THE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE thinks it has lured Senate majority leader Trent Lott into supporting the chemical-weapons ban. The tactic: engaging in extensive negotiations with Lott over Senate modifications of the treaty. By making concessions to Lott — and to Sen. Jesse Helms, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — President Clinton’s aides believe they’ve given Lott a stake in the treaty. At least they figure they’ve put him in a position where blocking the pact would be awkward and perhaps politically damaging. (Helms is another story.) To keep Lott mollified, Clinton aides have also love-bombed him. Robert Bell of the National Security Council thanked Lott publicly for his cooperation in adding conditions to the treaty and called him “a very tough negotiator.” Even Lott’s staffer, Randy Scheunemann, was lauded by Bell.
For a while, it appeared the White House was right about Lott. When conservative leader Paul Weyrich warned him against playing the facilitator role for the Chemical Weapons Convention that Howard Baker played in the passage of the Panama Canal treaties two decades ago, Lott scoffed. Weyrich’s point was that Baker’s presidential chances were hurt, while those of Ronald Reagan, who opposed the treaties, were enhanced. And Lott later reacted irritably to a lobbying effort by several dozen conservatives, including treaty critic Frank Gaffney. Lott also pleased the White House by insisting the treaty be voted on by April 29, the date it goes into effect worldwide, and not be bottled up in Helms’s committee. Republican senators worried he was preparing to vote for the treaty or let it pass while quietly voting no. ” He’s been trying to play this too cute,” complains Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Lott ally, by seeking to satisfy both Clinton and his Senate colleagues.
Pressured by Santorum and other senators, Lott has changed his tune. “Right now,” he told Chris Matthews on CNBC on April 15, “the form this treaty is in, even with the conditionalities that have been agreed to . . . is not in our best interest, and I will be opposed to it.” Lott said his biggest concern was the “sharing” provision, which is supposed to give countries access to all permissible chemicals and chemical technology. “I’m concerned that some of the people like Iran that may be a part of this treaty [will] use it to get more chemical-weapons information and more information about how to deal with defensive activities. These are major flaws with this treaty. If those could be and are addressed, I’ll vote for it. If they’re not, I will vote against it, and I will speak against it, and I will fight it.”
The White House offered more concessions the next day, notably one on sharing. Major chemical-manufacturing countries, collectively known as the Australia Group, would not be required to weaken their export controls under the treaty, according to a new modification. They could still deny Iran or anyone else access to “dual-use chemicals” that might be used to produce weapons of mass destruction. All 30 countries in the Australia Group declared, at the Clinton administration’s instigation, that they would maintain the controls. Besides, a White House official said, the provision granting full exchange of chemicals among treaty-signing countries was innocuous boilerplate and non-binding. “You’ve got to throw a bone to countries who didn’t get everything they wanted in the treaty,” the official said.
Lott was not visibly impressed. For one thing, there was the question of China, not a member of the Australia Group but a chemical exporter. If China sold chemicals that could be used militarily, wouldn’t France and other countries join in? Lott was said to think so. And what about changes in governments, bringing in officials who hadn’t promised to maintain export controls? And what about the exchange of defensive technology, which the treaty promotes? Wouldn’t that lead to “reverse engineering,” which makes it possible for rogue countries like Iran to concoct ways to evade America’s chemical defenses? These questions will have to be dealt with adequately to get Lott’s support, or at least keep him from leading the fight against the treaty.
That creates a problem. The White House has already made so many concessions — including ones to Lott easing the ban on tear gas and forcing foreign inspectors to get warrants from American judges to search American chemical plants — that any more might vitiate the treaty. “We’ve pushed the envelope as far as it can go without renegotiating the treaty,” says a Senate aide. Renegotiation, especially of the sharing provision, is exactly what Helms wants. It would, of course, kill American participation in the treaty for now. Before agreeing to that, the White House would probably yank the treaty from Senate consideration, as it did last September. Clinton doesn’t relish this. But his leverage with Lott is diminished. “I’ve stuck my neck out [for the president] on a couple issues and basically wound up with an empty bag,” Lott says. This time, the man with the empty bag may be Clinton.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
