Wrong Again: Scowcroft and Kanter’s Advice on ‘Fixing the C.T.B.T.’ Won’t Do the Job

(Washington, D.C.): In yesterday’s Washington Times, two prominent officials
of the Bush
Administration — former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and former Under Secretary
of State Arnold Kanter — offer advice that is too-clever-by-half: Salvage the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by reopening negotiations on the Treaty “for the sole purpose of
limiting its initial term to a fixed period (for example, five years) with the option for renewal for
additional fixed periods.” Unfortunately, the predictable effect of such a step would be far from
“fix[ing] the CTBT,” but fixing the Senate Republicans’ wagon.

This faulty advice comes on the heels of Gen. Scowcroft’s abysmal recommendation that the
Senate defer action on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, rather than defeat it — a
recommendation wisely spurned in the event by an absolute majority of the U.S. Senate,
including many who simply cannot be characterized as inveterate foes of arms control or
proponents of a new isolationism. Indeed, it reflects badly on the objectivity, not to say
credibility, of individuals with so much experience in security policy-making that they would
echo the Clinton Administration’s unfounded demagoguery that partisanship killed the CTBT.

The Bottom Line

The Scowcroft-Kanter proposal should be rejected out of hand because there is no such thing
as a
“sunset provision” in arms control. Like the “supreme interests” clause that is supposed to
provide an escape hatch in the event a treaty like CTBT turns out — as predicted — to be
incompatible with U.S. national security requirements, a limited duration provision would be a
snare and delusion. For the same reasons Messrs. Scowcroft and Kanter consider the defeat of
the CTBT to have done “grave damage,” it is a safe bet that they and others will contend that
even greater damage would accompany the expiration of the Treaty.

The truth is that the United States requires testing to assure the safety, reliability and
credibility
of its nuclear deterrent. Since such testing is anathema to the proponents of the CTBT, it seems
unlikely that any renegotiated Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would permit even relatively
low-yield detonations to occur. Absent that latitude, the CTBT will not be “fixed” so as to make
it
compatible with American security interests.

The Center could not agree more with one of Messrs. Scowcroft and Kanter’s colleagues in
the
Bush Administration, William Kristol, who pointed out in a scathing “Memorandum to Opinion
Leaders” on 27 October:

“[Their article] serves as a reminder that, in important instances, the distinction
between Clintonism and Bush-era realism is a small one, with differences that can be
remedied with ‘one-easy-step’ fixes. But the piece should also remind us that the
Senate’s vote has drawn the lines for a long-overdue discussion about America’s role
in the world and a national security strategy to match. These are lines that Kanter and
Scowcroft seek to blur, in search of an empty bipartisnathip that would wash away the
need for a debate over American power and principles.”