Abstract
“It's not going to happen on my watch,” Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proclaimed on October 1, as he and other Republicans maneuvered to reject ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Arms control diplomats from around the world were dismayed by the rejection vote, and—as symbolized by Helms's remark— shocked by the cavalier way in which the Senate treated such an important treaty.
The vote seemed to be one more bit of evidence that the United States, or at least a significant fraction of its body politic, thinks itself above collective nonproliferation and security arrangements.
Amid deteriorating international relations, especially with Russia and China, there is a fear in the arms control and nonproliferation world that shortsighted domestic and commercial interests will drive U.S. policy toward initiating a new arms race that could bring the nonproliferation regime crashing down.
The obvious first casualty of the Senate vote may have been the CTBT itself. Amb. Jaap Ramaker of the Netherlands, who chaired the final year of CTBT negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament, said he hoped the Senate decision was not irreversible. The treaty, he said, created “a powerful barrier against ever more devastating nuclear weaponry no one needs.” The treaty, he added, was “a win-win situation for the United States and the world at large.”
A second casualty, at least over the long run, may be the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which has been in force since 1970. According to Jayantha Dhanapala, the president of the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference and now U.N. under-secretary general for disarmament affairs, the promise to complete the test ban treaty was a critical reason why the state parties to the NPT agreed to the indefinite extension of that treaty “through a carefully interlaced package of decisions and a resolution.”
That package, says Dhanapala, “has now begun to be undone on the eve of the critical NPT review conference.”
Locking in preeminence
The first review conference since the NPT'S indefinite extension will be in New York in late April and early May. Senatorial rejection of the CTBT will not be the only hot item at the meeting, of course. The conference was already facing political questions caused by the 1998 Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests, the impasse in the U.S.-Russian negotiations on strategic nuclear reductions, deadlock in the Conference on Disarmament over beginning negotiations to ban the production of fissile materials for weapons, possible noncompliance by Iraq and North Korea, slow progress on the goal of strengthened International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, and concerns by non-nuclear weapon states in the Middle East that the NPT does not effectively address the problem of Israel's un-safeguarded program.
No one said multilateralism would be easy. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the 187 parties to the NPT have adhered to their obligations. Individually, some might have decided that their security necessitated the development of nuclear weapons. But they have refrained from going nuclear, because they have understood that such a free-for-all would have meant living in constant jeopardy.
In contrast, the United States—as well as the other nuclear weapon states—have failed to implement their side of the bargain, despite the opportunities presented by the end of the Cold War. Indeed, since 1995, they have reinforced their reliance on nuclear doctrines.
Non-ratification of the CTBT by the United States compounds the growing perception among many non-nuclear countries that they were cheated in 1995. Off-the-record conversations with diplomats make it clear that many nations believe that the United States and the other nuclear powers seek permanent nonpro-liferation on the basis of perpetual possession by the favored few—ignoring their own Article VI obligations to pursue nuclear disarmament.
Further, it did not escape the attention of the diplomatic community that while the Republicans spoke of the need for testing to maintain and keep modernizing U.S. arsenals, advocates of the test ban argued that the CTBT would lock in U.S. dominance in nuclear technology while curbing everyone else.
Therein lies the real core of international anxiety: the United States seeks arms control only insofar as specific measures help guarantee U.S. preeminence.
Unilateralism
That top-dog attitude plays into the hands of proliferators, alienates allies, and undermines collective approaches to halting the spread of weapons, from the treaties prohibiting biological and chemical weapons to the Ottawa Convention on Landmines.
The fear underlying much international concern about the Senate rejection of the CTBT is that the United States is giving up on arms control and locking itself into a one-dimensional approach to security, driven by arms manufacturers selling high-concept defense shields and precision weapons. This illusion of individualized, technology-based safety and dominance is promised without requiring the kind of concessions inherent in collective security arrangements.
The problem is not simply “isolationism,” as some critics of the Senate vote have suggested. Indeed, some opponents of the test ban are prepared to see the United States intervene in areas like Kosovo, providing that the Pentagon gets to exercise its toys and call the shots—and as long as few Americans get hurt.
The underlying trend is toward U.S. unilateralism, which has the potential to destabilize international relations and frustrate international objectives on nonproliferation, war prevention, and disarmament.
The test ban vote has been ascribed by some to domestic squabbles and partisan politics. If that were the whole truth, there would be hope that a new administration could manage its relationship with Congress better and get treaty ratifications and foreign policy decisions through in the future.
But the Senate vote, along with the failure to make headway in deep reductions of nuclear weapon stockpiles and the likelihood for deploying a national ballistic missile defense system (as well as other actions in international fora on disarmament and arms control) suggest a bleaker scenario.
The United States is fast losing whatever authority it might have had in global efforts to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction; it is increasingly perceived as part of the problem, not as part of the solution.
If U.S. unilateralism triggers the disintegration of the system of interlocking agreements and treaties that comprise the international nonproliferation and security regimes, the consequences would be far reaching. By the time the United States realizes that partnership and restraint provide greater security than going it alone, it could be too late. Nuclear weapons are a great leveler.