Tag Archives: Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton, ‘New Isolationist’?
The U.S. Needs a Missile Defense That Defends its Allies, Too

(Washington, D.C.): As the worm turns! In the wake of the U.S. Senate’s crushing rejection
of
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) last month, President Clinton and his supporters
unleashed a torrent of invective against Republicans in the Senate, and their party more
generally. The GOP, it was said, was in the hands of “new isolationists” who were reflexively
opposed to arms control and endangering the Nation’s standing around the world by appearing
indifferent to the will of the “international community.”

Now, having widely promoted this slanderous falsehood, the Administration finds itself
being
tarred with the same brush. The President’s new-found, and long-overdue, enthusiasm for
deploying a limited national missile defense is causing Mr. Clinton’s allies at home and abroad —
and most of our potential adversaries — to portray this initiative as isolationist, a mortal threat to
arms control and insensitive to the preferences of foreign governments.

These anxieties could only have been intensified by a speech the Under Secretary of Defense
for
Policy, Walter Slocombe, gave last Friday about America’s determination to defend itself against
missile attack — whether the Russians like it or not. Slocombe commendably declared that: “We
will not permit any other country to have a veto on actions that may be needed for the defense of
our nation.”

Allied Concerns

Even before this pronouncement, European leaders were expressing alarm. On Thursday,
French
President Jacques Chirac issued a quintessentially Gaullist denunciation of American foreign
policies and the isolationist tendencies that he contends are impelling them. According to the
November 7 New York Times, “French officials close to Mr. Chirac said that one of
the main
causes for concern…was the possible deployment by the United States of a limited missile
defense shield to protect against attack by ‘rogue states’ like Iraq or North Korea….’President
Chirac has told President Clinton that it could open a Pandora’s box that is in none of the allies’
interest.'”

The allies seem particularly upset that the Clinton plan for missile defense appears focused
on
the deployment of a limited anti-missile system that would protect only the United States. On
November 6, the Washington Post reported under a headline “Possible U.S. Missile
Shield
Alarms Europe,” that Germany’s Foreign Minister, Joschka Fisher of the Green Party, declared
during a visit to Washington last week that: “There is no doubt that this would lead to split
security standards within the NATO alliance. I see lots of problems developing in this respect,
which we must discuss calmly and reasonably with our American friends.”

The Post added that “Fischer said Germany’s commitment to be non-nuclear ‘was
always based
on our trust that the United States would protect our interests, that the United States, as the
leading nuclear power, would guarantee some sort of order.’ A drive by the United States to
build its own missile defense, he said, would erode that confidence by effectively putting
European cities at greater risk of nuclear missile attack than those in America.” (Wouldn’t that
be a legacy for Bill Clinton — converting the Greens into advocates of a “German bomb”!)

In point of fact, like the Senate vote to defeat the CTBT, a U.S. deployment of missile
defenses
should not be construed as a national retreat to “Fortress America.” Thoughtful Democrats and
Republicans alike understand that — in a world increasingly awash with ballistic missile threats —
effective anti-missile systems are becoming an essential ingredient to the United States’
engagement internationally, as well as its security at home.

What to Do Now

Assuming President Clinton is not, as Foreign Minister Fischer suggested last week, just
going
through the motions on missile defense “based on political calculations in the upcoming
presidential elections,” it behooves him to consider a alternative approach, one that both meets
American needs and addresses legitimate allied concerns about being left uniquely vulnerable to
ballistic missile attack.

Instead of making the initial “national” anti-missile deployment one involving the
construction
of a fixed, ground-based system in Alaska — a deployment that will not be able to provide
complete protection for all 50 states, let alone provide any anti-missile defense for U.S. forces
and allies overseas 1 — Mr. Clinton should authorize the
Navy’s Aegis fleet air defense system to
be modified so as to make it an effective, world-wide ballistic missile-killer.

As President Clinton’s own Pentagon has begun to acknowledge publicly, by taking
advantage of
the roughly $50 billion investment already made in relevant naval infrastructure, the United
States could acquire a missile defense that is capable of defeating a larger number of incoming
missiles than the present plan, doing it faster and at a fraction of the cost. If done in
collaboration with allied navies — not only the Japanese, who have four of their own Aegis ships,
but the NATO allies, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel, as well — understandable concerns about
leaving their countries undefended could be rapidly dispelled.

The Bottom Line

Of course, such an approach will not end the opposition now being expressed by the
Russians,
Chinese, North Koreans and others who find America’s vulnerability to ballistic missile threats
convenient. (In fact, North Korea’s growing ability to exploit that vulnerability has caused the
United States to become the largest provider of foreign aid to the despotic regime in Pyongyang.)
Neither will it allay the outcry from those at home and abroad who favor American disarmament
and regard the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (which prohibited a territorial anti-missile
defense of the United States) as sacred writ, or in Mr. Clinton’s words, as the “cornerstone of
strategic stability.” 2

For the millions of Americans who believe the United States must be defended against the
scourge of missile attack, if the Clinton Administration is now serious about defending America,
if it really will not “permit any other nation to have a veto on actions that may be needed for the
defense of our nation” and if it pursues missile defenses in a way that enhances alliance cohesion
— rather than divides the U.S. from its allies — the response will be very positive. More to the
point, if our countrymen do not get such leadership from the Clinton-Gore team, they are certain
to hire someone who will follow such a sensible, internationalist course in January 2001.

1 The principal reason for choosing such a system appears to be the
Administration’s belief that
it would involve the smallest departure from the ABM Treaty and, therefore, would be the most
readily acceptable to the Russians. To date, however, the Russians seem no more interested in
legitimating this approach to a U.S. missile defense than any other.

2The Russians are skillfully exploiting the Europeans’ anxieties over
what is perceived to be the
Clinton Administration’s “America First” approach to defending the United States so as to
exacerbate the rift between the U.S. and its allies. Every member of the European Union either
voted with Moscow or abstained in a UN committee’s vote last Friday on a resolution introduced
by Russia calling on the United States to continue to adhere to the ABM Treaty.

Did Clinton Want to Lose the CTBT?

(Washington, D.C.): The level of incompetence exhibited by the Clinton Administration in its management and defense of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) has prompted some to speculate that it actually "threw" the vote in the Senate. While some of the facts seem to support this astounding thesis — as Jeff Jacoby observed in his excellent 21 October column in the Boston Globe — the truth is less Machiavellian: The Administration never dreamt that a signed arms control treaty would be rejected by the Senate, no matter how defective. It didn’t work to secure the necessary support before a vote was scheduled and only did so afterwards when it became clear that the Treaty was in serious trouble.

What certainly is true, however, is that the Clinton Administration and its allies have shamelessly sought to politicize the Senate’s action on missile defense. Mr. Jacoby’s analysis of this effort — and of the larger attempt to distort the Clinton security policy record — should be required reading for all those who wish to understand the nature and implications of the vote on the CTBT.

Democratic Cynicism on Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Jeff Jacoby

‘Bill Clinton Wanted To Lose the Test-Ban Treaty Vote," editorializes the New York Post. A daft idea? The Post marshals the evidence:

The president never called the Senate majority leader in the months before the vote to urge ratification of the treaty. The vice president never mounted a campaign to build public support for it. Top administration officials never urged Senate Republicans to bring the treaty — which was signed three years ago — to the floor. Indeed, in a strategy session with Senate Democrats on Sept. 23, national security adviser Sandy Berger schemed to embarrass Republicans in the upcoming campaign by chiding them for not having put it to a vote.

At times the cynicism was undisguised. When Senator William Roth of Delaware, a Republican, announced his opposition to the treaty, Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat, exclaimed: "Bingo! That’s $ 200,000 worth of ads."

