Tag Archives: Bill Clinton

CENTER’S KYL WELCOMES AN ISRAELI REAGAN

(Washington, D.C.): When Benjamin Netanyahu surprised much of
the world by defeating Shimon Peres to become Prime Minister of
Israel last month, his triumph was all too often received with
chagrin, if not horror, by world leaders and the international
press. The common refrain was that, in electing Mr. Netanyahu,
Israel had chosen fear and war over hope and peace.

A welcome antidote to this dire appraisal was offered this
evening by a distinguished member of the Center for Security
Policy’s Board of Advisors, United States Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ).
In a speech before the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of
America (three pages of excerpts of
which are attached), Sen. Kyl argued that “Bibi”
Netanyahu’s election will actually serve to enhance the
security of the State of Israel, rather than weaken it. The
Senator — who is rapidly emerging as one of the Senate’s most
authoritative voices on issues critical to American foreign
policy and national security — also provided a principled and
realistic assessment of the steps that must be taken in the
Middle East in order to achieve real peace in the
region.

Among the most important points made by Sen. Kyl were the
following:

“The United States should shore up Israel’s
image as a powerful and permanent party in the region.
An element of Israel’s strength is the unwavering nature of
U.S. support for Israeli security and for basic Israeli
national interests. That…is why it’s crucial for
the United States to stand with Israel on Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is the heart of the legitimacy issue — the issue
of the Jewish people’s right to a state in their ancient
homeland.

* * *

“….The fight over the Jerusalem embassy law
reflected a fundamental difference in views over how in
general the United States and Israel can best promote
Arab-Israeli peace. The difference, one might say,
pits the Ronald Reagan approach to peace and security against
that of Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton.

“[Netanyahu] is decidedly in the Reagan
school. This, of course, doesn’t guarantee him
sympathy and support from certain State Department offices or
from our leading news organs. On the contrary, it practically
guarantees the opposite. President Reagan, after all, got
little sympathy or support from those quarters in his time.
The point is that Netanyahu’s principles are neither radical
nor unfamiliar, especially…to those of us who are
conservatives.”

The Center for Security Policy takes particular pride in this
salutary contribution to the public policy debate by one of the
recipients of its “Keeper of the Flame” award.

THE REAL ‘SNAFU’ IN THE CLINTON FILE SCANDAL

(Washington, D.C.): Historians may regard the revelation that
the Clinton Administration improperly requisitioned secret FBI
personnel files on hundreds of Reagan and Bush Administration
appointees as the beginning of the end of Mr. Clinton’s
presidency. Interestingly, the reason for such an apocalyptic
assessment is not primarily because the nature of the scandal
evident so far.

To be sure, the compilation of a list of over 400 individuals
who the White House might have considered unfriendly — if not as
actual “enemies” — is a problem for Bill Clinton.
(Presumably, had the list been extended beyond those with last
names beginning with the first seven letters in the alphabet, it
would have run to the thousands.) Thanks to this operation which
apologists insist was just “an honest bureaucratic
snafu,” the Administration got the FBI to transfer to a
White House safe the size of a small bedroom a treasure trove of
politically sensitive information. It included legally protected
background data on Members of Congress (like Speaker Newt
Gingrich), former Cabinet officers (like Secretary of State James
Baker) and others (including a number of Hill staffers
responsible for investigations into such natty problems as the
Waco fiasco, the Administration’s dismal drug policy and Energy
Secretary Hazel O’Leary’s various scandals).

Nobody Here but Us ‘Victims’

It seems likely that upcoming hearings will reinforce the
perception that what FBI Director Louis Freeh called the
“victimization” of his agency by the Clinton White
House was occasioned by a political purpose, not through
ineptitude. These hearings may even validate explosive charges
made in the Wall Street Journal last week by Gary
Aldrich, a former FBI agent assigned for five years to duty in
the executive mansion: He and a colleague repeatedly warned
supervisory personnel at the Bureau about the personnel security
practices of the Clinton team. In particular, Mr. Aldrich notes
that Craig Livingstone, a Hillary Clinton protégé who at the
tender age of 35 was given the position of director of White
House Security, had unmonitored access to the improperly accessed
files on Republicans — and the ability to copy or otherwise
utilize them at will.

It is predictable, though, that a far more serious difficulty
for the Clinton Administration — and for the Nation — will
prove to be a point given only passing treatment by Special Agent
Aldrich in his op.ed. focusing on the current file flap: “The
Clinton Administration had relaxed the security system at the
White House so that those loyal to the Administration could evade
background checks.”

Agent Aldrich notes the irony that, “at the time the
White House requested the files on previous administrations’
appointees — one full year into the Clinton Administration —
more than 100 Clinton staffers, including then-Press Secretary
Dee Dee Myers, still had not been investigated by the FBI for
passes or clearances.” He might have added that individuals
were given access to the White House complex for months at a
time, and in some cases for over a year, on the basis of
“temporary” passes or even “visitors” badges.



In this way, the normal security investigation and approval
procedures — the latter requiring formal Secret Service assent
— could be circumvented. Given the nature of most presidential
staff offices and the information available to them, however,
such “no escort required” White House passes enable
access to classified information and effectively authorize such
access.

Just One ‘Snafu’ After Another

When this controversial practice briefly became a matter of
congressional and press attention in the spring of 1994 href=”96-D57.html#N_1_”>(1), the director of the
White House Office of Administration, Patsy Thomasson, tried to
dismiss legitimate concerns with an explanation
all-too-reminiscent of the current “bureaucratic snafu”
line. Ms. Thomasson who had herself only gotten a security
clearance in February 1994 — thirteen months into her job —
assured Congress that “there was no reason for concern that
senior White House aides lacked permanent passes because they
nonetheless had gotten ‘requisite security’ approval.” As
the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, a senior
administrative official in the Carter and Bush White Houses, Phil
Larsen, decried that contention as “malarkey”:
“The Secret Service must clear a final financial check, and
is part of an adjudication. ‘None of this makes any sense,’
[Larsen said]. It would be ‘astonishing’ if security clearances
were issued before passes were. ‘The two always — and
should — go together.'”

Just in case the ominous implications of such a melt-down of
security procedures at the White House were not self-evident, Ms.
Thomasson clarified them in congressional testimony. Referring to
the “mole” who perpetrated the Kremlin’s most
successful penetration of the CIA discovered to date, Ms.
Thomasson declared: “We don’t think we have any
Aldrich Ameses at the White House. But we certainly could.”

Thanks to the Clinton Administration’s lax security
practices, such a possibility is not, unfortunately, limited to
the White House. Political appointees whose backgrounds
might make them susceptible to blackmail and other traditional
recruitment techniques of foreign intelligence services — for
example, history of drug abuse, shady financial dealings,
non-traditional sexual preferences, etc. — are not subjected to
the same scrutiny given civil servants. As a result, individuals
who could not previously have held senior government positions,
to say nothing of obtaining access to classified information,
have been able to do so.

What is more, Clinton appointees serving in the intelligence
community have not been obliged to take periodic lie-detection
tests, as is the norm for their career counterparts. And, thanks
to the Administration’s obsessive commitment to the widest
possible “sharing” of sensitive U.S. intelligence with
foreign nationals and multilateral organizations, the sort of
monitoring critical to effective counter-intelligence work is
becoming nearly impossible to perform.

The Bottom Line

In short, what is so troubling about the Clinton White House’s
recently revealed, selective interest in background
investigations is what it says about the larger contempt for the
business of protecting not only the privacy of individuals but
the secrets of the Nation. A counter-culture President who came
of political age when Richard Nixon engaged in similar abuses of
the FBI must be held accountable not only for crimes of the
former kind but also closely examined for his contribution to
possible crimes that may be jeopardizing the latter.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision
Briefs of that time entitled ‘No Aldrich
Ameses at the White House’: Are You Sure? Real Care In Order As
the NSC Reorganizes ‘C.I.’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-D_45″>No. 94-D 45, 1 May 1994) and The
Clinton Security Clearance Melt-Down: ‘No-Gate’ Demonstrates
‘It’s the People, Stupid’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-D_32″>No. 94-D 32, 25 March 1994).

