George Will, Richard Perle Sing Senate Majority’s Praises For Courageous Vote Against the Defective C.T.B.T.

(Washington, D.C.): Amidst the echo chamber of Washington spinmeisters, members of the
United States Senate — to say nothing of the public at large — could be forgiven for thinking that
the vote to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was a reckless mistake, born of
misconceptions about the merits of the treaty, an action that must be undone at the earliest
possible opportunity. Fortunately, one of the Nation’s most respected opinion-makers, href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=99-D_120a”>George F.
Will, and one of its leading security policy practitioners, former Assistant Secretary
of Defense
Richard Perle, have recently published essays (see the
attached) that debunk these claims — and
powerfully affirm the wisdom of the Senate majority’s action.

In a column entitled “Politics and the Test Ban Treaty” — an essay that can only be described
as
Churchillian which appears in the current edition of Newsweek — Mr. Will wrote:

“Now, at long last, the spell cast by arms control has been broken. The Senate did no more
than
its constitutional duty. The Senate opponents, all Republicans, acted after prolonged tutoring by
experts, one of the most persuasive of whom was a Democrat, James Schlesinger.
He was one
of six former secretaries of Defense, and other former high officials, including two CIA directors
appointed by Clinton, who urged rejection of the treaty. The 51 senators (17 more than the
number necessary to defeat a treaty) who voted no, acted on their politically hazardous
conclusion that the treaty is unverifiable, unenforceable and incompatible with the security of the
U.S. nuclear arsenal. Rejection of this treaty may improve future treaties by stiffening
the
spines of U.S. negotiators, who will know that there are things the Senate will not swallow
just because they bear the label arms control.“

Secretary Perle made a similar case in a splendid op.ed. article published in yesterday’s
New
York Times entitled “Neither Isolationists nor Fools”:

“Contrary to the claim that the Senate could have fixed its deficiencies, the treaty, by
its terms, is not subject to unilateral amendment or reservation….For Senators who
were persuaded that the treaty is inimical to American security interests,
delaying its consideration while the Clinton Administration sought to neutralize
their opposition and gain the votes for ratification would not have been
sensible….As our diplomats seek to improve the treaty by better drafting, by
eliminating unverifiable prohibitions and by providing for minimal safety and security
testing, they will have a powerful new argument to make to other countries: They will
be able to say they cannot muster the votes to ratify the treaty until it is fixed.”

The Bottom Line

Essays like those by Messrs. Perle and Will (together with those published in recent days by
former Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates, former U.S.
Ambassador to Germany
and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt and former acting Director of
the U.S. Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency James Hackett, which were circulated by the Center
yesterday) demonstrate the strength of the Loyal Opposition’s intellectual firepower — and the
high stakes involved in its laudatory efforts to halt defective arms control agreements like the
CTBT.