Lott's Choice: It's Henry Cabot Lodge or Arthur Vandenberg

WASHINGTON: This week the Senate decides whether the United States continues to lead the free world. If the Chemical Weapons Convention is voted down, there will not be a multinational agreement on nuclear or biological weapons for years.

The debate on the convention, which bans production and of chemical weapons, is not about U.S. chemical weapons. In an act of unilateral disarmament, the United States began destroying its entire stockpile under a 1985 law signed by President Ronald Reagan.

The Chemical Weapons Convention will simply make it an international crime for those nations who do not follow America's lead. The significance of the treaty is as a model for putting teeth into existing biological and nuclear weapons agreements that presently have little or no enforcement regimes.

But the overriding importance of the convention is the choice it represents: Will the United States continue to enter into multilateral agreements, or take the position of going it alone in its dealings with friend and foe alike? If extremists take over the Republican Party, and the Chemical Weapons Convention is not ratified, are NATO, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the United Nations far behind?

The last time the Senate rejected a treaty that had such a far-reaching effect on American foreign policy was in the aftermath of World War I. In 1920, the Treaty of Versailles, with its League of Nations Covenant, was voted down when Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge set conditions that Democratic President Wood-row Wilson felt he could not accept. Isolationism triumphed, and America turned inward.

It was not until after World War II that the United States charted a new course that would determine American foreign policy for the next half century. Republican Arthur Vandenberg, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, put aside his isolationism to make common cause with Democratic President Harry Truman. The defining moment for their bipartisan coalition was the Marshsall Plan. That recovery program helped rebuild Europe. The United States had never appeared so great or so generous.

Now, once again after a war (this time the Cold War), America is at a crossroads. Will it return to the extremist policies it followed after the World War I or demonstrate the generosity of spirit that animated American foreign policy after World War II and contained and then defeated the Soviet Union?

The chemical convention presents such a choice.

All 45 Senate Democrats and many Republicans support it, but are probably not enough for the 67 votes required for passage. Those Republicans sitting on the fence are waiting for a clear signal from their majority leader, Trent Lott. He has the burden of choosing sides in this battle for the soul of the Republican Party.

The treaty is not a favor to President Bill Clinton or the Democrats. It is a key security instrument for the American people and a signal to the rest of the world. If he follows in the tradition of Arthur Vandenberg and every Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower, Senator Lott will usher in a new era in American leadership and cooperation among free nations.

The writer is founder and chairman of Business Executives for National Security, an organization of U.S. business leaders. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.