Abstract
Historically, Republicans are much more likely to reach arms control agreements.
I have never voted for a Republican in my life. But if I were to vote my professional interests, in November I would cast my ballot for Governor George W. Bush.
I'm not talking about my stock portfolio—I mean my professional dedication to preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The hard reality is that when it comes to reducing weapons, Republicans do it better.
Counterintuitive?
How can I say this? Didn't I write in the Bulletin (“The Assault on Arms Control,” January/February 2000) that the past few years have been dominated by Republican opposition to arms control treaties and calls for increases in military spending and the rapid deployment of new weapons systems, particularly missile defenses?
I realize that many believe the election of George Bush would be a disaster for arms control. But the historical record and the declared positions of the Republican candidate indicate that a new Bush administration would be willing and able to implement sweeping arms reductions and advance arms control measures more effectively than a Gore administration.
It is by no means certain—and a great deal would depend on the outcome of struggles between the far right ideologues and the conservative pragmatists in the Bush camp—but it is likely.
A Republican-built regime
It is not unusual for Republican candidates to rail against the defense policies of incumbent Democrats—as Governor Bush has.
In office, however, Republican presidents, particularly when coupled with a Democratic House of Representatives, have moved to the center and negotiated and implemented almost all the treaties and agreements that constitute today's nonprolif-eration regime.
In 1968, candidate Richard Nixon criticized President Lyndon Johnson's negotiations for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons—the cornerstone of today's global controls. As president, Nixon proudly signed the pact at a Rose Garden ceremony.
Nixon also established the Non-Proliferation Treaty Exporters Committee (known as the Zangger Committee) to control the export of nuclear-weapons-related materials and equipment. He negotiated and implemented the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty limiting defensive armaments and the companion Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) limiting offensive arms, both signed in May 1972.
Nixon also announced in 1969 that the United States would unilaterally and unconditionally renounce biological weapons. He ordered the destruction of all U.S. weapons stockpiles and the conversion of all production facilities to peaceful purposes. He reversed 50 years of U.S. reluctance, and sought ratification of the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use in war of biological and chemical weapons (it was subsequently ratified under President Gerald Ford). The Nixon administration successfully negotiated the Biological Weapons Convention, signed in 1972 and ratified by the Senate in 1974, prohibiting the development, production, stockpiling, acquisition, and transfer of biological weapons.
President Ronald Reagan's first term was characterized by massive increases in the defense budget, new nuclear weapons programs, and—most famously—the initiation of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan had campaigned against President Jimmy Carter's SALT II Tr eaty, but in office he largely observed its limits. In his second term, Reagan negotiated and signed the landmark Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987, requiring the destruction of all U.S. and Soviet missiles and their launchers with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (but not their warheads). (Some argue that this treaty should be globalized to prohibit all missiles of this range anywhere in the world.) Reagan also began that year the Missile Technology Control Regime—the first effort to control the spread of ballistic missile technology—and he negotiated the first strategic treaty that actually reduced (rather than limited) deployed strategic nuclear forces.
President George Bush signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in 1991 and then kept the momentum going by signing the START II Treaty in January 1993, the most sweeping arms reduction pact in history. Bush also negotiated and signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
Of particular significance in this time of negotiations deadlock, President Bush in 1991 announced that the United States would unilaterally withdraw all of its land- and sea-launched tactical nuclear weapons and would dismantle all its land- and many of its sea-based systems. President Bush also unilaterally ended the 24-hour alert status of the U.S. bomber force and de-alerted a substantial portion of the land-based missile force. (Two weeks later, President Mikhail Gorbachev reciprocated, declaring similar tactical withdrawals and ordering the de-alerting of 503 Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles.)
Thus, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush either negotiated or brought into force all the instruments that make up the interlocking network of treaties and arrangements we refer to as the nonproliferation regime. Add in President Eisenhower's creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and that's pretty much the whole enchilada. There is every reason to believe that if President Bush had been reelected, he would have continued the process of nuclear arms reductions, quickly secured the ratification of the CWC, and strengthened the prohibitions against biological weapons.
Why “Bush II” could succeed
Democratic presidents seem to be always looking over their right shoulder, fearful of attacks for being “weak on defense.” As president, Bush would have no such concerns. He has already outflanked Vice President Al Gore on the left, promising to unilaterally cut nuclear weapons to “the lowest possible number consistent with our national security.” He also favors de-alerting nuclear forces, arguing that the present posture has unacceptable risks of accidental or unauthorized launch: “The United States should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger sta-tus—another unnecessary vestige of Cold War confrontation.” And he has talked of “skipping a generation” of conventional weapons (although he would increase the defense budget to rev up research and development on new weapons).
A number of his advisers believe there is little reason to field more than a thousand strategic nuclear weapons. Conservative senators like Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, who legislated a prohibition against Clinton unilaterally reducing nuclear weapons below the START I level of 6,000, say they would gladly lift the restriction for Bush because they would have greater trust in his leadership. There is every reason to believe that as president, Bush would quickly and sharply reduce deployed nuclear forces, with or without treaty agreement, and without a conservative backlash. It is not just a matter of trust; politically, the far right has no place to go.
Bush's problem issue is the deployment of national missile defenses. Coupled with his nuclear cuts, Bush has promised to deploy theater and national missile defenses “at the earliest possible date.” This is fine campaign rhetoric, but once in office he will be confronted with hard reality— there is nothing to deploy.
