For the past fifty years, the United States has been at the forefront of major international activity to improve the lot of the world in arenas of human rights and armed conflict. Although our actions and motives were frequently obfuscated in the name of the Cold War, most Americans believe that we’ve done much more good than harm on the world stage. At the very least, this is how we wish to see ourselves.
During the 106th Congress, two major steps backward have been taken. First, we first worked to weaken, then refused to sign, the International Criminal Court treaty, despite the fact that it was American initiative — dating back to the Nuremberg trials — that largely brought the ICC to its present state. We are now in the company of such great nations as Iraq, North Korea, and Libya as nonsignators.
Now, this week, the U.S. Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. England, France, Germany, China, and Russia — normally not bedfellows — called on us to ratify it. The vote was nineteen votes shy, not even close.
Special consideration goes to Senators John Chafee, James Jeffords, Gordon Smith, and Arlen Specter, for breaking party ranks to vote for the treaty. Awards for Shame to John McCain for taking a break from principle and integrity, and Robert Byrd for voting “present,” the lone Democrat to do so.
Both parties claim that they wish to continue abiding by the terms of the treaty. We have no plans to test nuclear weapons, or to undertake any other actions that would violate the treaty that we have not signed. Congressional testimony against the treaty states that we have no need to do so until the year 2030 (discounting the possibility that other technologies may preclude the need for testing by then). By defeating the treaty, we have given up the ability to ask other nations not to develop and test nuclear weapons, and the creation of international monitoring bodies to prevent nations from covertly doing so.
Are we so willing to trade our security for the sovereign power to do things we don’t want to do?