that New START is not significant or “modest” is not an argument against the treaty. Furthermore, the other major thrust of Wolfowitz and Perle’s pieces are that a New START treaty won’t solve the North Korea or Iran problems. But again, this is not an argument against Obama’s nuclear agenda. This is merely a diversionary argument, since no one is arguing that a New START or the Nuclear Posture Review or the Nuclear Security Summit will solve these problems. All neoconservatives are left with are baseless and un-serious claims about missile defense.

The weakness and incoherence of these arguments demonstrates not just that neoconservatives have little to argue, but that there opposition is driven largely not about the merits of the New START treaty, but about ideology and politics. The fact that the two opponents of Obama’s nuclear security agenda in the Wall Street Journal debate were two of the most prominent neoconservative architects of the Iraq war and the disastrous first term foreign policy of the Bush administration is not a coincidence. Instead, this is a reflection of where the opposition to Obama’s nuclear agenda is coming from.

As the START treaty and the NPR is reviewed in Congress it will therefore give greater clarity over where the current GOP stands on national security. It is pretty clear, given the statements of Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and John McCain (R-AZ), that a large portion of the Senate GOP will stand with the neoconservatives like Wolfowitz and Perle. But others such as Lamar Alexander, Richard Lugar, and Bob Corker have tried to maintain a more moderate persona on national security. The question will therefore be whether moderates are able to moderate. The debate over START is therefore shaping up to be a debate not about the treaty itself, but about whether Republican foreign policy realists and moderates still have a place in the current GOP.