His Pentagon briefers will tell him that it will take the better part of this decade to field either land- or sea-based systems. It would not be until the next decade at the earliest that the United States could consider the space-based weapons that some of his advisers imagine.
The danger is that he would abrogate the ABM Tr e a ty before he realized the limits of the technology. Some will urge him to do so immediately. But other, more sober officials will tell him that breaking the treaty will provoke a serious international crisis, not just with China and Russia, but with the country's closest allies. The issue could dominate his first year in office, while there would be no military benefit any time during his first term.
Is this what he wants?
I don't think so. The consequences of withdrawing from the ABM Treaty (particularly after the Senate rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) are so severe that George Bush will likely do what his father and Ronald Reagan did—talk tough, spend money, deploy nothing, and stay within the treaty. He may well succeed in developing a sensible plan for the deployment of theater defenses, or he could develop joint systems with the Russians, or perhaps after deep cuts in nuclear forces are implemented, he might negotiate modifications to the treaty that would permit the kind of very limited national defense that may someday be possible. In the meantime, it is possible that the nature of the regimes in Korea and Iran will change significantly, and with them, the alleged threat.
A great deal depends on whether the House goes to the Democrats. Historically, a Republican president and a Democratic House have proved to be a favorable combination—even with a Republican Senate. With the most radical faction of the party ousted from leadership posts, the House would restrain the president's budget excesses and restore some balance to the oversight responsibilities of the Congress. There might once again be hearings on missile defense that honestly debated the merits rather than relentlessly promoted the party line.
This favorable scenario is also highly dependent on Bush's choice of security advisers. As Frances FitzGerald documents in Way Out There in the Blue, George Schultz fought tenaciously for new arms agreements, overcoming Caspar Weinberger's stout resistance. A team headed by National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz would be strong. This is not a team that would tear down the existing nonproliferation regime for a pipe dream of missile defense. They could well forge new arrangements, new definitions of security that do not depend on nuclear overkill. They certainly wouldn't shrink from the task. The last time the armed forces were restructured, Colin Powell did it. The last time a major weapons system was canceled, it was Wolfowitz and Bush running mate Dick Cheney canceling the navy's A-12 stealth fighter.
Give Gore a chance
A President Al Gore might also reduce weapons and strengthen the treaties that prevent new threats from emerging. With a Gore victory would likely come a Democratic House and a reduced Republican majority in the Senate. The Republicans would be a defeated, disillusioned party. The field would be wide open for new initiatives and—finally—a break with Cold War arsenals and strategies. Gore and his team could also leap into the breach.
It's just that the track record isn't very encouraging.
With Bill Clinton's 1992 election, new international opportunities were there for the taking. But the momentum in arms reductions was almost immediately squandered. Despite repeated entreaties, the new president failed to bring the Chemical Weapons Convention or the START II Tr eaty to the Senate for ratification in his first two years, when he enjoyed complete Democratic control of Congress. There were few new initiatives. And Republican victories in the Senate and House in the 1994 elections threw President Clinton into a defensive posture from which he has never fully recovered.
Not all was bleak, of course. Clinton had some truly gifted officials on his security team and they worked heroically. They denuclearized Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, and firmly established and expanded cooperative threat reduction programs with the states of the former Soviet Union. In 1994, the Agreed Framework with North Korea froze and reversed that nation's pursuit of nuclear weapons in defiance of the nonproliferation treaty it had signed. They successfully managed the indefinite extension and strengthening of the NPT in 1995, led efforts to conclude and sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, finally won Senate ratification of the CWC in 1997, and resisted repeated efforts to repeal the ABM Tr eaty.
There were few other bright spots, however. Overall, the Clinton-Gore years were a bitter disappointment. In the second term, progress on the declared arms control goals of the administration ground to a halt and even went into reverse. The one Nuclear Posture Review conducted was a failure; administration officials refused even to consider another. The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency begun by President Kennedy was dismantled, precisely at the time when the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was declared the number one national security threat. Under heavy attack on both personal and policy issues, the president made fielding a national missile defense system his primary objective.
Clinton will end eight years in office without having signed a strategic weapons reduction pact (Bush signed two in four years). Clinton has largely been reduced to implementing treaties negotiated by his predecessors. And he may have fatally wounded START II, first by delaying submission of the pact until well into his first term, then by linking the negotiation of START III with the ratification of START II, then linking it again with Russian agreement to amend substantially the ABM Treaty. Although Senate Republicans bear the onus of defeating the test ban in 1999, the administration mishandled the entire ratification effort.
Vice President Gore has had ample opportunity to make his mark in the field, and apart from the Gore-Chernomyrdin process, has played only a minor role. There is every reason to believe that as president he could improve upon the Clinton record, but he may simply continue the present triangulation strategy on defense, subordinating progress on defense and arms control to domestic concerns and reelection. Does anybody think President Gore would reduce the defense budget?
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe the Gore camp will have learned some lessons. Perhaps they will realize that the American people strongly support efforts to reduce and even eliminate nuclear weapons—and that doing so would be a plus, not a minus, for a president with the courage to lead.
Perhaps after the election, the Gore administration will realize that time is short, that if they do not act now they may not be able to act at all. Perhaps they will come in equipped with a powerful plan to strengthen the arms control regime, to triple efforts to reduce and secure nuclear weapons in Russia, to put resources where the threats are, and to increase funding and attention to nonproliferation.
Perhaps. God, I hope so.