The Obama administration’s arms control team has to be tired. It took great effort to secure two time-sensitive and essential agenda items – negotiating a new strategic arms reduction treaty to replace one that was due to expire in December 2009, and engineering a positive NPT Review Conference in May 2010.

President Obama succeeded on both fronts. On its merits, New START should have been a walk in the park, but die-hard Republicans turned ratification into a cliff-hanger. The NPT RevCon was also a must win, since the Treaty couldn’t afford another train wreck like the previous conference in 2005.

There was much else to do, right away. President Obama oversaw policy reviews, hosted a meaningful nuclear security summit, and articulated his vision of a world without nuclear weapons. There were also wars to conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other pressing agenda items with Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, the Arab Spring, Muammar Qaddafi, a flagging economy, a debt crisis, and Republicans on Capitol Hill who equate compromise with surrender. This list is exhausting, but not exhaustive.

Arms control agenda items rise to the top when they can’t be postponed. JFK felt compelled to do something about the scourge of atmospheric nuclear testing. Richard Nixon had no choice but to nail down the NPT and negotiate the Strategic Arms Limitation accords. President Carter had a long ‘to do’ list on arms control that was winnowed down to negotiating and ratifying SALT II. President Reagan could not sidestep the dual track of impending “Euromissile” deployments and negotiations.

Except for when the Soviet Union was collapsing, big arms control achievements typically happen in the first half of a President’s four-year term, or outcomes drag out and success becomes harder to achieve, especially for Democratic Presidents. Less pressing arms control objectives are usually displaced by other deadline-driven agenda items and by upcoming elections.

Team Obama is still working hard, but has now gone mostly under the radar on the remainder of its ambitious arms control agenda. Work on nuclear security continues. The administration’s declared top-most multilateral negotiating objective is a fissile material cut-off treaty. The road ahead will be long and filled with potholes. The President’s emissaries are canvassing to see whether the CTBT might secure the consent of 67 Senators, an extremely hard sell when Republicans on Capitol Hill have that lean and hungry look. Talks with Moscow on expanding the scope and depth of nuclear arms reductions will be difficult and time consuming. The initiative of a Code of Conduct for responsible space-faring nations endorsed by presidential candidate Barack Obama remains unmentioned by the White House.

These dynamics – or rather this lack of dynamism – reflect very hard problems and overburdened political appointees. New achievements will require the President’s surrogates to catch their breath and somehow pick up the pace. Conditions must also break right for more arms control successes under this President.

How, then, to proceed? In cases where there are structural impediments, such as the Conference on Disarmament, where the FMCT is supposed to be negotiated, and the Constitutional requirement for the Senate’s consent to treaty ratification, the Obama administration deserves some slack. Making the CD functional again — or creating an ad hoc forum to make progress on the FMCT — and finding enough Republican support for the CTBT will take time.

Two arms control time lines beckon, the 2012 nuclear security summit in Seoul and a conference on a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction, as promised at the 2010 NPT RevCon. Tangible progress and bankable commitments can be secured in Seoul. Planning for the conference on a WMDFZ in the Middle East has been slowed by political upheaval in the Arab world, especially in Egypt. In the wake of a UN Security Council vote on Palestinian statehood, Iran’s blatant disregard for the IAEA’s reports and UN resolutions on its nuclear program, and the deterioration of Israel’s diplomatic relations with Egypt, Jordan and Turkey, conditions for a successful conference are very poor. (Note that I didn’t use the formulation “couldn’t be worse,” because they are likely to become worse.)

Two agenda items can easily be lost in the shuffle – the CTBT and the Code of Conduct for space. On both fronts, the Obama administration can still help steer positive outcomes without expending great political capital, while bypassing structural impediments. First, as posted previously, useful steps to make the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization’s valuable services permanent rather than provisional can be taken while awaiting the treaty’s entry into force.

The Obama administration can also do more to fulfill the President’s campaign promise to seek a space Code of Conduct. While the Pentagon was completing its assessment of the utility of a Code of Conduct, State Department officials lined up behind the European Union’s draft. “Leading from behind” on the Code will be less successful than with the ouster of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. The E.U. deserves kudos for moving the ball up the field, but it can’t seem to score the winning goal.

Meanwhile, Moscow has engineered the creation of a group of governmental experts at the United Nations, which will begin its deliberations on space in 2012. This forum – one quarter the size of the dysfunctional Conference on Disarmament – will include key states needed to de-regionalize the E.U.’s draft code. The GGE could become a vehicle for this purpose. Alternatively, Moscow and Beijing could try to use this forum to promote their proposed treaty to prevent space weapons that cannot be usefully defined or properly verified. In other words, the GGE could become a stepping stone toward a negotiating achievement or another stone in a blank wall of diplomatic obstruction.

The GGE presents a rare, near-term opportunity, but one that can be lost through bureaucratic timidity and high-level fatigue. Obstructionists thrive under these conditions. The Code of Conduct is garnering growing domestic and international support. It also has a few, hard-core opponents in the United States who speak louder when the Obama administration has lost its voice.

During the Bush administration, opponents of a Code of Conduct argued that if something ain’t broke, it didn’t need fixin’. Translation: the United States needed to maximize freedom of action in outer space and to reject any restraining measures, including a Code of Conduct. The results of this approach are now evident in the form of an unprecedented increase in space debris, a satellite collision, and tests or pseudo-tests of anti-satellite weapons.

It is clear to most space watchers that something most definitely is broken and in need of fixing, most immediately in low earth orbit, where debris hazards, ASAT capabilities, and space traffic management have become serious concerns. Opposition to whatever President Obama tries to do in space, as on earth, is endemic in some circles. Space diplomacy offers the Obama administration a welcome reprieve from trench warfare, since executive agreements like a space Code of Conduct are not treaties, do not require the approval of two-thirds of the Senate, and are a clear presidential prerogative.

The high-water mark for space diplomacy occurred in a brief five-year window framed by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 1972 ABM Treaty. There has been very little effort ever since to lend order to this essential but chaotic domain. In the absence of sensible rules of the road for space, U.S. national and economic security will be jeopardized. A Code of Conduct could therefore be a considerable as well as an essential diplomatic achievement. But at this juncture in the Code’s evolution, the Obama administration is still stuck in first gear.

Note to readers: Part of this post appeared as an op-ed in Space News.