A Loss for the U.S. in World

WASHINGTON —  Real U.S. security interests were damaged not only by what the recent Senate rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty does, but also by what the stand represents. In effect, the Senate jeopardized a half century of bipartisan support for a responsible international U.S. role. To be sure, it was easier to create consensus during the Cold War, when the United States faced an implacable foe, but that is the point: We are defining the U.S. role in the post-Cold War world. The Senate’s action goes a long way toward telling the world that the United States places not only its own parochial interests, but even domestic partisan interests, above its responsibilities in the world.

The Senate’s rejection of the test-ban treaty does not stand alone in cultivating that impression. The world’s wealthiest country persists in thumbing its nose at the international community by failing to pay its agreed share of financing for the United Nations. Now, the world’s mightiest nation, which has conducted more nuclear-weapons tests than all other countries combined, airily declines to ratify a treaty that would require us to accept a modest constraint on what remains an unparalleled technological capability for preserving and even enhancing U.S. nuclear-weapons superiority. Washington declares it will not even join the lesser nuclear powers (committed to real constraints) in taking a cautious step toward our end of the deal with nonnuclear countries in forging an international regime of nuclear weapons nonproliferation, a matter of great importance to U.S., as well as world, security.

The most dedicated opponents of the test-ban treaty saw its defeat as the first major step in rolling back the existing arms-control regime. They do not just oppose a test ban; indeed, it probably doesn’t even rank high in their concerns. But it was the most vulnerable. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is next. If so, then strategic-arms limitations: the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty of the 1970s, through the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I, the START II Treaty still awaiting Russian ratification and, prospectively, a START III treaty.

The same hard-line opponents of the test-ban treaty already argue that the ABM treaty is defunct because the Soviet Union no longer exists. It is an untenable position, but Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) has insisted that the protocols on ABM treaty succession be considered by the Senate together with amendments to START II and promised to press for renunciation of the ABM treaty. The greater threat, however, is that the pursuit of a national missile defense system, now accepted by both Congress and the Clinton administration, may lead Russia to renounce all strategic-arms control.

The rejection of the test-ban treaty is a challenge to strategic stability that defies common sense. The purported reasons for rejecting the treaty are, if not contrived, weak. If some small nuclear tests could evade detection by our existing technical means, that would, of course, also be true under the treaty--but the treaty provides additional verification and recourse for clarifying possible noncompliance, as well as the sanction of an internationally approved repudiation of any testing. In the unlikely event that U.S. national-security interests were threatened by any evasion of compliance (or the actions of a nonsignatory) the treaty provides for withdrawal. We would be no worse off then had the treaty and its powerful inhibitions on testing not been in effect.

There is no need for testing for the United States to assure reliability of proven nuclear weapons, and no identifiable requirement for any nuclear-weapons designs that would require testing. The test ban would, however, constrain potential proliferation. The real concern underlying these objections is one of principle: Blanket opposition to U.S. participation in a global security regime. There are those who do not favor international arms control any more than they do gun control at home.

The impact of the Senate action on U.S. relations with Russia is indirect, but not inconsequential. It was seen as but the latest sign of U.S. arrogance and unilateralism. From the Russian standpoint, the United States first chose the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, rather than the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, which includes Russia, as the principal security organization in Europe; then it expanded NATO to the East over Russian objections and with no evident need to do so; and, finally, it abandoned its reassurances that NATO was just a defensive alliance and bulldozed through a NATO intervention in Kosovo without mandate from either the U.N. Security Council or the OSCE. Now, the United States has abandoned the collaborative effort to build a global nonproliferation regime with the comprehensive test ban as a key component. And it has announced another “not whether but when” decision to proceed with a national missile defense--regardless of the outcome of talks with Russia on amending the ABM treaty.

Senate rejection of the test-ban treaty is widely recognized to have been a serious failure of U.S. responsibility as a world power. Even many who had reservations about terms of the treaty, including some senators who voted against ratification, have conceded that there would be adverse international repercussions. Indeed, nearly two-thirds of the senators signed a letter urging that a vote not be taken at this time. Yet, it was held, and, on nearly straight party lines, the treaty was rejected.

Predictably, Democrats (and some Republicans) blamed the rejection on the capitulation of GOP leadership to a strident minority determined to both trash the treaty and deal a blow to President Bill Clinton and the Democrats. And Republicans (and some Democrats) have put much of the blame on Clinton for a poorly managed effort to push the treaty through, gambling on traditional reluctance to undercut not only a president but also U.S. standing. Blame enough to share there may be, but the rejection of the treaty bespeaks insufficient awareness in the Senate, and the country, of the wide repercussions and extent of the damage.

It is ironic that the strategic-arms-control regime now threatened by GOP attack largely rests on achievements of GOP administrations (albeit with Democratic support): SALT and the ABM treaty under President Richard M. Nixon; the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty under President Ronald Reagan; and START under President George Bush. And, of course, the Comprehensive Test Ban has been a goal of all administrations, beginning with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 41 years ago.

But, as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) remarked after the Senate vote, “There are some who just want to have Fortress America.” This reflects the real agenda of those who maneuvered a minority of Republicans into a partisan majority. They are not isolationist, as some have labeled them. They are unilateralists, who want the United States to call the tune, and go it alone when necessary. Many are also supremacists, who think Washington can, and should, use its power, unfettered, to manage the new world order.

Paradoxically, this turn toward unilateral supremacism undermines the U.S. leadership role in the world. This was clear when the Senate ignored a rare appeal by President Jacques Chirac of France, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, all staunch U.S. allies.

Another disturbing aspect of the Senate action is its reflection of a new partisanship. It is sad when knowledgeable and responsible members of either party, in this case, Republicans such as Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, Sen. Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia and Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, bow to partisan discipline in support of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s deference to such hard-liners as Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona and Helms. Rancor is high, and some Republicans are too eager to find any way to vent their hostility to Clinton.

The test-ban treaty was, in effect, a stand-in victim of impeachment. Nonetheless, it is a sad and dangerous matter when U.S. security interests and a constructive role in the world become a political football. World politics do not wait on hold while U.S. politics are indulged. We need to think more seriously about creation of a new world order and our role in the process. We must all strive to make the Senate’s recent action on the test ban an exception rather than see it establish a new broader pattern. *