Tag Archives: Bill Clinton

Essay; The Biggest Vote

By William Safire
The New York Times, 18 May 2000

The most far-reaching vote any representative will cast this year will take place next week. It will be on the bill to permanently guarantee that Congress will have no economic leverage to restrain China’s internal repression of dissidents or external aggression against Taiwan.

Bill Clinton, architect of the discredited “strategic partnership” with Beijing, is lobbying for H.R. 4444 as part of his legacy thing. His strange bedfellow is the G.O.P. leadership, fairly slavering at the prospect of heavy contributions from U.S. companies that want to profit from building up China’s industrial and electronic strength.

Clinton has been purchasing Democratic votes one by one. The latest convert to pulling the U.S. teeth is Charles Rangel of New York, who was seduced by last week’s legislation to benefit African workers at the expense of Chinese laborers in sweatshops at slave wages. He is the ranking Democrat on Ways and Means, which yesterday voted to send the any-behavior-goes bill to the House floor.

The president’s tactics include frightening Americans with “dangerous confrontation and constant insecurity” from angry China if his appeasement is not passed.

He also divides American farmers from workers with his mantra, “exports mean jobs.” Of course they do; in the past decade, our trade deficit with China has ballooned from $7 billion to $70 billion. That means China’s exports to the U.S. have created hundreds of thousands of jobs — in China. Clinton’s trade deficit is certainly not creating net jobs for Americans.

His trade negotiator, Charlene Barshefsky, has become increasingly shrill, turning truth on its head this week by telling Lally Weymouth of The Washington Post that “organized labor, human rights advocates and some environmentalists have aligned themselves with the Chinese army and hard-liners in Beijing who do not want accession for China.”

Not to be outdone in twisting the truth and kowtowing to Communists, Republican investors and the Asia establishment assure us that only by abandoning yearly review of China’s rights abuses and diplomatic conduct can we encourage democracy there.

I confess to writing speeches for Richard Nixon assuring conservatives that trade with China would lead to the evolution of democratic principles in Beijing. But we’ve been trading for 30 years now, financing its military-industrial base, enabling it to buy M-11 missiles from the Russians and advanced computer technology from us.

Has our strengthening of their regime brought political freedom? Ask the Falun Gong, jailed by the thousands for daring to organize; ask the Tibetans, their ancient culture destroyed and nation colonized; ask the Taiwanese, who face an escalation of the military threat against them after the U.S. Congress spikes its cannon of economic retaliation.

Before Nixon died, I asked him — on the record — if perhaps we had gone a bit overboard on selling the American public on the political benefits of increased trade. That old realist, who had played the China card to exploit the split in the Communist world, replied with some sadness that he was not as hopeful as he had once been: “We may have created a Frankenstein.”

(I was on the verge of correcting him that Dr. Frankenstein was the creator, and that he meant “Frankenstein’s monster,” but I bit my tongue.)

To provide a face-saver for Democrats uncomfortable with forever removing Scoop Jackson’s economic pressure, Clinton’s bipartisan allies have cooked up a toothless substitute: a committee to cluck-cluck loudly when China cracks down and acts up. We already have a State Department annual report that does that, to no effect on a China whose transgressions have always been waived.

Human rights advocates know the smart money in Washington is betting on the appeasers. Our only hope is that the undecideds in Congress consider that unemployment in their districts will not always be under 4 percent, and that when recession or aggression bites, voters will not forget who threw away economic restraints on China.

Enriching China Unlikely to Advance U.S. National Security

(Washington, D.C.): In recent days, President Bill Clinton and his National Security Advisor, Samuel Berger, have asserted that U.S. national security requires that China receive Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status. The stridency with which they have adopted this line suggests that — despite the favorable “spin” proponents of PNTR are giving their prospects for success when the House of Representatives votes on that legislation on or about 22 May — they are having trouble overcoming skepticism concerning claims that the American economy will benefit greatly from China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Unfortunately for the White House and its business and other allies, it is unlikely that a dangerous China will become less so if it has even more resources at the disposal of its military-industrial and security services.

To the contrary, past and present Chinese behavior — notably the following activities — strongly suggests that Chinese hardliners are exercising full control over the regime. They will likely redouble these and other efforts if they are, in effect, rewarded for them by being spared yearly NTR reviews.

A Bill of Particulars

China’s Long-term Strategy seeks to dominate Asia and become a global superpower. It is pursuing these goals with patience and determination. The People’s Liberation Army sees the United States as “the main enemy” and the only impediment to accomplishing this goal.

This strategy was brilliantly dissected recently by Mark Helprin in a recent edition of National Review entitled “East Wind.” Of particular note is Helprin’s discussion of the vital role that economic expansion plays in this strategy as summarized in Deng Xio Peng’s “16 Character” diktat which calls on the Chinese people to “Combine the military and civil; combine peace and war; give priority to military products; let the civil support the military.” No one should be under any illusion: Beijing envisions using its economic expansion to fuel its military buildup and expansionist ambitions.

  • Penetration by PLA- and Chinese government-affiliated entities of our capital markets: The problem posed by China’s economic program is not limited to trade. China is, among other things, making an increasingly aggressive bid to penetrate the U.S. capital markets — one of this Nation’s last great monopolies.

    As incredible — not to say absurd — as it may seem, U.S. pension funds, mutual funds, life insurance, corporate and private portfolios are all seen as sources of cash with which China can put our interests at risk. A case in point is an Initial Public Offering issued by PetroChina, a subsidiary of the PRC’s largest energy company — an entity providing resources that are allowing Sudan’s government to engage in activities from genocide to slave-trading to support for terrorism and the proliferation of weapons mass destruction. For companies like PetroChina, other state-owned and -affiliated “bad actors,” the vast resources of the U.S. debt and equity markets represent “found money” — funds that are undisciplined and largely non-transparent. It must be asked: To what uses will they be put?

  • China’s Military Modernization Program: A principal beneficiary of course is China’s military, which aspires to make what Mao once described as a “Great Leap Forward.” The PRC’s long-term strategy calls for the People’s Liberation Army to achieve a massive modernization program capable of transforming its 1950s and ’60s vintage equipment and tactics into those at the forefront of the 21st Century. In the hope of accomplishing this enormous task as rapidly and as inexpensively as possible, Beijing is taking maximum advantage of technology acquired legally or illegally from us, as well as through a growing strategic axis with Russia.

    Of particular concern is the emphasis being placed by the People’s Liberation Army on a doctrine that envisions using asymmetric means and technologies to counter American military power. Thus we see China pursuing: Information Warfare; weapons of mass destruction and long-range ballistic missiles; advanced nuclear-armed anti-ship missile systems from Russia designed to destroy American carrier battle groups; electro-magnetic pulse weapons; etc., rather than concentrating (for now at least) on building up conventional forces comparable to our own.

  • The PRC’s Regional Agenda: The Chinese are assiduously dividing and intimidating U.S. allies in the region — Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea. They are doing this in a variety of ways, for example, by abetting North Korean belligerence and Pyongyang’s long-range ballistic missile program, as well as by brandishing their own ability to attack even American cities like Los Angeles with nuclear weapons.

    This campaign is designed to impress upon our democratic allies that the United States is a declining and unreliable power and China a rising one in the Western Pacific and East Asia. In the absence of credible American security guarantees, China is running what amounts to a protection racket, impressing upon our friends that Beijing’s help will be needed to counter North Korean and other regional threats.

    The Chinese military is also exhibiting increasing assertiveness around the Pacific Rim and Asia — from Pakistan, to Myanmar, to Malaysia, to Taiwan and the Philippines. It is actively establishing bases, intelligence collection facilities and other dominant positions from which to project power.

