Treaties and Agreements

Fifteen years ago today, President Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The treaty bars signatory countries from exploding nuclear devices. In signing the treaty with the same pen that John F. Kennedy used three decades earlier to sign the Limited Test Ban Treaty, Clinton called CTBT “the longest-sought, hardest-fought prize in arms control history.” Clinton didn’t realize at the time how accurate and prophetic his statement was. CTBT faced substantial Republican opposition from the start. When CTBT finally came to a vote in 1999, it fell well short of the two-thirds vote needed for passage. CTBT thus became one of just twenty-one treaties to be defeated on the floor on the Senate. As of September 2011, 182 countries have signed CTBT and 155 have ratified it. The treaty does not go into effect until all forty-four “Annex II states”—so-called because they are listed in Annex II to the treaty—sign and ratify the treaty. India, North Korea, and Pakistan have not signed the treaty. China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, and Israel have followed the U.S. lead and signed the treaty but not ratified it. President Obama vowed in his April 2009 Prague speech that: My administration will immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. After more than five decades of talks, it is time for the testing of nuclear weapons to finally be banned. Not quite. The political forces weren’t aligned in 2009 for rapid Senate action. They were even less aligned after the November 2010 elections and the successful but draining effort to persuade the Senate to approve the New START Treaty. The scuttlebutt is that Obama hopes to move forward with CTBT after he wins re-election. The State Department has a fact sheet posted on how CTBT would make America more secure, and Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher gave a speech in California in July touting CTBT. But of course if Obama is to push for CTBT’s approval in his second term, he first has to win re-election. And that, it is safe to say, is far from a done deal. What are the best things you have read on the pros and cons of CTBT?

President Obama begins his Latin America trip on March 19. When he stops in Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador the official business will range from trade to energy to regional security. One issue that won’t be on the agenda is the Panama Canal. That is because on this date in 1978 the Senate narrowly passed the “Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal,” thereby removing what had been a long-standing irritant in U.S. relations with Latin America. The Panama Canal Zone, which cut a ten-mile wide path across the middle of Panama, was a source of controversy in Latin America from its creation. Theodore Roosevelt had initially negotiated a treaty with Colombia to build a canal across the Panamanian isthmus. The Colombian Senate rejected the treaty, however, as lop-sided in favor of the United States. TR, deciding that there was more than one way to skin a cat, encouraged Panamanian separatists who wanted to be free of rule from Bogota to revolt. When the rebels succeeded, in part because the U.S. Navy prevented Columbian troops from landing in Panama to put down the uprising, TR struck a deal with the new government to build a canal. The Panama Canal was a point of great pride for the United States, but trouble was brewing. In 1964, anti-American riots broke out in Panama, killing twenty-three Panamanians and three Americans. The violence was ostensibly triggered by reports that U.S. high school students in the Canal Zone had desecrated a Panamanian flag. But the deeper issue was that many Panamanians saw U.S. control of the canal as an affront to Panamanian sovereignty—“a foreign flag piercing its own heart,” as a later Panamanian leader, General Omar Torrijos, would put it. The Johnson administration and then the Nixon administration talked with Panama about writing a new treaty. But those negotiations had failed to produce an agreement by the time Jimmy Carter came to office in 1977. So it fell to Carter to strike a final deal. Although he had argued against giving control of the canal to Panama earlier in his career, he had come to the conclusion that the canal was no longer vital to U.S. strategic and trade interests and that a failure reach an agreement with Panama would jeopardize America’s political and economic relations with all of Latin America. Carter moved quickly. In August 1977, U.S. and Panamanians announced an agreement. The deal they struck consisted of two treaties. One, which is sometimes called the “Panama Canal Treaty,” terminated the original 1903 treaty and established a process for handing complete control over the canal to Panama by December 31, 1999. The other treaty, usually referred to as the “Neutrality Treaty,” gave the United States a right in perpetuity to protect the canal’s “neutrality,” that is, to ensure that any and all countries could use it. Latin America hands praised Carter for resolving a budding crisis in the region. Unfortunately for the man from Plains, Georgia, Latin America hands were not nearly as numerous or as vocal as the conservative, pro-canal lobby in the United States. They hated the deal. Coming as it did on the heels of the ignominious U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, they charged Carter with appeasement and assailed America’s “retreat” from the world. A leading voice for the anti-treaty forces was Republican presidential hopeful Ronald Reagan. For the Gipper, the Canal Zone was “sovereign United States territory just the same as Alaska. . . and the states that were carved out of the Louisiana Purchase.” Or as he liked to say in a line in his stump speech that brought his conservative audience to its feet: “We bought it, we paid for it, it’s ours, and we’re going to keep it.” Reagan’s fellow California Republican, Sen. S. I. Hayakawa, had a slightly different take—America had a right to the canal because “we stole it fair and square.” As a matter of law and history, Reagan and Hayakawa had it wrong. The Canal Zone was not sovereign U.S. territory, whether taken fairly or unfairly. As Ellsworth Bunker, the distinguished U.S. diplomat who helped to negotiate the treaty, argued: We bought Louisiana; we bought Alaska. In Panama, we