Tag Archives: Bill Clinton

SELL-OUT AT THE SUMMIT: CLINTON COMPROMISES U.S., ALLIED SECURITY WITH CONCESSIONS IN MOSCOW

(Washington, D.C.): As predicted (1),
President Clinton used his just-completed summit with Boris
Yeltsin for a deplorable purpose — namely, to affirm his
commitment to perpetuate the American people’s vulnerability to
ballistic missile attack. What was surprising though was the
extent to which Mr. Clinton went even farther than expected to circumscribe,
foreclose or otherwise offer the Russians a veto over U.S.
options to defend American forces and allies overseas.

Taken together, the “basic principles” Messrs.
Clinton and Yeltsin have agreed to will have the effect not only
of endorsing the obsolete and increasingly dangerous 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. They also significantly expand its
scope in ways inimical to vital U.S. interests. In so doing,
President Clinton has thrown down the gauntlet to the
congressional leadership which has repeatedly and strenuously
objected to his diplomatic initiatives in this area. (2)

Shame, Shame: A Bill of Particulars

The following are the “basic principles” (emphasis
added throughout) that the two presidents have declared would
“serve as a basis for further discussions in order to reach
agreement in the field of demarcation between Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) systems and Theater Missile Defense (TMD)
systems.” (This formulation expressly commits the
United States to continue negotiations to which Senate Majority
Leader Robert Dole, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and virtually the
entire Republican congressional leadership have formally
expressed their opposition.)

  • “The United States and Russia are each committed
    to the ABM Treaty, a cornerstone of strategic
    stability.”     Since the 1972 ABM Treaty
    effectively precludes the United States and its people
    from being defended, this “principle”
    establishes unequivocally President Clinton’s
    determination to leave this Nation vulnerable to missile
    attack — even as he has acquiesced to Russia’s plan
    to ensure that Iran will be able to have nuclear weapons
    with which to exploit that vulnerability    . (See
    below.)

  • “Both sides must have the option to establish and to
    deploy effective theater missile defense systems. Such
    activity must not lead to violation or circumvention of
    the ABM Treaty.    ” This “principle”
    affords the Russians the first of several bases upon
    which to object to future U.S. deployments of theater
    missile defenses, systems that have not heretofore been
    legally constrained by the ABM Treaty. It will
    indubitably be cited also as grounds for objecting to
    future cooperation on TMD with allied governments.

  • “Theater missile defense systems may be deployed
    by each side which (1) will not pose a realistic
    threat to the strategic nuclear force of the other side
    and (2) will not be tested to give such systems
    that capability.” The term “realistic” was
    reportedly inserted at Russian insistence. The reason?
    The extent to which a threat is “realistic” is
    clearly in the eyes of the threatened. It is predictable
    that Moscow will be claiming that American TMD systems —
    particularly capable ones — are a threat to individual
    Russian missiles, even if they are wholly inadequate
    to pose a “significant” or
    “meaningful” threat against a Russian attack in
    a “force-on-force” scenario    .

  • “Theater missile defense will not be deployed by
    the sides for use against each other.    ” This
    “principle” appears to introduce a basis for
    the Russians to argue that there should be geographic
    limitations on the deployment of U.S. TMD systems. The
    ABM Treaty imposes no such limitations on non-strategic
    anti-missile weapons.

  • “The scale of the deployment — in number and
    geographic scope — of theater missile defense systems by
    either side will be consistent with theater ballistic
    missile programs confronting that side.    ” This
    “principle” appears to offer the Russians a
    “two-fer”: First, it establishes that there
    should be some relationship between the scale of theater
    missile threats faced by a “side” and the
    number of theater missile defenses that “side”
    may have. And second, it creates a basis for establishing
    numerical as well as geographic limitations on U.S. TMD
    capabilities.

    • According to this logic, since Russia faces a
    potentially enormous danger of attack from shorter-range
    ballistic missiles, it would be entitled to an enormous
    number of TMD systems. Since Russia’s TMD systems (e.g.,
    the SA-12 and S-300) have considerable strategic missile
    defense potential, the Kremlin could proceed with what
    amounts to a nation-wide defense against missiles of
    all ranges    . On the other hand, since the United
    States itself faces no theater missile threats,
    its TMD capabilities would presumably be limited to
    overseas deployments and possibly just to those numbers
    and regions where U.S. forces are still forward-deployed.

  • “In the spirit of partnership, the Presidents
    undertook to promote reciprocal openness in
    activities of the sides in Theater Missile Defense
    systems and in the exchange of corresponding
    information.”     Given previous experience,
    openness in sensitive Russian military programs is
    anything but reciprocal, as is evident from continuing
    problems associated with Moscow’s non-compliance with
    various data exchange and verification requirements of
    existing arms control agreements.

  • “The Presidents confirmed the interest of the
    sides in the development and fielding of effective theater
    missile defense systems on a cooperative basis.     The
    sides will make every effort toward the goal of
    broadening bilateral cooperation in the area of defense
    against ballistic missiles. They will consider expanding
    cooperative efforts in theater missile defense technology
    and exercises, study ways of sharing data obtained
    through early warning systems, discuss theater missile
    defense architecture concepts, and seek opportunities for
    joint research and development in theater missile
    defense.”

    • This “principle” appears to mean that
    instead of the “cooperation” contemplated by
    President Reagan between the two sides on a global
    — read, strategic — anti-missile system, there will now
    be only “cooperation” on theater missile
    defenses. This is a substantial departure even from the
    commitment made by President Yeltsin in January 1992 when
    he expressed a desire to participate in a “global
    protective system.” All other things being equal,
    the “cooperation” contemplated by this far more
    narrow statement will mean the transfer of extremely
    sensitive technical information, software and hardware
    that could lead to its irreparable compromise.

Other Aspects of the Summit Appear No Better

Regrettably, Mr. Clinton appears to have performed no better
in other areas he discussed with Mr. Yeltsin and/or addressed in
their communiqué:

  • Nuclear Weapons for Iran: Mr. Clinton claims to
    have secured two concessions concerning Russia’s planned
    transfer of nuclear weapons-related technology to Iran:
    First, Mr. Yeltsin has agreed not to sell Tehran a gas
    centrifuge facility used to enrich uranium for nuclear
    weapons. This is no major concession as even Yeltsin
    admits that it would be a “military” program;
    its transfer would put Russia in clear violation of the
    Non-Proliferation Treaty and in deep trouble with the
    U.S. Congress. There is every reason to believe that
    this item was added for the sole purpose of throwing it
    overboard in order to get President Clinton’s approval of
    the rest of the Iranian deal.