With some honorable exceptions, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was worth more to the Democrats dead than alive. Campaigning in Seattle when the Senate voted, Al Gore was so keen to denounce the GOP that he taped a TV ad on the spot. The treaty’s "breathtakingly irresponsible" defeat, he told reporters, was the fault of "right-wing extremists." A fuming Clinton, meanwhile, was blasting the Republicans for their "reckless partisanship" and "neo-isolationism." Thanks to the Senate, he said, we now have "no other means of keeping countries around the world from developing nuclear arsenals and threatening our security."

The media loudly echoed the Democrats’ scorn. Typical was ABC correspondent Martha Raddatz’s analysis of the vote. "I think what it showed is they" — the Republicans — "don’t really care about the world at all."

There is nothing new here. It was in just such hysterical cadences that Ronald Reagan was savaged in the 1980s as he set about repairing the nation’s degraded defenses and confronting the Soviet threat. It was in such cadences that Edward Kennedy and his allies condemned those who didn’t join their "nuclear freeze" campaign a generation ago.

Fortunately, Reagan succeeded and the nuclear freeze did not. The result was that when Reagan left office, the world was a safer place, and the United States a more secure nation, than either had been eight years earlier.

But on Bill Clinton’s watch, the world has grown steadily more dangerous. In crisis after crisis, region after region, the Clinton administration’s record is one of debacle, weakness, and scandal.

Stick a pin almost anywhere on the map and see the bitter fruit of Clinton’s stewardship.

Iraq? Saddam Hussein thumbs his nose at the world, Clinton’s occasional pinprick attacks having dissuaded him not at all from his drive to build an arsenal of mass destruction. The UN weapons inspectors are long gone, driven out by Saddam when it became clear that Washington – at least under the Clinton administration – would do nothing to stop him.

Bosnia? For years the administration dithered, unwilling to take the lead in stopping Slobodan Milosevic’s brigands from slaughtering their way to a Greater Serbia. When Clinton finally did act, it was to midwife a Dayton agreement that kept Milosevic in power – and free to unleash a new bloodbath in Kosovo.

China? In exchange for campaign cash from Beijing, the Clinton White House was opened to Chinese operatives. In exchange for campaign cash from Silicon Valley, the administration approved sales of sensitive satellite technology to China. For more than six years, Clinton and Gore have refused to rock any boat that might jeopardize the access of American business to Chinese markets. They looked the other way when China proliferated nuclear weapons material to Pakistan and Iran, refused to take action when Chinese spies stole military secrets from US nuclear laboratories, and declined to reassure Taiwan that it can count on US support if it is attacked or invaded by Beijing.

In North Korea, on the subcontinent, in Indonesia, in Russia, in Rwanda, in Somalia — around the world these past seven years, America has been timid when it should have been decisive, clueless when it should have been informed, careless when it should have been vigilant.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would have made this bad resumé even worse. Unverifiable and unreliable, it would have done little to stop the spread of nuclear weapons but a good deal to weaken the US nuclear umbrella that shelters much of the free world. That is why it was opposed by a phalanx of former defense secretaries, national security advisers, and CIA directors, and that is why the Republicans killed it.

"Reckless partisanship"? "Neo-isolationism"? "Right-wing extremists"? In a way it is comical to see Clinton and Gore hurl such epithets at the likes of Richard Lugar, John McCain, Olympia Snowe, and Pete Domenici, GOP senators renowned for their international outlook and bipartisan instincts.

But there is nothing funny about the president and vice president – and many members of their party – playing politics so nakedly and dishonestly with so grave an issue. Gore and the Democrats promise to make the test ban treaty an issue in the political year ahead. Let them. They may find that the American public is not half so gullible as they imagine.

Congress is Doing its Job, Not Engaging in ‘Isolationism’

(Washington, D.C.): At every conceivable turn, spokesmen for the Clinton
Administration and
its friends are repeating, in mantra-like fashion, that the Republican-led Congress is guilty of
practicing a “new isolationism.” As George Melloan, the Wall Street Journal’s highly regarded
columnist specializing in international affairs, puts it in today’s editions: “Get real.”

There are real disagreements about the manner and consequences of Mr. Clinton’s
approach to
security policy. Those disagreements, however, are generally not over a preference on the part
the President’s critics for American isolationism. They reflect, instead, very different judgments
about how the United States can most successfully and safely engage internationally.

Those who persist in propagating the “new isolationism” myth risk being seen as either
know-nothings or demagogues — or both. Such individuals are unlikely to contribute usefully to
the
sort of rigorous debate about security policy that is so urgently needed, and to which Mr.
Melloan has helpfully contributed.

Clinton Proposes and Congress Disposes, Thank Heaven

By George Melloan

Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, rocked the staid Council on
Foreign
Relations last Thursday night with a flailing attack on the “isolationist” Republicans of Congress.
Similar themes have been heard a few blocks away, in that center of the universe better known as
the United Nations building. According to Mr. Berger and like-minded theorists over at the U.N.,
Americans should be worried about the “bad image” projected when Congress challenges the
collective wisdom of what is so frequently described as the “international community.”

A proper reply from Congress would be that its job is to weigh benefits against costs to
American citizens, either in terms of money or national security. If you want nothing more than
images, the world’s leading expert sits in the White House. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
that failed to make the grade in Congress–touching off the Berger counterattack–was long on
imagery, but short on substance when subjected to rigorous analysis. It would do nothing to stop
any country bent on becoming a nuclear power from doing so, or, more to the point, nothing to
control the expansion of nuclear arsenals by countries, such as China, that already have them.

Mr. Berger clearly subscribes to the political theory that a good offense is the best defense.
He
was wise not to rely on defense, since neither he nor anyone else in the Clinton administration
has adequately explained why China could apparently steal American nuclear secrets with ease.
Trying to defend this administration’s national security policies would have required far more
intellectual agility than was needed to attack the “isolationists.”

Not that Mr. Berger’s speech in New York would rate a Heisman Trophy for offense, either.
It
missed the target by a mile. Some of the most prominent internationalists in U.S. public life
voted against the test ban treaty on grounds that it was unenforceable and thus worse than
useless. To imply, for example, that Republicans Richard Lugar of Indiana and Jon Kyl of
Arizona are “isolationists” is merely ludicrous. Sen. Kyl is the Senate’s leading defender of
NATO and other U.S.-sponsored security arrangements around the world. Indeed, it would be
hard to find anyone in the Congress, from either party, who could legitimately be called an
“isolationist” in this day and age. Get real.

Aside from trying to peddle political twaddle to the Council audience, Mr. Berger managed
to
tangle himself in contradictions. The central U.S. foreign policy problem, as he sees it, is that the
U.S. “is accused of both hegemony and isolationism at the same time.” Clearly, the only solution
to this problem is for the U.S. to do what the “rest of the world,” whoever that might be, wants.

Which brings us back to that “international community” that swings so much weight with the
Clinton administration. That term, properly understood, doesn’t refer to the world’s six billion
souls. Rather, it refers to the rather small community that gathers at the U.N. and the venues of
the U.N.’s multilateral sister organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank. These people are jealous of their considerable power and rightly see the U.S.
Congress as a threat. Congress of late has not been happy with the “international community”
and through its control of the lion’s share of the funds that support that community’s projects, it
has the power to express its unhappiness in significant ways.

Although the Congress has willingly funded U.N. peacekeeping around the globe, it has
withheld
an appropriation to bring U.S. dues to that organization up to date. If the money isn’t paid by the
end of this year, the U.S. is in danger of losing its seat in the General Assembly, we are told.
Horrors.