Excerpts of Speech Delivered by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) Before the National Distinguished Leadership Awards Dinner

Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations
of America(1)

New York City

17 June 1996

* * *

….I view the victory of [Benjamin] Netanyahu and Likud as a
development that can, contrary to the conventional wisdom,
actually improve ties between Israel and the United
States.

It’s important to bear in mind that there is more to
the United States than the State Department Near East Bureau.
Not everyone in the United States — not everyone even in
Washington — views Israeli “settlements”
as inherently bad. Not everyone believes that the key to peace is
Israeli relinquishment of territory. Not
everyone accepts Arafat’s peace promises at face
value. Not everyone is determined to ignore or excuse PLO
actions that violate those promises. And not everyone
yearns for Israel to hand the Golan Heights to
Syria and for the United States to station U.S. troops as
“peacekeepers” there.

Netanyahu says that Israel can enjoy peace only if it
safeguards its security. He disclaims interest in U.S.
peacekeepers and stresses instead the importance of Israeli
self-reliance. He demands that both sides — and not
just Israel — comply with peace agreements. And he highlights
the link between democracy and peace and warns that dictatorial,
police-state leadership in Syria and the Palestinian Authority
are major impediments to a reliable peace. These are themes that
make sense to many Americans. We recognize that Netanyahu
is advocating the kind of strong, morally confident,
peace-promoting policies for Israel that supporters of Ronald
Reagan believed (and still believe) the U.S. government should
adopt to protect our own country.

It’s significant that Bob Dole, in
congratulating Netanyahu after the election, stated:
“I well understand Likud’s emphasis on peace through
strength.” Netanyahu is being attacked as a
dangerous radical, indifferent to peace, by many commentators who
portrayed Ronald Reagan the same way. Reagan’s hard-headed
diplomacy — and his commitment to restoring our military
strength — helped create a better world. He made America more
powerful and more secure. He encouraged democratic changes in the
societies of our adversaries. These changes brought benefits to
the people in those societies, who came to have more freedom. And
the changes benefited us also, for democracy’s gains in Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union served the interests in peace
and security of ourselves and our allies.

If it were within Israel’s power to make peace in the
region, there would have been peace there decades ago; indeed,
there would never have been war to begin with. Those who
would promote Arab-Israeli peace should start with a clear view
of the nature of the problem. The chief reasons for the region’s
history of hostility and war are the deeply-rooted anti-Zionism
in much of the Arab world, the violent nature of Arab politics in
general, and the belief that through war, terrorism, intifada,
economic pressure, diplomatic attacks and unremitting hostility,
it may be possible to destroy Israel, or at least harm it enough
to wear down the Israelis’ resolve and eventually, even if it
takes a century or two, to overcome them.

Israel can have peace — that is, peace will be available
to Israel — only if attitudes, policies and politics change on
the Arab side. Much rhetoric out of Israel in recent
years, like that from many Clinton Administration officials
still, suggests that Israel could have peace if it simply changed
its own policies — if it “chose to pursue peace.” This
is a bad mistake. It is analogous to believing that the way to
make domestic crime disappear in America is for law-abiding
citizens somehow to change their behavior, perhaps by offering
concessions to the criminals. Israel cannot do anything that will
guarantee that its adversaries cease to be hostile or guarantee
that its Arab neighbors will have responsible, law-abiding and
stable political leadership. These are indispensable conditions
for Arab-Israeli peace, the conditions without which no peace
agreement can reasonably be deemed to have solved the problem.

This doesn’t mean, however, that peace is impossible or that
Israel can do nothing to enhance its prospects. Among Israel’s
wisest options is promoting or encouraging, to the extent it can,
demands for democratic reform among its Arab neighbors. I assume
Netanyahu had this in mind when, in his first post-election
speech, he committed himself with special emphasis to a fair,
democratic and humane relationship with Israel’s own Arab
citizens. The Middle East would be a better place if the
Arabs outside Israel had as much voice in their governments’
affairs, and commanded from the courts as much respect for human
rights, as do the Arabs inside Israel.

….Israel also enhances the prospects for peace by
showing itself as strong, resolute and morally confident rather
than weary, self-doubting and desperate for accommodation….If
its diplomacy is skillful, it can make itself appear
non-threatening and pragmatic, but at the same time guilt-free
and invulnerable to intimidation

….Here the United States can assist, though the Clinton
Administration unfortunately — despite some good intentions —
has been putting out unhelpful messages. The United
States should shore up Israel’s image as a powerful and permanent
party in the region. An element of Israel’s strength is
the unwavering nature of U.S. support for Israeli security and
for basic Israeli national interests. That…is why it’s
crucial for the United States to stand with Israel on Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is the heart of the legitimacy issue — the issue of
the Jewish people’s right to a state in their ancient homeland.

This was the thinking behind the effort of Bob Dole and myself
to spearhead the Jerusalem embassy legislation that was enacted
last fall. U.S. law now declares for the first time that
it is U.S. policy that Jerusalem be recognized as the capital of
Israel….The Clinton Administration fought this
legislation strenuously, though unsuccessfully. The President’s
argument was that we had to lure the PLO toward peace by keeping
open the question of America’s position on Jerusalem….We
advocated that the PLO be told forthrightly and unapologetically
that the United States supported the Israeli government’s claims
regarding Israel’s own capital.

….The fight over the Jerusalem embassy law reflected
a fundamental difference in views over how in general the United
States and Israel can best promote Arab-Israeli peace. The
difference, one might say, pits the Ronald Reagan approach to
peace and security against that of Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton.

….[Netanyahu] is decidedly in the Reagan school. This, of
course, doesn’t guarantee him sympathy and support from certain
State Department offices or from our leading news organs. On the
contrary, it practically guarantees the opposite. President
Reagan, after all, got little sympathy or support from those
quarters in his time. The point is that Netanyahu’s principles
are neither radical nor unfamiliar, especially…to those of us
who are conservatives.

He says he is determined to do certain things: To keep Israel
strong. To liberalize its economy. To revitalize his country’s
admirable religious and Zionist values. To cultivate democratic
tolerance and respect for human rights both domestically and
among Israel’s neighbors. And to demonstrate how all of the above
can maximize Israel’s chances of reaching sincere and stable
peace arrangements with each of those neighbors.

In expounding and implementing these ideas, Netanyahu
will get invaluable assistance from Natan Sharansky, whose
brilliant success in the recent elections has propelled him to
the Cabinet….Their new government’s message should
resonate with Americans who respect realism, common sense and
sound principles. By stressing Israeli self-reliance, the
new government can revive the admiration that Israel has
traditionally enjoyed among Americans who appreciate an ally that
has resolved to defend itself.

1. Emphasis added throughout.

Out with the old nukes, in the with new

by J. Michael Waller
The Washington Times, June 10, 1996

Russia’s hard -line military leaders must
have cheered when Senate allies of the Clinton
administration killed a bill that would have required
deployment of a national defense system against incoming
nuclear missiles.

For the revanchists who earned their generals’ stars
in the Red Army, the Cold War is far from over. As
command and control of Russia’s nuclear arsenal
deteriorates in the country’s prolonged crisis, military
leaders state that their top priority is to modernize
their nuclear forces.

The White House has swept under the rug what top
Russian officers admit freely: Strategic nuclear missiles
directed at the United States remain on alert and the
obsolete systems being dismantled (some with U.S. aid)
will be replaced by more high-tech weapons.

Why is Russia channeling its scarce resources into
strategic modernization if the Cold War is over and the
country can’t maintain the forces it has? Strategic
Rocket Forces Commander in Chief Igor Sergeyev provided
the answer in a briefing to the Duma last July.
“Strategic offensive arms,” he explained in
remarks summarized by a Russian government publication,
“are the main component of Russia’s defense might.
They include at most 10 percent of the entire army
personnel and take up only 5 to 6 percent of the
country’s defense budget. They are not only the most
reliable but also the cheapest component of our defense
might. And they have a high level of combat readiness and
combat capability.”