    • Second, the Gore-Chernomyrdin group is supposed to
    “review” the remainder of Russia’s nuclear
    cooperation program with Tehran. The value of this
    cosmetic exercise was made even more insignificant by Mr.
    Clinton’s announcement that the Russia-Iran cooperation
    was “legal” and “consistent with
    international treaties.”     Worse yet, he agreed to
    pap-filled communiqué language legitimating Russian
    activities by associating the United States with:

    “[The Presidents’ shared] commitments
    to the NPT and to the nuclear suppliers group
    guidelines, and in particular to the principles that
    nuclear transfers should take place only under
    full-scope International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
    safeguards and only when a supplier is satisfied that
    such transfers to any non-nuclear weapon state would
    not contribute to the proliferation of nuclear
    weapons.”

  • Chechnya: First, President Clinton dignified the
    perpetrators of brutal genocide in Chechnya by appearing
    in Moscow for festivities that featured a parade of
    hardware and personnel used in that brutal Stalinesque
    operation. (His decision to absent himself from the
    reviewing stand for the parade poetically captured the
    whole summit’s leitmotif of
    “See-No-Evil.”) Then he agreed to a communiqué
    that reeks of detentist moral equivalence and
    indifference to actual Russian behavior:

    • “Aggressive nationalism, proliferation of
    weapons of mass destruction, unresolved territorial
    disputes and violations in the area of human rights
    present serious threats to stability, peace and
    prosperity. The Presidents agree that the effort
    to deal with these challenges must be based on
    respect for the principles and commitments of the
    Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
    particularly concerning democracy, political
    pluralism, respect for human rights and civil
    liberties,     free market economies and strict
    respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and
    self-determination.    “

  • NATO: Another rout appears to have occurred on the
    alliance-management front. Russian efforts to sabotage
    NATO and prevent its eastward expansion seem to have been
    advanced, among other things, by the adoption of
    communiqué language that appears to commit the United
    States to full Russian membership in an institution
    conceived — and still needed — to deal with a potential
    strategic, military and political threat from Moscow:

    • “[The Presidents] agreed that the central
    element of a lasting peace must be the integration of
    all of Europe into a series of mutually supporting
    institutions and relationships which ensure that
    there will be no return to division or
    confrontation    . The evolution of European
    structures should be directed toward the overall
    goal of integration    . President Clinton stressed
    that the process should be transparent, inclusive and
    based on an integral relationship between the
    security of Europe and that of North America.”

  • Dangerous Technology Transfers: President Clinton
    also affirmed the U.S. commitment to work for the
    earliest possible integration of Russia into the
    floundering organization intended to succeed the
    Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls
    (COCOM) and the Missile Technology Control Regime:

    • “The Presidents agreed that the formal
    participation of the Russian Federation in the
    multilateral nonproliferation export control regimes
    would significantly strengthen those regimes as well
    as broaden the basis for cooperation between the two
    countries on nonproliferation. They agreed to direct
    officials in their respective governments to address
    expeditiously the issues affecting Russian membership
    in the various regimes, with a view to ensuring
    active U.S. support for Russian admission to each of
    the regimes at the earliest possible date.”

    Unfortunately, including Russia and China — two
    of the most prodigious and indiscriminate transferers of
    sensitive dual-use technologies — is a sure-fire way to
    neuter and otherwise obstruct these initiatives.

The Bottom Line

President Clinton has done significant harm to U.S. interests
with his performance in Moscow. It now falls to Congress to try
to undo at least some of this damage. These efforts should
include, among other things: a clear statement of congressional
intent to protect the American people, their forces and allies
overseas against missile attack; penalties for
countries and companies that defy the U.S. economic embargo on
Iran; and conditionality with respect to aid and other
political and economic assistance to Russia. Such conditionality
should make clear the unacceptability of Moscow proceeding with
the transfer of nuclear weapons-related technology to Iran,
furnishing of other strategic capabilities to dangerous third
parties or prosecuting genocidal attacks against Chechnya — or
others within or near its borders.

– 30 –

(1) See the recent Center for Security
Policy Decision Brief entitled Mischief in Moscow,
Crisis in Washington: Will Clinton Defy Congress on Missile
Defense? (No. 95-D 30, 8 May 1995).

(2) In addition to Mischief in Moscow,
see the Center for Security Policy Press Release entitled Read
Their Lips: New Hill Leadership Tells Clinton to Stop Foreclosing
Missile Defense Options (No. 95-P 02,
9 January 1995) and various News Releases by the Coalition
to Defend America: Summit Showdown: Key Legislators, AIPAC
Warn Against Clinton Efforts To Constrain Missile Defenses
(April 12, 1995), Senate Leadership Throws Down the Gauntlet
to Bill Clinton: Defend America — Or Else (March 15, 1995)
and Congressional Leaders, Others Fire Opening Salvo In 1995
Campaign to Defend America (January 24, 1995).

WHEN BILL KRISTOL SPEAKS, REPUBLICANS LISTEN; WILL THEIR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES ADOPT HIS SOUND ADVICE ON FOREIGN POLICY, PERSONNEL?

(Washington, D.C.): At a 17 April Washington forum on
“The Emerging Republican Foreign Policy” sponsored by
Freedom House, one of that party’s most influential figures,
William Kristol, made a stunning argument: Conventional wisdom
which holds that foreign and defense policies no longer matter in
national politics is wrong. He noted that Republicans
have won the White House when they were able — as in 1980, 1984
and 1988 — to offer the American people “a sense of what
the nation is all about, why we should be proud to be Americans.
And that does translate into a vision of America’s role in the
world.”

Even more importantly, Mr. Kristol — who previously
served as Chief of Staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and
Secretary of Education William Bennett and now directs the
Project for the Republican Future — observed the need for a
fundamental redirection of Republican foreign policy, including a
Reaganite repudiation of President Bush’s foreign and defense
policy positions comparable to that undertaken by House
Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1994 with respect to Mr. Bush’s domestic
policy agenda.

” …Gingrich’s victory on domestic policy in
’94…was explicitly based on repudiation of the Bush
Administration’s breaking of its “No New Taxes”
pledge — it was [an] explicit repudiation of Bush domestic
Republicanism and a reversion to Reaganism.