Some of the Capitol Hill complaints against U.N. programs are founded on beliefs that are of
special importance in the U.S. Objections to U.N. population control efforts are an extension of
the continuing battle between right-to-life and right-to-choose adherents in America, for
example. But multilateral organizations are most vulnerable to legitimate criticism when their
activities threaten to waste economic resources.

One such U.N. effort is the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, which is being revisited in
Bonn
this week by several hundred environmental activists from around the world who hope to convert
it from a paper tiger to one with real teeth. The Kyoto document is based on the flimsy theory
that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide–hardly measurable in a vast ecosphere of which CO2
is a natural component–pose an environmental threat. The treaty aims at reducing those
emissions, whatever the cost in money and jobs. Mr. Clinton, at the urging of Vice President Al
Gore, has enhanced his image with these fanatics by signing this idiotic document. But he has
not brought it before Congress, knowing full well that it could never be ratified.

As to the IMF, the Congress has supplied it with more capital despite growing doubts that
this
body plays a positive role in the world. The IMF, we now learn, has little clue as to what has
happened to all the money it has funneled into Russia, yet still wants to supply some more. More
generally, there are persuasive arguments that IMF loans do not really succeed in bribing
national governments to adopt better economic policies, as supporters claim, but in fact finance
the continuation of bad economic policies. The IMF proved to be woefully short on crisis
management skills during the Asian currency meltdown.

None of these challenges to Clinton and the international community have their basis in
isolationism. Two of the very few positive things this administration has accomplished, the
Uruguay Round and the Nafta free trade agreements, could not have been pushed through
Congress without Republican support. Mr. Clinton’s failure to get “fast track” authority for new
trade negotiations last year was not because of Republican objections but his own foot-dragging
to appease the labor movement, a major Democratic Party constituency. The World Trade
Organization meeting coming up in Seattle in late November promises to be a fiasco for similar
reasons.

In short, the problems Mr. Clinton has had with Congress on foreign policy have resulted
from
the incoherence of his own policies: He has allowed U.S. military power to wither while at the
same time tasking it with more and more U.N. assignments. He has played domestic politics by
signing nice-sounding treaties that are in fact meaningless, or even dangerous, for U.S. security.
Mr. Berger may rail at imaginary “isolationists” but that’s not what the coming political battle in
the U.S. is going to be about.

Clinton’s ‘Big Lies’ on the Senate’s Rejection of the C.T.B.T.

“The great masses of the people…will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small
one.”
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

(Washington, D.C.): In the wake of Bill Clinton’s stinging repudiation by the Senate over the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) last week, the President, his subordinates and their
allies outside the administration have responded by repeatedly smearing Republican opponents
of this accord with what can only be called “big lies.” This practice was much in evidence in the
course of Mr. Clinton’s press conference last week where he declared that the GOP was engaging
in “a reckless partisanship — it threatens America’s economic well being and, now, our national
security.”

Early in what amounted to the better part of an hour-long rant on that occasion, the President
declared without a hint of irony: “It’s been my experience that very often in politics when a
person is taking a position that he simply cannot defend, the only defense is to attack the
opponent.” The truth is, however, that it is the Clinton Administration whose position on the
CTBT is indefensible and whose only “defense” is now to attack those Senators who
courageously voted to reject a treaty that an actual majority of Senators found to be
insupportable.

A Bill of Particulars

Consider some of the more outrageous of the big lies being used to defame the fifty-one
Republicans who voted against the CTBT:

  • Big Lie: Partisan Republicans didn’t allow enough time for hearings or
    debate or afford the
    needed opportunity for amendment of the Treaty.

    The Truth: Every Senator, Democrat as well as Republican,
    explicitly assented
    to the unanimous consent agreement that set out the arrangements under which
    the CTBT was considered.     Evidently, as long as Senate Democrats and the Clinton
    Administration thought their side had the votes — or would get them in the end — the
    duration and particulars of the debate were deemed sufficient. If the task is simply to
    rubber-stamp a treaty, the job doesn’t take that long. In fact, with the notable recent
    exception of the controversial Chemical Weapons Convention, no arms control treaty
    since the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty has been subjected to protracted and
    rigorous Senate debate.

    The Democrat complaints about a rush to judgment and their demand for an
    eleventh-hour stay of execution only started when it became apparent that
    Republican Senators — unlike most of their colleagues across the aisle — had
    actually boned up on the Comprehensive Test Ban (thanks to the leadership of
    Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, the personal efforts of Sens. Jon
    Kyl     of
    Arizona and Paul Coverdell of Georgia, and most especially the briefings of
    experts like former Carter Energy Secretary James Schlesinger) — and that the
    CTBT was headed for defeat.

    In the end, the widely shared conviction that this accord was irremediably flawed
    and that delay would not improve it caused all fifty-five GOP Senators to vote to
    keep to the original schedule, dooming President Clinton’s efforts to try to cut
    the sorts of deals on unrelated matters that allowed the CWC to squeak through
    eight months after it was nearly killed by the Senate in September 1996.

  • Big Lie: The treaty was killed by hard-line Republicans who oppose
    bipartisan approaches to
    foreign policy in general and arms control in particular.

    The Truth: The 34 votes needed to kill the Comprehensive Test Ban
    Treaty — to say
    nothing of the absolute majority the opponents ultimately mustered — would not have
    been possible without the support of Senators like Richard Lugar of Indiana, Thad
    Cochran of Mississippi, Ted Stevens of Alaska, Pete Domenici of New Mexico and
    Olympia Snowe of Maine. These are legislators with unbroken records of
    bipartisanship in support for arms control agreements and foreign policy initiatives
    they deem to be in the national interest.

    It is contemptible and irresponsible to suggest that these members in particular
    would act as they did out of any motivation other than what they believed to be
    best for the national security and the international effort to achieve real
    constraints upon the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world. Indeed,
    those who insist that the Senate put partisanship before the national interest
    merely display their ignorance of the substantive nature of the debate and vote —
    and their biases with respect to both the CTBT itself and the proposition that the
    Senate is supposed to be more than a rubber-stamp in the treaty-making process.

  • Big Lie: As White House press spokesman Joe Lockhart put it Friday,
    in the wake of the
    CTBT’s defeat: “The titanic debate that’s gone on over the last several years within the
    Republican Party has finally been settled in favor of Fortress America — isolationism.”

    The Truth: Far from seeking an isolated United States, the
    Republican majority
    voted to assure that the military capability that most underpins America’s international
    engagement — the United States’ nuclear deterrent — remains safe, reliable and
    effective. The difference between the CTBT’s Senate opponents and proponents is not
    over the formers’ support for Fortress America or “going it alone” and the latters’
    conviction that allies and forward defense arrangements are critical to the Nation’s
    security. Rather, the difference that emerged from the Senate vote is between
    divergent views about how best the United States can “engage” and, in particular, the
    role nuclear weapons should play in American security policy.

The Bottom Line

Those who believe, as most Senators evidently do, that America’s global leadership,
international interests and security are better served by a credible deterrent than by an
unverifiable, unenforceable treaty that would undermine that deterrent, should welcome the
debate being promised — or, more accurately, threatened — by CTBT proponents.
Senatorial, to
say nothing of popular, opposition to this treaty can only be strengthened by intensified exposure
of the public to the wooly-headed, radical anti-nuclear agenda of which the zero-yield, permanent
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has long been a cornerstone. And that’s no lie.

C.T.B.T. Truth or Consequences #3: President Bush Did Not ‘Impose’ a Test Moratorium — It Was Imposed on Him

(Washington, D.C.): One of the more pernicious misstatements being served up by Clinton
Administration officials desperately trying to induce Republican Senators to agree to the
ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is to the effect that former President
George Bush “imposed a moratorium” on U.S. nuclear testing before leaving office. The most
recent such misrepresentation was made on ABC News’ “This Week” program on Sunday by
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. By so doing, they transparently hope to lend an otherwise
almost wholly lacking patina of bipartisanship to this accord.