bought not territory, but rights . . . . It is clear that under law we do not have sovereignty in Panama. Whatever the facts, much of the public sided firmly with Reagan and Hayakawa. A poll taken in September 1977 found that only 23 percent of Americans supported the treaties, while 50 percent opposed them. The breadth and depth of opposition to the treaties unnerved some senators, perhaps none more so than Edward Zorinsky (D-Neb.) He told Carter that while he was personally inclined to support the treaties, most of his fellow Nebraskans weren’t. Caught between his own policy preferences and those of his constituents, he announced that he would vote for the treaties if the administration could persuade a majority of Nebraskans that it was the right thing to do. Worried about where public opinion would lead Senator Zorinksy and others, Carter set out to make the case for the treaties to the public. He gave a major presidential address on the importance of approving them. The Committee of Americans for the Canal Treaties, composed of Cold War luminaries, influential labor leaders, and other opinion shapers, was formed to support passage. Major corporations that worried about what would happen to their investments in Latin America if the treaties didn’t pass, as well as liberal religious groups seeking to wipe away the stain of “colonialism,” also joined the fray. Carter also got a surprising boost from an unlikely source in Hollywood—Marion Robert Morrison. Better known to the world as John Wayne—yes, that John Wayne, the star of Stagecoach, The Searchers, The Green Berets, and True Grit, among other classic films—he had become friends with the Panamanian leader, General Torrijos. And he didn’t take kindly to Reagan criticizing his friend. He publicly challenged the Gipper “point by God damn point in the Treaty where you are misinforming people.” Carter’s team at times took a page out the John Wayne macho handbook in defending the treaties. When Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was asked how the United States would respond if Panama closed the canal on the pretext of conducting repairs, his response was blunt (and not well-received in Panama City): “According to the provisions of the Neutrality Treaty, we will move in and close down the Panamanian government for repairs.” The debate came to a head in March 1978. Here Carter was helped by Senator Minority Leader Howard Baker. (Chalk one up for bipartisanship.) As the historian George Herring tells the story: The key to the administration’s eventual narrow victory was the passage of two amendments [to the Neutrality Treaty] carefully crafted and shepherded through the upper house by Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Republican Howard Baker of Tennessee. The first gave the United States explicit rights after the year 2000 to intervene militarily to keep the canal open and for U.S. ships to move to the head of the line in times of crisis. Originally a memorandum of understanding, this amendment was formally incorporated into the treaty after quite extraordinary negotiations between Senator Baker and Torrijos. On March 16, the Senate voted to approve the Neutrality Treaty by a margin of sixty-eight to thirty-two, just one vote more than the two-thirds majority needed. (Polls showed that Nebraskans opposed the treaty. Senator Zorinksky kept his word and voted no.) Along the way, the Senate rejected seventy-seven amendments, most of which were designed to make the treaty unacceptable to Panama. A month later the Senate passed the Panama Canal Treaty, and the process of handing control of the Panama Canal over to Panama was set in motion. The battle over the Panama Canal treaties illustrates two broader lessons about the politics of American foreign policy. One is that presidents at times have won over the Senate even when they failed to win over the American public. Polls taken in the spring of 1978 showed that support for (30 percent) and opposition to (53 percent) the treaties had not budged since the previous summer, despite Carter’s full-court press on the public relations front. (I said in yesterday’s post that today’s TWE Remembers would provide an example of how presidents can move public opinion. Scratch that.) An interesting question to ponder is whether a president today could get the Senate to approve any treaty that a substantial portion of the public opposed. Polls showed substantial support for the New Start Treaty, and it still almost landed on the ash heap of history. The other lesson is that prevailing on Capitol Hill does not mean that a president necessarily prevails politically. Carter later lamented that “some fine members of Congress had to pay with their political careers for their votes” on the canal treaties. But in many ways he did as well. He may have done the right thing in settling the Panama Canal issue—and the fact that we virtually never talk about the canal suggests he did—but he reaped few political benefits from his victory and more likely hardened the convictions of his opponents to unseat him in 1980. Postscript. Carter’s problems with the Panama Canal did not end with Senate passage of the treaties. He also had to persuade Congress to appropriate funds to carry out the treaties’ provisions. This gave members of the House an opportunity to vent their spleen over the fact that the Constitution does not give them a role in treaty-making. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) castigated a round of Carter administration officials sent up to Capitol Hill to defend the request for the funds: We in the House are tired of you people in the State Department going to your tea-sipping friends in the Senate. Now you good folks come up here and say you need legislation [to implement the treaties] after you ignored the House. If you expect me to vote for this travesty, you’re sorely in error. When the conference committee set up to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of the implementing legislation issued its first report on the bill, the House rejected it. The House reversed itself only after Carter launched an intensive lobbying effort that involved former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and other Republican notables. Perhaps it is not surprising that most administrations wish they didn’t have to deal with the Hill.

