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Heritage
Foundation
The Arms Trade
Treaty, Week Two: As the U.N. Talks, the Senate Acts
Ted R. Bromund, Ph.D.
March 26, 2013
At the United Nations, review continues of the latest draft of the Arms
Trade Treaty (ATT) that was unveiled on Friday.
The temperature of the conference is notably lower now, and there is a
renewed sense that Thursday is likely to bring agreement on a treaty.
True, the Arabs and others continue to issue demands, and the U.S. is
still locked in a struggle with a group of over 100 nations that want a
perfect treaty, but this week’s speeches seem less strident than those
made at the end of last week. There is a distinct sense that, with the
treaty in all but final form, statements are now being made as much for
the record as to influence the drafting of the treaty.
The most important developments over the past few days have happened in
Washington, not New York. On Monday, the concurrent resolution
introduced two weeks ago by Senator Jerry Moran (R–KS) and
Representative Mike Kelly (R–PA) won its 34th Senate cosponsor, Senator
Max Baucus (D–MT). This means that more than a third of the Senate is
now committed to urging President Obama not to sign the ATT, opposing
its ratification by the Senate, and rejecting any funding for or legal
recognition of the ATT unless and until it passes fully through the
ratification process.
The resolution also continues to gain support in the House, where it
now has 129 co-sponsors. Together, this places the Senate and the House
jointly on record as supporting a resolution that is strongly critical
of the ATT and as defending their respective roles in the U.S. treaty
process—in numbers sufficient in the Senate to prevent the ATT’s
ratification.
On Friday, the leadership of Moran and Kelly was supplemented by an
initiative from Senator Jim Inhofe (R–OK), when his amendment to the
budget resolution was approved by a vote of 53 to 46. It gives the
chairman of the Senate Budget Committee—currently Senator Patty Murray
(D–WA)—the power to revise, in a deficit- and revenue-neutral way,
budget allocations relating to upholding Second Amendment rights, which
“shall include preventing the United States from entering into the
United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.”
With Moran’s concurrent resolution and Inhofe’s amendment, opposition
to the ATT is now at an all-time high in the Senate, surpassing the
previous peak of 51 Senators who signed a letter led by Moran on the
ATT to President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in
July 2012.
The efforts of the Moran resolution and the Inhofe amendment are
complementary. The Inhofe amendment shows the strength of opposition to
the ATT in the Senate, which some treaty supporters have recently
argued was on the wane. But it only allows the Senate Budget Committee
chair to take action against the ATT; it does not require such action.
It cannot eliminate the broader risks to U.S. foreign policy and
business deriving from the ATT; it cannot prevent the President from
signing the ATT; and it takes no position on the legal status of an ATT
that the President has signed but the Senate has not ratified. Those
are precisely the areas where the Moran concurrent resolution—which, by
its very nature, allows more room for the presentation of a position—is
at its strongest.
Together, Moran and Inhofe, with the vital support of Kelly in the
House, have shown real leadership on the ATT. With the conference now
looking more likely to conclude with the adoption of a treaty, their
collaborative support for each other’s efforts will be tested again in
the months and years to come.
Posted in American Leadership, Featured
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