The fact is that President Bush was euchred on the eve of the 1992 election into accepting
legislative restrictions on nuclear testing that he vehemently opposed. This point was made clear
in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week by Dr. Robert
Barker, a
nuclear weapon designer who served as the Pentagon’s top nuclear weapons expert during the
Reagan and Bush Administrations:

    There should be no doubt whatsoever that President Bush and the entire
    administration
    that stood behind him believed that nuclear testing was necessary for the maintenance of a
    safe and reliable stockpile.     I don’t believe the technical facts have changed since 1993.
    I
    believe we are faced with a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty not because the technical facts have
    changed but because some political issues are different now than were true in 1993.

President Bush’s Legacy

President Bush’s attitude towards nuclear testing is made express in an unclassified passage
from
a classified report he submitted to the Congress on his Administration’s last full day in office.
This report was written to explain why the Bush Administration found a statute mandating an
end to all U.S. nuclear testing, following a final series of underground tests, to be incompatible
with the national security. It read, in part:

    “…The Administration has concluded that it is not possible to develop a test program within
    the
    constraints of Public Law 102-377 that would be fiscally, militarily and technically responsible.
    The requirement to maintain and improve the safety of U.S. forces necessitates
    continued
    nuclear testing for those purposes, albeit at a modest level, for the foreseeable future.
    The
    Administration strongly urges the Congress to modify this legislation urgently, in order to permit
    the minimum number and kind of underground nuclear tests that the United States requires —
    regardless of the action of other states — to retain safe and reliable, although dramatically
    reduced, nuclear deterrent forces.”

The reasons for President Bush’s adamant position on the need to continue
nuclear testing in
order to assure the safety and reliability of the U.S. deterrent is not hard to comprehend in light
of the experience described by Dr. Barker in his testimony on 7 October:

    “During my six years in the Pentagon, from 1986 to 1992, the people in the nuclear weapons
    laboratories were even more experienced [than they are today since they] were doing
    nuclear
    testing. Well, every day of any year I could go to them and they would tell me my stockpile was
    safe, my stockpile was reliable — I could count on their judgment.

    “Five times during that six-year period I was faced with catastrophic failures in the
    stockpile.     The Department of Energy came to me on five occasions, and I found
    myself going to
    Secretaries Weinberger or Carlucci or Cheney, and telling them that a weapon in the
    inventory
    could not be trusted to do its job.     And until we did further tests those weapons were
    basically
    non-operational, and we were faced with trying to deal with the situation of instantaneously
    having a weapons system not available to us….In every case where a change had to be made in
    order to fix the problem, a nuclear test was required to be sure that the fix worked.”

President Clinton’s Legacy

Dr. Barker also pointed out to the Senate how the Clinton Administration’s ideological
attachment to the idea of banning all nuclear testing — without regard to the implications for the
safety and reliability of the stockpile — had a singularly perverse effect:

    “It’s one of the great ironies that there was a thing in existence back in 1993 called a
    test ban
    readiness program, which called for a significant number of tests each year for a decade in
    order to prove whether or not a scheme of calculation and non-nuclear simulation
    would
    provide a reliable replacement for nuclear testing    ….That is the reliable, scientific even
    business approach. You do not change your calibration tool without comparing the results.

    “No business would change its accounting system without verifying that the new system
    gave the
    same results of the new. No scientist would change the calibration tool in his laboratory without
    validating that the new tool gave the same result as the old. And in 1993 we were embarked
    upon a process of developing a set of tools that we could assess whether or not they would prove
    to be a reliable replacement for nuclear testing.

    “The cessation of nuclear testing cut that whole thing off, and instead we
    jumped into the
    replacement and have denied ourselves the ability to ever calibrate it if we ratify this
    Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.”

The Bottom Line

No President since John F. Kennedy has voluntarily imposed the kind of unilateral
moratorium
on nuclear testing upon which Bill Clinton has insisted over the past seven years — and for good
reason. And President Kennedy declared when he ended the three year testing moratorium he
had adopted:

    “We know enough now about broken negotiations, secret preparations and the advantages
    gained
    from a long test series never to offer again an uninspected moratorium. Some may urge us
    to try
    it again    , keeping our preparations to test in a constant state of readiness. But in
    actual practice,
    particularly in a society of free choice, we cannot keep top flight scientists concentrating on
    the preparation of an experiment which may or may not take place on an uncertain date in
    the undefined future.

    “Nor can large technical laboratories be kept fully alert on a stand-by basis waiting for some
    other nation to break an agreement. This is not merely difficult or inconvenient — we
    have
    explored this alternative thoroughly and found it impossible of execution.”

The fact is that President George Bush, many of those who served in senior ranks of his
administration — notably, his Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, his National Security Advisor
Brent Scowcroft and his Secretary of Energy James Watkins have all expressed their opposition
to this treaty — and his son, George W. Bush, have formally counseled the Senate against
permanent unilateral and/or multilateral bans on nuclear testing. This counsel should be heeded
— not misrepresented or ignored.

End-Game for a Defective C.T.B.T.

(Washington, D.C.): On Wednesday, President Clinton, Vice President Gore and a host of
Cabinet officers, military leaders, Nobel Prize winners, scientists and others will gather at the
White House for a pep rally in support of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). If, as
expected, a sufficient number of U.S. Senators next week reject this fatally flawed treaty on the
grounds that it is inconsistent with U.S. national security, many of the participants in this
extravaganza who would be expected to recognize that reality are likely to find their authority
seriously diminished in the future.

‘You Can’t Get There From Here’

In the event 34 or more Senators decline to consent to the CTBT’s ratification, one reason
seems
likely to prove overriding: Not one of those participating in the White House pep
rally — not
the Administration’s luminati, not the former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not the
directors of the Nation’s nuclear laboratories or other scientists — can honestly say that
the U.S.
nuclear deterrent can be maintained in a safe, reliable and credible condition for the
indefinite future without at least low-yield, periodic underground nuclear testing.

To be sure, there will be a lot of talk tomorrow about how “confident” these assembled
worthies
are that that will be the case. The President and his cheerleaders can be expected to reiterate
some variation on the line Mr. Clinton pronounced on August 14, 1995 — the day he revealed
that he would agree to a treaty banning even undetectable, low-yield nuclear tests: “I consider
the maintenance of a safe and reliable nuclear stockpile to be a supreme national interest of the
United States.” Clinton and Company will assert their confidence that the Nation’s supreme
interest in preserving such a stockpile will in the future (actually ten years or so in the future) be
satisfied by sophisticated computer modeling, not actual testing.

Unfortunately, being “confident” is not the same thing as being certain. And
no one can be
certain that our arsenal of aging nuclear weapons will be viable in the future if we are
unable to use the tool that every President from Truman on — until, that is, Bill Clinton —
understood was necessary for that purpose: realistic nuclear testing.

The Deterrent May Already be in Trouble

Indeed, there is already reason to be less-than-confident that today’s U.S. arsenal meets the
exacting standards for safety and reliability that have heretofore been observed. After all, we
have not tested any nuclear weapons since 1992 — the longest such moratorium since the dawn of
the nuclear age. Importantly, up until the time we suspended testing seven years ago, we were
routinely finding problems with our arsenal.

In fact, according to Dr. Robert Barker, a physicist and thermonuclear
weapons designer who
served as the Pentagon’s top expert on atomic energy matters under three Secretaries of Defense,
he was obliged to recommend taking U.S. nuclear arms off alert (known as “red-lining”)
five
times during the six years before U.S. testing was halted. No weapons have been
red-lined
since then. It strains credulity that this is due to their condition actually being perfect.
More likely, we simply do not know what our weapons’ defects are since, without testing,
they are not apparent.