“In foreign policy, you haven’t had that yet, and you
probably need that, not because Bush foreign policy did
not have many good successes, and not because there aren’t
important lessons to be learned from the Bush Administration,
[but] because you need a fresh slate. You need to
have people who don’t have a stake in defending the decision
not to go after Saddam in ’91 or the decision not to go into
Bosnia late in ’91 and early ’92.”

The Center for Security Policy welcomes Bill Kristol’s
forceful articulation of a view to which it has long subscribed,
namely that coherent, robust foreign and defense policy positions
are essential to successful campaigns for the White House. In the
absence of a credible vision of America’s role in the world —
and a willingness to devote intellectual energy and political
capital to defining and espousing it — none of the
Republican presidential contenders are likely to be able to
exploit one of Bill Clinton’s most glaring political liabilities:
his feckless, unprincipled, expediency-driven approach to
international affairs.

The corollary to this conclusion is, as
Mr. Kristol notes, that Republican candidates must not saddle
their campaigns with those who bore responsibility for the Bush
Administration’s failed foreign and defense policies. Unless
equipped with a “fresh slate,” it is predictable that
those who seek the next Republican nomination will be required
either to defend stances that contributed to the defeat of the
last one or allow Mr. Clinton to claim, credibly, that there is
in important respects no difference between his security policy
positions and those of the “mainstream” Republicans who
would remove him from office.

A DEFINITIVE CRITIQUE, AND WINNING PLATFORM, ON SECURITY POLICY; WILL REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES HAVE THE ‘VISION THING’ TO EMBRACE IT?

(Washington, D.C.): Even though the torrent of
announcement speeches and campaign rhetoric from
Republican presidential candidates is becoming ever more
voluminous, the quantity — and quality — of what has
been said to date about America’s role in the world
leaves much to be desired. In particular, the leading
contenders have tended to address this subject with
generalities and platitudes, if at all.

This is a truly astonishing fact given two
considerations: First, Bill Clinton has no greater
political vulnerability than his record of haplessness in
the conduct of foreign relations and the squandering of
U.S. power and prestige. And second, the candidate
who successfully articulates that critique and offers a
convincing alternative stands to reforge the
Republican-Reagan Democrat coalition that has repeatedly
secured the White House for those whose views on social
policy and domestic issues did not enjoy majority
support.

Fortunately, the Republican contenders have just been
offered a brilliant analysis of recent failures in the
foreign and defense policy fields. With characteristic
eloquence and conviction, former Senator Malcolm Wallop
of Wyoming laid out for an audience at the Heritage
Foundation last Monday the main lines of attack — and a
prescription for corrective action — that his party’s
candidates would be well advised to integrate into their
thinking and their platforms.

Denying Clinton the ‘Me-Too’ Excuse

To do so, the Republican field will, however, have to
make a crucial strategic decision: The would-be
presidents must disavow, or at least distance themselves
from, the roots of Mr. Clinton’s most abject security
policy failures which, regrettably, lie in Bush
Administration decisions. To do otherwise is to allow
Bill Clinton an easy out — the credible claim that any
fault for such failures must be apportioned on a
bipartisan basis. In this manner, he might just wrest
from Republicans in 1996 their most empowering issue,
namely, a powerful, secure and respected America, just as
he did in 1992, with devastating results.

The Center for Security Policy believes that Sen.
Wallop’s remarks bear close reading. They epitomize the
clear-headed analysis of foreign and defense policy and
courageous leadership that earned this long-time member
of the Center’s Board of Advisors the organization’s
“Keeper of the Flame” award in 1992. At a
minimum, the Senator’s formidable intellect and
committed conservatism should make him a contender in his
own right — for the position of Secretary of State or
Defense in a Republican administration headed by
whichever candidate has the good political and policy
sense to embrace the Wallop vision and, thereby, to
improve his chances of winning the White House.

‘IT’S ECONOMIC SECURITY, STUPID’: D’AMATO-KING-AIPAC EFFORT ON IMPORT CONTROLS SHOULD APPLY TO IRAN, BEYOND

(Washington, D.C.): In the years since Bill Clinton
successfully campaigned for president on the motto “It’s the
economy, stupid,” his foreign policy seems to have been
defined by a variation on the theme: U.S. interests will be
determined by short-term economic considerations, no matter how
ill-conceived the resulting policy might be.

The corollary to this governing principle appears to be the
axiom “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”: As long as
other nations are stupidly pursuing trade policies contrary to
either their long-term strategic interests or our own, we have no
choice but to follow suit.

On these grounds, for example, the Clinton Administration
has: facilitated the dismantling of the multilateral regime for
controlling exports of militarily relevant technologies (known as
COCOM); aggressively marketed such technologies to China;
essentially normalized relations with Vietnam; and repeatedly
dallied with the idea of easing the trade embargo against Cuba.
The same considerations are also at work in its decision to
reward North Korea with not only $4 billion in new nuclear
reactors but also with trade relations. And the Administration is
actively contemplating at least the partial lifting of economic
sanctions against Serbia and Iraq in the face of mounting
pressure from its allies.

Convergence Theory

To varying degrees, this expediency-driven policy has been
rationalized as “economic engagement.” It amounts,
ironically, to a capitalist mutation of the Marxian doctrine of
economic determinism and assumes that liberal Western values and
democratic institutions will inevitably follow from exposing
closed economies to market forces.

In practice, however, such a policy is doomed to the same
results as its precursors — appeasement and detente: If
unconditioned upon and unaccompanied by systemic political and
economic reform, the result will be to provide life-support to
totalitarian regimes, extending their brutal hold on power at
home and greatly increasing their potential for malevolence
abroad. Thanks to the Clinton Administration, there is scarcely
an odious regime in the world today that is not already enjoying
trade and financial relations with the United States or that is
reasonably expecting to do so shortly.

What About Iran: ‘CoNogo’

The Clinton Administration has been discomfited in recent
days by growing public debate over its policy of continuing
economic engagement towards a totalitarian regime it supposedly
wants to contain. Iran’s frightening arms build-up, including its
acquisition of key ingredients of a nuclear weapons production
complex from Russia, and its threatening military actions in the
Persian Gulf compelled Mr. Clinton in mid-March to block a
massive investment in Iran by the U.S. oil company, Conoco.