Since Bill Clinton has been president, the Russian
military has conducted several major strategic weapons
exercises, at least one of which included a mock nuclear
attack on the United States, in 1993, on June 22, 1994,
and from October 4-10, 1995. The White House has said
nothing.


Deep spending cuts and the deteriorated state of its
conventional forces have caused Moscow to increase
political and military reliance on strategic weapons.
President Yeltsin signed a military doctrine in 1993 that
reverses the “Gorbachev doctrine” of civilian
pre-eminence over the military and renounces the
Andropov-era “no first use” nuclear pledge,
propagandistic as it may have been. Even veterans of old
Communist Party think tanks became alarmed. “A first
strike strategy,” reform-mined military analyst
Aleksei G. Arbatov commented at the time in Nezavisimaya
Gazeta, “presupposes the unleashing of nuclear
war.” All this happened when Russian-American
relations were at their best. In 1994, the Russian navy
began retrofitting its Typhoons to house the new
SS-N-24/26 ballistic missile. In early 1995, it tested a
submarine-launched ballistic missile, concealing the
technical characteristics in violation of an arms
agreement with the United States. U.S. Navy intelligence
estimates that Russia spent as much as $7.2 billion on
submarine construction and modernization in 1994, and $9
billion in 1995. Shipyards are building hard-to-detect
nuclear attack subs, including the Akula II and the
completely new Severodvinsk class, according to Russian
military leaders.

In open hearings last July, the general staff informed
the Duma of development of a new ballistic missile
submarine class to succeed the Typhoon, with capabilities
superior to the American Ohio-class (Trident) subs; the
keels have already been laid, but lack of funds has
stalled the projects. Covering the hearings, Kommersant
Daily reported that with economic recovery, construction
will resume: “Russia plans for more than one day
ahead despite the unprecedented cuts for military
R&D.”

Why such subs when the rest of the navy is rusting
away? “Our strategic forces are the most important
part of the fleet,” explained Russian First Deputy
Navy Commander Igor Kasatonov at a London naval
conference in April. “We are now trying to improve
our logistics so we can supply them properly.” Asked
about the next decade’s procurement priorities. Adm.
Kasatonov was unequivocal: “Our priority is the new
generation of more accurate strategic nuclear missiles of
the kind which can be launched from submarines.”

The West has looked on hopefully as Russia
decommissions part of its ground-based intercontinental
ballistic missiles (ICBM) fleet. But reform and arms
control have little to do with reductions. According to
First Deputy Chief of Staff Vladimir Zhurbenko, the
missiles, with aging electronic and highly corrosive
fuel, “are at the end of their useful life.”
The defense ministry newspaper Red Star – the name hasn’t
changed – argues that the giant, 10-warhead SS-18s need
to be dismantled “because of their age, irrespective
of the [START] treaty.”

Neither is U.S. “Cooperative Threat
Reduction” aid a motivator. Three years ago, well
before any such assistance went through the pipeline,
Gen. Sergeyev told Russian journalists that while certain
ICBMs would be scrapped, “the combat readiness of
strategic missiles will not decline in any way. The
obsolete systems will be replaced with up-to-date
ones.” One of the replacements is the TOPOL-M, a
three-stage variant of the SS-25. On Sept. 5, just hours
before the U.S. Senate voted to build a national
ballistic missile defense system by 2003, the military
test-launched a TOPOL-M prototype at the Plesetsk
cosmodrome 600 miles north of Moscow.

Announcing the launch, Military Space Forces spokesman
Igor Safronov told TASS that 90 of the 154 SS-18 silos on
Russian territory will be converted to house the TOPOL-M.
The missiles will also be based on eight-axeled mobile
launchers to conceal them from detection. Mr. Safronov
echoed the rest of the military, “Russia hopes to
replace all its outdated missiles in the coming
years.”


As stopgap measure until aviation upgrading is
possible, Russia is purchasing a fleet of Soviet-era
strategic bombers and hundreds of air-launched cruise
missiles (plus nearly three dozen ICBMs) from Ukraine.
With no apparent concern form Washington and various
incentives from Moscow, Kiev agreed to the sale after two
years of negotiations. According to Gen. Sergeyev, the
deal, now in its final stages, will transfer to Russia 25
Tu-95M “Bear-H” strategic bombers, 19
supersonic Tu-160 “Blackjack” strategic bomber,
and several hundred cruise missiles (in addition to 32
ICBMs). Gen. Sergeyev said the weapons will help Russia
“maintain its nuclear potential at an appropriate
level until 2009,” presumably in time for the
country to rebuild its economy and military industry.

The General Staff briefed the Duma that a
new-generation of air-launched cruise missile is in
production. The next-generation multi-role strategic
“stealth” bomber, the Sukhoi-T60S, is
reportedly under development.

Advanced nuclear warheads are also in the works,
according to Atomic Energy Minister Viktor Mikhailov, who
disclosed continuing weapons programs a year ago. Tests
may have begun. In January, as this newspaper revealed
and Defense Secretary William Perry confirmed, the
Pentagon detected seismic activity consistent with a
low-yield nuclear blast at the underground arctic nuclear
test center at Novaya Zemlya, even though Moscow had
pledged in 1992 to stop such detonation.

The public still doesn’t know the truth about the
alleged test. The administration has been dismissive of
serious reports of across-the-board Russian arms-control
violations as it has been silent about Russian strategic
modernization. We have come to expect such behavior from
the Clinton administration. The mystery is why so few of
its opponents in Congress have made it an issue.

BEFORE U.S. INTELLIGENCE CAN BE REFORMED, THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION MUST STOP DEFORMING IT

(Washington, D.C.): With President Clinton in full-time
reelection campaign mode, his Administration is going to
considerable lengths to readopt the coloration of centrism that
won the White House for a so-called “New Democrat” in
the first place. In particular, there are few indications
of the looney Left agenda that would almost certainly
characterize a Clinton second term unconstrained by the
requirement to secure any further popular mandate. But
— despite Dick Morris’ best efforts — every once in a while,
the truth will out.

One such insight comes from the memorandum issued on 16 April
by John Deutch, Bill Clinton’s Director of
Central Intelligence — a position that is currently being given
unprecedented influence over all aspects and agencies of the U.S.
Intelligence Community. The self-declared purpose of this
unclassified document, which was sent far and wide throughout the
government, is to revise “Security Controls on the
Dissemination of Intelligence Information.” As such, it
appears to fall within the rubric of “reform” of how
and with what the United States performs intelligence functions
in the post-Cold War world.(1)

Hidden Agenda

This Director of Central Intelligence Directive (DCID
1/7-1), however, offers an insight into the truly radical nature
of the Clinton Administration’s agenda for U.S. national security
and foreign policy institutions. Simply put, that agenda seems
designed to dismantle or incapacitate such institutions or
otherwise to reduce their effectiveness. href=”96-D44.html#N_2_”>(2)

Specifically, the Deutch directive appears to embrace the
Hazel O’Leary syndrome: The rightful protection of the necessary
secrets which protect Americans’ values and way of life and
the lives of those sent into harm’s way for that protection
is regarded as insidious and repressive. The order of the day is
to disclose sensitive information, no matter how
ill-thought-through or how dire the likely consequences.

This policy seems rooted in a conviction that potential
adversaries who gain access to U.S. secrets will not use them to
this country’s detriment — not least by using such information
to neutralize U.S. “sources and methods” of collecting
such information and exploiting the openness to penetrate
whatever secrets as are still closely held. An Intelligence
Community still reeling from the effects of one Soviet/Russian
mole, Aldrich Ames, should be exhibiting more care about
facilitating the burrowing of his successors.

Now Hear This

Consider, for example, the following highlights of the Deutch
directive that would more likely deform than reform
American intelligence operations:

  • The purpose of this memorandum is to enure “the
    widest possible dissemination of information to policy
    makers, warfighters and other consumers.” Other
    “consumers” are identified as “foreign
    governments, international organizations or coalition
    partners consisting of sovereign states.” It
    is not altogether clear from the text exactly what
    priority Director Deutch assigns to sharing U.S. secrets
    with the latter “consumers” but it seems a
    reasonable inference that such information-sharing is
    equal in priority to the U.S. government
    “consumers.”