‘Safeguard F’ is No Safeguard

Some of the military leaders and scientific experts whose authority and credibility the
President
will be shamelessly exploit in the hope of selling the CTBT to the requisite 67 Senators by the
time the vote is held on October 12 may be willing to overlook this natty reality on the basis of
what is known as “Safeguard F.” The Treaty’s proponents want legislators and
the public to
believe that there is an escape hatch in case our “supreme interests” are jeopardized by an
unexpected lack of confidence in our nuclear stockpile: Pursuant to Safeguard F, they aver, we
can always resume nuclear testing.

To appreciate what a fraud this assurance is, one only need read the convoluted,
characteristically
hedged language the President used in describing in August 1995 the nature of his commitment
to resume testing, should the need arise:

“In the event that I were informed by the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Energy,
advised
by the Nuclear Weapons Council, the directors of the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons labs
and the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command that a high level of confidence in the safety or
reliability of a nuclear weapons type which the two Secretaries considered to be critical to our
nuclear deterrent could no longer be certified, I would be prepared, in consultation with
Congress, to exercise our supreme national interest rights under the CTB in order to conduct
whatever testing might be required.”

Let us count the weasel words: Everybody having anything to do with nuclear weapons has
to
agree that a “high level of confidence” (a most subjective standard) is no longer certifiable
(another subjective judgment) with regard to a weapon that is “critical” to America’s deterrent
posture (a third). If all that happens, the President would “consult” with Congress. Assuming
that goes swimmingly, he would be — what? — “prepared” to conduct whatever testing might be
necessary.

In short, this so-called “safeguard” is pure Clintonian sophistry. Set aside
the fact that the
Administration is allowing the ability to resume testing seriously to erode, making it hard to do
so even if the go-ahead were given. If concerns about the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear
weapons arise, it is far more likely that such weapons will be retired from the arsenal
on the
grounds that the specified, subjective thresholds for resuming testing have not been crossed.
This is especially true since it will surely be argued at the time that the effect of the United States
returning to testing will be to precipitate the wholesale abrogation of the CTBT by others and a
huge upsurge in nuclear proliferation.

The Bottom Line

Fortunately, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and more than 33 of his colleagues have
broken
the code on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. They understand that, no matter how many
respected former military officers, Nobel Prize winners, Hollywood celebrities and Cabinet
officers endorse this accord, it is a formula for unilateral U.S. nuclear
disarmament. This is
precisely why it has been a prime objective of every anti-nuclear crusade over the past fifty-five
years and the cherished goal of the Administration’s high-ranking “denuclearizers.”

Far from “locking in America’s technological superiority,” this unverifiable agreement will
lock-out the technological tools upon which the United States’ deterrent uniquely relies. We
already
have evidence that other nations (notably, Russia and China) are exploiting the CIA’s
acknowledged inability to monitor low-yield testing — a problem that will be aggravated, not
corrected, by the ambiguous information likely to be generated from the multilateral seismic
system being set up under this treaty. In any event, since the CTBT does not define what
constitutes a prohibited “nuclear test explosion,” we will be unable to hold others to the same
stringent standard of zero tests to which this country will surely adhere.

Defeating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty will not be sufficient to ensure the future
safety
and reliability of America’s nuclear deterrent that President Clinton professes to be a supreme
interest of the United States. But it will be an important and indispensable step in the right
direction.

Clinton as the Anti-Reagan: Appeasement of North Korea Would ‘End the Cold War’ by Capitulation, Not Roll-Back

(Washington, D.C.): Amidst the many, pathetic explanations served up by Clinton
Administration spokesmen to rationalize, if not explain, its latest act of appeasement toward
North Korea, perhaps the most telling was an unidentified U.S. official’s assertion reported in
today’s Washington Times that “changing, reforming or undermining the
North Korean
regime would be impossible, take too long or risk war.” Therefore, to end what another
official called “the last vestige of the Cold War,” the Administration proposes to implement a
“roadmap” of successive U.S. concessions leading towards normalized relations with an
abidingly unreformed, malevolent Pyongyang. Had Ronald Reagan adopted a similar
defeatist attitude toward the Evil Empire, it is a safe bet that the Cold War would have
ended far less satisfactorily.

The first step in that roadmap was unveiled earlier this week with the announcement that
another
“interim agreement” had been reached with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DRPK).
Pursuant to this verbal agreement, the U.S. would ease trade restrictions and open
the door for
certain financial and investment flows, and eventually full-fledged diplomatic relations. All
these benefits would begin to be available to Pyongyang based on what State
Department
spokesman James Rubin labels an “understanding” that the DPRK “will refrain from
testing
long-range missile tests while negotiations on improving relations continue. So it is an interim
situation….There will be an interim freeze….”

It is more than a little disturbing that Rubin emphasized that Ambassador Charles
Kartman
was able to decipher this “understanding” because of his intimate knowledge of “the difficult
nuances in talking to the North Koreans.” This suggests that someone not versed in
such
“nuances” might not be able to understand that the DPRK has actually committed itself even to
the modest step of not launching on an “interim” basis the Taepo Dong II missile currently
sitting on a pad, apparently ready to go.

Worse yet, Amb. Kartman may simply be the most recent American envoy to fall for
a North
Korean negotiating strategy that is less nuanced than nefarious. As one scholar of the
subject, former Defense Department official Chuck Downs, put it in Over the Line: North
Korea’s Negotiating Strategy — an insightful review of the dismal record of Western
negotiations.
with the North over the past forty years:

    North Korea…used the four-way talks [between the U.S., South Korea, China and the
    DPRK] the same way it had used every previous negotiation: to extract concessions
    that filled gaps in its economic performance, to provide a pretext for domestic
    political purges and increased political oppression, and to build up its military
    capabilities.

    This was the same, tested strategy that North Korea had pursued time and time
    again. It used this strategy to take territory during the armistice talks, to build up
    its military in defiance of armistice constraints, to gain international recognition
    through terrorist attacks, to intervene in South Korea’s politics while promoting
    dialogue, to win concessions by denying inspections, and, in this most recent
    instance, to perfect its weaponry while it pursued peace talks. For the North
    Koreans…the talks were merely the next step in its strategy of negotiating for
    survival. 1

Failed Framework Agreement

Just how effective this approach is for the DPRK can be seen in the Clinton Administration’s
insistence that the Agreed Framework of 1994 has served its declared purpose of preventing the
North from pursuing its nuclear program. This is perhaps understandable, given the prestige and
over half-billion dollars in aid — making North Korea the largest U.S. foreign assistance recipient
in Asia — that the Administration has sunk in Pyongyang since 1995.

Jamie Rubin has even gone so far as to say that, but for the ’94 accord “there would have
been
many tens of nuclear weapons that North Korea could have produced by now.” There is
nothing wrong with such assertions except that they are unproven, unprovable and highly
unlikely to be correct.

The Agreed Framework never had a comprehensive verification and inspection mechanism;
neither did it require the elimination of the DPRK’s nuclear complex, program or extant
weaponized material. The North long ago learned that for the United States agreement is
everything; abundant evidence of non-compliance — even egregious violations — matter not at
all. It also knows that weapons of mass destruction represent the only way to assure victory over
South Korea and its American and UN allies. They are also a means to secure the North’s other
key goals of international recognition outside of the peninsula, enhanced political and economic
support from the United States and a modicum of internal regime legitimation.

The truth, therefore, is that Kim Jong-Il’s regime will never eliminate its nuclear
weapons
program — the fruit of a 30 year effort — until either it falls from power or is forced to do so
by a resolute West led by the United States. Neither will it cease export sales of
weapons,
even if offered cash offsets, because such deals are the currency of its diplomatic strategy with
countries from Asia to the Middle East.

