The most shameful part of the vote is not that the wrong decision was made, but that it was made for the worst reason: partisanship. Realizing there weren't enough votes for ratification, President Clinton and many other Congressional Democrats asked Lott and the Republican leaders to take the treaty off the current Senate agenda as a way to delay the vote for further deliberation instead of killing it outright.

Realizing what was at stake, Britain, France and Germany also asked for a delayed vote. Lott, however, refused to compromise when Clinton wouldn't promise in writing that he wouldn't bring it back up for vote before the end of his presidential term in 2001. The fact that the decision to bring up the vote with no delay was decided exactly on party lines and the vote on the treaty itself practically so (with a few Republicans voting to ratify) is a pretty clear indicator that the vote was decided not for policy reasons but because of politics.

With a delayed vote, CTBT still could have been rejected if the ensuing debate had proven it a bad idea. By rejecting it now, we have, in Clinton's words, "severely harm[ed] the national security of the United States" and "damage[d] our relationship with our allies." Unfortunately, these concerns don't seem to matter as long as Lott and the GOP have a chance to publicly embarrass their arch-nemesis.

History repeats itself. In 1918, partisan politics ruined the chances of a successful League of Nations. Its failure as an institution is said to be one of the factors that led to the re-emergence of German power and World War II. Following in the footsteps of Henry Cabot Lodge, Trent Lott and the Senate GOP may have very well stifled one of the world's best hopes to decrease nuclear proliferation.

It would be a shame if the US failed to prevent nuclear war because a few angry Senators wanted to give Clinton a "black eye."

Shawn P. Saler '03 is a first-year living in Canaday.