Today marks the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formally ending the Mexican-American War. As you might have guessed, the treaty was signed in Guadalupe Hidalgo, which is just outside of Mexico City. Under the terms of the treaty the United States received California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. In return, Mexico received $15 million and Washington agreed to pick up the tab for $3.25 million in claims that U.S. citizens had against the Mexican government. I am not flagging the anniversary because it’s how we ended up with Las Vegas, though I suppose that’s a benefit. Rather, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is significant because it was negotiated by a U.S. diplomat in direct defiance of the president of the United States. Add in a heavy dose of domestic politics, and you have a diplomatic negotiation for the ages. First some background. The United States declared war on Mexico on May 13, 1845, shortly after Mexican troops killed eleven Americans north of the Rio Grande. The war’s origins were shrouded in controversy; in many ways it was the nineteenth century version of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. President Polk had been spoiling for a fight, and he used the clash, which the Americans in some ways provoked, to go to war. Polk’s allies rushed the declaration of war through Congress, refusing to allow members who wanted more time and information to speak. Polk expected a quick victory. He didn’t get it. Despite losing several major battles, the Mexican government, led by Antonio López de Santa Anna, who is best remembered by American schoolchildren as the villain at the Battle of the Alamo, refused to negotiate unless U.S. troops left Mexican soil. Polk tried to break the stalemate in the spring of 1847 by sending Nicholas Trist, the State Department’s chief clerk to Mexico. Trist knew some Spanish, having once been posted to Havana. He was also, like Polk, a Democrat, so he was presumed to be loyal to the president. In particular, Polk wanted Trist to keep an eye on Gen. Winfield Scott, who Polk (rightly) suspected of harboring presidential ambitions. Trist’s efforts didn’t produce much that summer even though by mid-September Scott’s troops had captured Mexico City and forced Santa Anna from power. That mattered less to Polk, though, than what he saw as signs that Trist could not be trusted. Trist had forwarded to Washington rather than rejected out of hand a Mexican proposal to set the border not at the Rio Grande as the Americans had insisted all along but further north at the Nueces River. Perhaps worse, Trist had struck up a close friendship with General Scott. So in early October, Polk ordered Trist to return to Washington. Trist received his recall in mid-November, and he did what would seem unthinkable: He refused to stop negotiating. He believed that the new Mexican government would agree to the treaty terms that Polk had instructed him to negotiate. He also worried that if he returned home that the next U.S. envoy might ask for even more from Mexico. He believed that tougher terms would be unacceptable to the Mexicans and condemn the United States to a bloody and protracted guerrilla war. As he later explained it: My object was…to make the treaty as little exacting from Mexico, as was compatible with its being accepted at home. So Trist wrote Polk a sixty-five page letter explaining why he intended to ignore his recall and finish the job. Trist’s letter arrived in Washington in mid-January. Polk did not take the news well. He wrote in his diary that the letter was dated on the 6th of Decr. last, and is the most extraordinary document I have ever heard from a Diplomatic Representative . . . . His despatch is arrogant, impudent, and very insulting to his Government, and even personally offensive to the President. He admits he is acting without authority and in violation of the positive order recalling him. It is manifest to me that he has become the tool of Gen ‘l Scott and his menial instrument, and that the paper was written at Scott’s instance and dictation. I have neer in my life felt so indignant, and the whole Cabinet expressed themselves as I felt….If there was any legal provision for his punishment he ought to be severely handled. He has acted worse than any man in public employ whom I have ever known. His despatch proves that he is destitute of honour or principle, and that he has proved himself to be a very base man. Polk hated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo because General Scott’s capture of Mexico City had convinced him he could squeeze more out of the Mexicans. But the treaty’s provisions matched the terms he had initially given Trist. And that meant that Polk had a political problem. Public opposition to the war was growing. In late December 1847, an obscure Illinois congressman named Abraham Lincoln offered the so-called