The obvious next question was: Why should the American oil
industry be allowed to persist in buying billions of dollars
worth of Iranian crude oil, as long as it is refined and sold
overseas, thereby providing hard currency flows used to
underwrite the mullahs’ ominous machinations? The typical
answer: We have no choice since we will be unable to persuade
other nations’ companies to follow our lead if we stop; and we
will, therefore, only be hurting American corporate and
employment interests by doing so.

The Third Way

Fortunately, two Republicans legislators from New York —
Senator Alfonse D’Amato and Rep. Peter King — and the
American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) have joined
forces to give the U.S. a choice. Messers. D’Amato and King
introduced legislation last month that has been endorsed by AIPAC
as part of its important new “Plan for Action” against
Iran.

The D’Amato-King bill would, according to the Washington
Post, “prohibit the U.S. government from doing business
with any corporation anywhere that does business with Iran, ban
any U.S. exports by or to such a company and prohibit the
importation into the United States of any goods produced by a
company doing oil business with Iran or selling Iran goods with a
potential military use.” As Sen. D’Amato put it, his
legislation would compel “a foreign corporation or
person…to choose between trade with the United States and trade
with Iran.”

In January 1995, Senator D’Amato elaborated on his concerns
about on-going U.S. trade with Iran:

“We are subsidizing Iranian terrorism by purchasing
their oil and it has to stop. Iran is arming itself to the
teeth, and we are simply ignoring it. We must sever any
remaining trade between the United States and Iran to ensure
that we do not provide them with anything that will come back
to haunt us.”

In the past, such a choice has been forced upon foreign
entities with therapeutic effects. For example, in 1982, the
Reagan Administration imposed crippling import controls against a
handful of foreign companies (including a U.S. overseas
subsidiary) involved in the construction of a strategically
portentous Siberian gas pipeline for the Soviet Union when those
entities shipped equipment to Moscow over White House objections.
Three of those companies ultimately went belly up. A few years
later, similar steps taken in retaliation for Toshiba’s illegal
transfer of sensitive machine tools to Moscow compelled it — and
the Japanese government — to tighten up export practices
governing such technology.

Towards a Policy of ‘Economic Security’

The value of the D’Amato-King legislation could extend well
beyond Iran, moreover. By establishing that foreign concerns can
do business with either pariah states or the world’s most
lucrative market — but not both, it can restore leverage
and moral authority that has dissipated under the present and
previous U.S. administrations. No longer will the only
alternative to Uncle Sam “going with the flow” in
international trade with tyrants be the undesirable option of
unilaterally denying American firms the opportunity to compete
for foreign development projects and sales.

The conundrum for the Clinton Administration, of course, is
that if it embraces this sensible policy toward Iran, how can it
justify foregoing it towards other malevolent regimes? Is North
Korea’s Kim Jong-Il really any less bent on acquiring nuclear
weapons than the Iranian mullahs? Is Hafez Assad of Syria any
less guilty of sponsoring international terrorist operations than
Rafsanjani and company in Iran? Is Beijing any less engaged in a
destabilizing arms build-up and aggressive behavior in strategic
international waterways than is Tehran?

The Bottom Line

Before coming to office, the Clinton Administration
talked about creating a National Economic Security Council
that promised to integrate U.S. economic and national security
interests. Regrettably, once installed, Mr. Clinton opted instead
for a National Economic Council — a change of name that appears
to reflect the change in emphasis: National security concerns
have clearly been given, at best, short shrift in Administration
deliberations about foreign trade and economic policy.

By now, however, it should be clear to President Clinton and
his advisors that “it’s economic security,
stupid.” The Center for Security Policy urges the
Administration to embrace the D’Amato-King-AIPAC initiative on
Iran. It also calls upon Mr. Clinton to recognize — and make
use of — that initiative’s central feature: affording the
United States the credible ability and precedent to deter others
from undercutting prudent economic embargoes on pariah states
like Cuba, Serbia, Libya and Iraq.

CLINTON’S CANARD: HIS PHONY ‘INTERNATIONALISM’ IS A SURE-FIRE FORMULA FOR A ‘NEW AMERICAN ISOLATIONISM’

(Washington, D.C.): Richard Nixon would be proud: A
conference jointly sponsored by his presidential library and
think-tank yesterday helped ensure that foreign and defense
policy — an area to which he personally ascribed the highest
priority throughout his long career of public service — was
featured at the very outset of Campaign 1996. If, as a result,
the American people are afforded a clear and understandable
choice in that area, this Nixon legacy achieved posthumously may
come to rival in importance those he accomplished while living.

Unfortunately, in remarks to the “After Victory:
Defining an American Role in an Uncertain World” conference,
President Bill Clinton was at pains to confuse and impede
public understanding of the true character of his foreign
and defense policies. In particular, the President wrapped
himself and his administration in the banner of committed
“internationalists.” He claimed that they were
creatively pursuing policies that would resist a “new form
of American isolationism” and assure that the U.S. would
prevail in the ongoing battle between freedom and tyranny. In an
astounding bit of Orwellian doublespeak, Mr. Clinton even
assailed those who he said were given to “trumpet the
rhetoric of American strength, while denying the resources”
necessary to protect this country’s interests.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that there has
rarely been a presidency more given to the uncertain trumpeting
of American power and the reckless reduction of resources
necessary to support and exercise that power. Far from the
stuff of a committed and credible internationalist, Bill
Clinton’s security policies can better be described as those of a
multilateralist — a man prone to: unilateral disarmament;
the willful pursuit of utopian and dangerous arms control
initiatives; various feckless diplomatic non-solutions to the
world’s crises; and the subordination of U.S. freedom of action
to foreign vetoes.

Watch What He Does, Not What He Says

Each of these tendencies was in evidence in Mr. Clinton’s
remarks to the Nixon conference last night. Consider, for
example:

  • The President announced the unilateral “permanent
    removal” of 200 tons of fissile materials from the
    U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. This action is but the
    latest in a series of steps intended to accomplish what
    he and other Administration officials have described as a
    policy of “denuclearization.”     Other such
    steps include: the dismantling of the infrastructure
    required to produce and maintain the American nuclear
    stockpile; the permanent cessation of nuclear testing
    necessary to a credible, safe and reliable nuclear
    deterrent;(1)
    the termination at one of the Nation’s two national
    laboratories of critical, competitive nuclear weapons
    design work; and the reduction of U.S. nuclear forces at
    a pace far faster than called for by arms control
    agreements, than the Russians are implementing their own
    reductions and than is prudent under present
    international circumstances. The cumulative effect of
    these measures is disastrous for the American nuclear
    deterrent.