  • The guideline for determining the appropriateness of
    sharing is whether it “promotes the interests of the
    United States, does not pose unreasonable risk to U.S.
    foreign policy or national defense and is limited to a
    specific purpose and normally of limited duration.” This
    formulation allows even intelligence compromises that
    would pose a “reasonable” risk to the security
    of this Nation, as long as someone believes they will
    “promote” ill-defined interests of the United
    States.

  • “Classifiers shall carefully consider whether there
    is a need to mark material with any dissemination control
    marking and to use control markings only in the limited
    instances authorized by this Directive.” Read: The
    default setting with regard to sensitive U.S.
    intelligence information is no classification —
    not protect secretly acquired information unless
    specifically directed otherwise.

  • “Intelligence producers shall prepare their reports
    and products at the lowest possible classification level
    commensurate with expected damage that could be caused by
    unauthorized disclosure.” At least this
    sentence acknowledges that damage could be
    caused by unauthorized disclosure — a sentiment that
    seems largely absent from the rest of the text. Still, a
    premium is placed upon disseminating, rather than
    protecting, classified data.

  • “In ‘writing for the consumer,’ Intelligence
    Community elements shall prepare their reports and
    products at the collateral, uncaveated level to the
    greatest extent possible, without diluting the meaning
    and value of the intelligence for the consumer.” href=”96-D44.html#N_3_”>(3) In layman’s
    language, this sentence orders intelligence officials to
    consider it their normal duty to communicate highly
    classified information to “consumers” by
    routinely packaging it in such a way as ostensibly not to
    disclose how the U.S. government came by it. The risks
    associated with failing to prevent such disclosures are
    evidently considered secondary to the risks of not being
    sufficiently forthcoming with America’s secrets.

U.S. Secrets Can Become a Non-renewable Resource

In short, Director Deutch intends to institutionalize
the widespread sharing of sensitive U.S. intelligence material —
much of it collected at enormous cost to the American taxpayer
and often at considerable risk to personnel working for or with
the United States government — with the U.N. and other
multilateral organizations, with foreign governments and their
nationals. The result of such sharing could well be to
jeopardize the often fragile, and sometimes irreplaceable,
sources and methods by which it was obtained.

This being the case, it is all the more extraordinary that
such sharing no longer has to be deemed essential to U.S.
national security. Instead, one need only assert that
intelligence sharing “promotes the interests of the United
States” and poses “reasonable” risks to U.S.
foreign policy or national defense. Even this may understate
actual Clinton policy. After all, in May 1995, the State
Department’s senior intelligence official — Assistant Secretary
of State Toby Gati — told Congress that the United States had to
share intelligence with the U.N. even when it is not in U.S.
interests to do so. Her reasoning? Doing so might
assure that the United Nations would be willing to make use of
American secret information when Washington wanted it to.

To be sure, DCID 1/7-1 also avers that “any component
disseminating intelligence beyond the intelligence community
assumes responsibility for ensuring that recipient organizations
agree to observe the need-to-know principle and the restrictions
prescribed by this directive, and to maintain adequate
safeguards.” The United Nations refuses to agree to
such arrangements, however. Worse yet, the Clinton
Administration does not want to ask that of Boutros
Boutros Ghali — as it made clear in objecting to legislation
requiring such safeguards that was introduced last year by Sen.
Olympia Snowe (R-ME). And, according to a cover memorandum
accompanying the DCID, Director Deutch orders senior officers in
the Intelligence Community to “establish…challenge
procedures by which consumers may register complaints about the
misuse of control markings….” One can only imagine
the use foreign consumers of U.S. intelligence like Boutros Ghali
or old KGB man/Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov will
make of this “Complaints Desk”!

The Deutch directive complements a number of other, similarly
motivated initiatives, for example, governing the process whereby
intelligence information is classified in the first place and
establishing that personnel fitness reports — and, therefore,
one’s career in intelligence — will be adversely affected by a
documented tendency to err in favor of classifying data. The
predictable effect of such steps will be to make it harder to
protect secrets that, if divulged, could prove inimical to the
national security.

The Bottom Line

The good news is that this Deutch directive does not go into
effect until 15 June. Republicans looking for grounds to justify
their continued control of the Congress could do a lot worse than
to use the next five weeks to halt this irresponsible
intelligence deform. In the process, they should
consider a very constructive blueprint for intelligence reform
actually commissioned — and then ignored — by the
Clinton Administration: Redefining Security by the Joint
Security Commission. Neither the Clinton revised
Executive Order on Classification (E.O. 12958) nor the Deutch
DCID reflects a single idea from the Joint Commission’s work.

To the extent that the Deutch directive also serves as
microcosm of the broader and purposeful Clinton wrecking
operation now underway in every one of the country’s national
security and foreign policy institutions, it also offers
a powerful argument for ensuring that the White House does not
remain in such hands for another four years.

– 30 –

1. For more information regarding how the
Clinton Administration’s “reforms” are hurting the
Intelligence Community, see the Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Chairman Hyde Sounds an Urgent Warning About
the Need to Strengthen, Depoliticize U.S. Intelligence
(No. 96-P 06, 22 January 1996).

2. Such ill-advised intelligence sharing
is just one aspect of the Clinton Administration’s
“counterculturalist” approach to national security
policy-making. For other examples, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Center’s Gaffney Warns
Heritage Foundation Audience About Bill Clinton,
‘Counterculturalist-in-Chief,’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-P_04″>No. 96-P 04, 16 January 1996).

3. “Writing for the consumer”
could be a laudable goal unless what is meant by it is really the
sort of egregious politicization evident in the recent National
Intelligence Estimate on ballistic missile threats to the United
States. In this regard, see the recent op.ed. piece by the
Center’s Director, Frank. J. Gaffney, Jr., entitled “Reforms
Deform U.S. Intelligence” (Defense News, 8-14 April
1996).

Iran/Bosnia ignominy

by Frank Gaffney, Jr.
and
Roger Robinson, Jr.

The Washington Times, 9 April 1996

Last week, the “character issue”
that has dogged Bill Clinton since 1992 became a feature
of one of the president’s most serious foreign policy
debacles — Bosnia. With eight congressional committees
reportedly now launching inquiries into what must
inevitably become known as the Iran-Bosnia Scandal, this
nexus could become lethal for Mr. Clinton’s re-election
bid.

According to investigative reporting by the Los
Angeles Times, this newspaper and other publications, in
early 1994, President Clinton personally approved a
policy of “active acquiescence” to a request by
Croatian President Franjo Tudjman that Iran be allowed to
funnel arms to the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government
via Croatia. This action was taken, however, at a time
when the Clinton administration’s official policy was
fixedly supporting the U.N. arms embargo on the former
Yugoslavia — an odious arrangement that had the effect of
denying a member nation its right to self-defense while
doing little, if anything, to curb the war-making
potential of the Serb perpetrators of aggression and
ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

In other words, Mr. Clinton was at once enabling the
Islamic totalitarians of Iran to secure a strategic
beachhead on the Continent of Europe — one made the more
dangerous for its combining radical Iranian theology,
arms and terrorist training with the profound alienation
of a people who had good reason to feel abandoned by the
West — and assiduously resisting congressional
initiatives sponsored by his rival, Sen. Robert Dole, to
end the arms embargo and to provide U.S. weaponry
above-board to the Bosnian government.

The bitter fruits of this misguided policy are now
evident: The United States has some 20,000 men and women
on the ground in Bosnia. It is widely understood that
this problematic — and, in any event, ephemeral –
commitment to protecting the victims of genocidal
aggression would likely have been unnecessary had the
Bosnian government been able to defend itself long ago
with nothing more than U.S. air support.

