The United States Senate’s 51-48 defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty – a pact that would ban all nuclear testing worldwide – strikes a painful blow to America’s global reputation and reeks of partisan politics.

The world’s most powerful nation should set the example – albeit largely symbolic – that nuclear proliferation should not be sanctioned in a civilized world.

Instead, representatives from countries, including Germany, France, Russia, Japan and even China, have decried the U.S. Senate’s rejection of the test ban treaty.

President Clinton branded the Republican’s rebuff of the pact “new isolationism.” The magnitude of this setback can be compared with the 1920 defeat of the Treaty of Versailles – Woodrow Wilson’s move to make America a force in international politics following victory in World War I.

Moreover, 62 members of the Senate – both Democrats and Republicans – signed written statements asking that the vote on the treaty be postponed until further debate took place. Only six days were spent on hearings and debate, leaving Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) unable to make an educated choice on the treaty. For the first time in his 41 years in the Senate, Byrd merely voted “present” for lack of adequate information.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s (R-Miss.) engineering of the rushed vote stinks of blatant partisan politics. The Senate Republicans’ nearly lockstep vote sends a deleterious message to the global community. In countries like Pakistan and India the threat of nuclear warfare is a distressing reality that needs serious consideration.

By disabling the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in its infant stages, the Senate used the Constitutional tool of “advise and consent” on treaty ratification irresponsibly and with a potentially disastrous effect.