Some organizations are purposefully designed to require a high degree of consensus before acting in deference to minority rights. The obvious example is the UN Security Council, where all five permanent members have veto privileges when dealing with threats to international peace and security. Collective security by means of the UN is, as D’Artagnan said, “All for one and one for all.”
I’m no expert about climate change, although my back is still sore from shoveling a 100-year record snowfall this winter in Central Virginia. Trying to reach agreement at the climate change conference in Copenhagen was like convening 200 die-hard Red Sox fans to determine, by consensus, which relief pitcher Tito Francona should send to mound. (Note to non-U.S. readers of ACW: feel free to substitute your favorite team and sport.)
Then there’s the U.S. Senate, where a super-majority of 60 votes (out of 100) on procedural matters is required to pass a substantive piece of legislation by a simple majority – if the minority insists on doing so. Don’t ask me how, but the word “filibuster” which used to refer to an American military adventurer fomenting insurrection in Latin America, now describes bloviation and other obstructionist tactics on Capitol Hill.
The more power and responsibility the United States has gained in world affairs, the more the filibuster has turned the Senate into a dysfunctional body. The Senate voted 24 times to invoke cloture to stop filibusters between World Wars I and II. By comparison, between 1945 and 1980, the Senate invoked cloture 145 times. Matters got worse during Ronald Reagan’s two terms, with cloture being invoked 115 times; add 71 cloture votes in the four years of the George H.W. Bush administration.
The “unilateral moment” heralded by Charles Krauthammer after the demise of the Soviet Union coincided with a period of even more intense partisanship. There were 207 cloture votes during Bill Clinton’s presidency, followed by 276 during George W. Bush’s two terms, with a record 112 cloture votes in the 110th Congress alone. But records were made to be broken, and the Senate has become a graveyard for bipartisanship during the Obama administration.
As readers of ACW are well aware, the Senate’s rules for consent to treaty ratification are even more daunting, requiring a two-third’s vote.
The Conference on Disarmament in Geneva now makes the US Senate look like the Daytona Speedway. Consensus is required at the CD, and consensus these days is very hard to come by. Pakistan is now fronting efforts to block a work program whose centerpiece is a fissile material cutoff treaty. Consider this payback for the U.S.-India civil nuclear deal and a reflection of Pakistani security concerns about India’s growing conventional military capabilities.
The CD, which began (under a different name) with ten nations, now has 65 that can veto forward progress. When procedural rules favor dysfunction and when the stakes are high, more creative methods of accomplishment become imperative. A small vanguard of states can get the ball rolling on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty with verification experiments laying the groundwork for a necessary precursor to the FMCT – a global moratorium on fissile material production for weapon purposes. Once this ad hoc body – a coalition of the willing, if you will – begins to gain traction, recalcitrant states at the CD will become interested in reviving the CD so as to retard its progress. Which is why coalitions of the willing must be willing to continue their work in parallel with the CD.
More creative approaches to negotiate space security – another CD agenda item – are also imperative. As discussed in this space earlier, an unverifiable treaty banning ill-defined space weapons is not in the cards. But a code of conduct for responsible space-faring nations, including a ban on the use of space objects for target practice, is now possible. The sooner major space powers get this ball rolling outside the CD, the better.