Daschle was mistaken. Lott, who would later say, “There was never a handshake, there was never an agreement,” met later Tuesday with Republican hard-liners, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Jesse Helms and Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl. Both men have long been convinced that the treaty’s ban on nuclear testing was effectively unverifiable, unenforceable and against the national interests of the United States. His colleagues left Lott in no doubt; if he did a deal with the Democrats, conservatives would see that he paid for it. Lott broke the news to Daschle early the next day, and on Wednesday evening brought the treaty to a vote. It was rejected, by 51 votes (all of them GOP) to 48–the most dramatic repudiation of an international treaty since the Senate failed to endorse the creation of the League of Nations in 1920.

The next day, an angry Bill Clinton held a press conference at the White House. The vote, said the president, was “partisan politics of the worst kind… Now, if we ever get a president that’s against the test-ban treaty, all bets are off.” He criticized what he calls a “new isolationism” among some opponents of the treaty. The message from the Senate to the rest of the world, said Clinton, was simple: “Go take a hike.”

Message received. During the next two days, foreign leaders and newspapers lined up to take shots at the Senate. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he was “deeply disappointed,” and the Russian Foreign Ministry said it was “very concerned.” The Times of London saw the vote as “a serious blow to America’s political and moral authority,” while in Paris, Le Monde declared that “the world today is less safe than it could have been.” “For the rest of the world,” said former national-security adviser Brent Scowcroft, who wanted the vote delayed, “it will appear that confidence in American steadiness and leadership is misplaced.”

In the global chatter, quite distinct aspects of the Senate’s vote got muddled. The first–and least edifying–involved the Washington blame game. For Clinton and his supporters, the Senate’s action was part of a growing, bitter partisanship in Washington, fueled entirely by what Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute calls “this blind hatred” of the president. “I was surprised by the vitriol,” said Sen. Joe Biden, Democrat of Delaware; even Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith, one of four from the GOP who backed the treaty, said that “Clinton enmity” explained a “big load” of the treaty’s rejection.

But in Washington today, nobody’s motives are simple–or pure. The truth is that Democrats had been asking for a vote on the treaty for months. Lott merely called the Democrats’ bluff, and found–partly because the White House had scarcely lifted a finger to lobby for the treaty–that Daschle had no more than a pair of deuces in his hand. Blame Lott for playing politics with national security if you like; just don’t suppose that Democrats are above it, or won’t use the issue in next year’s elections. “The [test-ban vote] is going to help us get the Senate back,” says one Democratic strategist. The vote, said Scowcroft, was a case of “narrowly partisan game-playing on both sides… which made a parody of the treaty process.”

Which brings up a question: in a nonpartisan, thoughtful Washington (dream on…), should the treaty have been ratified? The arguments here are more finely balanced than most critics of the Senate have allowed. It is fatuous to claim that every one of the many former holders of high office who opposed the treaty–some of them Democrats–did so because they hated Clinton. The treaty means different things to different nations; for some, its real purpose is not to ban testing but to force nuclear disarmament on those states that possess the bomb, by condemning their arsenals to gradual obsolescence. And even those–like the United States–that reject such an interpretation have to gamble that as-yet-unattained standards of computer modeling and simulation can mimic nuclear explosions with enough accuracy to maintain confidence in the weapons stockpile.

Nonetheless, for 41 years American administrations have supported the idea of a test ban, for two reasons. First, because it would reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation–an overarching goal of American national security. Nuclear-weapons technology is more than 50 years old; lots of nations have scientists able to develop bombs. The test-ban treaty is one part of a web of obligations that constrains their capacity to do so: to develop a bomb that fits on a missile or under a modern strike aircraft you have to be able to test it–and any seriously useful test is detectable. Yes, some states may sign the treaty and ignore it; but even so, they would then be subject to significant pressure to desist.

The second reason that U.S. administrations have supported the treaty is more subtle. Those nations that could have developed nuclear weapons but haven’t, and those that have voluntarily abandoned their programs–among them Brazil, Argentina and South Africa–have done so partly for one reason. They trusted the United States to take the lead in multilateral, cooperative efforts to rein in nuclear weapons. American critics of the test-ban treaty are justified in saying that it is at least partly symbolic. But outside the United States, the symbolism really matters; it proves that the biggest kid on the block is a nice guy at heart.