  • China’s espionage: The former long-time chief of the FBI’s Chinese counter-intelligence unit, Paul Moore’s made the point in a powerful op.ed. article in the New York Times last August that the PRC is pursuing a comprehensive, patient and deadly approach to intelligence collection against this country. In so doing, he notes, Beijing appeals to and/or coerces overseas Chinese to help in that effort.

    Mr. Moore explained in his essay that such practices make it very difficult to catch, let alone to prosecute successfully someone like Wen Ho Lee, suspected of spying at Los Alamos. Such individuals generally are not doing it for the money, fancy cars or bigger houses. They may not even be aware of exactly what they are doing. This makes for a huge — and possibly insoluble — counter-intelligence challenge.

  • China’s penetration of our hemisphere: This problem has been much in the news lately, from Long Beach and Palmdale here in California to strategic bases at either end of the Panama Canal. There are estimated to be several thousand front companies working for the People’s Liberation Army and/or Chinese intelligence services in this country. The Chinese are also actively engaged in drug, alien and arms smuggling into the US. They are also actively insinuating themselves in an ominous fashion into other parts of the Western hemisphere including: Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico and Cuba.
  • Chinese proliferation: The PRC is the leading exporter of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile technology to dangerous developing nations — nations they see not as we do, as “rogue states” but as clients. Indeed, Beijing sees such trade as more than simply a means of securing vital energy resources from oil-rich countries like Libya, Iraq, Iran and Sudan.

    The Chinese also understand that, by building up the offensive power of these states, as well as that of Cuba and North Korea, their clients can help buy the PRC freedom of maneuver by distracting, tying up and otherwise stressing the world’s one global power, the United States. Proliferation can also prove helpful in increasing pressure on America’s democratic and other allies to seek China’s influence and protection. Israel’s sale of powerful early warning aircraft and other advanced weapons technology is a case in point.

    PRC efforts to increase the forces of instability around the world has even had the effect of augmenting China’s leverage on the United States as we seek its help in controlling such threats.

  • China’s penetration of our political system: Last, but hardly least, there is the matter of illegal Chinese campaign contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaigns. Is it a coincidence or is it cause and effect that Clinton has made momentous changes in granting China access to satellite and missile technology, supercomputers, embraced Beijing’s position on Taiwan, largely ignored the PRC’s violations of human rights (recently it failed to secure votes in Geneva for resolution condemning China’s record), given China access to the WTO, etc.?

    Such behavior on the part of China is all the more worrisome because it comes against the backdrop of significant internal unrest in China. Will Beijing engage in what the political scientists call “social engineering” — using phony claims of “external aggression” as a pretext for imposing greater control at home and diverting public anger from a failed government to foreign “barbarians”? Will China actually accelerate its timetable for using force against Taiwan, leading to conflict with the United States?

The Bottom Line

It is unlikely that the American economy as a whole will, on balance, benefit from granting China Permanent Normal Trade Status. There is, however, no chance that a China engaged in such an ominous array of malevolent activities while it is, at least nominally, subject to close annual scrutiny as part of the Normal Trade Status review process will become less of a threat to U.S. national security once that leverage no longer exists. Representations to the contrary are cynical, reckless and a disservice to the very important debate about PNTR now taking shape.

With Putin’s Win, Has Andropov Returned to the Kremlin?

(Washington, D.C.): Back in the early 1990s, as Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union, many prominent Americans sought to justify their desire to spend the “peace dividend” by declaring the absolute and irreversible end of the Cold War.

Some more responsible U.S. legislators, notably then-Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, hedged their bets a bit. Even as they presided over the rapid down-sizing of the U.S. military, these leaders acknowledged that there was a possibility that the Kremlin might revert to form at some point. We were confidently and repeatedly assured, however, that before anything so untoward occurred, there would be “years of warning” — by some estimates as much as a full decade.

Are We Being Warned?

This blithe formulation always begged the question: What would the early years of such “warning” look like? It can reasonably be argued that they would feature just the sorts of behavior now taking place under the leadership of the man elected last weekend to become the new President of Russia, career KGB operative Vladimir Putin. Consider the following bill of particulars:

  • Putin’s election is an ominous sign in its own right. His formative years were spent as a spy in Russia and East Germany actively working against and otherwise trying to subvert Western interests. Since he emerged from the shadows as Boris Yeltsin’s last Prime Minister and heir apparent, he has made a point of demonstrating his continuing loyalties to the institutions of the old Soviet Union, most especially the “power ministries” of the former KGB internal security and intelligence apparatuses and what’s left of the USSR’s military.

    Unfortunately, the fact that the Communists polled as well as they did in Sunday’s balloting suggests that Putin will feel free, if not actually obliged, to go beyond rhetorical support and symbolic gestures towards these instruments of state power. Having run on a platform (if that term can be applied to something so imprecisely defined) of restoring strong central control, chances are that Russian civil liberties are going to suffer.

  • The press in Russia has already begun to experience Putin’s tightening grip. State-owned media — and those controlled by pro-government oligarchs (upon whose corrupt support he seems every bit as dependent as Yeltsin) — were indispensable handmaidens to the Kremlin’s election strategy. The Acting President was given endless and uncritical air time, often featured in clips emphasizing where his loyalties lie. (For example, Russian voters were treated to Putin flying a fighter jet to Chechnya; Putin decorating the officers who ruthlessly destroyed its capital, Grozny; and Putin extolling the virtues of not just the KGB, but those of the brutal founder of the Soviet secret police, Felix Dzerzhinsky.)

    Those press organs that are not in Putin’s pocket have also been put on notice. The silencing of a courageous Radio Liberty correspondent whose broadcasts from Chechnya did not conform to the party line about low casualties and the combatant nature of those being mercilessly shelled by Russian forces represented an unmistakable warning: A free press will be tolerated only insofar as it suits the new ruler of the Kremlin.

  • Then there is the matter of the war against the Chechens. The ruthlessness of that conflict, the fact that its pretext — the bombing of several Moscow housing complexes and the attendant deaths of some 300 occupants — may have been a KGB provocation, and the cynical exploitation of this military campaign for domestic political consumption all signals the arrival in power in Russia of a very dangerous man.
  • This danger is particularly acute since Putin has embarked upon a program of rebuilding Russia’s military, with special emphasis on modernizing its nuclear forces. He is defraying the associated costs with the sale of vast quantities of advanced weaponry to Moscow’s ominous new strategic partner, Communist China, in an alliance explicitly hostile to the United States. Among the other beneficiaries of this fire-sale approach to Russian technology relevant to weaponry of mass destruction are rogue states like Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya.

An Andropov Today Would be Far More Dangerous

What makes Vladimir Putin especially worrisome is that he seems likely to try to pull off the hat-trick envisioned by another, very dangerous career KGB officer, Yuri Andropov, who briefly ruled the Soviet Union after Leonid Brezhnev’s death: Securing vital economic and political support from the West, even as the Kremlin pursues domestic and foreign policies that are antithetical to the our values and strategic equities.

An early application of this sort of juijistu may come if Putin agrees to sign onto the so-called “Grand Compromise” being proposed by the Clinton-Gore Administration. This arms control agreement would trade the evisceration of the U.S. nuclear deterrent and an affirmation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty’s ban on effective territorial missile defenses for Russian permission to build a very limited anti-missile system in Alaska. By itself, the latter will be insufficient to defend the country even from future rogue state threats. Republicans and American voters more generally should understand that that is not its principal purpose, though. Rather such a stratagem is primarily intended to protect Al Gore from legitimate attack in connection with his role in leaving the United States vulnerable to ballistic missile-backed blackmail, or worse.

Unfortunately, the Clinton-Gore Administration’s hapless stewardship of international affairs over the past seven years has afforded Putin options of which Andropov could only have dreamed. For example, if China succeeds in penetrating the U.S. capital markets, enabling American investors to be unwittingly tapped to underwrite odious and/or malevolent activities via the sale of shares of government-owned or -affiliated entities like PetroChina, Russia will be sure to follow suit in a big way.

