‘There You Go Again’: Jimmy Carter Urges America to base its security on Violated Treaties, Unilateral Disarmament

(Washington, D.C.): In an op.ed. article in today’s Washington Post, former President Jimmy Carter offers a vivid reminder of the misconceptions and misplaced confidence in arms control and other nations’ benign intentions that blighted his tenure in office. It also helps define the fundamental differences in approach to national security policy that could — if elevated in the course of the current election cycle — help the American people choose representatives who reflect their own, generally commonsensical tendency to rely upon real military capabilities for the common defense, rather than the empty promises of potential adversaries and other unreliable treaty partners.¹

‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’

The following are among the more dubious, if all-too-familiar, features of Mr. Carter’s latest commentary:

• Blame America First: The former President holds the U.S. and NATO’s failure to “move away from [their] reliance on nuclear arsenals since the end of the Cold War” to blame for Russia’s increasing emphasis on its own nuclear weaponry. In fact, the Kremlin is modernizing its arsenal of thermonuclear arms and delivery systems not because the U.S. is doing so (it is not), but because Moscow gets more of the proverbial “bang for the buck” from investments in nuclear than conventional weaponry.
• Disarm the One You’re With: The President advocates taking U.S. and Russian nuclear forces off their “hair-trigger alert” status — an inherently unverifiable formula for eliminating America’s nuclear deterrent and quite possibly increasing the incentive a future Russian leader might feel to utilize covertly maintained forces preemptively.
• Preserve American Vulnerability: Mr. Carter opposes the deployment of U.S. missile defenses (which he characteristically demeans as “Star Wars”) in favor of preserving the obsolete, defunct, violated and increasingly dangerous 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Here We Go Again

President Carter’s essay comes as those who share his enthusiasm for arms control — no matter how unverifiable or violated the agreement in question might be — ramp up a campaign aimed at bludgeoning the United States Senate into reconsidering and approving one of the most defective of such accords in the history of diplomacy: the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).²

Mr. Carter declares that the “recent rejection by the U.S. Senate of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was a serious blow to global nuclear control efforts and to confidence in American leadership. Never mind that his own administration refused to pursue a permanent, zero-yield CTBT like that President Clinton signed. Never mind that his Secretary of Energy, Dr. James Schlesinger, was one of the most effective opponents of the Clinton CTBT who criticized that treaty on precisely the grounds that it adopted provisions that had properly been rejected by Mr. Carter when he occupied the White House — i.e., provisions they are inconsistent with U.S. national security requirements, including the need to maintain a safe, reliable and effective nuclear deterrent.

The Clinton Administration has asked former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili to try to resurrect its CTBT. The General has thus assumed the unenviable task of persuading at least eighteen U.S. Senators that they erred in voting against this treaty. Failing that, the General will be obliged to pretend that substantive changes have been effected sufficient to make the unacceptable acceptable, even though such changes can only be achieved through a renegotiation of the CTBT with the more than 100 other parties. It is for this reason that Sen. John Warner, the influential Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, declared at a recent Center for Security Policy symposium that the present Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is “unfixable.”

The Bottom Line

Jimmy Carter’s presidency is remembered by many American’s — including the historians recently recruited by C-SPAN to rank him and his fellow chief executives — as a substantial failure. This is due in no small measure to the widespread perception that he failed in his stewardship of U.S. security policy. Unfortunately, his judgment on such critical matters as nuclear deterrence and arms control has not improved with the loss of power and the passage of time. The United States government, and most especially the U.S. Senate, would be well advised to reject his advice as forcefully as the American people did his reelection bid twenty years ago.

¹1. In this regard, it is worth noting the results of a recent Zogby poll in which 60.6% of those queried want “a viable missile defense system in place rather than relying on the diplomatic success of disarmament treaties.” See Center Decision Brief entitled Flash: The American People Want to Be Defended; Wall Street Journal Shows it Can Be Done First from the Sea (No. 00-D 16, 17 February 2000).

²2. For a detailed critique of the CTBT, see the Center’s Truth or Consequences series (No. 99-P 114).