Worse yet, the safety of these troops is placed at
considerable risk due to the continued presence of
undetermined number of Iranian and other Islamic foreign
legionnaires who have now become fixtures in the
government (notably, the Interior Ministry) and armed
forces of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Even if these foreign
forces could be rooted out, the thousands of converts
they have recruited to a radical, anti-Western strain of
Islam would constitute a potentially serious threat to
NATO personnel. They will almost certainly pose a
continuing peril for European security in the years
ahead.

There are, in addition, likely to be far-reaching
costs for American interests internationally from this
covert Clinton policy (so secret it was conducted outside
the purview of the CIA!) For example, demonstrated U.S.
duplicity offers its European allies grounds for
off-loading blame for the radical Islamification of
Bosnia. It also gives rise to a pretext for the French,
British, Germans and others to spike Washington’s
halfhearted, post-Dayton bid to provide an effective,
non-Iranian arm-and-train option for the Bosnian
government.

The Clinton administration’s too-clever-by-half
Iran-Bosnia initiative also offers Russia precisely the
excuse Mr. Clinton used to hold at bay Mr. Dole and other
advocates for formally terminating the arms embargo.
Henceforth, Moscow can be expected to be even more brazen
in selectively complying with other international
embargoes (for example, that currently in effect against
the Kremlin’s former and future client, Iraq). In
addition, the likes of Boutros Boutros-Ghali are afforded
an opportunity to castigate the United States like an
errant schoolboy who has broken the rules.

Clearly, the strategic implications of these ominous,
and highly avoidable, developments must be subjected to
at least as intense investigation by the Congress as was
accorded the Reagan administration’s benighted, but
relatively innocuous, arms-for-hostages deal with Iran.
President Clinton’s less-than-candid conduct demands, in
particular, that the true nature of his so-called
“containment” policy toward Iran be assessed
with care.

In this regard, the possibility must be considered
that the Clinton administration’s policies on the
following Iran-related issues were substantially
influenced by a compromising sense of indebtedness to
Tehran for helping equip and train the Bosnian Muslims:
de facto acquiescence to Russia’s nuclear reactor deal
with Iran; failure to prosecute Iranian links to the
wholesale counterfeiting of $100 bills; initial approval
of the massive Conoco oil deal with Iran; declining even
to name Iran as a state-sponsor of terrorism at the
recent Sharm el-Sheik summit; strong opposition to the
D’Amato-King legislation that would afford significant
new import-control tools for tightening the embargo on
Iran; and turning a blind eye to the hemorrhage of North
Korean Scuds, Russian submarines and aircraft, Chinese
cruise missiles and patrol boats and other advanced
technology delivered to the Iranian armed forces. Such
policies promise greatly to compound the damage done in
the first instance by Mr. Clinton’s decision to give
President Tudjman the green light — the practical effect
of giving his representatives “no instructions”
— to set up an Iranian arms pipeline through Croatia.

Regrettably, the Iran-Bosnia Scandal is not the only
instance in which Mr. Clinton’s character problem is
complicating, and probably seriously jeopardizing, U.S.
security policy interests. Other examples that come to
mind include: his recent certification that Yasser Arafat
is complying with commitments made pursuant to the Oslo
accords (even the influential American Israel Public
Affairs Committee has acknowledged this is not true); his
claim that the United States would not try to get
involved in Boris Yeltsin’s re-election campaign (it is a
matter of record that Mr. Clinton has repeatedly and
personally done just that at the expense of billions of
American tax dollars); and his declaration that there is
no need to fear a ballistic missile attack against the
United States for at least 15 years (in the wake of
recent Chinese threats against Los Angeles, most experts
recognize such a claim to be pollyannish, if not
reckless).

Whatever comes of the congressional investigations
into the new Iran-Bosnia scandal, one thing is clear: It
will no longer be possible for President Clinton to
pretend that there is a firewall between the
“character issue” that has been the leitmotif
of his presidency’s domestic agenda and his conduct of
international affairs. The sooner the body politic comes
to grips with this reality, the sooner corrective action
can be taken across the board.

Inflating the electoral process

by Frank Gaffney
The Washington Times, April 2, 1996

Four years ago, Bill Clinton took a very dim
view of a foreign government meddling in the democratic
processes of another sovereign state. At the time, of
course, Governor/Candidate Clinton was objecting to
British Prime Minister John Major’s efforts to help his
friend, George Bush, stave off what proved to be a mortal
electoral challenge from Mr. Clinton.

That, as they say, was then. Today,
President/Candidate Clinton is actively and personally
intervening in Russia’s upcoming presidential election to
help his friend, Boris Yeltsin stave off a potentially
mortal challenge from the Communist Party’s leader,
Gennady Zyuganov. The consequences of this interference
in a foreign election are likely to prove fully as
injurious as were the British government’s efforts on
behalf of Mr. Bush.

U.S. and Russian official documents leaked,
respectively, to Bill Gertz of this newspaper and to a
Russian nationalist journal establish that President
Clinton has quite explicitly tapped U.S. taxpayer
resources — both directly and indirectly — in an effort
to ensure that President Yeltsin is re-elected this June.
The following are among the costly contributions being
made for this purpose:

At Mr. Clinton’s urging, the International Monetary
Fund has approved the second-largest loan in its history
(only the no-less-politicized Mexican bailout was
larger). This has been done even though former senior
Russian officials privately acknowledge that Moscow has
complied with virtually none of the IMF’s preconditions.
What is more, in those areas where Russia appears to have
taken steps demanded by the IMF — notably, by abandoning
a planned across-the-board 20 percent increase in tariffs
— it has failed to do so fully. In fact, as the New York
Times reported on March 26, the Kremlin has actually
increased tariffs by between 5 percent and 10 percent
“but the Monetary Fund says it does not believe that
the politically important loan should be held up because
of those increases.”

It must be asked: If such an attitude has been adopted
at the outset of the disbursement of the Russian loan — a
disbursement that is, interestingly, front-loaded so as
to put $1 billion in Mr. Yeltsin’s hands before the June
election — why should Moscow give greater weight to
assertions that the Fund will be more resistant to
political imperatives in deciding the fate of future
progress payments?

The Clinton administration continues to insist that
hundreds of millions of tax dollars flow to Russia
through the so-called Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR)
program, known universally as Nunn-Lugar funding after
its congressional sponsors — Sens. Sam Nunn and Sen.
Richard Lugar. On March 18, the CATO Institute published
a damning indictment of this $1 billion-plus program in a
study titled The Nunn-Lugar Act: A Wasteful and Dangerous
Illusion. Author Rich Kelley defines the problem this
way: “The evidence suggests that CTR may in the long
run threaten, rather than enhance, American security. CTR
funds have eased the Russian military’s budgetary woes,
freeing resources for such initiatives as the war in
Chechnya and defense modernization. Any claim that CTR
has encouraged good behavior in the former Soviet Union
is an overstatement, if not an irony. In fact, the
program has created a series of perverse incentives that
may have hindered, rather than advanced, the
stabilization of nuclear weapons in the former Soviet
Union.”

The Clinton administration has found the U.S.
Export-Import Bank to be yet another vehicle for sluicing
what amount to campaign contributions into Boris
Yeltsin’s war chest at American taxpayer’s expense. On
March 21, David Kramer of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and Heidi Kroll, a Moscow-based
economist employed by Harvard University, published a
chilling article in the Wall Street Journal titled,
“The Ex-Im Bank’s Russian Disaster.” This
article describes two recent initiatives undertaken by
Vice President Al Gore that will involve lending well
more than $1 billion in taxpayer-underwritten resources
even though their net effect is likely to be the
undermining of privatization and the discouraging of
productive foreign investment in Russia.

As it happens, some experts — notably, a
distinguished British scholar, Dr. Mark Almond —
anticipate that, despite his poor showing in the polls at
the moment, President Yeltsin will be re-elected. In
remarks last week to a Heritage Foundation gathering, Dr.
Almond suggested that if so, it would not be because of
U.S. help, however. Nor would it be due to the popular
appeal a Yeltsin candidacy. Rather, it would be because
President Yeltsin would use the powers of his office —
not least the KGB’s responsibility for the security of
elections, and the loyalty of Yeltsin-appointed mayors
and governors — to steal the election.