The Bottom Line

The New York Times, Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering told today that he hoped Putin’s victory — read, the opportunities thus afforded for Clinton to purchase a “legacy” with new, inequitable and unverifiable bilateral arms control deals and increasingly problematic economic relations — will end the argument over “who lost Russia.” In fact, the answer is already clear: Bill Clinton and Al Gore did, by blowing the extraordinary opportunity to encourage real, systemic change in the former Soviet Union. The really bad news is that Russia may just have been won by Andropov redux.

Arrest Assad, Don’t Treat with Him

(Washington, D.C.): President Clinton today announced that he would be meeting
Hafez Assad
in Geneva next Sunday. The transparent purpose of this seance is to see if the United States can
pay the Syrian dictator enough to accept Israel’s surrender of the strategic Golan Heights.
Neither regional peace, U.S. interests nor a presidential legacy worth having will be served by
an agreement that comes from a transaction with someone like Assad.

A far better use of Assad’s visit to Switzerland would be for him to be subjected to the
Pinochet
precedent: In light of serial crimes against humanity, among other offenses, an international
warrant should be issued for the arrest and deportation to compel this ruthless despot and mass
murderer to stand trial. This suggestion is but one of the noteworthy points made recently in an
important op.ed. article on Assad’s abiding malevolence and hostility to peace that appeared
recently in the Wall Street Journal Europe under the by-line of one of America’s
foremost
students of Mideast affairs, the American Enterprise Institute’s David Wurmser.

Wall Street Journal Europe, January 4, 2000

Does Syria Want Peace?

By David Wurmser

The round of Syrian-Israeli peace talks that started Monday in West Virginia was attended by
U.S. President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Syria, meanwhile, sent only
its foreign minister, Farouk al-Shara. The Clinton Administration would like observers to believe
that there is no significance in this. But symbolism does not go unnoticed in the Arab world, with
its precise protocol and constant emphasis on who is paying homage to whom. Public events
express the relations of power among leaders and nations — an ancient legacy inherited from
Byzantine times where high politics were decided by seating arrangements at banquets.

True, it must be acknowledged that Syrian President Hafez Assad’s health remains
questionable,
and may make it difficult for him to travel. (He managed to make it to Moscow last year.) Assad
would also, if the activist lawyers who nabbed Augusto Pinochet were consistent, risk arrest for
crimes against humanity. But Assad could at least have sent his designated successor — his son
Bashar — as he normally does for important events he does not himself attend. The fact that he
did not is consistent with Syria’s behavior so far, and suggests Assad may have more interest in a
peace process than in peace itself.

During the round of talks in Washington last month, Mr. Shara shocked everyone by
launching a
tirade against Israel and the United States. He dwelled on the long conspiracy to oppress and
victimize Syria. And as if that were not enough, the last hours of the summit were spent
unsuccessfully trying to convince Mr. Shara to publicly shake Mr. Barak’s hand. The White
House dismissed these humiliations as negligible glitches in an otherwise momentous, historic
chain of happy events. But Syria intended the very structure of the negotiation to portray Israel
and the United States as subjugated.

Syria’s behavior is part of a pattern. Indeed, for most of the last decade the Syrian
government
seems to have made sport of humiliating the United States. Here are a few highlights:

  • In late 1994, President Clinton traveled to the Middle East. While visiting Syria right
    after a bomb, likely planted by a Syria-based group, ripped through an Israeli bus, Mr.
    Clinton gingerly called on Syria to crack down on terror groups. Assad contradicted the
    president at a news conference and defied him to produce any evidence that Syria had
    ever supported terror, in essence calling him a liar to his face.
  • In fall 1995, Mr. Clinton again traveled to the Middle East to witness the Jordanian-Israeli
    peace treaty. Syria marked the moment by letting its minions unleash a volley of
    rockets on northern Israel to protest, while Assad flew to Cairo to coordinate with Egypt
    on how to derail the treaty. Mr. Clinton, trying to avoid offending Syria, went on to
    Damascus right after that to pay a courtesy call.
  • In early 1996, after the last time Israel offered Syria the entire Golan Heights for peace,
    Syrian-backed factions in Lebanon unleashed a volley of Katyushas on Israel, which led
    Israel to launch a mini-war. Seeing his carefully nurtured negotiations melt into the hell
    of rocket and artillery barrages, then-U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher flew to
    Damascus to mediate a ceasefire. He sat for hours on the tarmac waiting to meet any
    Syrian official. None came. Mr. Christopher returned to the United States.
  • In late 1998, America launched a short air war on Iraq. In Damascus, where nothing
    happens without the blessing of the government, crowds of students — regime loyalists —
    stormed and ransacked the U.S. embassy and hoisted Syria’s flag atop the consular office.
    The crowd then sacked a British installation and wound up at the U.S. ambassador’s
    house, which they also ransacked while his wife hid in the cellar. Syrian police looked on
    but never interceded. Syria never apologized, but the speaker of its parliament appeared
    on television to say that the U.S. deserved it. About the same time, the U.S. ambassador
    to Lebanon ran into a band of Hezbollah fighters while visiting Syrian-controlled areas.
    In sight of Syrian soldiers, according to the Israeli press, he was surrounded and forced at
    gunpoint to trample on an Israeli flag. Syrian troops never intervened, nor did Syria
    apologize.

Why does Syria do this? After coming to power 30 years ago, Assad’s regime quickly
degenerated into a totalitarian ally of the Soviet Union. It has failed in every aspect of
governance. Its economy is a mess. Ethnic and sectarian divisions tear as hard as ever at its
seams. Like North Korea, Syria became a poor country with a large army into which it still pours
ever more precious resources. The Syrian regime cannot base its legitimacy on internal
accomplishments, since there are none.

Syria has failed externally too. Its patron, the Soviet Union, turned out to be a lame horse.
Turkey to its north has a larger army than Syria’s and shows no hesitation to use it. War with
Israel has only brought Syria defeat. Syria successfully digested Lebanon, but only because of
Iranian support, American acquiescence and Israeli passivity.

Instead, Assad’s path to legitimacy lies in humiliating the United States and Israel. Assad has
long sought to demonstrate to his people that his Arab neighbors, Israel and even the United
States acknowledge his power and superiority. By humiliating America and getting away with it,
he, like Saddam, taps its power to vindicate his own.

It is, however, a difficult dance. Assad must humiliate without engendering a reaction to his
regime or its hold on Lebanon. Enter the peace process. Real peace would loosen his grip on
Lebanon and shake Syria’s internal stability. A regime like Assad’s needs external conflict to
survive. Without it, he cannot explain to his people why massive internal repression and a state
of emergency are still necessary. A peace process, on the other hand, is useful. Through offers of
progress, he lures Israel and the United States close enough to give him a steady stream of
opportunities to demonstrate his importance.

And why does the United States dance with Syria? Perhaps it is because the Clinton
administration has no concept of honor. Lacking that, this administration cannot understand the
damage caused to its credibility by allowing a flailing Stalinist regime in Syria to humiliate it
freely and repeatedly. Nor, it seems, does the Clinton Administration understand that tolerating
Syria’s behavior makes real peace less, not more, likely.

David Wurmser is director of Middle East Studies at the American Enterprise Institute
in
Washington, D.C.

Nix to Blix: Man Who Certified Iraq as Non-Nuclear is Unlikely to Find — or Even to Seek — Saddam’s Hidden Weapons

(Washington, D.C.): In a hugely disappointing decision yesterday to fill a
senior UN
bureaucratic post, the Security Council spoke volumes about its depleted appetite for further
confrontations with — to say nothing of additional efforts to punish — Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein. The Security Council formally endorsed Secretary General Kofi
Annan’s
recommendation to appoint Hans Blix. a Swedish diplomat with a checkered
record, to become
the first head of the successor to the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM).

