WILL THE ‘WORLD’S GREATEST DELIBERATIVE BODY’ DELIBERATE ABOUT THE FLAWED START II TREATY?
Precis: The skids now appear greased
for prompt and superficial consideration of the START II
Treaty by the full U.S. Senate. This treaty has serious
flaws; it will likely have even more serious strategic
repercussions. Sen. Helms, Sen. Dole, the U.S. Senate and
the American people all have an interest in subjecting
this accord to close scrutiny — particularly after next
week’s elections in Russia. The pacing item should be an
evaluation of START II’s impact on America’s offensive and
defensive forces, not an arbitrary Christmas
recess deadline.
(Washington, D.C.): It is often said that politics
make for strange bedfellows. If so, then the combination
of politics and arms control is a formula for sleeping
with the enemy.
A case in point is the “unanimous consent”
agreement adopted by the Senate last Thursday concerning,
among other things, the institution’s schedule for
considering the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
(START II). According to this agreement, Senators are
obliged to take up START II by the end of the current
session. As things stand now, that will be just before
Christmas — a period that has not been known for careful
deliberation of anything but congressional holiday travel
plans. Such a moment is hardly conducive to a rigorous
debate about one of the most radical disarmament
agreements ever to be presented for the Senate’s advice
and consent.
What makes this schedule all the more bizarre is that
next Sunday, Russia will hold momentous parliamentary
elections. There has been little evidence that the
present parliament (or Duma) would assent to ratification
of START II. The next one, which is expected to be
dominated by resurgent Communists and other
nationalist/fascist/xenophobic forces, is even less
likely to do so. It seems a safe bet, however, that in
the period just after — to say nothing of just before
— this election, Washington will have a hard time
accurately forecasting the full import of the ascendancy
of such forces in Moscow. Why on earth would the
United States Senate want to commit itself to the
necessarily abbreviated consideration of a risky START II
under such circumstances?
START II’s Flaws
The START II Treaty is an example of the adage
“You want it bad, you’ll get it bad.” After
President George Bush’s re-election defeat in November
1992, he became seized with the idea of concluding this
agreement before he left office on 20 January. As the
Center for Security Policy noted in a 31 December 1992
analysis (1)
of the then-incipient agreement:
“Time and again, the [Bush] Administration
has allowed expediency to drive the timing and to
determine the content of strategically sensitive arms
control accords with the ex-USSR. Time and again
in the process, U.S. positions crucial to the
equitableness, workability and verifiability of such
accords have been seriously compromised.
“All too often, the result has been
agreements that: promise more security for the United
States than they deliver; establish precedents and
loopholes quite detrimental to U.S. interests; are
difficult, if not impossible, to verify; and reward
the worst elements in the Kremlin for their
negotiating intransigence and their insistence on
continued militarism.” (Emphasis added.)
START II is defective, among other reasons, due to its
“downloading” and “conversion”
provisions. Thanks to the inherent unverifiability of
these arrangements, the Treaty affords Moscow an option
to retain the capability rapidly and covertly to re-MIRV
missiles. If this option is exercised, a remilitarizing
Russia could break-out massively and on short-notice.
Although the United States in theory retains a re-MIRVing
option also, as a practical matter, budgetary,
programmatic and nuclear stockpile considerations assure
a strategically significant asymmetry in this area.
Of arguably even greater concern is the Russians’
contention that START II and the 1972 ABM Treaty are
linked. If the United States abandons the latter, the
Kremlin promises to walk away from the former. While the
Bush Administration formally rejected this linkage, its
successor has effectively affirmed it. As a result,
ratification of START II will have adversely affect not
only the deterrent capabilities of U.S. strategic offensive
forces but America’s ability to put into place strategic
defenses, as well.
Why Now?
To understand how such a problematic agreement could
be coming before the Senate at all, let alone on a
fast track for ratification, it is necessary to
examine the peculiar circumstances that gave rise to the
Senate’s unanimous consent agreement last week:
- Sen. Helms loves the Democrats? The author
of this troubling consent agreement was none
other than Sen. Jesse Helms, chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Now, Sen.