Should that occur, it is likely that President
Clinton’s acknowledged and free-spending intervention on
behalf of the victor will be seized upon by the defeated
communists and other xenophobes to drive Mr. Yeltsin to
take ever-more-draconian steps to demonstrate his
independence from, if not outright defiance of, the West.
As a result, even if widespread vote fraud (which those
like Jimmy Carter will nonetheless indubitably call
“substantially free and fair elections”) does
not produce grave domestic instability in Russia, it will
almost certainly accelerate the Kremlin’s reversion to
malevolent type internationally.

President Clinton professes to be a champion of
campaign finance reform. He could do worse than by
halting his administration’s wanton misuse of tax dollars
blatantly to interfere in Russia’s nascent democratic
process. Even if such behavior were not improper and
counterproductive, it would still be opprobrious since —
as Mr. Gertz has established — Mr. Clinton is motivated
in no small measure by the belief a Yeltsin victory will
help his own re-election bid. If President Clinton will
not refrain from such self-dealing at taxpayer expense,
Congress should sharply restrict his ability to do so.

AN ALTERNATIVE TO CLINTON’S FAILED CHINA POLICY: ‘STRATEGIC CONTAINMENT AND TACTICAL TRADE AMBIGUITY’

(Washington, D.C.): In recent days, China’s increasingly
belligerent behavior toward Taiwan and its contemptuous dismissal
of American remonstrations have established one fact
convincingly: The Clinton Administration’s policy toward Beijing
— which has recently been mutated from a stated policy of
“strategic ambiguity” to one of “strategic clarity
and tactical ambiguity” — has been an abject failure.

Such an outcome is hardly surprising given that the Chinese
were certain to view a policy of “strategic ambiguity”
against the backdrop of the three years of Clinton appeasement of
Beijing. The appalling magnitude of the Administration’s
appeasement is becoming more apparent day-by-day. For example, Ken
Timmerman — a distinguished investigative journalist
and long-time friend of the Center for Security Policy — has
just published a major exposé in the new issue of the American
Spectator. It reveals Secretary of Defense William Perry’s
personal involvement in myriad, and profoundly troubling,
sweetheart deals with Communist China. (Excerpts
from this important article are attached.)

Diverse observers of the scene — from Washington Post columnist
Jim Hoagland to the editorial boards of the London Economist
and Wall Street Journal — have increasingly embraced a
view long held by the Center for Security Policy (1): Communist China is
fast becoming a threat to vital U.S. security interests in East
Asia and beyond. As Mr. Hoagland put it in a powerful op.ed.
article last Sunday:

“This conflict [between China and Taiwan] will not go
away after the March 23 election. Beijing’s enemy is
democracy on Chinese soil. The tyrants cannot rest, or bother
to let Americans smooth their feathers, while Taiwan
demonstrates that one China exists in order and prosperity
under democratic rule while the other does not. One
has to go. Washington should do everything it can to
make sure that it is the Beijing regime that goes.”
(Emphasis added.)

Meanwhile, The Economist devoted its lead editorial
this week to the theme of “Stay Back, China.” It said,
in part:

“…Helping America to hold China to the rules of
peaceable behavior is the only way to preserve the stability
on which the region’s continued prosperity depends….China
will see the point of talking only if it is convinced that it
stands to lose less by talking than by gunfire. By contrast,
appeasing China over Taiwan will only feed China’s appetite
for trouble.”

In a similar vein, the Wall Street Journal
editorialized today:

“The Clinton Administration’s limp responses to
[various Chinese] ploys have emboldened Beijing to escalate
the provocations….Presidents get themselves — and the
country — into fixes like this by giving the wrong signals
to potential adversaries….If you want to avoid major
affronts be intolerant of small affronts. Bill Clinton has
not done that. And so in the Taiwan Strait he now faces a
challenge that can be ignored only at a very significant cost
to the United States’ role as the main guarantor of peace and
stability in East Asia. What’s he going to do now?”

What We Should Do Now

If President Clinton remains unable to send the right
signals to the Communist China, Congress must go beyond adopting
the Cox Resolution urging a defense of Taiwan against Chinese
aggression. (2) It is
time for the United States to adopt a policy towards Beijing that
might be called “strategic containment and tactical trade
ambiguity.”

The strategic containment aspect would be predicated
on the reality that China is engaged in a massive offensive
military build-up — with an onerous strategic component directed
against the United States. It would feature:

  • Revitalizing and institutionalizing both bilateral and
    multilateral security arrangements with states — other
    than China — in the region.

  • Restoring controls on strategic dual-use technology
    transfers to China.

  • Staunching large-scale diversion of Western financial
    flows — particularly official credits and credit
    guarantees — to the Chinese military and security
    services, and their associated industrial enterprises.

  • Reviewing at once U.S. and Western equipment and
    technology dedicated to the vital Chinese energy sector.
    Such reviews should be conducted by Congress and
    multilateral institutions in order to establish whether
    steps need to be taken to inhibit the growth of this
    large revenue-generating sector with the potential
    substantially to fuel Chinese military expansion and
    potential regional adventurism.

With respect to tactical trade ambiguity, the
potentially positive political spin-offs of expanded U.S.-China
commercial relations can continue to be tested — for the
moment — with the maintenance of Most Favored Nation
status. Nevertheless, U.S. Section 301 trade legislation
empowering Washington to respond to continued and blatant Chinese
trade-related abuses should be exercised robustly. Moreover,
Clinton Trade Representative Mickey Kantor’s solid recommendation
earlier this month — i.e., that Section 301 be deployed against
governments (including that of China) condoning or actively
participating in bribery by foreign companies at an estimated
cost of $45 billion annually to U.S. firms — should be
implemented at once.

The Bottom Line

By adopting a nuanced approach to trade in the context of
strategic containment, China can be put on unmistakable notice:
Beijing will retain its coveted access to the U.S. market —
giving rise to a $40 billion trade surplus for Beijing annually
— only to the extent that it demonstrates substantially improved
and non-hegemonic behavior. Should China persist in implementing
the Maoist maxim that power only flows from the barrel of a gun,
however, then that access will likewise have to be substantially
reduced.

At the end of the day, the United States simply cannot persist
in a policy defined by strategic appeasement and the tactical
subordination of all other equities to U.S. exports and other
commercial interests as pursued by the Clinton Administration
and, for that matter, by the Bush-Baker team before it. The
stakes are sufficiently great that America must once again be
guided by the sort of principles, values and moral compass that
helped hasten the demise of one communist tyranny — and must now
be brought to bear to contain and potentially roll back another.

– 30 –

1. See, for example, the Center’s Decision Briefs
entitled The Ultimate ‘China Card’: Right
Response to Odious Chinese Behavior is Recognition for Taiwan
(No. 94-D 54,
26 May 1994); and Export
Decontrollers make the ‘Counter’ in U.S. Counter-Proliferation
Policy Stand for Counter-Productive ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-D_60″>No. 94-D 60, 14 June
1994).

2. See the Center’s recent Press Release entitled
Center’s Cox Leads Congressional Effort to Discourage Chinese
Aggression Against Taiwan ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-P_23″>No. 96-P 23, 5 March 1996).

Steve Forbes at the inauguration of the Casey Institute

ON THE OCCASION OF THE INAUGURATION OF

THE WILLIAM J. CASEY INSTITUTE OF

THE CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY

 

The ANA Hotel, Washington, D.C.

13 March 1996

 

"WILL THIS BE AN AGE OF MISSED OPPORTUNITIES — OR ONE IN WHICH AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IS RENEWED?"

 

Introduction

Bill Casey, I think as Ed made very clear, did epitomize the best that is in America. And I know that it is the fashion these days, in certain circles, to criticize some of the things he did when he headed up the Agency. I’d just remind those who lob these criticisms to remember that we were engaged in a war. It was a Cold War, but nonetheless, it was a real enemy.

And when you face a war, when you face the pressures of war, you can’t always do things in a way that may satisfy arm-chair academicians, looking many years hence. Because part of the problem of looking back, however fascinating it is, is the idea that somehow the results were inevitable, that it was going to happen anyway, regardless of what individual players did.