  • The most immediate rationalization for the Clinton
    “denuclearization” policy is that such steps
    will promote its goal of obtaining a permanent extension
    of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Mr.
    Clinton said last night that “there is nothing more
    important than” this objective. By his actions,
    he has made clear his view that the need to maintain the
    effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent is a lesser
    priority.

  • The President also rattled off in a mantra-like fashion
    his other arms control objectives: getting the Senate to
    rubber-stamp the seriously flawed START II Treaty;
    obtaining its advice and consent to a treaty that
    fraudulently promises to “rid the world of chemical
    weapons”; “strengthening” an inherently
    unverifiable and widely violated ban on biological
    weapons; giving a new lease on life to the obsolete and
    ever-more-dangerously absurd Anti-Ballistic Missile
    Treaty by expanding its scope and signatories; achieving
    arms control agreements in the Middle East; and —
    perhaps most utopian and addled of all —
    prohibiting the world-wide production and use of
    land-mines. Should Mr. Clinton succeed in these
    endeavors, the United States’ national security posture
    will be even more out of synch with the real-world
    threats to America’s interests than it has become in the
    wake of his Administration’s so-called Bottom-Up Review.

  • Mr. Clinton used the occasion of the Nixon conference as
    well to aver yet again that his Administration’s amazing,
    shrinking agreement with North Korea (2) “does
    stop North Korea’s nuclear program.” In actuality,
    of course, it does no such thing: Thanks to the
    Carter-Clinton deal, North Korea will have traded out the
    capability to produce sufficient plutonium to make a
    couple of nuclear weapons per year for reactors that will
    enable it to manufacture several weapons a week.     The
    technology for accomplishing this is widely available; it
    is foolish to believe that the North will not have it by
    the time one or both of the new reactors come on-line.

    • As with his contention that the choice is between his
    version     of internationalism or isolationism, the
    President creates a false choice between his agreement and
    alternatives that are either “unworkable,”
    “foolhardy” or inadequately supported by the South
    Koreans and Japan. At a bare minimum, it is certainly not
    foolhardy to insist — as the chairman of the Senate Foreign
    Relations Committee, Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), has done
    recently — that this agreement be formalized as a treaty
    and submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent    .
    It is inconceivable that either South Korea or Japan could
    object to such a step since it can only help to maximize the
    chances for securing the North’s compliance. And there is no
    reason why this should be unworkable unless North
    Korea has not really agreed to what the Clinton
    Administration claims it has, something the United States and
    its allies is better off establishing sooner rather than
    later.

  • President Clinton also leveled a broadside at those he
    cast as “isolationists” who “would
    eliminate any meaningful role for the United
    Nations…deny resources to our peacekeepers and even to
    our troops and instead squander them on Star Wars. And
    they would refuse aid to the fledgling democracies and to
    all those fighting poverty and environmental problems
    that can literally destroy hopes for a more democratic,
    more prosperous, more safe world.”

    • This bit of petulant demagoguery bears little resemblance
    to the sensible internationalist approach being
    advanced by the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. What
    is more, it is certain (if not intended) to have the effect
    of alienating those interested in a genuine bipartisan policy
    of American engagement and leadership in global affairs.

The Dole Alternative

An eloquent refutation of President Clinton’s suggestion
that the Nation faced a choice between conducting U.S. foreign
and defense policy his way or isolationism was provided by
Senator Robert Dole (R-KA), the Senate Majority Leader and
incipient presidential candidate. In remarks to the Nixon
conference preceding the President’s, Sen. Dole made clear that
he embraced genuine internationalism even as he rejected
important tenets of the Clinton approach.

The Majority Leader identified a number of serious and
“multifaceted threats” to American interests including:

“…A resurgent Russia, asserting its position around
the globe. China has international ambitions of its own, and
is in the midst of a leadership transition. There are
international terrorists — often state-supported. There are
global crime syndicates. There are extremist movements based
on religion or ethnic origin.”

The following were among the noteworthy items in Sen. Dole’s
critique of the Clinton Administration’s security policies:

  • A scathing review of Russian behavior incompatible with
    the Clinton Administration’s cherished notion of a
    reliable partnership with Moscow, including a reference
    to a statement by the Nixon conference’s chairman —
    former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — that
    “…What we dealt with in the Cold War was both
    communism and imperialism, and while communism was
    defeated, the trend toward [Russian] imperialism still
    exists.”

  • A condemnation of “The Clinton Administration’s
    ‘Russia First’ policy — which has turned into a ‘Yeltsin
    first’ policy     — resulted in the loss of a tremendous
    opportunity to state American concerns forcefully before
    thousands were slaughtered in Chechnya.” He argued
    for “developing a more honest relationship, one that
    does not paper over important policy differences with an
    appeal to personal ties….Our differences with Russia
    should be identified,…negotiated where possible and
    condemned when necessary.”

  • A warning that “American and European inaction in
    the face of [Serbian genocidal aggression in the Balkans]
    cannot help but embolden other radical ethno-nationalists
    by giving them a green light for ethnic cleansing.”

  • A judgment that “the Agreed Framework has little
    prospect of successfully addressing the North Korean
    threat, and apparently, has already been violated by
    Pyongyang.”

  • And, importantly, an endorsement of the need for
    ballistic missile defenses    . Sen. Dole noted that:

    • “There are defensive options…that could provide
    the United States and our allies with protection against
    accidental and limited ballistic missile strikes. Pursuing
    and effective ballistic missile defense capability should be
    a top priority for U.S. defense policy now and for the
    foreseeable future.”

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy welcomes the joining of the
debate over the present and future course of American foreign and
defense policy. In the best tradition of President Nixon’s latter
years, the “After Victory” conference has obliged those
who might otherwise be inclined to focus on other things to
sharpen positions on an issue the Center believes is likely to
prove critical to the outcome of the next presidential election:
Who best can offer the sort of leadership in international
affairs that will protect burgeoning and vital U.S. interests
overseas, safeguard American security at home and promote through
principled, steadfast policies the spread of freedom around the
world? Such is the stuff of which genuine bipartisan coalitions
— and successful campaigns for the White House — are made.

