The Senate Foreign Relations Committee this afternoon approved, by a bipartisan vote, the U.K. and Australia defense trade cooperation treaties signed by President Bush in 2007 and which have been languishing in front of the Senate committee ever since. The treaties would eliminate export license requirements for certain U.S. exports to certain end users in Britain and Australia.

The treaties now head to the Senate floor, where they will require a 2/3 vote of consent by the Senate before the President can ratify the two treaties. Although many treaties signed by a U.S. president have died in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, only 21 treaties that have made it to the floor of the Senate have been rejected, the last being the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1999. Given the hyper-partisan atmosphere in the Senate these days, it wouldn’t surprise me if these two treaties with two of our most important defense allies might be numbers 22 and 23 and fail to obtain the 67 votes required. I hope I’m wrong.

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