Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

A Strategy for Achieving Senate Approval of the CTBT

by John Isaacs [contact information]

Published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Online on April 15, 2009

Article summary below; read the full text online

On April 5, speaking in Prague, President Barack Obama delivered his first public commitment to seek the Senate's advice and consent for ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The next day, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg told attendees at the Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference that Vice President Joseph Biden had been designated to lead the administration's campaign to win Senate approval of the CTBT.

Together, these events provided two critical signals that legions of CTBT supporters have been waiting for--a clear commitment to the CTBT from the president and a point person in the administration to take charge of the campaign. A bit of context: Biden was an important member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1999 when the Senate last considered the treaty. He also was a key figure in winning approval of another controversial treaty--the Chemical Weapons Convention.

At present, there are 56 Democratic senators plus two independents who caucus with the Democrats. All 58 are likely to vote "aye" on the treaty. So too will Al Franken of Minnesota, who appears ever closer to claiming the second Minnesota Senate seat after a long court challenge and extremely tight November 2008 election. With Franken aboard, the total projected Senate votes for the treaty are 59. One of the three Republican senators who supported the treaty in 1999, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter is expected to take the same position in a new vote.

That brings the number of treaty supporters to 60 if a new vote were held today. But getting from 60 probable votes to 67 sure votes is like forging a raging river at the finish line of a 10-mile hike.

That said, there is a hopeful precedent in the Senate's deliberation on the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which President George H. W. Bush signed shortly before he left office in 1993. (The CWC prohibits the development, production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons throughout the world.) President Clinton submitted the CWC to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification on November 23, 1993--after which, the treaty sat dormant because Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, an adamant CWC opponent, refused to allow the treaty out of his committee for a Senate floor vote.

Nonetheless, on April 24, 1997, the Senate gave its advice and consent to passage of the CWC on a 74-26 vote, with a majority of Republicans voting "aye" and Helms voting "no."