HORATIUS WALLOP (II): SENATOR SEEKS DEBATE ON START, ESTABLISHES WHY LEADERSHIP WON’T ALLOW ONE

(Washington, D.C.): For the second
time in three months, Senator
Malcolm Wallop (R-WY)
has brilliantly demonstrated two
important phenomena: (1) the fact that he
is a man of exemplary integrity and
commitment to principle — with a deep
concern over the security of the United
States and the role being played in it by
the U.S. Senate. And (2) the fact that
such qualities are otherwise largely
absent in that institution.

On 7 July, Senator Wallop thwarted an
ill-considered and reckless initiative by
Sens. Dale Bumpers (D-AR) and Jim Sasser
(D-TN) aimed at destroying the Strategic
Defense Initiative. By
single-handedly forcing a postponement in
consideration of the FY1993
Defense authorization bill, Sen. Wallop
— like a legendary Horatio at the
bridge — gave his colleagues
time to reflect on the folly of the
Bumper-Sasser effort to
deny the United States near- to
medium-term defenses against ballistic
missile attack. In
the end, cooler heads prevailed; the
nation still has the option to begin at
least contingency, limited anti-missile
deployments within this century.

What START Debate?

Yesterday, Malcolm Wallop
again sought to save his colleagues from
a no less foolish and
irresponsible course of action —
rubber-stamping the Strategic Arms
Reduction (START) Treaty. For
nearly five hours, he subjected the
Treaty and its proponents to withering
questioning. In the process, he
established several deeply distressing
facts:

• There are serious
  problems with the legal status of
  the START Treaty. For
  example, at different points in
  his testimony on behalf of START,
  former Secretary of State James
  Baker suggested that commitments
  by Ukraine, Byelarus and
  Kazakhstan concerning their
  adherence to the accord —
  commitments necessitated by the
  collapse of the Soviet Union — are
  both legally binding and
  not binding.
• The START Treaty contains
  a number of provisions that
  greatly erode its nominal
  strategic benefits — and magnify
  its possible risks to U.S.
  national security. For
  example, Treaty limits are
  undermined by provisions that
  permit the former Soviet Union:
  to modernize further the force of
  heavy ICBMs to which it is
  exclusively entitled; to retain
  unlimited numbers of
  “non-deployed” missiles
  for nonmobile launchers; to field
  unverifiable mobile missiles
  (which are, as a practical
  matter, denied the United
  States); to circumscribe on-site
  inspections; and to refuse
  monitoring of missile production
  facilities.
• The proponents of the
  START Treaty have not done their
  homework. The only
  three members available
  to respond to Sen. Wallop’s
  interrogatories — on a day when,
  as a result of the Jewish New
  Year, there were no votes
  scheduled and therefore,
  predictably, no Senators around
  — were Sens. Claiborne Pell
  (D-RI and the chairman of the
  Senate Foreign Relations
  Committee), Richard Lugar (R-IN
  and a senior minority member of
  that Committee) and Joseph Biden
  (D-DE and the Foreign Relations
  subcommittee chairman who
  purports to be the Senate’s
  leading expert on arms control
  matters).
• In response to straight-forward
  question after question, these
  Senators sputtered, mumbled,
  confessed their uncertainty about
  the answers, promised to get a
  response or — when all else
  failed — prevaricated. Particularly
  telling were rambling statements
  by Sens. Lugar and Pell to the
  effect that the changes that have
  taken place in the former Soviet
  Union make questions about
  non-compliance, ineffective
  treaty provisions and
  impenetrable legal Catch-22s
  irrelevant; such unfounded
  “whistling past the
  graveyard” alternated with
  assurances that all these
  problems would be sorted out
  later, if only the Senate
  would sign the blank
  check and ratify without knowing
  just how.

One can only assume that this
pathetic performance would have
been replicated had the chairmen
and ranking members of the other
two Senate committees charged
with examining this accord —
Armed Services and Intelligence
— deigned to participate.

