A Partisan Blow to Peace

In 1918, during World War I, Woodrow Wilson unveiled a proposal to increase international security. His famous "14 points of light" was a plan by which he believed the Allies could not only win the war but prevent such wars from occurring in the future. This latter hope hinged largely on his idea for a "League of Nations," a collective organization of nations designed to maintain world order. When the Treaty of Versailles was drafted at the end of the war, the League of Nations was a major component.

Wilson's efforts for peace, unfortunately, were stifled by the efforts of Henry Cabot Lodge, an influential Republican senator with a personal grudge against the President. Under the influence of the isolationist Lodge, the Senate failed to muster the two-thirds vote necessary to ratify the treaty. Without the membership of the United States, the League was practically powerless.

For over seventy years, the 1918 Treaty of Versailles would stand as the last important international security pact that the Senate failed to ratify. The streak was broken this past week when, on Oct. 13, majority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) led Senate Republicans in a 51-48 vote to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The CTBT, signed by 154 nations in 1996, would require all member nations to ban underground nuclear testing. The Senate vote was a major setback to proponents of reducing nuclear proliferation as well as a potentially fatal blow to the treaty itself, which will probably not be internationally ratified as a result of the decision. Other nations with nuclear weapons, including Russia and China, had indicated that they would make their decisions based on the United States' decision. The treaty must be approved by the world's 44 nuclear armed nations to take effect--so far, only 26 have.

With this decision, the Senate has taken a dangerous step of potentially global proportions. While there was never a guarantee that other nations would sign the treaty based on the United States' decision, it is understood that we would serve as one of the primary supports upon which the CTBT would stand.

India and Pakistan, which both recently alarmed the world with news of their own underground tests, had indicated their decision would be based on the United States'. Many other countries are also looking for U.S. commitment before taking a stand. Following the vote, several nations condemned the Senate for its decision, calling the vote "a serious blow," and "a setback to the process of nonproliferation and disarmament."

In pursuing this neo-isolationist policy, the US has hurt not only its credibility with other nations, but its own interests as well. Since the U.S. does not currently conduct nuclear tests, ratifying the treaty would have little effect on U.S. policy--but it would have induced other countries to change their currently hazardous policies.

By now, the United States should have realized that the cold war has ended and that building a "bigger and better bomb" is no longer a viable foreign policy. With a nuclear arsenal that already obscenely overshadows all other countries, America needs to focus instead on leading the way in decreasing unsafe proliferation.

The most shameful part of the vote is not that the wrong decision was made, but that it was made for the worst reason: partisanship. Realizing there weren't enough votes for ratification, President Clinton and many other Congressional Democrats asked Lott and the Republican leaders to take the treaty off the current Senate agenda as a way to delay the vote for further deliberation instead of killing it outright.

Realizing what was at stake, Britain, France and Germany also asked for a delayed vote. Lott, however, refused to compromise when Clinton wouldn't promise in writing that he wouldn't bring it back up for vote before the end of his presidential term in 2001. The fact that the decision to bring up the vote with no delay was decided exactly on party lines and the vote on the treaty itself practically so (with a few Republicans voting to ratify) is a pretty clear indicator that the vote was decided not for policy reasons but because of politics.

With a delayed vote, CTBT still could have been rejected if the ensuing debate had proven it a bad idea. By rejecting it now, we have, in Clinton's words, "severely harm[ed] the national security of the United States" and "damage[d] our relationship with our allies." Unfortunately, these concerns don't seem to matter as long as Lott and the GOP have a chance to publicly embarrass their arch-nemesis.

History repeats itself. In 1918, partisan politics ruined the chances of a successful League of Nations. Its failure as an institution is said to be one of the factors that led to the re-emergence of German power and World War II. Following in the footsteps of Henry Cabot Lodge, Trent Lott and the Senate GOP may have very well stifled one of the world's best hopes to decrease nuclear proliferation.

It would be a shame if the US failed to prevent nuclear war because a few angry Senators wanted to give Clinton a "black eye."

Shawn P. Saler '03 is a first-year living in Canaday.