Well, when you’re in the midst of battle, that is simply and totally untrue. But Bill Casey, in the midst of battle, when it looked like, at the beginning of the Reagan administration, that the Russians, the Soviets, as we called them in those days, did have the upper hand, they were the moving power, they had invaded Afghanistan, they had built up their military, they were running in Latin America. We weren’t even concerned about Nicaragua anymore; it was El Salvador we were hoping to save. The rest looked like it was lost.

So put yourself back at that period of time, and what Bill Casey helped to do was truly extraordinary. He did help cut off the supply of money and technology to the Soviet Union. That was vitally important. He did everything humanly possible to keep Solidarity going during a very critical time.

And he also made sure, in a very general sense, to bolster our friends and undermine our enemies. Sounds easy to say, but try it, and try it in Washington. He did it. He made it work. And to get something done in this town, not only to have a sense of vision, a sense of determination, but to be able to know how to operate in this town to get something done, inside a bureaucracy, where you know that you don’t have too many friends, even perhaps where you expect to find them, not to mention on some of those committees and quarters on Capitol Hill, is truly remarkable.

He’s earned a high place in history, and it is fun to be here today to give him honor, where honor is richly deserved and due.

The Challenge

The legacy that Ronald Reagan and Bill Casey left us is very easy to summarize, but as we look around us today, sadly, it is very easy to ignore. And that is to have a strong America here, at home, and a purposeful and confident America overseas.

When you look at that legacy, and look at the dismal contrast of America today, and the real question that faces us today is: "Will future generations of Americans look back on us, and our times, and say, ‘This was an age of missed opportunities’?" Will that be the epitaph of this generation and of this era? We stand in danger of that epitaph.

The fundamentals are there, here, at home, for a very strong America. The economic fundamentals have never been better….[But] we’re not growing the way we should, even though the potential is there for the greatest economic boom in our history.

Look at what else Bill Clinton has done. Let’s look at the topic today. Foreign policy. To talk about a Clinton foreign policy is almost to talk about an oxymoron. It’s not just incoherent and comical anymore. It is now getting downright dangerous.

It was kind of amusing, three years ago, in the aftermath of the Cold War, to think of a serious President, or any President of the United States spending at least a half hour a day with his pollster, going over the previous night’s polls, and visiting with his National Security Adviser 15 minutes every two weeks. That kind of was humorous, but it’s no longer humorous, that kind of incoherence in foreign policy….It is once again a dangerous world.

[Take, for example,] casual commitments made in Bosnia. Now our people are on the line there. We stand the danger — we stand the danger of making, in spirit, the kind of mistakes that we in the West made after World War I. After World War I, even though communism triumphed in the Soviet Union, what became the Soviet Union, democracy had triumphed, too, in much of Europe and much of the world.

But because we turned our backs on the world, and because of mistakes that the other great powers made, in the ’20s and ’30s, over 20 democracies collapsed in Europe and around the world, not because of aggression, not because of invading armies, but simply because the environment was inhospitable, both at home and overseas….

This is the danger that we face today. The world still appears very secure. We are still, as they say, the only superpower. But if we make the mistakes and continue the kind of dithering and incoherence of this administration, we will create the kind of forces that turned the promise of the post-World War I era into the purgatories of the 1930’s and into the world war of the 1940’s. It can happen again.

Human nature has not changed, the nature of power has not changed, and America had better not forget it. Just look around the world at some of the missed opportunities, starting with the biggest one, in Russia.

Economically, we foisted on them something called "shock therapy" which combined austerity, high taxes, so-called privatization which became a corruption binge, and ended up destroying people’s savings, and as we know from the Weimar Republic, as we know from czarist Russia, as we know from Nationalist China, that when you have hyperinflation, you set in motion the possibility of bad political forces arising.

That’s what’s happened in Russia today. The forces of freedom, the forces of reform, the forces of democracy are on the run, hopelessly on the defensive, it seems. Just look at elections. Communists winning elections again, doing well in elections. That tells you how far we’ve fallen.

Did we ever sit down with the Russians and show them how we stabilized our dollar 200 years ago, when it was worthless, or how other countries, like Argentina, stabilized their currency? No. It wasn’t worth it; just threw some aid over there; threw them the IMF, which is really malpractice, economic malpractice. Everywhere they go, there’s disaster in their wake.

And look at what’s happening. Not only bad election results, but now, ultranationalism is starting to get back in the saddle again. Look at this potential union with Belarus. Look what’s happening on the pressure on Ukraine. It’s starting to happen again, and we bear a major form of that responsibility.

Let’s go now to what’s in the headlines today: China and Taiwan. That was an easily avoidable crisis. All that had to have been done, when a few months ago it became apparent that pressure might be applied, was go behind the scenes, and say in unmistakably clear terms, "Force is not going to be tolerated against Taiwan."

But instead, we sent over our technology, did everything we could to appease the Chinese, and we had a Secretary of Defense who not only has turned a blind eye on this transfer of sophisticated military technology, when he was asked, a couple of weeks ago, what would happen if China started to lob missiles at Taiwan, went to war over Taiwan, he said: "Our response will depend on the circumstances."

Now, if that isn’t an invitation for trouble-making, I don’t know what is. What should have been done is what Teddy Roosevelt would have done: Go behind the scenes, make unmistakably clear the consequences [and] send the Seventh Fleet to the Straits of Taiwan….So with China and Taiwan, that disaster could have been avoided with a little bit of firm diplomacy.

* * *

…If we continue to dither about China and Taiwan, is it going to be too many years before Japan feels the pressure to rearm? Do we really want a re-armed, nuclear-armed Japan? The Japanese don’t want it. Their Asian neighbors don’t want it. And by our presence in Asia, we can help prevent it.

But this kind of ambiguity that we demonstrated with Taiwan and China is what got us in such deep, bloody trouble in Korea 45 years ago, what led to the disaster with Iraq in Kuwait six years ago. Why in the world are we repeating it again?

* * *

Look at another country, Cuba. We all know about the airplanes [shot down] there. We also should know a little more about two nuclear reactors that are under construction in Cuba, Chernobyl-like design, on seismically sensitive ground….They’re starting to construct them again. They had to stop a few years ago when the Soviet Union collapsed. Now they’re starting to build them again.

Do we really want two nuclear reactors of Chernobyl-like design, built in shoddy fashion, which all the defectors and observers say is happening, on seismically unstable ground, right off our shore? Why don’t we stop it before it’s completed? Do you hear anything from the administration on that? Not much. Not unless you bring it up. Doesn’t show up in the polls.

Then look at another part of the world, India and Pakistan. They’re two countries that could drift — skid — into nuclear war. Anything being done coherently in that part of the world? We haven’t heard about it.

Look closer at home. Look at Mexico, once a promising country, starting to develop, developing a middle class. What did we do? We foisted upon them, urged them, the deadly toxic poison of devaluation, which led Mexico into a depression, which has had social consequences in this country, people trying to cross the border. Mexico is in a depression. Mexico has a middle class that is now truly frustrated and dangerous. They had growing expectations; now they’re ruined. That could have been avoided.

Look at Libya, now in the midst of developing chemical weapons, deadly chemical weapons. Anything being done about that? No, not with this administration.

Look what’s happening to defense….We’re starting to cheat on spare parts, starting to underpay our people in uniform again, cutting back, cutting back. It’s not a thing of throwing money at it, but we do have real obligations in the world and we’d better be prepared to meet those obligations. We’re not in a position to do it today. That is truly asking for bloody trouble.

…Reference is made to the need for a missile defense system. We do need a missile defense system. China is soon going to be able to lob missiles, not just at Taiwan, but at the United States. So, too, are other rogue nations around the world.

Why wait for it to happen? All we have to do is upgrade, for starters. It’s cheap. The Aegis program with the Navy, make it Upper Tier, can do it in three or four years. That’s mobile. It would have been very helpful today with the Taiwan crisis. But is anything being done about it?

