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U.S. Trouble With START and Other Treaties
John B. Bellinger III
Interviewee:
Interviewer:
President
Overall, the U.S. pattern of failing to ratify a number of treaties even after winning desired changes undermines
U.S. credibility, Bellinger says. He cited the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) and Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as
examples. "It may well be that we will sign the treaty, but our negotiating partners have no confidence that the executive branch will
necessarily be able to get a potentially controversial treaty through the
Q. The new arms reduction treaty with
A. The new START Treaty will end up being approved this year by the
Q. What about some of the concerns raised by former governor
A. My sense is that he, in writing this op-ed, is more the standard bearer for conservative Republicans who want to give the president a hard time and make this difficult. Many other Republicans, including the Bush administration, were not concerned that arms reduction would threaten our missile defense.
Governor Romney and several Republican members of the
Q. You contend in your recent
A. The president doesn't have to personally get involved in most treaties. There are some highly controversial or important treaties that the president himself needs to make an issue of, for example, the new START Treaty -- (which is) important, and the Law of the Sea Treaty because it is controversial. In many other treaties, the president himself doesn't need to be involved. Nonetheless, the
It's not that they're opposed to the treaties before the
Q. According to the
A. Some of those treaties fall in different categories. On the Law of the
The administration could get through some of these treaties, not all of them. Some of them would be quite difficult, some of them would require going to the
Q. Why do you think that is?
A. They have not made it a priority. They focused on domestic political issues in their first year, and through much of this year, and they've not wanted to take on controversial treaties in an election year. And then we had in fact cleared away during the Bush administration many of the treaties that had been languishing for a number of years, so there were fewer treaties pending on the
Q. You pointed out the Law of the Sea as one that the administration should focus on. If it's such a big deal and there's so much support, why hasn't the
A. Most of the members of the
The senators in
Given that both the president and the vice president served on the
Q. There are several treaties that are already in force, including LOST. What happens when
A. In some cases
Q. I talked to an international law expert before the
A. That is a real problem in treaty negotiation.
Perhaps the most prominent example is the Law of the Sea Treaty, where the Reagan administration complained bitterly about Article 11 of the treaty relating to deep seabed mining as did a number of other countries. The treaty was then renegotiated in the 1990s and changes were made to address the U.S. concerns. Other countries then all became party, but
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(c) 2010 Paul Greenberg