Blix was the lowest-common-denominator choice for the job after Russia, China and
France
vetoed his much more conscientious compatriot, Rolf Ekeus. He is a natural choice to run the
sort of Potemkin inspection operation that those three countries clearly have in mind for their
once-and-future client, Iraq. Given Blix’s dismal sixteen-year performance as director general
of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — an organization that had
an uncanny
track-record during his tenure of not finding evidence of nuclear weapons activities prohibited
by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Thus not only Iraq, but Iran, North Korea, Brazil,
Argentina and South Africa were among the nations that succeeded in largely concealing
indigenous or collaborative nuclear weapons programs from Blix’s IAEA.

Unfortunately, as the following, recently published editorials make clear, the Blix
appointment is
only the latest in a litany of serious mistakes made by the Clinton-Gore Administration with
respect to Iraq. If not immediately reversed, these mistakes will have the effect of empowering
and emboldening Saddam — and set the stage for serious grief for the United States and its
regional allies down the road.

Wall Street Journal, 20 January 2000

Saddam Is Reversing Gulf War Defeat

By Andrew J. Bacevich

The wrangling between Secretary General Kofi Annan and members of the United Nations
Security Council over the appointment of someone to head the United Nations
Monitoring,
Verification, and Inspection Commission may yet result in the revival of some
attenuated form
of weapons inspections in Iraq. If it does, spokesmen for the Clinton administration will no doubt
proclaim this yet another triumph of American statecraft. Doing so just might distract Americans
from the real story–namely, how during his seven years of jousting with President
Clinton,
Saddam Hussein has thwarted the U.S. at every turn. The only question is whether to
credit
the outcome to Iraqi cunning or to unvarnished American ineptitude.

U.S. efforts to subvert the Iraqi dictator’s hold on power from within have gone precisely
nowhere. In 1996, Saddam uncovered and proceeded to smash CIA operations based in northern
Iraq aimed at organizing a domestic opposition. Since that debacle–and despite congressional
prodding in the form of the Iraq Liberation Act–administration efforts to galvanize the Iraqi
opposition have been largely confined to hosting taxpayer-supported conferences in pricey
midtown Manhattan hotels.

Administration expectations that international sanctions might put the squeeze on
Saddam
have likewise produced little. Since 1993, the once robust coalition built by George
Bush has
all but evaporated. Today erstwhile American partners jockey for position to cut the best possible
deal with Iraq at the first available opportunity. Iraqi petroleum exports under the guise of
food-for-oil have now reached a post-Desert Storm high, with only the most naïve
believing that the
proceeds serve exclusively humanitarian purposes.

Most significantly, the administration has frittered away America’s dominant
position in
the Persian Gulf through its cavalier expenditure of U.S. military power. When, in the
fall of
1998, Saddam sent U.N. weapons inspectors packing, President Clinton subjected Baghdad to a
modest four-day air campaign. Advertised as a powerful setback to Saddam’s efforts to rebuild
his military machine, Operation Desert Fox amounted to little more than a pyrotechnic display
that covered a stinging diplomatic defeat for the U.S.

In the 13 months since, all but unnoticed by the American public, the U.S. has continued to
bomb
Iraq, unloading some 2,000 missiles and precision-guided bombs against several hundred targets
scattered throughout the Iraqi outback. The targets demolished with impressive skill by
American aviators are devoid of larger military significance. The likelihood that this
haphazard campaign will produce a politically meaningful result approaches zero.
Indeed,
it is not at all clear that the campaign has an identifiable political purpose.

Nominally, the administration remains committed to removing Saddam from power. In
reality,
the lack of resolve shown in the face of Iraqi defiance and the frivolousness of
American
military action tell a different story, namely that the U.S. is learning to accommodate itself
to a Persian Gulf that includes Saddam Hussein. Other nations in the region, or with
interests there, respond accordingly.

Saddam himself can hardly fail to appreciate that events are heading in his direction. Back in
January 1993, when Mr. Clinton became president, observers noted the irony that the victor in
the Gulf War had been ousted from power while the loser had managed to survive. Now it seems
all but certain that Saddam will outlast a second American president as well.

Whereas Saddam emerged from his confrontation with Mr. Bush weakened and
vulnerable, after eight years of Mr. Clinton his position grows stronger by the day. As
the
end of Bill Clinton’s two terms in office approaches, Saddam Hussein can take justifiable
satisfaction at having made significant progress toward his ultimate objective: reversing the
results of the Persian Gulf War.

Andrew J. Bacevich is director of the Center for International Relations at Boston
University.

Jerusalem Post Editorial, 23 January 2000

Iraq Quietly Consolidates

A five-member team from the International Atomic Energy Agency has arrived in Iraq, but
it
would be an illusion to think that close control over Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass
destruction is being reinstated.

The team, led by Ahmed Abuzahra of Egypt, is the first visit to Iraq by monitors from the
Vienna-based IAEA since UN weapons inspectors left the country in late 1998, never to return.
The new inspection is not connected to those mandated by the UN after Iraq’s defeat in the Gulf
War – it is a routine inventory check for nuclear material and is part of the monitoring
procedures required of all signatories to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

The issue of restoring the regime of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection
Commission remains mired in a dispute between Secretary- General Kofi Annan and members
of the Security Council over who should head it. Russia, China, and France joined in successful
ignominious agreement to reject Rolf Ekeus, who was Annan’s choice for the job. Much
mockery was spent on Saddam’s pompous claims to have won the Gulf War in 1991, but it is by
no means clear that the murderous dictator will not have the last laugh on the issue.

He has held on to power, rebuilt his palaces, and restocked his coffers, and he has
steadily
whittled away the power and credibility of both the UN and the US. Weathering the
ineffective strikes on radar units that paint allied aircraft in the designated no-fly zones, Saddam
has reimposed his will on the outside world just by being cantankerous and devious. He has
been aided magnificently by the incompetent handling of the Iraq desk in Washington and by
misguided states scrabbling to regain commercial influence in Iraq at any cost.

It is easy to forget that while the world public and the media may have grown bored with the
tedium of stories from Iraq, Saddam has been quietly but relentless consolidating his
power
and rebuilding his strength, out of the limelight. It will be no surprise if the Middle
East and
the world gets some other nasty surprise from Iraq, which it should have been expecting but
wasn’t.

What is as puzzling as it is worrying is the apparent invisibility of any Washington
policy
on Iraq — or indeed any attempt to implement whatever shreds of policy ever existed.
Yet,
in the last 12 months, the Americans have managed to drop more than 2,000 bombs and missiles
on Iraq in those no-fly zone confrontations. The best word so far used to describe this military
campaign is “haphazard,” and it would defy the skills of any military analyst to come up with a
coherent explanation of what it is all about.

There have been two main indicators that the failed Western policy to contain
Saddam must
be blamed on American incompetence rather than Iraqi cunning. The first was the
disastrous CIA operation in Kurdish northern Iraq in 1996, which Saddam routed. The second
has been the failure to implement Congress’s Iraq Liberation Act – which was supposed to fund
the overthrow of the dictator by native opposition groups.

President Bill Clinton signed the 1998 act which was supposed to invest $97 million in this
project. Apparently only $20,000 has been disbursed to the opposition groups – enough to buy
some basic office supplies. The London office of the Iraqi National Congress, the main
democratic opposition group, shut down at the end of last year. All this dithering and
incompetence has enabled Saddam to replace his bombast after the Gulf War with a credible
claim to have rolled back allied achievements then. If anyone still thinks Saddam will be content
just with that, they will be deluding themselves.

Security Concerns of Hispanic Americans

By Patrick Ortega
The Washington Times, 4 January 2000

At the outset of his presidency, Bill Clinton plunged his administration into turmoil from which it has never fully recovered. He did so by pursuing a course of action vehemently opposed by the nation’s military in order to pander to politically active homosexuals insisting on the right to serve openly in the armed forces.

