THE MORNING AFTER: MID-TERM ELECTIONS SET STAGE FOR NEW DIRECTION IN U.S. SECURITY POLICY

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday’s astounding victories
for Republicans in the U.S. Senate and House of
Representatives should produce more than a mere
transformation of the power structure in Washington and
widespread changes in the domestic political agenda. With
the Congress firmly in the hands of a new, conservative
majority, the most dramatic changes of all may be
seen in the role the legislative branch plays in the
formulation and implementation of effective defense and
foreign policies.

The Center for Security Policy
welcomes this prospect and the electoral changes that
make it possible. The Center is, by law, a non-partisan
organization; it nonetheless regards the election of
legislators — of both parties — committed to
principled, common-sensical security policies as a most
salutary development.

In particular, the Center believes that the results of
the mid-term elections should clear the way for dramatic
course corrections in a number of areas in which it has
been actively involved over the past few years. These
include the following:

• With Republicans elected on platforms (notably,
  the Contract with America) that promise to provide
  protection for the people of the United States,
  their forces overseas and their allies against
  missile attack, the next Congress can be
  expected to take concrete steps to end what is
  the single, most egregious national security
  problem facing the Nation today. The Center for
  Security Policy and the blue-ribbon Coalition
  to Defend America of which it is a part
  look forward to working with the legislative
  branch to accomplish this urgent task.
• The Center also expects that the new Congress
  will take a critical look at the Clinton
  Administration’s policy of
  “denuclearizing” the United States and
  its budgets that are grievously eroding the
  readiness of today’s U.S. military and
  imperilling the technological superiority of
  tomorrow’s armed forces. Corrective
  action is needed on both scores.
• Similarly, Administration initiatives in the arms
  control arena should receive far closer scrutiny
  than has be the case in recent years. Even before
  the Senate changed hands, Clinton efforts
  to expand and exacerbate what the Washington
  Post has called the “obsolete notion of
  arms control” codified by the 1972
  Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty were in
  trouble. On 19 September, 39 U.S. Senators,
  including then-Minority Leader Robert Dole and
  the rest of the Senate’s Republican leadership,
  wrote President Clinton, warning: “In our
  view, any agreement that hinders our advanced TMD
  [theater missile defense] programs would
  constitute a bad agreement.”

If the old Senate already had five more votes
than would be needed to block ratification of any
new treaty — or amendment to the existing 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty — that had the
effect of “hindering our advanced TMD
programs,” the new Senate will be even more
hostile to such an idea. Certainly, as the
signatories pointedly reminded President Clinton
on 19 September, thanks to Section 232 of the
Fiscal Year 1995 National Defense Authorization
Act, U.S. law now demands that “any
agreement that substantively modifies the ABM
Treaty” be submitted to the Senate for its
formal advice and consent. They served notice
that what the Clinton Administration has in mind
would represent such a substantive modification.
As a result of yesterday’s outcome, the
Administration would be well-advised to cease and
desist its efforts to negotiate such
modifications.

• It is to be hoped that, under the new leadership
  of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed
  Services Committees, the Senate will be similarly
  ill-disposed to other, equally reckless
  arms control initiatives, notably: the
  fatally flawed Chemical Weapons Convention, a
  Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban and the effort
  permanently to extend the Nuclear
  Non-Proliferation Treaty, irrespective of the
  price that might be exacted for doing so (e.g.,
  in terms of adopting verifiable provisions or
  making diplomatic, economic and/or strategic
  concessions). The prospect that such ideas might
  be subjected, at last, to thorough, balanced
  hearings in a Republican Senate should prove most
  therapeutic.
• The new Congress will have to engage in no less
  rigorous oversight of other dubious
  Clinton foreign policies. For example,
  the new Senate will have as members Jon Kyl,
  Republican of Arizona, and Daniel Patrick
  Moynihan, Democrat of New York, both of whom have
  expressed opposition to the idea of deploying
  U.S. forces on the Golan Heights in
  connection with an Israeli-Syrian agreement.
  Certainly, the days when Mr. Clinton can ignore
  congressional concerns about the unauthorized
  overseas commitment of significant numbers of
  U.S. forces in non-emergency situations (e.g.,
  Haiti and Macedonia) are now over.