But by voting down the test-ban treaty, the Senate has called that judgment into doubt. If there is a danger in last week’s vote, it is not that nuclear war is suddenly more likely, or even that a clutch of nations will now test weapons that they have been hiding. It is that the rest of the world may no longer trust America to put the needs of the global community above domestic politics.

For Clinton, the Senate vote was part of a pattern. He imputed a new isolationism to those who refuse “to pay our United Nations dues,” who provide the “woefully inadequate” budget for foreign affairs and refuse “to do our part to stem the tide of global warming.” The isolationists, said Clinton, “are saying that America does not need to lead either by effort or example. They are saying we don’t need our friends or allies.” Smith also fears that the GOP may fall under sway of an element that sees little value in any international treaty. “At least in the short term,” said the Oregonian, “we are sending the world the message that we can go it alone. I think the consequences will be far-reaching for years to come.”

Are those fears justified? Lott, naturally, dismissed them. “Nobody can be an isolationist in this world,” he said last week. “It’s physically impossible. It’s irrational.” Yet there can be little doubt that with the end of the cold war, the old imperatives of foreign policy have been called into question. A sizable group of Republican members of Congress really do view with suspicion any multilateral treaty that seems to fetter American freedom of action. They have opposed treaties on test bans, chemical weapons and global warming; they treat the United Nations with undisguised contempt; they are even suspicious of the World Trade Organization, whose job it is to oversee a rules-based system of free trade that was for decades a central plank of Republican policy.

Yet it was the Clinton administration that demonized the United Nations for its actions in Somalia–an adventure that was American-planned, American-led and American-botched. It is the Clinton administration that preached the virtues of the rule of law to the rest of the world–and then lobbed a cruise missile onto a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory in retaliation for attacks on its embassies. If Republican senators sometimes seem to ignore the case for adherence to international norms, they have company farther west on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Yet here’s the great paradox. Outside Washington, America is in some respects less isolationist than it has ever been. More than 25 million Americans–nearly 10 percent of the total population–were born overseas; more Americans than ever work for foreign companies; the number of Americans taking trips abroad has increased by 25 percent in the past 10 years. In a poll released last week by the Better World Campaign, 76 percent said they thought the United States should stay as involved in world affairs as it was during the cold war–or get even more involved. There’s no good reason to doubt that Americans could engage in a debate on the proper global role and responsibilities of their nation, including the purpose of its nuclear arsenal. All it takes is some leadership from Washington. It certainly didn’t come last week.

The 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty required ratification by 44 specific countries before it could go into effect. Just 26 of those have done so. The Senate’s rejection of the treaty last week was seen by other countries throughout the world as a major blow to global arms control and as a diplomatic disaster for President Clinton.

· A ban on all nuclear test explosions worldwide for all time

· Creation of a multilayered global monitoring network to detect explosions and to verify compliance

· On-site inspections of areas suspected of nuclear testing

· Notification by countries of scheduled chemical explosions above a certain magnitude

NUCLEAR TESTS SINCE 1945 LAST TEST UNITED STATES 1,030 1992 FRANCE 210 1996 BRITAIN 45 1991 FORMER SOVIET UNION/ 715 1990 RUSSIA PAKISTAN 2 1998 INDIA 3 1998 CHINA 45 1996

1954 Almost 10 years after the first nuclear test, India’s prime minister calls for a suspension, the first initiative of its kind

1957 President Eisenhower announces the United States is willing to suspend testing for two years if the Soviet Union observes certain conditions

1958: Negotiations begin on a comprehensive nuclear test ban in Geneva

1960: Talks halt after a U.S. spy plane goes down over the Soviet Union

1994: Negotiations on the CTBT begin in Geneva

1996: After months of revisions, the treaty is adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. President Clinton is the first world leader to sign it.

Start I, extension: Makes weapons-limit treaty permanent

Start III: Reduces U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, calls for destruction of warheads. Negotiations to begin once Russian Duma ratifies reduction-treaty Start II (already ratified by United States).

Treaty of Rarotonga: Bans nuclear explosives in the South Pacific and dump radioactive wastes at sea

Treaty of Pelindaba: Bans nuclear weapons and dumping of radioactive waste from the African continent