There should be no confusion on one point, however: The
Clinton Administration may try to dress up its multilateralist
policies as exemplars of a coherent, effective, internationalist
program. The truth is that they are, for the most part,
manifestations of — or contributing factors to — the “new
American isolationism” that the President so glibly decries.
By dismantling U.S. military power, subordinating what remains of
it to the dictates of the United Nations and other multilateral
institutions and fostering the notion that doomed peacekeeping
operations and futile arms control agreements are the best hope
for fostering an acceptable world order, the Administration is
exposing the American people and their interests to grave new
perils even as it alienates them from the pursuit of more
effective solutions.

The Center urges Senator Dole and other Republican leaders —
including House Speaker Newt Gingrich who also presented the
Nixon conference yesterday with a strong endorsement of the need
for a real internationalist approach to American security
policy — to continue to articulate their alternative to the
failed Clinton approach. If they do so, they are sure to be
rewarded with a further mandate for leadership from a grateful
public.

– 30 –

(1) The President continues to suggest
that he can maintain a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent
without nuclear testing. Unfortunately, he is not heeding the
advice of one of his table-mates at last night’s dinner — former
Secretary of Defense and of Energy James Schlesinger. In 12 July
1993, he published an immensely important op.ed. article in the Wall
Street Journal entitled “Clinton Defers a Necessity —
Nuclear Testing.” It said, in part:

“…Reliability testing [of nuclear weapons] is
essential. As time passes, and as [retrofits are made to
correct degraded or failed weapons components], we must be
absolutely confident that this modified device will still
induce the proper nuclear reaction. That is why non-nuclear
testing, valuable as it is, is insufficient. It is why talk
of a test ban with zero nuclear yield is irresponsible.”

(2) The accord with North Korea is still
sometimes referred to as a “treaty” (for example, last
week by Under Secretary of Defense Walt Slocomb in a public
defense of the deal hosted by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies). In fact, it is now officially not even a
“framework agreement” but an “agreed
framework” — a formulation that apparently is intended to
reflect the fact that the deal amounts to little more than a
vehicle to make representations about ostensible North Korean
commitments that are, in fact, already being honored in the
breach. (In this regard, see the article in today’s Washington
Post describing complaints from Senator Mitch McConnell about
Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s lack of candor in
testimony on Capitol Hill regarding Pyongyang’s diversion of fuel
now being bought for it by the U.S. Defense Department.)

Heed Not Clinton’s Reckless ‘Call to Arms Control’

(Washington, D.C.): Much of what is wrong with Bill Clinton’s foreign and defense policy was
on display in a speech given yesterday by his National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake, to a
convocation of international arms controllers: In pursuit of a negotiating objective of dubious
value — the permanent extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — Dr. Lake
amply demonstrated the Administration’s propensity to pander to all comers. Worse yet, the
wheeling and dealing threatens to foreclose, or otherwise compromise, vital American defense
capabilities which will be all the more needed in the event U.S. diplomacy once again delivers
more promises than security.

The aim of Dr. Lake’s remarks — and a prominent theme of the two-day event sponsored by the
leftish Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at which they occurred — was to persuade
representatives of nations who are signatories of the NPT that the United States is earnestly
engaged in a wide array of ambitious disarmament ventures. By so doing, the Clinton
Administration hopes to induce such countries not only to “re-up” when the Non-Proliferation
Treaty Review Conference is held in April. It seeks, in addition, their agreement to change the
accord from one which requires such renewals every five years to a treaty of indefinite duration as
what Dr. Lake calls a demonstration of “the international community’s resolve” to fight nuclear
proliferation.

A Defective Strategy

Clearly, there are several problems with this strategy. First of all, the NPT has not precluded
nations determined to acquire nuclear weapons from doing so. It may have made such efforts
more complex, expensive and time-consuming than would otherwise have been the case, but
signatories like Iraq and North Korea, that wanted to pursue military nuclear programs proved
adept at doing so despite International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

In fact, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has principally served as a rationale that nations
which did not want to “go nuclear” could cite to justify their policy. A number of these nations
have, nonetheless, acquired sufficient nuclear technology and infrastructure to permit them to
obtain some nuclear weapons capability in short order should they feel the need to become
members of the “nuclear club.”

Second, as Dr. Lake himself acknowledged yesterday, nations interested in obtaining nuclear
weapons or fissile materials with which to fabricate them no longer need to produce these items
themselves. The National Security Advisor described as “a new and deeply disturbing
phenomenon” the practice of “nuclear smuggling, with the greatest threat coming from the
stockpiles of the former Soviet Union.” If the effort to stem drug-trafficking is any guide, the
number of arrests of those smuggling nuclear weapons-grade materials is but a fraction of those
successfully transferring such deadly commodities to willing buyers.

Third, the price the United States is determined to pay in the hope of inducing others to agree to
the extension of the NPT is exceedingly high. Dr. Lake used the occasion of his remarks to affirm
the Administration’s commitment to achieve a Comprehensive Test Ban (CAB) in 1995 by
unveiling several new U.S. concessions. These include: perpetuating a unilateral moratorium on
underground nuclear testing until a CAB enters into force; a proposal to keep the relevant
negotiations in session through the summer; and abandoning a U.S. demand that it have the right
to withdraw from a CAB ten years after it enters into force.

Displaying the internal illogic of the Clinton Administration’s position on nuclear weapons,
however, Dr. Lake hastily added that “the President considers the maintenance of a safe and
reliable nuclear stockpfle to be in the supreme national interest of the United States.”
Either Mr. Clinton is unaware that the main point of a Comprehensive Test Ban is to produce
unsafe and/or unreliable nuclear stockpiles — leading ultimately to their complete elimination — or
he is being disingenuous about his commitment to maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal in such a
condition.

The Rest of the U.S. Arms Control Agenda is No Better

In the hope of impressing upon his audience the seriousness of President Clinton’s commitment to
disarmament, Anthony Lake proceeded to describe an ambitious arms control agenda beyond the
NPT. The common denominator of most — if not all — of the Clinton initiatives appears to be that
the Administration is completely untroubled by the impracticality, unverifiability or asymmetrical
effect of such treaties. The rationale evidently is that the mere act of reaching an agreement,
however flawed, creates an “international norm” which then gives the United States and other
members of the international community standing to complain about others’ infractions.