Now, he seems determined to complete his tenure by once again sacrificing national security in the hope of currying favor with another special interest, Hispanic-Americans, to whom he believes the permanent cessation by the U.S. armed forces of live-fire training exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques is an important priority.

Mr. Clinton is wrong if he thinks denying the men and women who wear our country’s uniform the best possible preparation for combat before they are sent into harms’ way will improve the electoral prospects of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Al Gore among Hispanic voters. The vast majority of us are as supportive as are Americans of other ethnic origins when it comes to our troops and the national interests they are asked to defend at great personal risk and sacrifice.

Unfortunately, sailors and Marines operating in and from the Atlantic Ocean – including some 3,500 Hispanic-American personnel who are typically trained at Vieques each year – are not being properly prepared today. This is due to an illegal occupation of the live-fire range by demonstrators exploiting understandable public outrage over a tragic accident that killed a civilian Navy employee there last April. (Tragic though his death was, he did sign a contract acknowledging and accepting the risks associated with being an armed guard at the bombing range.)

Yet, if President Clinton has his way, that range will be permanently closed in the future.

The conventional wisdom has it that all parts of the Puerto Rican body politic – and, for that matter, all Hispanic-Americans – oppose the resumption of the kind of realistic, combined-arms exercises that can be uniquely performed at Vieques. This perception is being skillfully exploited by the island’s governor, Pedro Rossello (who also happens to be a co-chairman of Al Gore’s fund-raising efforts there), to elicit a commitment from Mr. Clinton to bar the resumption of live-fire training on Vieques and, within at most five years, to end all Navy activity on that island.

The effects of such a presidential decision on military readiness would be dramatic and very harmful. Senior commanders have all declared the live-fire training on Vieques to be essential to the combat effectiveness and safety of our troops.

These adverse impacts are all the more insupportable if, in fact, the majority of the people of Vieques actually do not want the Navy to end its utilization of the live-fire range. Based upon extensive conversations last month with scores of officials, religious leaders, demonstrators, businessmen and others among the 9,300 inhabitants of Vieques, I believe most Viequenses are actually prepared to accept continued, realistic military operations on their island – provided their legitimate concerns about safety, environmental responsibility and just compensation are addressed in good faith by the Pentagon.

To be sure, this is not the view of a vocal minority. They want the Navy out and threaten intensified civil disobedience and even violence if so much as one more piece of explosive ordinance lands on Vieques. I discovered, however, that a number of the prime-movers behind the effort to prevent resumption of live-fire training at Vieques are not even natives of that island. Prominent among them is Roberto Rabin, one of the self-designated leaders of the “Commitee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques.” Mr. Rabin, whose name originally was Robert Rabinowitz, first came to the island as a student from the University of Massachusetts, and wrote his thesis on U.S. intervention in Third World countries and its negative effects.

By applying well-honed techniques of propaganda, indoctrination and intimidation – and, importantly, by drawing support and resources from like-minded radicals and leftist-chic types from Puerto Rico and the mainland – the opponents of continued live-fire training on Vieques have largely succeeded in suppressing overt opposition to their cause. With Gov. Rossello’s belated support and that of other leading Puerto Rican politicians, they are poised to parlay their claim to speak for the people of Vieques into the sort of special interest political leverage that moves President Clinton to act.

It is striking, though, that in tape-recorded interviews I conducted with some of these leading opponents of live-fire exercises on and near Vieques, they adamantly opposed the idea of putting the question of whether those operations should continue to a vote by that island’s residents. Their vehemence suggests a lack of confidence that their position, in fact, enjoys anything like the popular support they claim for it.

President Clinton has a responsibility far higher than the one he obviously feels to help the campaigns his wife and his chosen successor are mounting. He has a duty to look out first for the interests of the nation as a whole and those of the men and women – Hispanic-Americans and others alike – who serve in its defense.

The one way that would allow Mr. Clinton to fulfill that larger responsibility in a democratic and above-board fashion (as opposed to doing backroom deals with radical leftists and self-serving politicians) is to hold an honest plebiscite among the people most immediately affected – the Viequenses. It should be held a few months from now, affording an opportunity for both the U.S. military and its opponents to make their best cases. While there is no guarantee how such a referendum will come out, if it is genuinely free and fair, I believe a majority of the people of Vieques will see the right thing for their community and the country to be a resumption of live-fire training on their island by America’s armed forces committed to conduct such training in a safe and responsible manner.

Patrick Ortega is the founder and president of the Civic Family Institute in Los Angeles, a public policy organization dedicated to educating Hispanics on the American political system and current civic affairs.

‘Assisted Suicide’ For Israel, and Other Clinton Legacies

(Washington, D.C.): News flash: The Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, has been, for all intents and purposes, incarcerated in a hotel in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. He will be kept there for some undetermined number of days. During this time, Mr. Barak will be held incommunicado from his people and the rest of the outside world, pursuant to conditions imposed by the Clinton Administration — conditions that are different in degree but not much in kind from those inflicted by the India Airlines hijackers.

Psychological ‘Peacemaking’

To be sure, unlike the victims of that terrorist action, the Prime Minister wants to be in Shepherdstown. He even wants to do what President Clinton demands — namely, the surrender of all of the Golan Heights to Syria. It is not yet clear, however, whether he is willing to take that step on what amounts essentially to Syrian dictator Hafez Assad’s terms.

The purpose of locking up Mr. Barak with the Syrian Foreign Minister, Farouk al-Shara and their American minders (Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, with periodic visits by President Clinton) is to create the sort of psychological pressure that gave rise to earlier Israeli capitulations at the Wye River Plantation. In Shepherdstown, the Clinton Administration will strive to recreate an environment of relentless meetings, artificial deadlines and accompanying sleep deprivation with the goal of “getting to ‘Yes,'” no matter what the cost.

As with Wye, the object will be to induce America’s friend to sacrifice territory, security and principle. As at Wye, the beneficiary will be a man who, like Yasser Arafat, has a long and bloody record of hostility toward both Israel and the United States and has yet to offer concrete evidence of his commitment to peaceful coexistence with the Jewish State.

And as with the Wye River deal, the United States’ negotiators will be prepared to lubricate the Israeli concessions with American commitments. Israel alone is said to expect some $18 billion in financial assistance. Both nations may be offered military and intelligence technology. President Clinton may even try to resuscitate the discredited idea of placing U.S. troops or other personnel on the Golan Heights to help keep the peace there.

‘Assisted Suicide’

Unfortunately, even if fully implemented, these promises cannot and will not compensate Israel for the vital margin of safety it will be giving up if the strategic high ground of the Golan is returned to Hafez Assad’s tender mercies. Relocated military units and settlers will not have the deterrent effect in the low lands of the Galilee that they do in their current position on the Heights overlooking Damascus. Alternatives to Israel’s current intelligence assets on the Golan are unlikely to be as reliable, particularly if operated by non-Israeli personnel.

And, as eleven former senior U.S. military commanders and civilian experts concluded in a study performed for the Center for Security Policy in 1994,1 American and/or international forces will be at risk of terrorist and other attacks on the Golan without “enhanc[ing] Israeli security.” The authors — among them, the late Admiral Elmo Zumwalt — concluded: “One of the dangers of such a deployment is that it may create a false sense of security in Israel and discourage the investments necessary to address such risks. This would not serve U.S. interests, much less Israel’s.”

This is the crux of the matter: President Clinton’s campaign to complete a deal between Syria and Israel involving the surrender of all the Golan could prove suicidal for the Jewish State. If Israel decides to take such a step on its own, that is its business. If it does so on the basis of false assurances and unwarranted expectations that the United States will prevent Israel from coming to harm, however, the U.S. government would be guilty of assisted suicide, with Bill Clinton playing the role of Dr. Kervorkian.

