An Inherent Lesson in Arms Control

The decision by the U.S. Senate not to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) provides important lessons about arms control practices and objectives for the coming years. Those lessons fall into three broad categories. The first is political relations between the White House and Capitol Hill. The second relates to the terms of a treaty, particularly the alignment of its technical features with its purpose. The third category is the relationship between arms control and deterrence. Each offers food for thought for the pending debate over the deployment of a national missile defense system and the future of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

Political Relations

The first lesson is that "politics" matter. "Politics" clearly played a role in the defeat of the CTBT. It was not, as some would have it, the politics of scandal or isolationism. Rather it was politics of a simpler kind, the politics of mistrust. From its first days, the Clinton administration has had an uneasy relationship with the Congress. The administration's ill-prepared policy initiatives, its failures to consult with its congressional allies, and its willingness to abandon positions long held by its own party caused disaffection among Democrats. The deft footwork of the administration in parrying and frequently defeating the efforts of the Republicans gave rise to cries of foul play. The president frustrated the new majority by recasting their major themes or initiatives and then either capturing them as his own or denigrating them as foolish.

The mistrust between the White House and Capitol Hill, generated in domestic policy debates, also affected national security policy. It surfaced immediately over gays in the military. Events in Somalia followed by decisions to intervene in Haiti and Bosnia and the administration's justification for these actions as support for the "will of the international community" exacerbated that mistrust. Seven years into the Clinton administration, the president and Congress have agreed on relatively few national security issues beyond the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it this way in her November 22, 1999, essay in Time: "Unfortunately ... the [a]dministration and Congress have not yet agreed on a common post-[C]old [W]ar strategy" for meeting the new dangers the nation faces.

In the field of arms control, the Senate's actions on two earlier treaty ratification votes revealed this mistrust. In the case of the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II), the Senate declared in its ratification resolution that U.S. reductions called for in the treaty should not dangerously outpace those of Russia. It feared the administration would move toward START II levels before Russia ratified the treaty. A requirement to retain START I force levels was contained in successive Defense authorization acts. It has been relaxed somewhat by the current authorization act that recognizes the existing budgetary constraints on Russia's strategic forces.

Another arms control issue on which the White House and Senate have disagreed is the application of the ABM Treaty to theater missile defense (TMD). Since 1994, the majority in the Senate has held that agreements with Russia to distinguish or demarcate TMD systems from ABM systems of the type pursued and eventually obtained by the administration were unnecessary. Some argued that the ABM Treaty did not restrict TMD, while others contended that these agreements constituted a substantive change to the treaty requiring the Senate's advice and consent. Despite the clear opposition of the Senate majority, the administration concluded a demarcation agreement. This convinced many Republicans that, despite its assurances to the contrary, the administration was attempting to use the agreements to expand the authority of the ABM Treaty and to dangerously limit the capability of U.S. TMD to satisfy Russian demands.

For its part, the administration had argued that the demarcation agreements were designed to protect the integrity of the ABM Treaty by defining a difference between TMD and ABM capabilities. It insisted...