-Caveat Lector-
1/19/01
www.investors.com
Clinton Seeking Treaties w/o Senate Approval
By Douglas Austin
Investor's Business Daily
Treaty making seems simple enough. The president inks the deal.
Two-thirds of the Senate votes to ratify. The treaty becomes the
law of land.
But what if the president inks the deal, orders it acted on, but
doesn't ask for the Senate's OK?
That's just what President Clinton has done for several treaties.
Will they survive his leaving office? NOt if the treaties'
Republican critics have their way.
"(President-elect George) Bush ought to look hard at every single
one of these agreements and ascertain whether it makes sense for
the country to be bound by them," said Frank Gaffney, director of
the Center for Security Policy. "In most cases, I think the
answer is going to be no."
Clinton's unratified treaties cover a range of issues, from
missile defense to civil rights for children.
Human Rights
In 1998, Clinton issued an executive order, No. 13107, telling
federal agencies to comply wth several human rights treaties the
Senate had not yet ratified.
The order sets up an "interagency working group" to oversee
compliance.
"It's almost as if ratification is only a detail, a mere
formality," said Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival,
a group that opposes the treaties. "Clinton is trying to get the
federal machinery moving to implement these treaties whether they
have been ratified or not."
Two of the treaties are the Convention on the Rights. of the
Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women.
Critics fear the treaties mask a move toward greater state
control over the family and the economy.
The treaty's rights for children provides legal grounds for state
intervention in family matters. The treaty to ban all
discrimination against women could be used to push wage controls.
"They use these treaties to shape and reorient the public
policies and even the social culture of nations around the
world," said Patrick Fagan, research fellow at The Heritage
Foundation.
The U.N. sends a team every five years to report on local
conditions.
The report is used to pressure the country to change its laws. In
the U.S., that would shift more power to Washington.
Fagan says the U.N. takes a radical interpretation on the rights
of the child, driving a wedge between parents and their kids.
For example, parents in Britain had the right to remove their
kids from sex-education classes.
But that right was criticized by the U.N.'s first report on
conditions for children in Britain. The U.N. report was then used
in Britain to change the law, taking away the parents' right.
The ABM Treaty
The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty might have died when the
Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.
But in 1997, President Clinton signed off
on a memorandum of understanding with four ex-Soviet states.
The memo treated the ABM treaty as still
valid. That put severe limits on any missile-defense system the
U.S. might field.
First the White House said any follow-on to the ABM treaty would
need Senate OK. It even promised to seek the Senate's OK when the
Senate approved the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty in 1997.
But after signing the 1997 memo with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and
Kazakhstan, the White House changed its mind.
ln a 1998 letter to Congress Clinton said a case could be made
that the ABM. treaty. was still in effect, so the new memo didn't
need the Senate's OK.
ABM treatyopponents want Bush to renounce the memorandum. They
say Clinton violated the rider put in the CFE treaty ordering a
Senate vote.
"The Clinton administration's trying to bypass the Senate
regarding this 1997 MOU (memorandum of understanding), which they
tried to do before the Senate said no, was constitutionally
questionable," said Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation.
"I think that agreement inherently required Senate consent, and
there was a real question of undermining the Senate's tidvice and
consent powers in an unconstitutional way."
Clinton signed the treaty to join the "International Criminal
Court" on New Year's Eve.
Standing Tribunal
The treaty would create a standing tribunal to indict, prosecute
and punish people for crimes against humanity.
The White House claimed it would give the U.S. influence during
further talks. But Clinton said Bush shouldn't send it to the
Senate until U.S. concerns were fixed.
Bush's people agree the treaty is flawed. They have no plans to
send it to the Senate and will review the treaty when Bush. takes
office.
GOP opponents in Congress are weighing a law banning cooperation
with the court.
Critics charge Clinton gave support to the treaty by signing it.
He also made it more difficult to work against the pact.
"Once we sign, we are saying well, we're kind of basically in
favor of this," said Jeremy Rabkin, professor of government at
Cornell University. "And that makes it very hard for us to go
around twisting people's arms not to go forward with it, which is
what we ought to be doing."
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
In a rare move, Clinton sent the nuclear test ban treaty to, the
Senate. He wanted the political fight and thought he could force
the GOP's Senate majority to ratify the pact.
During the debate, the White House claimed that Clinton's
signature tied the U.S. to the treaty even without Senate action.
That tipped the balance for many moderate Senators.
"The Senate wouldn't tolerate any such
doctrine whereby the signature alone would bind us," said Peter
Rod-man, director of national security programs at the Nixon
Center.
"That's one of the things that led the Republicans to kill the
test ban treaty, because the Clinton administration was arguing
that we were going to be bound by it anyway," he said.
Only 48 voted to support the deal.
The next day, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright outraged
critics by sending a cable telling U.S. diplomats to assure their
hosts the U.S. would continue to follow the treaty.
Gaffney called the move "the most egregious example" of what
Clinton has done over his term.
Even after direct Senate rejection, the White House has sent
hundreds of people to multilateral working groups and training
sessions.
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