• The relevant Senate
  committees failed to take
  testimony from critics of the
  START Treaty. The
  proponents of the Treaty have no
  one but themselves to blame for
  their abysmal performance in
  defending the accord: They
  apparently purposefully denied
  expert witnesses who would have
  pointed out its flaws the
  opportunity to provide testimony
  in any of the twenty or
  so hearings held by the three
  committees on START.
• There has been
  considerable wishful thinking —
  or perhaps cynical dissembling —
  about the prospects for a
  “follow-on” agreement
  that would correct some of
  START’s defects. At
  this point a so-called
  “START 11” agreement is
  still a gleam in the eye, yet the
  Senate Armed Services Committee
  devoted roughly 11 pages of its
  report on START to this
  “bird in the bush”
  compared to only two pages
  concerning the one “in the
  hand.” As they have done
  incessantly in the past,
  proponents of arms control would
  rather talk about the virtues of
  a yet-to-be-negotiated accord
  than the defects of a present
  one.
• The Senate leadership’s
  determination to act on the START
  Treaty before the October
  recess has not only
  contributed to an inadequate
  review of the Treaty by Senate
  committees; this unseemly and
  unjustified haste has also
  precluded the Foreign Relations
  Committee from taking aboard the
  findings and recommendations of
  its sister committees. Sen.
  Lugar volunteered that his panel
  might have acted differently on
  expressed objections from the
  Armed Services Committee to a
  reservation it attached to the
  resolution of ratification if
  Foreign Relations had had time to
  review Armed Services’ report
  before putting its own
  recommendation’s to bed.
• The Senate leadership —
  in obvious collusion with the
  Bush Administration — is equally
  determined to prevent
  serious debate on, or any
  opportunity for amendment of, the
  START Treaty by the full
  Senate. By dint of the
  cynical scheduling of the
  “debate” on START on
  Rosh Hashanah and the filing of a
  cloture petition designed to
  choke off debate before it
  even began, Sen. Wallop has
  effectively been precluded from:
• demanding a closed
  session of the Senate to
  consider classified
  issues associated with
  the START Treaty;
• otherwise eliciting
  answers from the leaders
  of Senate committees that
  have recommended the
  Treaty’s ratification: or
• offering a number of
  amendments — the need
  for which has, if
  anything, been
  dramatically underscored
  by yesterday’s
  non-debate.

In other words, Senate
Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-ME) is
determined to railroad
the Senate into providing uninformed
“advice” and unwarranted
“consent” to the most
risky arms control agreement of all time.
This is a rank abuse of power
that seriously disserves the national
security and demeans the U.S. Senate. In
particular, it betrays the institution’s
constitutional prerogatives as a coequal
partner with the executive in the
treaty-making process. In so doing,
Sen. Mitchell not only relegates the
Senate to a rubber-stamp on the present
agreement; he also invites the
Administration to expect no less
intrusive or rigorous a role to be played
in assuring the quality of future accords
— a sure-fire formula for getting still more
reckless arms control treaties in
the future.

The Byrd Precedent

Ironically, in taking such
irresponsible steps, the Majority Leader
is explicitly repudiating the counsel and
practice of his predecessor, Sen. Robert
Byrd (D-WV). In 1988, in explaining why
he insisted upon a relatively thorough
and painstaking review of and Senate
debate on the INF Treaty, Sen. Byrd made
the following thoughtful and highly
relevant points:

“This Senator is not going
to be guided in the Senate’s
deliberation of a treaty by
whether or not the Administration
has asked for a delay. That is
not the Senate’s role under the
Constitution. The Administration
has its work in making the
treaty. The President makes
treaties by and with the advice
and consent of the Senate…. [A
treaty] is not just a piece of
paper. Once we approve the
ratification of that treaty…
[it] constitute[s] the supreme
law of the land. If we make a
mistake in passing a bill, that
can be fairly easily rectified
simply by passing another bill
repealing the first law. But when
it comes to a treaty, if we make
a mistake we had better know it
before we enter into its
ratification….

“I do not intend to delay
for the sake of delay, but
neither do I intend for this
Senate to rush into something
here just because there has been
a calendar deadline set somewhere
by somebody. There is
this danger. One may say ‘Well,
let’s go ahead and call it up and
let the thing be worked on in the
meantime while the Senate is
debating it.’ I am not oblivious
to the pressure that can be
brought on the Senate once we get
something up. The pressure will
be there and every day it will
intensify: ‘Oh, we have got to
hurry, we have got to get through
this … ; the Senate should act;
let all these things be worked
out by our experts down the road.
They can work out the
verification regime. They can
work out the details,’ and all
that.” (9 May 1988)

“If the Senate had rushed in
and approved the treaty, say a
month ago, and then discovered
these ambiguities and
contradictions, the level of
confidence of the country in our
ability to reach good, solid
agreements with the Soviets,
fully protective of United States
interests, would have plummeted. The
Senate would have been criticized
for rushing to approval before
thoroughly examining the terms of
the agreement. The cloud which
would have been
cast over our processes would
surely have a major, adverse
effect on the success of
future arms control agreements
being approved by this body ….
Arms control agreements,
including a START agreement,
should be concluded when, and
only when,issues in
dispute have been satisfactorily
negotiated, and should
not be negotiated under the
pressure of artificial deadlines.
Likewise, when and if a sound
agreement is in sight, there
should be no undue delay in
concluding it. But the
important thing is that it
be a good agreement —
not dictated by calendar
deadlines, not dictated by
election year politics.”
(12 May 1988) (Emphasis
added throughout.)

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy believes that Sen.
Mitchell’s contemptuous disregard for
the counsel of his distinguished
predecessor is a travesty. It
makes a mockery of an institution that
was once deservedly known as the
“World’s Greatest Deliberative
Body” and invites future crises
affecting the United States’ security —
and perhaps even its constitutional
system of checks and balances.

The Senate must be given an
opportunity to have a full and free
debate on START — and any other
agreement that would profoundly affect
the nation’s defense posture. At the very
least, Sen. Wallop is entitled to answers
to his questions about this Treaty and
the chance to offer amendments based upon
those answers in order to fix fatal
defects.