I must say here, one of my opponents, Senator Dole, has taken the lead in trying to move that forward, but again, the blockages come from the White House. They just don’t think it’s a matter of high importance anymore. They don’t think it’s really a matter of importance. They assure us that these rogue regimes will be years away from being able to do us real harm.

That kind of reminds me. Didn’t they say something about Iraq’s nuclear program a number of years ago — that it was many, many years away? Then we discovered how much progress they’d made. Why trust to estimates that can only be guesses, at best? Why not have that defense system, and have it soon? It’s our own safety.

* * *

And what about starting to negotiate a free trade agreement with Japan? It may take 10 years to do it; took six years to do one with Canada. But why not try it now? They’re in the throes of change. Let’s try to make those forces of change positive ones in Japan. Stranger things have happened.

A free trade agreement with Japan is no stranger, no more seemingly Pollyannish, than the idea that 50 years ago, a war between Germany and France would be inconceivable. Yet in Western Europe it is inconceivable today, thanks to democracy sinking real roots, thanks to the positive forces of change we helped put in motion. They had been at each other’s throats for a thousand years. Yet now war’s inconceivable. So why not look to the stars, why not dream about what we can do, and then try to make it a reality?

Diplomats like to say they’re realists. If we had trusted the realists all the time, we’d still be living in caves. So occasionally, we have to come out of our caves and throw the long pass, try to do something that may seem unrealistic today, but in a positive sense make the conditions possible to make what is unrealistic today positively realistic tomorrow.

Conclusion

In short, my friends, what is going to be our epitaph? I’m an optimist. I do think when the American people understand the issues, they will do things more right than wrong, just as they did when Ronald Reagan and Bill Casey went before them in 1980. I think we can do it again.

And I’m convinced that when historians look back on this period, they’re going to conclude once more, that the American people have proven wrong the critics and the skeptics, and the doubters and the naysayers, and that America, once again, [will] resume her place as the leader and inspiration of the world.

Of Delusions And ‘The Deluge’: Genesis Of The ‘Summit With Terrorists,’ Roots Of A Failed Foreign Policy

(Washington, D.C.): The Clinton Administration has responded reflexively to the spate of murderous bombings in Israel over the past few weeks: When in doubt, hold a summit meeting. Such meetings offer what President Clinton and his handlers like best — impressive photo opportunities, occasions for grand opening statements, earnest conversations between policy wonks and the issuing of high-sounding, but generally irrelevant, joint communiques. They afford, in short, the appearance of action when something has to be done and the Administration either cannot or will not do something effective.

 

Such a gambit is particularly troubling in this case because Wednesday’s meeting seems less a summit on terrorism than a summit with terrorists. After all, it will prominently feature Yasir Arafat, senior officials from numerous Arab nations, Boris Yeltsin and his newly minted Foreign Minister, Yevgeny Primakov. If the U.S. had its way, it would also include Syria’s Hafez Assad.

 

What is Wrong With This Picture?

 

Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, most Arab governments and the Kremlin — and Primakov personally — have long been involved in Middle Eastern terrorism. There is, moreover, reason to believe they still are. For example, Arafat routinely tells his people in Arabic of his support for the "martyrs" and "heroes" that he condemns in English for Western consumption as "terrorists" and "enemies of peace." His Palestinian Authority has forged strategic understandings with Hamas, allowing it to operate from safe havens in the territory now under his administration, and using Western-supplied financial resources to support its activities. For their part, Arab leaders have traditionally sought to buy peace at home by paying baksheesh to enable terrorist organizations to wage war against someone else — especially against the Israelis.

 

Soviet/Russian policy, as administered and executed by KGB operatives like Primakov, has traditionally been aligned with Middle Eastern states who engage in terrorism themselves or enable others to do so. The Kremlin has, moreover, helped to train, arm and underwrite terrorist cells operating from and in the Mideast. And now Primakov has placed a high priority on refurbishing Moscow’s relations with several of the region’s pariah states most closely identified with international terrorism, notably Libya, Iraq, Iran and Syria.

 

Speaking of Syria, Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced on Sunday that he hoped Hafez Assad would come to the summit in Sharm el-Sheik since everybody involved in the "peace process" should be there. Never mind that Syria is officially listed by the United States as a state-sponsor of terrorism, thanks to its continued protection of numerous terrorist organizations’ headquarters, bases and training facilities on its territory and that of Syrian-controlled Lebanon.

 

Delusions and ‘Delugeism’

The convening of an international conference on terrorism involving such figures transcends the usual triumph-of-form-over-substance that is the Clinton Administration’s stock-in-trade. It epitomizes two other qualities that are contributing greatly to the general meltdown of U.S. foreign policy now underway.

 

Delusions: The first of these is the Clinton team’s propensity to base American diplomacy and national security decision-making on delusions. In this case, evidence of delusional wishful thinking includes:

 

  • the fanciful belief that a man like Arafat, who has devoted his entire adult life to the single-minded pursuit of the destruction of the state of Israel, has suddenly been transformed into a reliable Israeli "partner for peace";

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  • the unfounded conviction that economic ties will induce Israel’s sworn enemies to concentrate on enriching themselves when, in fact, it is more likely simply to provide fresh cash-flow for underwriting their deadly campaign against the Jewish state;

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  • the absurd notion that the security of the state of Israel could, to a significant degree, be subcontracted out to Yasir Arafat and his proto-military force; and

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  • the preposterous idea that sharing sensitive American intelligence and technology will help Arafat’s Palestinian Authority destroy terrorists with whom it is allied. In fact, the result will more likely be to acquaint the terrorists with the nature and capability of U.S. intelligence, allowing them to tighten up operational security and to liquidate possibly irreplaceable American sources of information.

A thoughtful discussion of these and other delusions animating both Israeli and U.S. policy toward the peace process was published in today’s Washington Times (a copy is attached). This op.ed. article was adapted from a longer and extremely important essay authored by Douglas J. Feith — a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Middle East specialist on the National Security Council and active member of the Center for Security Policy’s Board of Advisors — appearing in the current edition of the Middle East Quarterly.

 

‘Delugeism’: The second phenomenon is what might be called the "après Novembre, le deluge" syndrome. Like Louis XV of France, who correctly anticipated the bloody tide of popular unrest that would flood his country during his successor’s reign, President Clinton must know that his luck is running out on an array of foreign policy problems from Beijing to Bosnia, from Northern Ireland to North Korea and most especially in the Middle East.

 

Bill Clinton is nothing, however, if not a master of the art of temporizing. He is constantly staving off a looming defeat by mutating his position, appeasing his opponents or otherwise conjuring up — for the moment at least — a way of finessing the problem. Unfortunately, in geopolitics as in one’s own life, deferring tough choices generally only makes matters worse. It is often interpreted (usually correctly) as a sign of weakness. Frequently, the options available after problems have been allowed to fester are less attractive and/or effective; all too often, they are also far more costly.

 

Never has this Clinton practice been more evident than with respect to his effort to secure reelection this fall. It is now common knowledge around the world that the President wants no unpleasantness before November. Despots see a vulnerability to be exploited, diplomats a blank check for virtually any option that will postpone the day of reckoning until after the polls close.

 

In the Middle East, this means not only summits designed to laud Yasir Arafat (look at the applause for his temporary round up of "the usual suspects" that passes for his current crackdown on Hamas) and to boost the sagging election prospects of Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres (a deplorable intervention in the internal affairs of a fellow democracy). In all likelihood, it also will translate into new U.S. financial, political and strategic concessions that will perpetuate the delusions and add to the coming deluge.

 

The Bottom Line

Tomorrow, the House International Relations Committee will hold hearings on the Mideast peace process. Incredibly, this is only the second time since the Oslo accords were signed in September 1993 that Congress has bestirred itself to take a hard look at what is going on in the name of peace, a look informed by testimony from knowledgeable critics.

 

Unless Congress moves to challenge the twin pillars upon which the Clinton Mideast policy increasingly rests — namely, delusions and "delugeism," however, form will continue for a while longer to triumph over substance, to the serious detriment of American interests in the region and to the great peril of the state of Israel.