Clinton’s Therapy and Counter-culture Agenda

If we are to believe a report in today’s New York Times, moreover, Bill Clinton’s determination to use everything from blandishments to coercive techniques to secure his “comprehensive” Middle East peace is animated by more than the standard “place in history” syndrome of a lame-duck president. According to the Times, Mr. Clinton’s deep-seated psychological needs — to which the Nation has been sickeningly overexposed during the past two years — are also at work. He is lonely in the White House without Hillary. He is determined to compete for attention with her campaign and Al Gore’s, both of which have hurt his feelings by declining presidential offers of help on the stump.

This pop psychoanalysis misses one other factor that appears to be driving the Clinton foreign policy agenda for 2000: He seems determined to fulfill a counter-culture design by changing, before leaving office, the “facts on the ground” with respect to virtually every one of this country’s recent and prospective adversaries — the group of rogue states and their big power sponsors that appear to be working increasingly in concert against U.S. interests and that comprise what former Under Secretary of State William Schneider has called “Club Mad.”

For example, the President has effectively normalized relations, or set in motion a process that will have that result, with Angola, Vietnam, Libya and North Korea. A deal between Barak and Assad would clear the decks for adding Syria to that list, something the President wants very much to do with Cuba as well before year’s end. He is also trying to romance the so-called “moderate” mullahs of Iran and is no longer seriously resisting others’ efforts to rehabilitate Saddam Hussein. China reads him as accommodating with regard to its ambitions towards Taiwan. And Vladimir Putin knows Russia will bear no real costs for its liquidation of Chechnya, its anti-American strategic axis with the PRC or its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. All in all, there’s never been a better time to be an enemy of the United States — a reality that makes for a very ominous Clinton Legacy, indeed.

The Bottom Line

Mr. Clinton’s wholly inappropriate, and pathetic, self-promotion at the Millennium festivities on New Year’s Eve are but a taste of what is to come. He has already served notice that he intends to emulate former President Jimmy Carter’s self-appointed, freelancing diplomacy after he leaves office in a year’s time. The real danger is that between now and then he can do grave damage to U.S. security interests and those of its friends like Israel in his quest for affirmation, historical legitimacy and an ideological settling of accounts.




1The participants in the study, entitled U.S. Forces on the Golan Heights: An Assessment of Benefits and Costs are: General John Foss, Commanding General, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (who had responsibility for U.S. forces in the Sinai). General Al Gray, Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps. Lieutenant General John Pustay (USAF, Ret.) Assistant to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; President, National Defense University. General Bernard Schriever, Commander, U.S. Air Force Systems Command. Admiral Carl Trost, Chief of Naval Operations. Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., Chief of Naval Operations. Douglas J. Feith, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense; Middle East specialist, National Security Council; Frank Gaffney, Jr., Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Policy); Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Policy). Eugene Rostow, Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Under Secretary of State (Political Affairs). Henry S. Rowen, former Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs); Chairman, National Intelligence Council, Central Intelligence Agency.

Now‘s the Time to Address the Costs of a Golan Deal

(Washington, D.C.): “Premature.” That’s the word Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
and
other Administration officials are using to finesse legitimate questions about the prospective
costs to the United States of Bill Clinton’s latest diplomatic “Hail Mary” pass — his bid to buy a
legacy by promising to help finance Israel’s surrender of the Golan Heights to Syria.

With the bazaar opening Wednesday, in the form of talks between the three nations in
Washington, Congress should immediately put Clinton and Company on notice: Don’t
even
think about presenting the American people with another fait accompli.

Previous Faits

That was, after all, the practical effect of Clinton Administration promises made
without prior
congressional approval to support the so-called Oslo “peace process”
with hundreds of millions
of dollars in cash outlays for Yasser Arafat. A substantial proportion of these funds — intended
to help the Palestinian Authority demonstrate tangible benefits for its people from making peace
with the Israelis — have instead disappeared into bank accounts and slush funds controlled by the
corrupt Arafat and his cronies. The same fate seems in prospect for the additional hundreds of
millions promised by the Clinton team to lubricate the subsequent Hebron and
Wye River deals.

Then there is the longer-term experience with Egypt. Cairo has garnered
billions of dollars in
U.S. foreign aid since it became the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel. While
much of this assistance was meant for economic development purposes, the most
notable
impact has been in arming Egypt to the teeth with advanced American weapon
technology.
In recent months, even the Israeli government of Ehud Barak has evinced concern that Egypt
may, thanks to the “peace process,” be reacquiring a war option against the Jewish State. 1

Now Syria

These past, problematic transactions are likely to pale by comparison — both in quantitative
and
qualitative terms — with what Mr. Clinton appears to be willing to promise to “support” the
Israeli-Syrian entente. Israel’s Finance Minister Avraham Shohat on Sunday
told Israel
Radio, “I have no doubt the Americans know a process of this type that requires
removing
military infrastructure and building new military infrastructure including warning stations
will cost a lot of money.” According to Reuters, “the [Israeli] Yedioth
Ahronoth newspaper
reported treasury officials put the cost at about $18 billion.”

That amount might be the price Israel alone would charge. It is
anybody’s guess at this point
how much Syria would demand to accept Barak’s surrender of the Golan Heights. As
Israeli professor Steven Plaut observed in an essay that appeared in the Middle East
Quarterly
and Wall Street Journal, Hafez Assad has driven the Syrian economy into the
ground:

    Although Syria’s ruling Baath party doesn’t call itself communist, its economic
    structure makes Syria one of the world’s last surviving communist countries. An all-powerful
    central planning bureaucracy fixes prices and owns the bulk of industry in
    the country….Syria is finding it increasingly difficult to feed itself. Its agriculture
    sector is low-tech and primitive. The World Health Organization estimates that 28%
    of Syrian children suffer from stunted growth, in large part due to malnutrition. The
    Syrian infrastructure is undeveloped and primitive, with often-unsafe water, few
    sewers and an unreliable electricity supply.

‘Show Me the Money’ — and Other Goodies

Hafez Assad is no fool. He clearly understands, just as his friends Slobodan
Milosevic, Kim
Jong Il, Fidel Castro, Jiang Zemin, Boris Yeltsin and Yasser Arafat
have before him, that
Mr. Clinton will gladly obligate the U.S. taxpayer to pay handsomely for the most
insubstantial of expedient diplomatic “successes.” Despite his people’s desperate
economic
plight and the persistent rumors of his own imminent demise, Assad is poised to parlay his
incredibly weak hand into enormous, tangible political, financial and strategic gains.

Indeed, the Syrian despot may already have secured a presidential commitment to remove his
country from the State Department lists of drug-trafficking and terrorist-sponsoring
nations — just for beginning the negotiating process. That could clear the way, in turn,
for infusions of
multilateral and other forms of economic life-support for his faltering regime, even before any
peace agreement has been signed with Israel. It is certainly not “premature” for Congress to
know what inducements have already been offered to get Syria back to the negotiating table.

One might think that reacquiring every square inch of the Golan Heights lost to Israel in
1967
(the terms upon which Assad has long insisted and now apparently has secured) would be reward
enough for that patient and relentless nationalist. After all, as anyone who has visited the sliver
of high ground in question — or been exposed to the history of Israeli security with and without
the strategic depth it provides — can attest, return of the Heights will restore Syria’s war option
against the Jewish State.

Unintended Consequences: Re-establishing Syria’s War Option?

This danger can only be intensified if, as Assad obviously expects, the Syrian military gets
the
sort of help from the U.S. government and its defense contractors that has greatly increased the
ability of other Arab armies to conduct offensive operations, including against Israel if they
should so choose. Maintaining access to early warning information from the intelligence assets
on the Height’s Mount Harmon, constructing expensive new military facilities in the Israeli
plains below the Golan and even the presence on the high ground of American monitors will not
alter a harsh reality: A rearmed Syria under the control of the likes of Hafez Assad and
an
Israel bereft of its strategic depth is a formula for instability and conflict, “peace
agreements” notwithstanding.

