Did Clinton Want to Lose the CTBT?

(Washington, D.C.): The level of incompetence exhibited by the Clinton Administration in its management and defense of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) has prompted some to speculate that it actually "threw" the vote in the Senate. While some of the facts seem to support this astounding thesis — as Jeff Jacoby observed in his excellent 21 October column in the Boston Globe — the truth is less Machiavellian: The Administration never dreamt that a signed arms control treaty would be rejected by the Senate, no matter how defective. It didn’t work to secure the necessary support before a vote was scheduled and only did so afterwards when it became clear that the Treaty was in serious trouble.

What certainly is true, however, is that the Clinton Administration and its allies have shamelessly sought to politicize the Senate’s action on missile defense. Mr. Jacoby’s analysis of this effort — and of the larger attempt to distort the Clinton security policy record — should be required reading for all those who wish to understand the nature and implications of the vote on the CTBT.

Democratic Cynicism on Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Jeff Jacoby

‘Bill Clinton Wanted To Lose the Test-Ban Treaty Vote," editorializes the New York Post. A daft idea? The Post marshals the evidence:

The president never called the Senate majority leader in the months before the vote to urge ratification of the treaty. The vice president never mounted a campaign to build public support for it. Top administration officials never urged Senate Republicans to bring the treaty — which was signed three years ago — to the floor. Indeed, in a strategy session with Senate Democrats on Sept. 23, national security adviser Sandy Berger schemed to embarrass Republicans in the upcoming campaign by chiding them for not having put it to a vote.

At times the cynicism was undisguised. When Senator William Roth of Delaware, a Republican, announced his opposition to the treaty, Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat, exclaimed: "Bingo! That’s $ 200,000 worth of ads."

With some honorable exceptions, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was worth more to the Democrats dead than alive. Campaigning in Seattle when the Senate voted, Al Gore was so keen to denounce the GOP that he taped a TV ad on the spot. The treaty’s "breathtakingly irresponsible" defeat, he told reporters, was the fault of "right-wing extremists." A fuming Clinton, meanwhile, was blasting the Republicans for their "reckless partisanship" and "neo-isolationism." Thanks to the Senate, he said, we now have "no other means of keeping countries around the world from developing nuclear arsenals and threatening our security."

The media loudly echoed the Democrats’ scorn. Typical was ABC correspondent Martha Raddatz’s analysis of the vote. "I think what it showed is they" — the Republicans — "don’t really care about the world at all."

There is nothing new here. It was in just such hysterical cadences that Ronald Reagan was savaged in the 1980s as he set about repairing the nation’s degraded defenses and confronting the Soviet threat. It was in such cadences that Edward Kennedy and his allies condemned those who didn’t join their "nuclear freeze" campaign a generation ago.

Fortunately, Reagan succeeded and the nuclear freeze did not. The result was that when Reagan left office, the world was a safer place, and the United States a more secure nation, than either had been eight years earlier.

But on Bill Clinton’s watch, the world has grown steadily more dangerous. In crisis after crisis, region after region, the Clinton administration’s record is one of debacle, weakness, and scandal.

Stick a pin almost anywhere on the map and see the bitter fruit of Clinton’s stewardship.

Iraq? Saddam Hussein thumbs his nose at the world, Clinton’s occasional pinprick attacks having dissuaded him not at all from his drive to build an arsenal of mass destruction. The UN weapons inspectors are long gone, driven out by Saddam when it became clear that Washington – at least under the Clinton administration – would do nothing to stop him.

Bosnia? For years the administration dithered, unwilling to take the lead in stopping Slobodan Milosevic’s brigands from slaughtering their way to a Greater Serbia. When Clinton finally did act, it was to midwife a Dayton agreement that kept Milosevic in power – and free to unleash a new bloodbath in Kosovo.

China? In exchange for campaign cash from Beijing, the Clinton White House was opened to Chinese operatives. In exchange for campaign cash from Silicon Valley, the administration approved sales of sensitive satellite technology to China. For more than six years, Clinton and Gore have refused to rock any boat that might jeopardize the access of American business to Chinese markets. They looked the other way when China proliferated nuclear weapons material to Pakistan and Iran, refused to take action when Chinese spies stole military secrets from US nuclear laboratories, and declined to reassure Taiwan that it can count on US support if it is attacked or invaded by Beijing.

In North Korea, on the subcontinent, in Indonesia, in Russia, in Rwanda, in Somalia — around the world these past seven years, America has been timid when it should have been decisive, clueless when it should have been informed, careless when it should have been vigilant.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would have made this bad resumé even worse. Unverifiable and unreliable, it would have done little to stop the spread of nuclear weapons but a good deal to weaken the US nuclear umbrella that shelters much of the free world. That is why it was opposed by a phalanx of former defense secretaries, national security advisers, and CIA directors, and that is why the Republicans killed it.

"Reckless partisanship"? "Neo-isolationism"? "Right-wing extremists"? In a way it is comical to see Clinton and Gore hurl such epithets at the likes of Richard Lugar, John McCain, Olympia Snowe, and Pete Domenici, GOP senators renowned for their international outlook and bipartisan instincts.

But there is nothing funny about the president and vice president – and many members of their party – playing politics so nakedly and dishonestly with so grave an issue. Gore and the Democrats promise to make the test ban treaty an issue in the political year ahead. Let them. They may find that the American public is not half so gullible as they imagine.