The Senate Should Block an End Run on Nuclear Arms
President Obama needs congressional approval if he wishes to further diminish America's arsenal.
The Senate Should Block an End Run on Nuclear Arms
President Obama needs congressional approval if he wishes to further diminish America's arsenal.
Dec. 27, 2012 6:20 p.m. ET
Poised to join his former Senate Foreign Relations Committee colleagues
Barack Obama
and
Joe Biden
(and possibly
Chuck Hagel
) in the executive branch, Sen.
John Kerry
will likely join this administration's push for "dramatic
reductions" in America's nuclear arsenal. Yet as a long-time senator and
possibly our next secretary of state, he should know better. Such cuts
threaten both the viability of our strategic deterrent and the Senate's
constitutional say over treaties, a critical check on executive power in
foreign affairs.
President Obama has
made eliminating all nuclear weapons his signature policy. In 2011, his
New Start Treaty committed the United States to a ceiling of 700
strategic delivery vehicles and 1,550 strategic warheads. Now, as he
promised in March, he seeks even deeper reductions through "a step we
have never taken before—reducing not only our strategic nuclear
warheads, but also tactical weapons and warheads in reserve."
But
the president faces the Constitution's requirement that two-thirds of
the Senate consent to any treaty. In 2010, the Senate ratified New Start
with a vote of 71-26, but only after ending a filibuster with the exact
67 votes needed for a treaty. After his nasty re-election campaign,
partisan budget wrangling and unfulfilled promises to modernize our
nuclear stockpile, Mr. Obama will have a hard time finding 12 Republican
senators to support any new nuclear deal with Russia.
Accordingly,
a State Department advisory group headed by former Defense Secretary
William Perry
suggests that Mr. Obama ignore Congress. Its November report
urges that America and Russia reciprocally reduce nuclear weapons
without any international agreement: "Unilateral and coordinated
reductions can be quicker and less politically costly . . . relative to
treaties with adversarial negotiations and difficult ratification
processes."
Senators should block
end-runs around the Constitution's treaty clause. An informal agreement
would prevent effective congressional scrutiny of the unwise rush to
slash the nuclear arsenal, America's ultimate national-security
safeguard and a crucial buttress of world peace. Common limits on
nuclear warheads ignore the enormous disparities between America's
global responsibilities and Russia's far more limited interests.
Constraints on launching platforms impede the U.S.'s ability to use
conventional warheads in conflicts far from any Russian concern. Only an
effective American nuclear deterrent can prevent regional arms races
sparked by the Iranian and North Korean campaigns to perfect nuclear
weapons and ballistic missiles.
A
fly-by-night agreement would only compound these defects. Russia has
violated many of its arms-control treaty commitments, and no patina of
international law would bind Russia under the Obama administration's
wink-and-a-nod. We have experience with these types of loose political
agreements, such as the 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives, with
which Moscow has never complied adequately. America's diminishing
nuclear capabilities risk allowing Russia to break out quickly to
significantly higher weapons levels that leave the U.S. strategically
vulnerable.
The Constitution's treaty
mechanism requires real political consensus to sustain decisions on high
matters of state. The Framers mandated Senate supermajorities for
treaties precisely to guard against the foolhardy surrender of national
rights. Long-term limits on arms, by requiring far-reaching constraints
on building and deploying weapons systems, strike at the very core of
national sovereignty: the ability to defend ourselves. Evading the
treaty clause on vital strategic issues unwisely violates the Framers'
design.
Pursuing arms reductions
without senatorial consent would contravene the Constitution's careful
calibration of executive and legislative power. The commander in chief
has the power to decide how, when, and where to use the military—but
only the one Congress provides. Understanding funding as the most
important check on the executive's war powers, the Framers granted
Congress plenary authority over the shape and size of the U.S. armed
forces.
In Virginia's ratification
convention, for example,
James Madison
stated, "The sword is in the hands of the British King. The purse
is in the hands of the Parliament. It is so in America, as far as any
analogy can exist." Under Article I, Section 8, a Congress that
disagrees with White House arms cuts can respond by raising a larger
military. In the 1990s, Congress funded national missile defense despite
Clinton administration opposition.
The
U.S. has never entered into a significant arms-control agreement
without a treaty—not the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (1963),
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1970), the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty (1972), the Biological Weapons Convention (1975), the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (1987), the Conventional Forces
in Europe Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention (1993), Start I
(1991) or New Start (2010).
Only SALT
I—an interim, ultimately flawed agreement with the Soviet Union entered
into under the Nixon administration—didn't take treaty form. Presidents
Carter and Reagan erred in keeping the U.S. within SALT II's nuclear
limits without Senate ratification. President George W. Bush, by
contrast, correctly received Senate consent to the 2002 Treaty of
Moscow, which reduced deployed nuclear weapons after the U.S. withdrew
from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
There
may be no perfect constitutional test for when treaties are required,
but surely the touchstone must be the gravity of the issue for
sovereignty and security. The closer an international agreement
approaches the core of self-defense and independence, the stronger is
the case for the Senate's constitutional role. For arms agreements
between the U.S. and Russia, the world's largest nuclear powers, the
Constitution's answer could not be clearer.
Mr.
Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was
undersecretary of state for arms control and international security from
2001-05. Mr. Yoo, a professor at the University of California at
Berkeley School of Law, served in the Justice Department from 2001-03.
Dec. 27, 2012 6:20 p.m. ET
Poised to join his former Senate Foreign Relations Committee
colleagues Barack Obama and Joe Biden (and possibly Chuck Hagel) in the
executive branch, Sen. John Kerry will likely join this administration's
push for "dramatic reductions" in America's nuclear arsenal. Yet as a
long-time senator and possibly our next secretary of state, he should
know better. Such cuts threaten both the viability of our strategic
deterrent and the Senate's constitutional say over treaties, a critical
check on executive power in foreign...
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