The election of Jon Kyl — a distinguished
member of the Center for Security Policy’s Board
of Advisors and recipient of its 1994
“Keeper of the Flame” Award — to the
Senate also means that that body will have a
formidable new voice for discipline and
transparency in foreign assistance to the former
Soviet Union. The re-election of Sen.
Joseph Lieberman and the new Republican majority
suggests, moreover, that a legislated end to the
odious arms embargo against Bosnia is
finally at hand.

• Another area where substantial improvement should
  be forthcoming as a result of the Republican tsunami
  involves re-establishing effective
  controls over the export of strategic
  technologies. Thanks to the dangerously
  short-sighted actions of the executive branch in
  recent years that have encouraged — and facilitated
  — the dismantling of multilateral export control
  arrangements, this job will be made vastly more
  difficult. At the very least, however, it is to
  be hoped that the weakened power (if not outright
  defeat) of legislators like Rep. Sam Gejdenson
  (D-CT), who have repeatedly championed misguided
  export liberalization schemes on Capitol Hill,
  will allow the legislature to play a constructive
  rather than destructive role.

Time for Clinton to Clean House

If the Clinton Administration means what it says about
wanting to “heal the wounds” and work with the
new Republican-controlled Congress, it would be
well-advised to purge its ranks of left-wing and
like-minded officials whose policy recommendations are
anathema to the new congressional majority. Such
officials include; Secretary of Energy Hazel
O’Leary (the leading advocate of U.S.
“denuclearization”); Secretary of State
Warren Christopher, his Deputy, Strobe Talbott, and
Assistant Secretaries Robert Gallucci and Winston
Lord (responsible, among other things, for
outrageous appeasement policies in Korea, Vietnam and
elsewhere); National Security Advisor Anthony
Lake and his Senior Director for Democracy Morton
Halperin (responsible, among other things, for
implicating the U.S. in ill-advised U.N.-run peacekeeping
operations and “nation-building exercises” in
Haiti and beyond); Assistant Secretary of Defense
Ashton Carter (an important contributor within
the Defense Department to the
“denuclearization” impetus) and Deputy
Assistant Secretary Mitch Wallerstein
(substantially responsible for the reckless dismantling
of U.S. and multilateral export controls);
Lieutenant General Wesley Clark, Director for Strategy,
Plans and Policy on the Joint Chiefs of Staff
(who, as President Clinton’s favorite military officer —
thanks to his being a fellow Arkansan and Rhodes Scholar
— has played a major and very counterproductive role in
politicizing and undermining sensible military positions
on such issues as missile defense and related
negotiations, the Bosnian arms embargo and Haiti
operation); and Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown
(under whose leadership the Commerce Department has
proven even more irresponsible than usual with respect to
the export of critical technology to U.S. defenses).

Whether Mr. Clinton has the wisdom and courage to
unburden himself of such “Old Democrats” — and
those who are otherwise unworthy of public trust —
remains to be seen. At a minimum, however, it is clear
that these individuals have little future in
government, at least in positions requiring Senate
confirmation.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy very much hopes that
yesterday’s elections will produce a new
“correlation of forces” in Washington
reminiscent of those that prevailed in the late 1970s
when, under the bipartisan leadership of the late
Senators Henry M. Jackson and John Tower, a major course
correction was effected in U.S. security policy. Indeed,
several years before Ronald Reagan became President, this
coalition stopped the hollowing out of the U.S. military,
defeated a “fatally flawed” arms control treaty
(SALT II) and created conditions under which American
power would once again be respected around the world.

As Center Director Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. noted in his
column in the Washington Times last Monday, such
a desirable course correction was inevitable;
the only question was how soon would it occur:

[The] list of prematurely declared [Clinton
foreign policy] “successes” is illustrative
of the larger problem with the Clinton security
policy record. In due course, if not [on 8 November],
the critical swing group of voters — the Reagan
Democrats — are going to vote against Clinton and
Company. These voters will do so for the same reasons
they rejected the last southern Democratic president,
Jimmy Carter: they have no use for leaders who
squander America’s prestige and reduce its power and
who, in the process, embolden U.S. adversaries at the
expense of our interests overseas.

The Center is delighted that this sea change has taken
place now, before the costs of correcting the damage
already done to America’s prestige, power and interests
become even greater. It looks forward to working with the
new Congress toward that end.