The Consular Treaty

The Johnson Administration has finally brought the consular treaty it signed with the Soviet Union in 1964 to the Senate for ratification. The treaty, unfortunately has been heavily criticized by a bloc of Senators more concerned with a chimerical Red peril than resumption of the thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations.

Opponents of the treaty, many of whom distinguished themselves over a decade ago as supporters of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, feel that the agreement will open up vast opportunities for the Russians to spy in the United States. This, of course, is a rather withered cry, but they have given it a new moral twist. They invoke America's "dying youth" in Vietnam and intone righteously that this is no time to cuddle up to a nation giving aid and comfort to Ho Chi Minh.

Sadly, many of the treaty's most vociferous critics do not seem to comprehend what innovations the agreement actually entails. It is not, as many opponents believe, the only way to establish new consulates. The President can legally authorize consulates himself, and has done so in the past without Senate approval.

There would be no massive influx of secret agents, as some Senators fear. By most estimates, no more than ten to fifteen officials would be added to the Russian diplomatic corps here. Even J. Edgar Hoover, director of the F.B.I. and the nation's most enthusiastic bloodhound, admits that the government could handle any threat the new arrivals might pose.

The treaty would entail far more inconvenience for the Soviet Union. It provides that the Soviet Union must inform the American consulate whenever the Russian government arrests a U.S. citizen--protection which American businessmen and tourists have never before enjoyed. This protective measure is clearly beneficial. American tourists in Russia outnumber Russian visitors to the U.S. 20 to 1, and the Soviet regime often capriciously arrests and detains Americans for ulterior motives.

In return, the United States has agreed to grant all Russian consular officials immunity from criminal prosecution, an outlet that offending Russian officials have always had for all practical purposes. Arrests of Russian non-diplomatic personnel in the U.S. usually lead to retaliatory seizures of Americans in the Soviet Union and often to an exchange. The U.S. can still expel Soviet diplomats suspected of espionage, a penalty more swift than criminal prosecution.

The treaty will, to the chagrin of many minds immobilized by the demonology of the fifties, expedite cooperation with a nation assisting the North Vietnamese. But cooperation at this juncture is something to be encouraged, for the United States should not allow the whole range of its foreign policy to be darkened by the spectre of Vietnam.