Can a Southern Populist Mirror a Brahmin Elitist?

The Chemical Weapons Convention goes into effect April 29, but the United States is not a party to it. Failure of the U.S. Senate to ratify the agreement would be reminiscent of its decision on another treaty earlier in the century. In 1919-1920, the Senate rejected U.S. membership in the League of Nations by refusing to ratify the Treaty of Versailles at the close of World War I. That action signaled this country’s sharp turn to isolationism, a policy condemned by history, for Nazism and fascism flourished overseas with scarcely a nod from America.

As the Senate now weighs the treaty to ban poison gas, several issues seem hauntingly familiar. In 1919, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, acknowledged that U.S. entry into the league was favored by “the people generally,” but he still adamantly opposed it. Newspaper editorials supporting entry outnumbered those against by 10-1. Similarly, a recent poll shows 84% of the public supports the Chemical Weapons Convention. And a count of editorials in the past year placed 138 in support of ratification, 11 opposed.

The lineup of leading characters has striking parallels, too: Democratic president, GOP Senate, bipartisan support for the agreement and a cluster of Republican nay-sayers led by a powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Lodge, a New England patrician, was a thorn to President Woodrow Wilson and his favored treaty, just as Southern populist Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) is to President Bill Clinton today. That Helms might muster enough votes to block the two-thirds needed for ratification, as Lodge did, mortifies Senate Democrats--and many Republicans.

Helms has presented the White House with 31 conditions for ratification. They include an odd mix of reservations about the treaty and demands that have nothing to do with it. One such demand, which the administration has agreed to consider, is the elimination of certain government agencies, including the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, which helped develop the CWC.

But the White House is rejecting complaints by Helms and other opponents that the treaty would be unduly expensive, unverifiable and allow outside inspectors to steal company secrets. The Chemical Manufacturers Assn., which represents 90% of the chemical industry, says joining would be a bargain. Trial inspections have convinced industry leaders that their secrets would be protected. Moreover, since countries that have not signed will face trade restrictions by countries that have joined, failure to ratify has been estimated as costing $600 million in lost exports.

Of course, no treaty can be foolproof, but a parade of knowledgeable officials has testified that the country would be better with the treaty than without. Support has come from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, past directors of the Central Intelligence Agency and its current acting director, veterans groups and arms-control chiefs from the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations.

James A. Baker III, George Bush’s secretary of state, worries that failure to ratify the CWC “will send a message of American retreat from engagement in the world.” Whether this means broad isolationism, as happened after rejection of the League of Nations, is unclear. But failure of the United States to join the chemical pact will have dismaying consequences far beyond the terms of the CWC itself.

Several arms-control agreements await Senate consideration, and the CWC was thought the most likely among them to succeed. Not many people, it was assumed, are fans of poison gas. But if the convention is defeated, the chances for ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and other nuclear reduction agreements will probably be dismal. A U.S. turn inward will weaken international efforts to cut nuclear arsenals elsewhere.

Second, current negotiations to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention will be fatally impaired. Some senators object to the CWC because verification cannot be foolproof. But most recognize that the elaborate monitoring and verification measures provided by the CWC would catch cheating of any consequence. Confirming compliance of a ban on biological weapons is more complex than on chemical weapons. A Senate that does not approve a chemical treaty with verification measures is hardly likely to agree to one on biological weapons.

Third, failure to ratify the chemical ban will be interpreted to mean that we do not take chemical-weapons proliferation seriously. This is plainly self-defeating. We are eliminating our chemical arsenal anyway, and ignoring the treaty suggests we do not care if others do the same.

Fourth, rejecting the pact will injure U.S. credibility, in general. Not only was this country an original signer of the convention in 1993, we wrote much of the text during the 10 years of negotiations. If we back away now, who will trust our leadership in developing other international agreements?

As with this pact, the United States also wrote much of the League Covenant after World War I. Yet, resistance to the league and the chemical treaty stems from much the same point: that the United States would ostensibly be ceding control of its security interests.

Lodge argued that U.S. troops would fall under league authority because Article X of its covenant required members to oppose aggression. Nonsense, said Wilson, calling Lodge’s reservation an attempt to nullify the covenant. The Constitution trumps any external authority, the president said, and the U.S. would never lose control of its own forces.

Just as Lodge dismissed Wilson’s assurances, Helms rejects Clinton’s on the chemical treaty. For Helms, Article XI of the CWC is the hitch. It prohibits restrictions on chemical trade among parties to the pact, though the clause states such trade must be for “peaceful purposes.” Ignoring the peaceful-purposes requirement, Helms says rogue regimes could demand access to our chemicals for nefarious activities. The administration counters that the treaty’s words mean what they say.

Helms and his clutch of treaty opponents remain obdurate. In 1919, Lodge predicted that only by accepting his reservations would the Versailles Treaty be ratified, “and it will not be ratified, in my judgment, in any other way.” Sound familiar? After posting reservations about the chemical treaty, Helms vowed that the administration’s “opposition to making essential changes will ensure the Senate never ratifies” it.

To the shame of the Senate and the country, Lodge prevailed in his day. The sad and terrible consequences of that determination should be recalled as today’s Senate considers a measure to help rid the world of poison gas.