Unfortunately, the history of arms control is replete with instances in which the “family of
nations” either refused to address non-compliance with such international norms — or did so in a
completely ineffectual manner. It is predictable that the same will be true of the arrangements Mr.
Clinton wants to add to the international lawbooks:

  • START II: Secretary of State Warren Christopher will urge the Senate today quickly to
    advise and consent to the START II Treaty signed with Russia in January 1993. Such haste is
    clearly unwise in light of the serious concerns that now exist about Russian compliance with
    existing arms control agreements (notably, treaties governing Intermediate-range Nuclear
    Forces, Conventional Forces in Europe, and chemical and biological weapons) and uncertainty
    about the future direction of Russia. Perhaps because a rigorous congressional review would
    raise hard questions about the extent to which the Administration has already been unilaterally
    implementing     the START 11 Treaty, the Clinton team hopes that a prospective signing
    ceremony at the May summit with Boris Yeltsin will effectively truncate unwanted Senate
    deliberations.

  • The ABM Treaty: Dr. Lake reported that the Administration is hoping to conclude this year
    negotiations that will “preserve the viability” of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, while
    clarifying the distinction between theater missile defenses (not currently limited by the Treaty)
    and strategic defenses that are. In fact, the Administration is pursuing changes to the ABM
    Treaty that would greatly expand its scope, foreclosing a number of promising anti-missile
    defense technologies and making it more difficult for the United States to protect its troops
    and allies overseas, to say nothing of its own people. Such “viability” is clearly at cross-purposes with the desires of the newly elected Republican majority in Congress and —
    according to recent polling data made public last week by the Coalition to Defend America —
    the wishes of most Americans.

  • The Chemical Weapons Convention: According to Dr. Lake, the Clinton Administration is
    also determined to push for ratification of the CWC, despite: the obvious futility of trying to
    eliminate chemical weapons from the face of the earth; the likelihood that such a treaty will
    exacerbate already serious shortfalls in U.S. chemical defensive capabilities; and the substantial
    costs that individual American corporations will be obliged to incur to comply with the CWC’s
    intrusive inspection and monitoring requirements.

  • The Biological Weapons Convention: The United States hopes to adopt the intrusive and
    expensive verification regime negotiated for the Chemical Weapons Convention as a model for
    “fixing” the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. These arrangements will, of course,
    prove no more effective in the latter case than they would be in the former. If adopted,
    however, they will assuredly serve to compromise the competitive posture of the U.S.
    biotechnology industry by exposing it — in the name of arms control verification — to
    widespread commercial espionage.

  • The Convention on Conventional Weapons: Dr. Lake announced that the United States will
    also push for ratification of a convention that will “advance President Clinton’s initiative to
    eliminate the most deadly of land mines.” Like so many other utopian arms control schemes
    being pursued by the Clinton Administration, this initiative will not end the menace posed to
    innocent civilians by easily and cheaply manufactured land mines. It may, however, compel
    U.S. and allied military personnel to end their use of a valuable defensive measure, resulting in
    unnecessary casualties in future combat situations.

‘Year of Indecision’

Yet another hallmark of the Clinton Administration was on display as Anthony Lake was laying
out his ambitious arms control agenda for 1995 — which he repeatedly called the “year of
decision”: Even as Dr. Lake was saying that “there are no more important negotiations before us”
than those concerning the permanent extension of the NPT, U.S. officials were putting out the
word that the United States would be willing to accept a 15-year review. According to today’s
Washington Times, “the Administration is privately explaining its plan to have the NPT opened
for review every 15 years instead of never allowing reviews.”

Such indecisiveness can only reinforce the impression that if one does not like the Clinton
position, just wait: It will change momentarily. What is more, as the truculent North Koreans
demonstrated, under the present Administration, the United States will probably reward — rather
than seek to punish — those who resist its policies.

The Bottom Line

The risks to U.S. security and foreign policy interests arising from the misbegotten Clinton arms
control agenda should not be underestimated. Among other things, the United States is in danger
of destroying the safety, reliability and effectiveness of its nuclear deterrent. The Administration
could exacerbate America’s present vulnerability to chemical, biological or nuclear weapons —
whether delivered by ballistic missiles or otherwise. In the name of advancing the NPT, the
Administration could even play into the hands of those seeking to weaken one of its most
important regional allies, Israel (which is not a signatory of the NPT and which wisely has
maintained a studied ambiguity about its nuclear capabilities).

The Center for Security Policy believes that the new Republican-led Congress ought to
demand a “time-out” on further Clinton Administration arms control initiatives. The
premises that animate these initiatives — and the concessions being offered to sell them —
warrant a close adult supervision that is not in evidence from Dr. Lake and his colleagues.

An important first step in this direction has come in the form of letters signed by virtually every
member of the House and Senate Republican leadership (including relevant committee and
subcommittee chairmen) calling upon the Administration to suspend its efforts to renegotiate the
ABM Treaty. As the Clinton team seems determined to defy the will of Congress in this regard(1),
legislation is in order preventing such negotiations until legislators have had an opportunity to
consider whether they are more interested in protecting the people of the United States against
missile attack or “preserving the viability of the ABM Treaty.” At the very least, a similar shot
across the bow should be fired with regard to the other elements of the Clinton arms control
agenda.

– 30 –

1. See in this regard the front-page story in today’s Washington Times, entitled, ‘Missile Pact With
Russia on Fast Track.’

Letter to the President

Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515-1801

January 4, 1995

The Honorable Bill Clinton
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

We appreciate your letter of October 22, 1994 responding to the letter of September 19, 1994
signed by a bipartisan group of legislators regarding the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty
and constraints on theatre missile defenses.

We welcome your assurances that your Administration is “not going to rush” the process of
negotiating changes to the 1972 ABM Treaty. It is our expectation that the new Congress and
relevant Congressional committees will want, as an early order of business, to examine the
wisdom of expanding the ABM Treaty’s limitations in the name of “demarcating” strategic and
theatre missile defenses and multilateralizing this agreement. We also anticipate that there will be
considerable interest in reviewing the more fundamental issue whether a treaty that is intended to
prohibit an effective defense of the United States against missile attack is consistent with our
Nation’s vital security interests and emerging threats.

Therefore, we respectfully suggest that further negotiations on either the demarcation or
multilateralization efforts, or any other efforts that bear on the viability of the ABM Treaty, be
suspended until the new Congress has had an opportunity to examine these questions with care.