Israel’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’?

The decision about whether to relinquish territory critically important to the safety of the
State of
Israel is a decision that only that country’s government can make. It must do so with its eyes
wide open about not only the military risks. Jerusalem must also be under no illusions about the
dangers associated with surrendering control over the thirty percent of Israel’s water resources
that emanates from the Golan watershed. Ditto the inadvisability of “contracting out”
responsibility for Israel’s security interests in Lebanon to its Syrian occupiers.

Most importantly, Israel cannot responsibly make that decision on the basis of
promises
about American financial or technical assistance, the emplacement of U.S. personnel on the
Golan Heights, security guarantees or any similar inducements without certainty that they
will be honored. Such confidence, in turn, cannot be justified unless it enjoys
steadfast
congressional support, as well as that of the Clinton Administration.

The Bottom Line

It would be a serious mistake for either Mr. Clinton or the parties to an Israeli-Syrian accord
to
mistake legislators’ overwhelming desire to promote real peace in the Middle East for a
willingness to pick up whatever tab the Administration runs up and submits without prior
consultation. Far from being “premature,” Congress and its constituents are entitled to
know now the nature, extent and duration of Mr. Clinton’s latest round of “peace
process”
promises.

The same principle applies to such promises as that enunciated in 1994 by eleven
high-ranking,
former U.S. national security officials — including three members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 2 —
in urging deliberation and debate about any deployment of U.S. forces on the Golan Heights long
before a deal predicated upon such a commitment was completed: “If the subject is debated now
and Congress and the executive branch decide to oppose a deployment of U.S. troops on the
Golan, Israel and Syria could take this into account in their negotiations and devise alternative
security arrangements accordingly. Such a decision would be far less disruptive if made
now
than if deferred until after a Syrian-Israeli deal is concluded.”

The Center for Security Policy commends the Chairman of the House International Relations
Committee Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) for publicly announcing last week
that he expects
“the administration will not make any promises regarding foreign assistance to either of the
parties without prior, extensive consultations with Congress.” This shot-across-the bow should
be but the opening salvo in the debate that should precede, not follow, the imminent
Israeli-Syrian negotiations.

1 See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Are U.S. ‘Investments’ in the Mideast ‘Peace
Process’ Giving the Arabs a New War Option? (No.
99-D 126, 28 October 1999).

2 The participants in the study, entitled href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=00-Golan94″>U.S. Forces on the Golan Heights: An Assessment of
Benefits and Costs are: General John Foss, Commanding General,
U.S. Army Training and
Doctrine Command (who had responsibility for U.S. forces in the Sinai). General Al Gray,
Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps. Lieutenant General John Pustay (USAF, Ret.) Assistant to the
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; President, National Defense University. General Bernard
Schriever, Commander, U.S. Air Force Systems Command. Admiral Carl Trost, Chief of Naval
Operations. Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., Chief of Naval Operations. Douglas J. Feith, Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense; Middle East specialist, National Security Council; Frank
Gaffney, Jr., Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Policy); Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense. Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense (International
Security Policy). Eugene Rostow, Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency;
Under Secretary of State (Political Affairs). Henry S. Rowen, former Assistant Secretary of
Defense (International Security Affairs); Chairman, National Intelligence Council, Central
Intelligence Agency.

Don’t Give Syria Life-support in Exchange for a Phony Peace

(Washington, D.C.): In the midst of the hype over the latest “breakthrough” in
the so-called
Middle East “peace process” — hype driven, it appears, by the convergence of Bill Clinton’s
desperate bid for a legacy, Hafez Assad’s alleged near-deathbed conversion to peacemaker and
Ehud Barak’s determination to get agreements with Israel’s Arab foes at any price — precious
little thought seems to be being given to whether this initiative makes strategic sense for either
Israel or the United States.

Fortunately, wise counsel suggesting — correctly — that it does not appeared
today on the
editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. The following op.ed. by Steven Plaut
should be
required reading for everyone interested in achieving a genuine and secure peace for Israel — not
simply another ephemeral, fraudulent piece of paper and its accompanying signing
ceremony.

Don’t Negotiate. Let Syria Collapse.

By Steven Plaut

Wall Street Journal, 10 December 1999

President Clinton hailed as a “breakthrough” Israel and Syria’s plans to reopen talks next
week in
Washington. But Israel shouldn’t rush into an agreement with Syria, which would only prop up a
regime on the verge of collapse.

Hafez Assad’s Syria is a Third World backwater. On the off chance that Syria is serious
about
resolving its conflict with Israel, it is no doubt motivated by the shabby state of its economy.
And if it should turn out yet again that Damascus is interested in little more than scoring a few
public-relations points, the most promising way to turn up the heat on Mr. Assad is by increasing
economic pressures on Syria.

Even if the Syrian economy were in fine shape, the country would still have deep troubles.
Its
dictator is sick and old, and his son and anointed heir, Bashar, may not be up to the job. The
ruling dynasty is fractured. Last week the French newspaper Liberation reported that Gen. Assaf
al-Shawkat, Hafez Assad’s son-in-law, had been admitted to a Paris military hospital with a
gunshot wound to the belly. Liberation reported that he was shot by Mr. Assad’s younger son,
Maher.

The Syrian ruling class consists mainly of a small and despised ethnic minority, the Alawis.
It is
a pariah country due to its involvement in terrorism and drug trading. It is on poor terms with all
its neighbors except Lebanon, which it occupies militarily. Syria has gone to the brink of war
with Turkey over water, and Damascus claims a chunk of territory in southeastern Turkey.
Syria’s Russian-supplied military equipment is obsolete, and the regime has almost no money to
buy Western replacements. Syria is so backward technologically that it has yet to introduce credit
cards, cellular phones or a stock market. It has outlawed access to the Internet for all but the
regime’s closest cronies.

The Syrian economy is imploding, and the reforms needed to revive it would threaten the
power
of Mr. Assad and his cronies. Mr. Assad was reported to have been shocked by the collapse of
Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime in Romania a decade ago and has been fixated on avoiding
Ceausescu’s fate. His model seems now to be North Korea.

Although Syria’s ruling Baath party doesn’t call itself communist, its economic structure
makes
Syria one of the world’s last surviving communist countries. An all-powerful central planning
bureaucracy fixes prices and owns the bulk of industry in the country. Syria operates under
five-year plans that are often formulated in year two or three.

The International Monetary Fund says Syria’s economy is more in need of reform than any
other
in the Mediterranean region. The central government controls resources, prints oodles of money,
employs 40% of the labor force, controls all imports and exports, owns all banks and insurance
companies, regulates every financial transaction and most commercial ones, owns all big
industry and much small industry and controls ordinary wholesale and retail trade and
agricultural markets.

Although the regime claims a gross domestic product per capita of $6,000, the actual figure
is
somewhere between $600 and $1,200. Nearly 70% of Syrian workers earn less than $100 a
month. Syria’s external debts are huge relative to GDP and growing. Since most of these
obligations are in arrears, Syria has been cut out of international financial markets.

Syria is finding it increasingly difficult to feed itself. Its agriculture sector is low-tech and
primitive. The World Health Organization estimates that 28% of Syrian children suffer from
stunted growth, in large part due to malnutrition. The Syrian infrastructure is undeveloped and
primitive, with often-unsafe water, few sewers and an unreliable electricity supply.

The U.S. won the Cold War by letting the Soviet empire collapse under its economic
deadweight, with no military confrontation. Israel should take the same approach with Syria.
Rather than hurry to accommodate Mr. Assad, Prime Minister Ehud Barak should sit back and
wait for Syria to collapse.