Helms has reflexively demonstrated over the years
a healthy, and laudable, skepticism about arms
control agreements. He has been especially
critical of those with Moscow in light of the
Kremlin’s practice — under both the former and
present regimes — of systematically
violating such accords.
- Unfortunately, since assuming the Committee
chairmanship, Senator Helms has become focused on
one legislative initiative, virtually to the
exclusion of all others. He wants to downsize the
bloated foreign policy bureaucracy, reorganizing
the State Department to incorporate functions now
performed by two other agencies. If he had his
way, the latter — the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency and the U.S. Information
Agency — would be dismantled altogether.
- But Senator Helms is not going to have his way.
The Clinton Administration vehemently opposes the
Senator’s agenda (even though, ironically, the
Helms initiative originated with a proposal from
Secretary of State Warren Christopher). President
Clinton’s allies in the Senate have successfully
filibustered Mr. Helms’ reorganization bill for
months. In retaliation, he took hostages —
holding up action on various ambassadorial
nominees and two arms control treaties, including
START II. In return for Sen. Helms agreeing to
release them last week, Senate Democrats have
promised nothing more than to allow a vote on a
watered-down Helms bill. It cuts funding for
the foreign policy bureaucracy, but does not
require structural reform. Even if Sen. Helms
prevails in the Senate, moreover, there is no
guarantee that the President will sign such
legislation. The North Carolinian with a
reputation as a skillful and tenacious negotiator
has clearly been had on this deal.
- Sen. Dole loves Sen. Lugar/President Clinton? Scarcely
less astounding is the performance of Majority
Leader Robert Dole, who approved the unanimous
consent agreement. After all, he is not generally
known for blithely giving political rivals sticks
with which to beat him. And yet, the principal
beneficiary in the Republican presidential
sweepstakes of Senate action on START II will not
be Senator Dole. Instead, it will be the
legislator who has worked hardest to promote this
dubious accord and to shield it from critical
scrutiny: Sen. Richard Lugar. What is more,
if Sen. Dole becomes the nominee, he will face a
President who will gleefully point to the
ratified START II Treaty as an example of his
foreign policy leadership instead of having to
defend its unverifiable and inequitable
provisions. Is it the spirit of Christmas giving
that prompts Senator Dole to make such generous
presents to his opponents?
- The Senate loves Executive Poaching on Its
Prerogatives? Of course, Sen. Dole may feel
— as he does about the Bosnia deployment — that
it is the “right thing” to accede to
the President on matters of foreign affairs, even
when the merits of the case do not support doing
so. It must be asked, however: Why would other
Senators be willing to go along with Bill
Clinton’s campaign to reduce their institution to
the role of rubber-stamp for executive branch
action, no matter how ill-advised? What is more,
if the Senate proves so indifferent to its
co-equal responsibility under the Constitution
for treaty-making, won’t the Clinton
Administration reasonably conclude that major
concessions can continue to be made to Moscow
with respect to existing arms control
agreements (for example, the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, Conventional
Forces in Europe, START I and Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaties) without the Senate’s advice and
consent?
The Bottom Line
Regrettably, the biggest losers from these strange
marriages of convenience are the American people and the
national security. START II is an unverifiable and, in
important ways, inequitable agreement that will leave the
United States ill-prepared to deal with future
adversaries. It will be used to justify the continuing
attrition of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. And, its
supporters will cite Moscow’s linkage of this accord to
the ABM Treaty as a new excuse for perpetuating the
latter — and the complete vulnerability to ballistic
missile attack that it effectively imposes on the United
States.
The best Christmas present Sen. Dole, Sen. Helms
and the Senate could give the country would be to
postpone final action on START II until the implications
of the Russian election become clearer and an adequate
opportunity is afforded to debate and amend this flawed
accord.
(1) See the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled When Will We Ever Learn? Last
Bush Foreign Policy Paroxysm Produces Flawed START II
Accord — For Wrong Reasons (
1992).
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