U.S. officials misrepresent these realities at our national peril. But, in a forward to
Over the Line,
former CIA operative and U.S. Ambassador to both South Korea and China James
Lilley warns:

    American diplomats…persuade the American people to support policy
    outcomes
    that are little more than concoctions of how things should work out with the
    North Koreans….    The North Koreans are happy to play this game — they are more
    than willing to subscribe to deception if it means they benefit — so they temper or
    escalate their actions to lend credence to misconceptions that serve their purposes.

Enter Secretary Perry

At the moment, the chief promoter of such wishful thinking and cat’s-paw for the North
Koreans’ strategems is former Defense Secretary William Perry, who has over the past two days
presented to Congress a still-classified report laying out the roadmap for normalized relations
with Pyongyang. Ominously, an administration spokesman says the report marks a path future
administrations could follow “with steadiness and persistence even in the face of
provocations” —
in other words, a program of appeasement, no matter what the North does.

Reality Check

Even if one believes that North Korea will not flight test its Taepo Dong II missile
— or sell
it to Pakistan or Iran to test launch for it, the DPRK is hardly the kind of state with whom
the U.S. can safely cultivate friendly relations. It remains in a state of war with South
Korea,
kept at bay over the past 47 year primarily by the armed presence of nearly 40,000 U.S. troops.
North Korea remains on the U.S. State Department list of state sponsor’s of terrorism and
continues to equip itself with advanced weapons from Russia and China, both of whom are
publically committed to fomenting whatever difficulty they can with a view to unseating the U.S.
from its status as the sole-superpower. North Korea manufactures nuclear, biological and
chemical weapons (the latter being especially well-integrated into their force structure and
war-planning) and the systems necessary for their delivery. Pyongyang sells all of these to
countries
hostile to the United States and its interests including Iran, Syria and Iraq.

In fact, the unclassified version of the CIA’s latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE),
Foreign
Ballistic Missile Development and the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States through
2015,
cites North Korea as one of leading engines of missile advances around the world. “The
proliferation of medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) — driven primarily by North
Korean No Dong sales — has created an immediate, serious, and growing threat to
US
forces, interest and allies, and has significantly altered the strategic balances in the Middle
East and Asia.”

North Korea currently has missiles capable of reaching all U.S. forces and allies in East Asia,
as
well as Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. And last August, it surprised everyone by firing a
three-stage rocket over Japan — a capability the CIA had only months before dismissed as
between two
and five years away. The CIA now estimates that, after Russia and China, North Korea
is the
next most likely to develop ICBMs capable of reaching the United States.

The Bottom Line

The time has come for a Reaganesque alternative to the path of appeasement of North Korea
to
which President Clinton and Secretary Perry would commit the United States under both present
and future administrations. Earlier this year, House International Relations Committee Chairman
Ben Gilman outlined the basic principles of such a policy based on: “conditional reciprocity;
strengthened conventional deterrence and theater missile defense” including the creation of a
Northeast Asian Defense Organization including at least Japan and South Korea and, most
importantly, “a willingness to undertake tough measures in the name of national security.”

The Clinton-Perry proposal for “peace for our time” on the Korean Peninsula should
be
rejected by Congress in favor of an approach that would “end the Cold War” there on
terms conducive to a genuine and durable peace, i.e., one aimed at rolling back and
changing the North Korean regime.

As Fred Ikl, former Undersecretary of Defense, has pointed out in an important
op.ed. article in
the Wall Street Journal in October 1998, it is past time for the U.S. to stop
repurchasing 45 years
of North Korea’s broken promises, while obscuring the violations and loopholes in the
Framework and undermining our allies’ confidence. Otherwise “the day may come when
continuing U.S. appeasement will have nullified the deterrent that has prevented a second Korean
War for 45 years.”

Congress should also make clear that the Administration has no business
considering
diplomatic recognition at the consular or embassy levels with what is commonly referred to
as the “World’s last Stalinist regime” while denying the people of a democratic Taiwan
(Republic of China) such status. Taiwan is, like the DPRK, a nation of 21 million. In
virtually
every other respect it is different: For fifty-years it has been an ally and friend of the United
States. In recent years, the ROC has become a vibrant democracy with perhaps the freest people
in Asia, and our 14th largest trading partner. Particularly relevant is the fact that Taiwan
voluntarily ceased its nuclear weapons program over a decade ago at the United States’ urging.
Recognition of North Korea under present circumstances — combined with the sorry U.S.
response to Beijing’s recent threats to Taiwan — seem likely to prompt the ROC to reconsider its
decision to remain a non-nuclear state, something an American administration so concerned
about preventing nuclear proliferation would surely want to avoid.

1 The DPRK learned these techniques from the masters: the
Communist Chinese. As Downs
notes: “North Korea has made a science out of the Chinese notion that crisis has two attributes:
danger and opportunity.” Pyongyang learned during the Korean War that the Chinese policy of
brinksmanship policy can effectively offset the United States’ objective strategic advantages
because there are political and public-opinion constraints on the Americans’ willingness to
escalate beyond a certain level (e.g., preemptive strikes on North Korean nuclear sites, as was so
successfully done by Israel against Iraq in 1981).

Hillary’s ‘Conversion’ on Jerusalem Does Not Reflect Her Husband’s Policy — or Her Own, Long-held Views

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, First Lady/proto-Senate Candidate Hillary Clinton
demonstrated anew the behavior that prompted Bill Safire to describe her as a
“pathological liar.” In a transparent bid for Jewish votes in her newly adopted state of
New
York, Mrs. Clinton released a 2 July letter to the respected Orthodox Union
professing her
commitment to Jerusalem as the “eternal and indivisible capital of Israel” and her belief that the
U.S. embassy in the Jewish State should be located in its capital, Jerusalem, rather than in its
present, “politically correct” location of Tel Aviv.

Not surprisingly, the Clinton Administration immediately sought to distance itself from Mrs.
Clinton’s remarks. National Security Council spokesman David Leavy declared that “The views
expressed by the First Lady are her personal ones and she has an obligation to share those with
the people of New York. In terms of the President’s views or the Administration’s, ours haven’t
changed on Jerusalem.” Translation: Hillary can pander to Jews in New York and elsewhere —
as Bill Clinton and Al Gore have done before her — by promising to support the relocation of the
embassy. But it won’t have any more effect on U.S. policy than did those earlier
promises
or, for that matter, than did President Clinton’s signature of legislation direction such a move
enacted with near-unanimous bipartisan support five years ago. 1

With Friends Like Hillary, Israel Needs No Enemies

What is astounding, however, is the idea that a woman with Mrs. Clinton’s track record could
say with a straight face that she will “be an active, committed advocate for a strong and secure
Israel.” Consider just a few items from a bill of particulars helpfully compiled by another
important Zionist organization, Americans for a Safe Israel, that suggests
the opposite will be
true in the future, as it has been in the past:

  • During the 1980’s, Mrs. Clinton served on the board of the New World Foundation
    whose
    largesse went, in part, to the Palestine Liberation Organization     — an entity that was at
    the
    time indisputably a terrorist operation, explicitly dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish
    State and responsible for the murder of American citizens. (There is substantial evidence that
    Yasser Arafat and the PLO remain, despite their political make-over made possible in no
    small measure by the efforts of the Clinton Administration, committed to the ultimate
    liberation of all of “Palestine.”2)
  • In February 1996, Mrs. Clinton hosted a reception at the White House for leaders
    of
    organizations with known ties to and/or who have acted as apologists for Hamas
    terrorists.
  • As Stephen Emerson, one of the Nation’s foremost experts on terrorism, has documented,
    such is the case with the American Muslim Council (AMC) and the Council on
    American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Notably, Mr and Mrs. Clinton have both
    embraced the AMC’s
    executive director, Abdulrahman Alamoudi,     who Mr. Emerson has established
    champions
    Abu Marzook — the person responsible for creating Hamas’ death squads. (For
    his troubles,
    Mr. Emerson has been subjected to a campaign of vilification and intimidation by several of
    these organizations.)
  • On 29 January 1998, Mrs. Clinton hosted another reception to mark Eid
    al-Fitr,     the
    Muslim day when the Ramadan fast is broken. Among the outside organizers of this event
    was Salam al-Marayati, the director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council
    (MPAC). In a
    Summer 1998 article in the Journal of Counterterrorism and Security International
    entitled,
    “The Muslim Public Affairs Council — A Case Study in Deception,” Mr. Emerson revealed
    the role that MPAC has played, in its own right and as a member (together with CAIR, the
    AMC and the American Muslim Alliance) in the American Muslim Political Coordinating
    Council, in defending militant Islamic fundamentalism, supporting groups operating under its
    banner and issuing statements hostile to the United States, as well as Israel. For example, in
    1997, al-Marayati called for the resumption of the Arab world’s anti-Israel boycott.

    As it happens, according to a front-page, above-the-fold article in today’s New
    York
    Times    , al-Marayati’s background has proven to be sufficiently problematic that
    House
    Minority Leader Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-MO) has just withdrawn his
    appointment of the MPAC director to a congressinally mandated
    counterterrorism commission.

  • In May 1998, Mrs. Clinton used a television interview broadcast by the Voice of
    America
    to declare her support for the creation of a Palestinian state     that is “on the same footing
    as
    other states.” Such a state would, presumably, enjoy full sovereignty, the right to maintain
    standing armed forces, exclusive control over its borders and foreign and military relations —
    in short, a mortal threat to Israel. 3 Even though the
    Clinton Administration also went
    through the motions of disassociating itself from this stunning, clearly deliberate and probably
    presidentially approved statement on Middle East policy, its Casablanca-esque disavowals
    rang hollow.
  • On 1 July, President Clinton himself broke still more new ground in the First
    Couple’s
    agenda of pandering to the Arabs at Israeli expense:     In a press conference with
    Egyptian
    President Hosni Mubarak, Mr. Clinton endorsed the Palestinians’ “right of return,”
    saying
    that they should be able to ” live wherever they like, wherever they want to live.” Mrs.
    Clinton has yet to be asked about her views on this matter and, under present circumstances,
    she may be unwilling to acknowledge them. It is hard to believe, however, given the
    solidarity she has long expressed with the Palestinian people — whom she and her husband
    appear to see through the same prism as the American civil rights movement looked at
    downtrodden blacks, with the Israeli Jews cast in the role of the racist Ku Klux Klan and their
    political sympathizers — that she would deny the Palestinians the right of return.

The Bottom Line

Hillary Clinton’s record is not that of an individual committed to a “strong and
secure
Israel.” She is no more convincing in her pledge to support Jerusalem’s unity under
Israel’s
permanent control and to make that support tangible by ensuring that the U.S. embassy is moved
to the Jewish State’s capital.

In a way, given this reality, even more appalling than Mrs. Clinton’s disingenuous
pandering to the Jewish vote is the pandering of some in the American Jewish community
to her. A case in point is the decision of the Jewish women’s organization,
Hadassah, to give
Hillary Clinton their 1999 Zionist Award, the first time it has violated its own
guidelines —
which “prohibit the extension of any award or honor to a candidate for elective office” — and,
presumably, the first time it has besmirched this award by giving it to someone who is, if
anything, a well-known anti-Zionist.

1See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled See
‘Happy Birthday, Jerusalem’: Congress
Affirms You Are the Unified Capital Exclusively of Israel ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_81″>No. 95-D 81, 25 October 1995) and
Blessed Be the Peacemakers, for They Shall Move the U.S. Embassy to
Jerusalem (No. 95-D
78, 19 October 1995).

2 See The Map Is On The Wall: Arafat Wants No
Part Of ‘Peaceful Co-Existence’ With
Israel, Must Get No More U.S. Aid Until He Does ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_93″>No. 97-D 93, 8 July 1997) and Clinton
Legacy Watch # 24: An Odious Ultimatum To Israel ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_78″>No. 98-D 78, 6 May 1998).

3 See Bibi’s Choice: Allow The Palestinians to
Acquire a Real — and Threatening — State or
Just a ‘State of Mind’ (No. 98-D 126, 9
July 1998) and Honor King Hussein: Thwart
Palestinian Statehood (No. 99-D 19, 8 February 1999).

They’re Baaaack: The Kremlin’s Kosovo Kaper Augurs Ill for Clinton’s ‘Victory’

(Washington, D.C.): It was absolutely poetic. No sooner had President Clinton finished
trumpeting his “victory” over the Serbs in an Oval Office address — including fatuous remarks
about the very positive role the Russians had played in securing a “peace agreement” — than
the
Kremlin took a page out of the play-book that put half of Europe in its thrall at the end of
the Second World War: Hours before British and other NATO forces entered Kosovo,
several
hundred Red Army soldiers assigned to “peacekeeping” operations in Bosnia rolled through
Serbia to take control of the airport in the Kosovar provincial capital of Pristina.

Bad Business

There ensued a series of tough stand-offs with heavily armed NATO troops demanding to be
let
into the airport, only to be defiantly told by the Russians and their Serb allies to get lost.
Deputy
Secretary of State Strobe Talbott — the former Soviets’ preferred interlocutor — made
the same
mid-flight U-turn as Yevgeny Primakov had done two months ago, with one important
difference. The former Russian prime minister turned around his plane en route to Washington
as a gesture of contempt for the Clinton decision to launch the air campaign against Serbia;
Talbott went back to Moscow for the purpose of purchasing, yet again, the Yeltsin
regime’s
support for the peacekeeping operation that was supposed to replace it.

At this writing, apparently neither the chief American kow-tower nor his long-time friend
and
patron, Bill Clinton, have so far found and met the Russians’ price for a de-escalation of this
little drama. But it is a safe bet that, given enough time, they will — and the price
will be a
considerable one for U.S. taxpayers and interests.

This is, as the Communists are wont to say, “no accident, comrade.” The Russians are, after
all,
a people whose national sport is chess — an extraordinary game in which even the weak can turn
disadvantaged positions into triumphs if they are audacious, cunning and far-sighted enough.
Those who run Russia today (that is, one or more of the following: the ailing
Boris Yeltsin; his
prime minister du jour Stepashin; the “power ministers” responsible for defense,
foreign affairs,
intelligence and internal security; the politically well-connected oligarches; and the military
leadership) chose to strengthen their government’s field position by changing the “facts
on
the ground” in Kosovo.

Political Alchemy — Turning National Weakness into Strength

For these reasons, anyone who believes that the Russian move into Kosovo was a
“rogue
operation” is smoking something. This was a calculated move, pure and
simple. That reality
is especially obvious if, as has been reported, Moscow was prepared to fly large transport aircraft
— presumably crammed with additional personnel and firepower — into the Pristina airport once
Red Army troops had secured it. Implementation of this plan was only prevented when the
Kremlin could not get permission from either the Romanians or the Bulgarians to overfly their
territory.

Clearly, the powers that be in Moscow correctly calculated that the sneak deployment of
Russia’s
contingent from Bosnia would translate into increased leverage — leverage desperately sought by
an erstwhile superpower unwilling to accept its all-but-complete irrelevance in a region long
considered to be its sphere of influence.