With each passing year Syria will be less capable of feeding and arming itself, and more
susceptible to outside economic threats and pressures from the West. Western states can help
things along by imposing economic sanctions. With a bit of determination, this could lead to a
collapse of Mr. Assad’s totalitarian regime in Syria. That would redraw the strategic map of the
Middle East, most likely in a way that would benefit Israel–and the long-suffering Syrian people.

Steven Plaut teaches at the Graduate School of Business, University of Haifa,
Israel.

Kissinger Rebuts Clinton & Co.’s Claim that C.T.B.T. Was Defeated by Partisan Politics, Isolationists

(Washington, D.C.): In the wake of the United States Senate’s decisive rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) last month, President Clinton, Vice President Gore, their senior subordinates and other zealous advocates of arms control sought to obscure this defeat — if not set the stage for a renewed ratification bid — by propagating several untruths. Specifically, they claimed that: the Treaty was no given serious attention by the Senate; there were "no hearings"on the matter; there was insufficient time for debate; and no opportunity to amend the resolution of ratification.

Arguably, the most insidious and misleading of such falsehoods, however, was the endlessly repeated claim that partisan politics and isolationist impulses were responsible for the Senate’s action. This contention, which was parotted by foreign governments, opinion-makers and editorialists around the world, impugned the integrity and gravitas of every one of the fifty-one Senators who voted on the merits to reject this fatally flawed accord. To his credit, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — who was one of many prominent former Cabinet officers and other experts who recommended against Senate advice and consent to the CTBT — wrote a syndicated op.ed. article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on 21 November calling such claims "absurd." Dr. Kissinger’s should be the last word on this defective accord and the "traditional, toothless" variety of arms control of which it is a prime example.

Arms Control to Suit a New World

By Henry A. Kissinger

The Washington Post, November 26, 1999

The Clinton administration’s reaction to the Senate’s refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty threatens to erode the bipartisan approach that has sustained U.S. foreign policy even within the administration. President Bill Clinton condemned the vote as a symptom of militant isolationism, and the State Department notified foreign governments that it still considered itself legally bound by the treaty. All this has tempted some foreign leaders to question the credibility of America’s international role.

It is high time to put an end to name-calling. The treaty failed because the end of the Cold War has transformed global strategic conditions and the nature of arms control. No doubt, isolationists, in different guises, exist on the extremes of both parties. But it is absurd to blame the Senate vote on an isolationist cabal when six former secretaries of defense, four former national-security advisors and four former CIA directors opposed ratification, while four former secretaries of state, myself included, refused to endorse it.

The deadlock between administration righteousness and senators’ lack of confidence in the administration’s security policy has revived the acrimonious arms-control controversies of the early 1970s. Yet, the key issue–the transformation of the nature of arms control with the end of the Cold War–has been almost totally submerged.

When nuclear stockpiles reached tens of thousands of deliverable weapons and war threatened the extinction of humanity, individuals in and out of government began to advocate the then-unprecedented proposition that the holders of these vast arsenals might negotiate to mitigate nuclear danger by limiting their nuclear buildups and establishing some rules for deployment. The purpose was to reduce the risk of surprise attack, accidental war or war by momentum, such as World War I. The result were two agreements in the 1970s limiting the number of delivery vehicles on both sides. However controversial, the accords were maintained throughout the Cold War by administrations of both parties, including President Ronald Reagan’s.

This "strategic" approach to arms control, which always insisted on retaining the option of modernization and never took risks with verifiability, was nearly overwhelmed by assaults from two opposite directions. One came from a "radical" theology of arms control, which sought to base U.S. security on guaranteeing the maximum destructiveness of nuclear war. Advocates of Mutual Assured Destruction insisted on leaving civilian populations totally vulnerable to nuclear attack. Hence, they opposed any kind of defense against nuclear missiles and tried to thwart any modernization as destabilizing. Their goal was to prevent war by imposing strategic nuclear passivity on the United States.

The difference between the strategic and radical schools of arms control was illustrated by their respective attitudes toward nuclear testing. True, the "strategic" arms controllers negotiated an underground test ban. But unlike the current version of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the ban was confined to tests above a specific threshold that was verifiable and allowed a limited number of proof-tests of existing stockpiles to determine their reliability.

Opponents of arms control in the 1970s lumped the "radical" and "strategic" schools together and attacked any effort to stabilize military relations between the superpowers as a mirage or a deliberate deception. The radical arms controllers never encountered a new technology they could approve; their critics never confronted an arms-control agreement that they could countenance.

With the test-ban treaty, Clinton’s became the first administration to throw its weight behind the radical arms controllers, and it did so without consulting either key senators or former senior officials. The administration ignored the experience of the Threshold Test Ban of the 1970s and pursued a comprehensive and permanent ban, despite the knowledge that it was not verifiable at low levels.

The Senate vote should be interpreted as a wake-up call to the revolutionary change in the nature of the U.S. strategic problem and in the role (and limits) of arms control. The "strategic" arms control of the 1970s sought to regulate a bilateral U.S.-Soviet relationship. Each of the parties could be assumed to have a parallel interest in reducing the risks of surprise attack or accidental war. Though this premise was questioned on ideological grounds, it was possible to design plausible negotiating positions on the basis of which strategic equilibrium might transcend ideology, at least as far as the goal of preventing a nuclear holocaust was concerned.

But the conflict between two nuclear superpowers is no longer the overwhelming threat. Rather, it is the spread of weapons of mass destruction to countries that reject any common norms and seek nuclear weapons to blackmail the rest of the world. The premise of the complete test ban was that cessation of tests by the nuclear powers would set an example for other countries to stay out of the nuclear-weapons field. But the countries about which we are most concerned have neither signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty nor would they be constrained by it if they did sign it. After all, North Korea, Iran and Iraq had all signed the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and accepted its inspections. Yet, each is actively pursuing clandestine nuclear capabilities in violation of agreements it signed.

The oft-repeated argument that a complete test ban, if observed, would freeze the U.S. nuclear advantage does not apply to rudimentary nuclear capabilities of rogue states. Industrialized proliferators may sign the complete test ban for exactly the opposite reason: to achieve a pause to enable them to narrow the gap with U.S. technology.

The United States has a special responsibility for international security, especially involving nuclear weapons. For the sake of all who depend on U.S. protection, Washington cannot afford to subordinate national security to doubtful, speculative benefits. The U.S. is the ultimate guarantor against the scourge of biological and chemical warfare. It needs a capacity to resist with discrimination, that is, in a way that will minimize catastrophe and not stake everything on the nihilism of the theory of Mutual Assured Destruction. For the U.S. to give up technological options is a far graver decision than for countries relying on far more rudimentary capabilities.

Democratic governments have an obligation to their publics to demonstrate serious efforts to reduce the dangers of a nuclear holocaust and nuclear proliferation. But traditional arms-control agreements, especially of the toothless variety, may have come to the end of the road. Existing nonproliferation agreements should be preserved, including the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the suppliers’ restraints of the more recent period, such as the Missile Technology Control Regime and the Canberra Group restricting chemical exports.

But new nuclear states like India and Pakistan are reachable by traditional instruments and norms of diplomacy. Their friends can assist them in achieving a stable mutual deterrence and give stabilizing reassurances about their conventional security. Even a less sweeping test ban might have a place in such a strategy if it had a verifiable threshold, a time limit that permitted reassessment in the light of experience, quotas for proof-testing and agreement on sanctions against violators.

But what is really needed is a new common policy for nations already possessing nuclear arsenals. They must agree on controls over the export of their technologies and devise precise and tough sanctions against states acquiring weapons of mass destruction and those nations that supply them.

In too many countries, foreign policy has turned into a subdivision of domestic politics. But if, as Clemenceau said, war is too serious to be left to the generals, the future of nuclear weapons is too fateful an issue to be dominated by partisan slogans, either here or abroad.

Henry A. Kissinger, Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger frequently writes for, The Times.