The Politics of Arms Control Treaty Ratification

489 Pages·1991·61.24 MB·English

by  Michael Krepon

THE POLITICS OF ARMS
CONTROL TREATV
RATIFICATION
Also by Michael Krepon
Commercial Observation Satellites and International Security* (co-editor)
Arms Control and the Reagan Administration (author)
Verification and Compliance: A Problem-solving Approach (co-editor)
Strategie Stalemate: Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control In American Politics* (author)
Also by Dan Caidwell
American-Soviet Relations: From 1947 to the Nixon-Kissinger Grand Design (author)
Henry Kissinger: His Personality and Policies (editor)
Soviet International Behavior and U.S. Policy Options (editor)
Tbe Dynamics of Domestic Politics and Arms Control: Tbe Salt II Treaty
Ratifieation Debate (author)
*also published by Palgrave Macmillan
THE POLITICS OF ARMS
CONTROL TREATY
RATIFICATION
edited by
Michael Krepon
President
Henry L. Stimson Center
and
Dan Caldwell
Professor of Political Science
Pepperdine University
Palgrave Macmillan
in association with the
Henry L. Stimson Center
© Henry L. Stimson Center 1991
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1991 978-0-312-06604-8
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY 10010
First Published in the United States of America in 1991
ISBN 978-1-349-60585-9 ISBN 978-1-137-04534-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-04534-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tbe Politics of arms control treaty ratification / edited by Michael Krepon
and Dan Caldwell.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Arms control-United States-History. 2. Treaties-
Ratification--History. 3. United States--Foreign relations
Treaties. 4. United States--Politics and government-2Oth century.
I. Krepon, Michael, 1946- . 11. Caldwell, Dan.
JX1974.P6238 1991
341.3'7'0941-dc20 91-34787
eIP
Contents
Acknowledgments Vll
Introduction
Dan Caldwell 1
1 The League of Nations Component of
the Versailles Treaty
William C. Widenor 17
2 The Washington Naval Treaties
Thomas H. Buckley 65
3 The Geneva Protocol of 1925
Rodney J. McElroy 125
4 The Limited Test Ban Treaty
Benjamin S. Loeb 167
5 The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
Alan Platt 229
n
6 The SALT Treaty
Dan Caldwell 279
7 The INF Treaty
Janne E. Nolan 355
Conclusions
Michael Krepon 399
Index 473

Acknowledgments
This book has been made possible through the grant support
of the Ford Foundation. We are deeply grateful to Enid c.B.
Schoettle for supporting the Stimson Center's treaty
ratification project and for helping us to disseminate our
findings. Stanley Heginbotham was instrumental in shaping
our inquiry into executive-congressional relations. He also
provided wise counsel during the formative stages of the
project.
Many individuals played important roles in the creation of
this book. Any study of this kind is only as good as its case
studies, and we have been fortunate to enlist the services of
Thomas H. Buckley, Benjamin S. Loeb, Rodney J. McElroy,
Janne E. Nolan, Alan Platt, and William C. Widenor who
helped refine the list of questions addressed in each case and
who adapted to the focused comparison method of inquiry
admirably weH.
We also wish to thank the case study reviewers for their
efforts to sharpen the analysis of individual cases: George
Bunn, Linda Brady, Lynn Davis, I. M. Destler, Elisa Harris,
Pat Holt, Robert Hoover, David Kennedy, Herbert F.
Margulies, and John Stewart. We are grateful to James M.
Montgomery for steering us in the right direction at the
outset of our inquiry.
Most of the essays in this book were presented to a
conference on executive-congressional relations and the treaty
ratification process convened at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars. We wish to thank Charles
Blitzer, Robert Litwak, and Samuel WeHs of the Wilson
Center and Enid c.B. Schoettle of the Ford Foundation for
providing this opportunity to broadcast our findings to a
Washington audience and to receive useful comments from a
knowledgeable audience.
vii
Special thanks go to McGeorge Bundy, Terry Deibel,
Alexander George, Lynn Meininger, John Rielly, Stanley
Riveles, Gaddis Smith, and Larry K. Smith. We are grateful
to Richard Baker, Jo Anne McCormick Quatannens, and
Donald A. Ritchie of the Historical Office of the Uni ted
States Senate. Dan Caldwell would like to thank the Seaver
College Reassigned Time Committee of Pepperdine
University for granting hirn support while working on this
project. Most important, we wish to thank Page Fortna,
Steven Irwin, Nancy McCoy, John Parachini, Amy Smithson,
Lisa Tepper, and Fred von Lohmann, whose research and
administrative support made this project possible.
M.K., D.C.
viii
Introduction
Dan Caldwell
This book presents a eritieal examination of exeeutive
eongressional relations and the domestie polities of arms
eontrol treaty ratifieation within the United States during the
twentieth eentury. The starting point of this study is the
hypothesis that the polities of treaty ratifieation ean be as
important as the negotiations leading up to agreements.
Benefits to international peaee and seeurity sought in years of
painstaking diplomatie effort ean be lost without Senate
eonsent, as was the ease with the Treaty of Versailles and the
seeond treaty arising from the Strategie Arms Limitation
Talks (SALT n). Despite the substantial importanee of this
subjeet, the politics of treaty ratifieation is a relatively
unexplored ania, particularly compared with the volumes of
studies and memoirs concerning past arms control
negotiations.
With the simultaneous pursuit of a number of arms
control agreements and a weakened politicalleadership in the
Soviet Union, it is appropriate to assess the ways in whieh the
executive and congressional branches have handled past arms
control treaties. How have treaties been dealt with in the
past? What domestie political factors within the Uni ted States
have been the most important in determining whether a treaty
has won the Senate's approval or not? How can an
administration improve the chances for ratification by paying
attention to these factors?
The existing literature on executive-congressional relations
and the politics of treaty ratifieation does not deal extensively
with these questions. The topic of the ratification process has
been overlooked by historians, politieal scientists, and
practitioners of public policy. Only the Versailles Treaty has
been carefully analyzed, but much of the scholarship
surrounding this ratification battle was written decades ago.1
1