The Kremlin’s Current Price

Indeed, it seems already to have had that effect as Russophiles like Talbott are putting out the
word that the Russians may now be given a “zone of responsibility” in which they will be
dominant. As the New York Times wryly observed today, “No one was saying yet
how or
whether a zone differed from a sector.”

In fact, early reports suggest that the differences may be minimized in order to “save face”
for the
Russians. Talbott declared after his negotiating session on Sunday that the zone would be one in
which the Russian role would be “important and manifest.” The Times reports that
one proposal
under consideration “would allow the Russians to turn down NATO orders to carry out missions
but would require the Russians not to intervene when NATO forces carry our the same orders in
the Russian zone.” (That would seem to be the least one could expect from fellow
“peacekeepers” — unless, of course, NATO might be so bold as to ask the Russian troops not to
compromise the mission by tipping off the targets to the Allies’ plans!) So much for the
principle of unified NATO command.

Some of the bitter fruits of Russia’s power play are already evident. The Serbs have been
emboldened by the arrival of fraternal Slav units, getting in a few last licks as they withdraw.
For example, there are numerous reports of retreating Serb forces torching some of few structures
left unscathed by their previous “ethnic cleansing.” Displaced Kosovar Albanians have been
alarmed at the prospect of returning if the Russians are running anything. And the Kosovo
Liberation Army, which needs no provocation to seek revenge, has reportedly begun deadly
reprisals against selected Serbs.

It seems likely that the Kremlin will be rewarded for its airport-seizing act of terrorism in
other
costly ways, as well. At the upcoming summit meeting of the so-called “G-8” — that is, seven
leading industrial democracies and the world’s most powerful charity case — Boris
Yeltsin may
be promised expensive new Western commitments to debt relief, fresh cash infusions (at
least from multilateral institutions like the IMF and World Bank), the easing of export
controls on strategic items like supercomputers, etc.

The Bottom Line

Welcome to the post-post-Cold War world, in which the U.S. role as sole superpower is
increasingly challenged by lesser states — and found wanting. This will be particularly true if as
a result of the Russians’ mischief-making or other factors, American forces find themselves in
messy cross-fires in Kosovo.

One thing is sure: The United States is a long way from winning the peace in the
Balkans.
And until it does so — if it can — President Clinton would well-advised to refrain from crowing
about what is, at best, an incomplete victory.

“Naivet in ‘Engaging’ Russia Carries a High price Tag”

By George Melloan,
The Wall Street Journal, 18 May 1999

Boris Yeltsin survived a series of impeachment votes in the lower house of the Russian
parliament
Saturday, but one feature of the debate was more interesting than the outcome. At no time did the
passionate and often crude vilification of the president ever give way to glimmers of wisdom
about the sources of Russia’s economic malaise, which happens to have more importance to the
lives of the Russian people than all the other issues raised. The intellectual level of the debate was
roughly on a par with the yelps of jackals trying to bring down a sick and wounded bear.

It is tempting to say that the Russian people deserve better leadership than was on display in
the
Duma. But then, it was the Russian people who elected the jackals, either with their votes or
widespread non-votes. Maybe they deserve what they are getting.

The result of the voter defection has been the comeback of a Communist Party that kept
Russia in
thrall for 72 years, preserving its Third World living standards while the Western democracies
were getting rich. It should come as no surprise that these Neanderthals have no ideas for solving
Russia’s economic problems. Their dreams of power and fortune rest not on true reform but on
either preserving today’s chaotic status quo or turning back the clock. They remain good at what
they do, politics, but only for their own benefit. They run a disciplined political organization and
exploit the nationalistic emotions of that still-large part of the Russian population that remains
ill-informed and unsophisticated.

It is true that President Yeltsin is no longer an effective leader. He is ill and maybe
disoriented. He
should have resigned long ago and groomed a fresh young reformer to take his place. But that is
not his nature. His tactic for beating back the jackals was not any more useful to the Russian
people than the arguments his enemies used against him. Just before the impeachment debate, he
fired his prime minister, ex-KGB spook Yevgeny M. Primakov, and replaced him with another
security-service heavy, Interior Minister Sergei V. Stepashin. Since the Interior Ministry runs the
nation’s police forces this was largely an exercise in replacing one muscle man with another.

Primakov’s main credential was his acceptability to Duma Communists, not a reputation for
wise
policymaking. Mr. Yeltsin no doubt hopes Mr. Stepashin’s dominant trait will be an ability to
instill fear. He may be right. Of the 442 active Duma members, 100 failed to show up for the
votes on the five counts of impeachment, having either been scared away or bought off.
Otherwise, one count blaming the president for an “illegal” war against Chechnya might have
passed.

But neither the Chechnya rap, nor charges of destroying the Soviet Union and the army and
staging a coup against the parliament in 1993, address the issue of national bankruptcy. The
closest the Communists came was a fifth charge that Mr. Yeltsin had committed “genocide”
because of deaths caused by economic mismanagement. The Communist who introduced this
count was hard-pressed to define economic mismanagement, perhaps for lack of a standard for
measuring economic performance, good or bad.

But then a serious discussion of the Russian economy would not serve Communist purposes.
The
fundamental cause of the country’s bankruptcy is not that the economic reforms of the last eight
years have gone too far, as the Communists claim, but that they have not gone far enough. Most
of the economy remains in the hands of former Communist apparatchiks who control assets either
directly as managers or bankers, or indirectly, through the nearly dictatorial power some exercise
over regional governments. These modern economic royalists are not interested in a market
economy, because that would mean competition. They prefer monopolies. That is one reason
foreign investment in Russia is minimal. The powers that be don’t want competition, even though
they will gladly accept money if there are no strings attached.

Neither do they want a genuine rule of law. That, too, would hamper their exercise of
arbitrary
power. And many of those who control regional duchies are not especially interested in whether
Russia has an effective central government. One reason the central government went broke was
its difficulty in prying tax revenues out of regional corporations. They preferred to cut tax deals
with their local governors, who wield power more directly and effectively over what they do.

It may take a generation or two to break the power of these economic feudalists. It will only
happen when today’s young Russians begin challenging that power, either in politics or in
business. Russia has young entrepreneurs who will some day build businesses that will represent
competition for vested interests. But no one is making it easy for them. The regulatory apparatus
controlled by the entrenched powers is primarily designed to protect existing enterprises against
upstart competitors. If that sounds familiar, it is because the same tactic is not unknown elsewhere
in the world, including the U.S. In Russia, any reformer who tries to dismantle this protective
thicket is likely to have his head handed to him by the Duma, which serves not the Russian people
but the feudal lords.

This is the Russia that the Clinton administration has been trying to “engage” with these last
six
years, most recently for aid in negotiating a deal with Slobodan Milosevic on Kosovo. President
Clinton’s primary tool for engagement is to send the Russians money, mainly through the
International Monetary Fund. The IMF currently is trying to find a government in Moscow, so it
can offer whoever heads it new financing to prevent default on existing credits.

Past IMF tranches derived mainly from the savings of Americans and Europeans have melted
away soon after being credited to a Russian account, some of it probably coming back quickly to
private Russian Swiss bank accounts. All this generosity hasn’t bought Russian good will, as some
of Mr. Clinton’s underlings like to claim, because Russia is more an abstraction than an entity.
Abstractions don’t have feelings and what you see is not necessarily what you get. Boris Yeltsin
levitates himself above this chimera but doesn’t really control it.

The alternative to giving the Russians money is to not give them money. Bill Clinton
continues to
make the wrong choice. The Russian leadership class responds by playing power games with the
presidency, appropriating everything they can get their hands on and clamoring for more. Boris
Yeltsin survived on Saturday but then so did a political system that is, in essence, going nowhere.

George Melloan is a Columnist for the Wall Street Journal.