Over the years, we've become all too inured to the monkeyshines
of Congress, the cheap tricks and spongey backbones that are
regularly in evidence on Capitol Hill. We're used to bills
that are passed for the wrong reasons, to federal appointments
held up to settle grudges and to special-interest groups that
are gored or indulged for all the wrong reasons.
But we've always clung to the naive belief that when it
came to national security, our representatives in Congress
would put down their rattles and act responsibly.
We dream on.
Last week's defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
demonstrated that the United States Senate needs to be quarantined
for a bad case of arrested adolescence.
By voting down this accord, the Senate reverted to a new
form of the old isolationism by telling the world that we're
turning our backs on cooperation. The treaty would ban underground
nuclear testing; 26 of the 44 nations that are believed
to have nuclear capability have approved it, but a number
of them, including China and Russia, have not, indicating
that they will follow America's lead. As a result of the
Senate's vote, our land becomes less secure; we lose the
ability to work with Russia to dismantle a loosely managed
nuclear arsenal, while the Chinese and North Koreans pursue
nuclear capability and India and Pakistan square off.
The only silver lining in this very dark cloud of Senate
mischief was Oregon's own Sen. Gordon Smith, whose vote
in favor of the treaty looks downright Churchillian.
Senate Democrats were hardly blameless in this debacle.
For some time, they have been pushing to have the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Jesse Helms, send
the treaty to the floor of the Senate. While the Democrats
sincerely wanted passage, their motives were suspect: A
number of D.C.-based sources confirmed that some Democrats
pushed for a floor vote knowing it might well fail, thus
giving them a campaign tool against Republicans.
Republicans were more than happy to oblige, knowing that
they had the votes to embarass Clinton and the Democrats.
When Clinton attempted to pull the treaty from consideration--and
thus avoid a public vote on this most sensitive of matters--the
Republicans would have none of it. On Oct. 13, 51 senators
rejected the nuclear test-ban treaty. Only four Republicans
stood against the stampede, Smith among them.
"I've had few days more frustrating that that one," Smith
told WW in a phone conversation last week. "When
it comes to treaties of this magnitude, we owe it to the
whole world and to our country to leave politics in the
wastebin."
Like many Republicans, Smith was not uncritical of the
treaty; he felt that it did not provide the United States
with adequate safeguards to ensure that other countries
would truly ban underground testing. But those flaws could
have been fixed even after ratification, he explained.
Smith agreed with the claim, made in The Wall Street
Journal, that the vote last week might have a nuclear
domino effect--giving countries who don't now have the bomb
or who have it in crude form the cover to proceed with testing.
"We had the ability to lead on this issue," he says.
Smith didn't risk much here in Oregon with his vote--polls
show that 80 percent of Americans supported the treaty.
But he did show a streak of independence, a willingness
to act like an adult and a growing ability to rise to the
major issues of the day.
Gordon Smith serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The United States has done no underground nuclear testing
since 1992. It maintains the reliability of its nuclear
arsenal via computer models and non-nuclear explosive tests.
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Willamette Week | originally
published October 20,
1999 |