Spot Resolution demanding to know exactly where on U.S. soil the first American blood was shed. Two weeks after that, the House passed a resolution declaring that the war had been “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun." Polk summarized his dilemma for his cabinet: I were now to reject a treaty made upon my own terms, as authorized in April last, with the unanimous approbation of the Cabinet, the probability is that Congress would not grant either men or money to prosecute the war. That would mean, of course, that the United States would end up with less territory than it gained under the treaty. Polk was unwilling to test his prediction about congressional behavior. On February 22, 1848, he submitted the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to the Senate for its advice and consent. Polk may not have gotten his way on the treaty with Mexico, but he exacted his revenge on Trist. He refused to pay Trist’s salary or reimburse his expenses. Trist lost his State Department job, plunging him into poverty. He wouldn’t find redemption until after the Civil War when Congress reimbursed him for his lost salary and unpaid expenses. President Ulysses S. Grant, who fought with great distinction in the Mexican-American and thought it "the most unjust war ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation”—made him postmaster of Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac from Washington.

Today marks the anniversary of the Senate vote to reject the Treaty of Versailles. I am flagging the vote not because it was one of the pivotal moments in the history American foreign policy, though it was, or because it indirectly helped lead to the creation of the Council on Foreign Relations, though it did. I flag the treaty’s defeat because we continue to hear its echoes today. First the politics of the treaty vote. As I discussed in an earlier post, Republicans were spitting angry with President Wilson for trying to use the war to help Democrats in the 1918 midterm elections. In addition, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, detested Wilson, who returned the feeling with equal fervor. Historians still debate whether Lodge always intended to kill the treaty. Even if he didn’t the dynamics of the Republican Party pushed him in that direction. Lodge feared a repeat of 1912, when Republicans splintered between William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt, allowing Wilson to win the presidency. Lodge’s fellow Republicans played on his fears, leading him to lament that his colleagues were speaking to him in language that “no man my age should be obliged to hear.” Sen. Mitch McConnell no doubt feels some kinship with Lodge. Lodge did not attack the treaty directly. He instead sought, as the historian Robert Ferrell put it, to “prolong the preliminaries and to delay the Senate’s advice and consent to the treaty until American opinion came to his side.” He began by taking two weeks to read the treaty out loud, sometimes to an empty committee chamber. He then called for public hearings, an unprecedented action at the time for a treaty, which lasted six weeks. (Jon Kyl was not the first senator to slow play the White House.) Then Lodge generated a list of Fourteen Reservations designed to “improve” the treaty, though Wilson believed the reservations effectively gutted his handiwork. The intellectual dispute at the heart of the Treaty of Versailles was as important as the partisanship that animated it. The treaty debate is often and incorrectly described as pitting isolationists against internationalists. Some senators did want to ignore the outside world. But they were a minority. Most senators recognized that “internationalism has come,” as Democratic Sen. Gilbert Hancock put it, “and we must choose what form the internationalism is to take.” For Wilson, that internationalism meant international law and collective security. For Lodge and others it meant maximizing America’s freedom to act. “What we want,” said Sen. William E. Borah, perhaps the most implacable foe of what he called Wilson’s “treacherous and treasonous scheme,” is “a free, untrammeled Nation, imbued again with the national spirit; not isolation but freedom to do as our own people think wise and just.” Lodge put the same point more darkly when he asked his fellow Americans “Are you willing to put your soldiers and your sailors at the disposition of other nations?” The split between those who see America’s salvation in joining with others and those who prefer to zealously preserve America’s sovereignty has never been closed. The Cold War era suppressed the debate because the Soviet threat virtually compelled the United States to pursue collective action. But the debate returned with a vengeance after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it lies at the heart of the debate over the New START Treaty. Sometimes the past is prologue.