Senate to Weigh Ratification of Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty

With the Senate set to begin a long-awaited debate on the comprehensive nuclear test-ban treaty today, widespread predictions that the pact is headed for defeat have focused attention on a key question: Would that set off a new global arms race?

Treaty proponents, led by the White House, have warned that a defeat could quickly create a Wild West atmosphere worldwide--with nukes instead of six-shooters.

Jack Mendelsohn, a longtime arms control advocate, sketches a worrisome scenario: If the United States refuses to ratify the treaty, India and Pakistan most likely won’t either. China may resume its testing. A spate of Third World countries will follow suit.

“That’s the real danger--that the whole nonproliferation effort of the past 40 years will unravel,” says Mendelsohn, now with the Lawyers’ Alliance for World Security, a liberal-oriented arms control monitoring group.

The treaty’s opponents, however, contend that such warnings are overblown. They argue that rejection of the pact would have little real impact.

The comprehensive test-ban accord was signed in 1996, but requires ratification by 44 nuclear-capable countries before it can take effect. Only 23 have done so. Earlier test-ban treaties, starting with one negotiated by President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev in 1963, were agreements among only a few countries, limited in scope or never ratified.

Henry D. Sokolski, director of the conservative Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, offers this reasoning about the treaty, which would bar countries that ratify it from conducting nuclear tests and would beef up international monitoring to detect violations:

* Most of the countries that currently have nuclear capabilities--including China--already have announced testing moratoriums of their own. Russia, meanwhile, cannot afford to resume an arms race.

* India and Pakistan are more likely to base any decision about future testing on their own tense relationship rather than on strictures in the treaty. Both have imposed moratoriums after their round of nuclear testing last year.

* As for so-called rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, treaty critics point out that the nations weren’t expected to sign the pact and are unlikely to become major nuclear powers any time soon--even if they step up their bomb-building programs.

The arguments of both sides are certain to be voiced when the Senate begins debate.

The vote on ratification is slated for Tuesday, with defeat almost certain. Proponents need 67 votes to ratify it; as of now, they have only 45.

Although some lawmakers have been trying to avert a formal vote, party leaders so far have been unable to work out a deal that would satisfy GOP conservatives, who have served notice that they intend to insist on a vote on the treaty.

At the least, rejection of the treaty would have serious political consequences.

For the Clinton administration, it would be another major foreign policy setback, capping a long list of failures on issues ranging from new trade negotiating authority to U.S. dues to the United Nations.

President Clinton has said that he regards the test-ban treaty as the centerpiece of his foreign policy agenda for the remainder of his term.

On Thursday, he warned that a defeat would do “terrible damage to the role of the United States” in arms control.

The president urged lawmakers to postpone the debate to head off a no vote.

Lawmakers concede privately that the past three days of wrangling over whether to shelve the treaty vote have centered more on personal pride--and protecting each party’s flanks politically in the 2000 elections--than on any substantive issue.

Many analysts also blame the administration for failing to maintain a sustained effort to build Senate support for the treaty. Clinton began serious lobbying only after the vote was scheduled.

“The Clinton administration bears a grave responsibility for having allowed the momentum of arms control to slow since the Reagan and Bush administrations,” says Alton Frye, an arms control expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Republicans argue that the best deterrent the United States could provide would be to develop a national missile defense system. They also want the administration to be more aggressive in imposing economic sanctions on countries that engage in nuclear proliferation.

But advocates of traditional arms control warn that missile defense technology, while improving, still is not capable of providing a reliable shield against attack. And they warn that sanctions won’t always work, as the U.S. experience with Iraq has shown.

Sokolski and William M. Arkin, a liberal arms control expert, say the real question is whether the United States should continue the arms control policy that it has maintained since the 1950s, or hammer out a new approach designed to deal with the current world situation.

The traditional arms control regime--designed to freeze the number of weapons worldwide and prevent more states from joining the nuclear club--was aimed primarily at limiting the Cold War arms race with the Soviet Union. Huge weapon stockpiles would deter any attack.

“That’s just not where we are anymore,” Arkin says.

But Tom Collina, specialist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, says defeat of the treaty would “take the wind out of the sails” of the arms control movement.

“If the test-ban treaty is rejected, it’ll be only a matter of time until some country begins testing again, and over the years the entire test-ban regime could crumble,” he says.

“The bumper-sticker slogan is that a vote against the treaty is a vote for proliferation.”