Sincerely,

Honorable Richard K. Armey

Honorable Newt Gingrich

Honorable Floyd Spence

Honorable C.W. Bill Young

Honorable Henry J. Hyde

Honorable Bob Livingston

Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman

Honorable Jerry Lewis

Honorable Christopher Cox

Honorable Joe Skeen

Honorable Larry Combest

Honorable Bill Paxon

Honorable Tom DeLay

Honorable Joe Barton

Honorable Susan Molinari

Honorable Joseph M. McDade

Honorable John A. Boehner

Playing President

The Washington Post, December 21, 1994

JIMMY CARTER seems now to be coaxing Bosnia’s warring Serbs and Muslims into a
cease-fire. It sounds promising enough: Who can oppose a halt in the carnage? But what is really
going on? How does an ostensible private person suddenly appear to acquire American and
“contact group” authority to make proposals, to pass around signed papers, to assign roles to
those not at his portable little table — in effect, to play a president? Is this not the same man who
insisted he represented only the “Carter Center”? Can his works be repudiated if a need arises? Is
he actually not operating in the penumbra of the Clinton administration’s self-doubt and
uncertainty and creating political facts whose consequences others will have to sort out?

A cease-fire: The Muslim-led Bosnian government wants a breather, the better to get through
the winter, rearm and fight on. The Bosnian Serbs want a permanent halt, the better to nail down
their gains. Unless the Muslims agree to this in two weeks, the Serbs say, the four-month
cease-fire supposedly accepted under Mr. Carter’s mediation is off. So what has been agreed to
beyond a Christmas respite?

The peace plan: The Muslim-led Bosnian government had favored the compromise plan written
up on a take-it-or-leave-it basis by the “contact group” consisting of the United States, Russia,
France, Britain and Germany. Bosnian Serbs had rejected it. They now accept the plan except for
its territorial and political provisions — except, that is, for its essentials. So, again, what has been
agreed to beyond an assertion of the familiar divide?

Jimmy Carter has used his own personal standing and negotiating skills and others’ pessimism
and fatigue to insert himself into a deadly stalemate in a manner defying order and accountability.
He has only his reputation to lose. Others have much more. It is incredible that he should have
gone so far.

And unless there is an entire dimension to both these proceedings and the trumpeted agreement
that has not been disclosed, it is more incredible that the Clinton administration should have let
him. Jimmy Carter is a man of peace. He has also all too often been a loose cannon. This was the
moment when Bill Clinton was supposed to be restoring his claim to be “presidential.” He has
done the opposite by appearing to fall into a Carter-fronted undercutting of the Muslim position.
Warren Christopher — you remember Warren Christopher, our secretary of state? — has condoned
an intervention that diminishes both his office and the foreign policy interests of the United States.

YOU CALL THIS A “NEW DEMOCRAT” AGENDA? THE D.L.C. “NO-NUKES” IDEA IS NOT MAINSTREAM AND MUST BE REJECTED BY CONGRESS

(Washington, D.C.): Over the past few days, the
Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) — an organization
that has traditionally been associated with
moderate-to-conservative positions in the Democratic
Party has properly taken to task one of its founders,
President Bill Clinton. Specifically, the DLC decried Mr.
Clinton’s abandonment of the political center — a
constituency whose support was critical to the his
election in 1992 and whose wholesale defection in 1994
doomed many Democratic candidacies.

This message was communicated with particular feeling
by the organization’s current chairman, a generally quite
sensible Congressman, Dave McCurdy (D-OK), whose own bid
for the U.S. Senate was sunk by the political rip tide
running against President Clinton — and anyone
associated with him. As Rep. McCurdy told the DLC
yesterday:

“While Bill Clinton has the mind of a new
Democrat, he retains the heart of an old
Democrat. The result is an administration that has
pursued elements of a moderate and liberal agenda at
the same time, to the great confusion of the American
people.”

‘Goring’ the President’s Ox

Others piled on with the same theme. DLC President Al
From, for example, warned the group that the Democratic
Party must change its policy direction or, “We will
not be a national party at the beginning of the next
century.” Then, in a transparent bit of political
repositioning, Vice President Al Gore tried to distance
himself from the left-wing agenda of the Clinton-Gore
Administration. Claiming that the DLC had provided
“the intellectual basis” for the
Administration, Mr. Gore observed that it had failed to
be “100 percent faithful” to the DLC’s policy
proposals, adding, “You can — and do — make a
powerful argument that where we have not been, we should
have been.”

Looney Left Agenda — Not ‘A Mainstream
Contract’

Incredibly, in the midst of these and other acerbic
and well-deserved criticisms of the Clinton
Administration’s leftward lurch, the DLC’s in-house
think-tank, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI),
served up what it believes is — in contrast to the
Clinton agenda — a “Mainstream
Contract.” As the name suggests, the DLC/PPI program
is also intended to be seen as a counterpoint to the
Republican-sponsored “Contract With America”
which, in addition to being better known, has the
advantage of having been submitted to and endorsed by
the majority of voters in the last election.

Given this background, it is extraordinary indeed that
the DLC would include in its so-called Mainstream
Contract a proposal concerning national security that can
only be characterized as a position of the Looney Left.
In a precis of the DLC’s proposal published in the New
York Times on 5 December 1994, Will Marshall,
president of the Progressive Policy Institute, advocated
that Democrats “end the Nuclear Century.“
He went on to say:

“Nuclear weapons are now more a liability
than an asset to our security. Democrats should call
for a ‘global grand bargain’ in which the U.S. and
the other four nuclear powers agree to reduce their
stockpiles [of nuclear weapons] toward zero and other
countries agree to strong, enforceable
non-proliferation measures.”

Are All Democrats Embracing U.S.
‘Denuclearization’?

The notion that the United States can negotiate away
the nuclear century by agreeing, along with Russia,
China, Britain and France to eliminate national
stockpiles is untenable. For one thing, the nuclear genie
is forever out of the bottle. Other states beyond the
five — including India, North Korea, Iraq, Iran and
Pakistan — either possess nuclear weapons or will
shortly do so. Even if one could have confidence that the
Russians and Chinese would faithfully honor an agreement
banning nuclear weapons (and one cannot), it is
sheer self-delusion to believe that “strong,
enforceable non-proliferation measures” can be
devised and promulgated that will end others’ nuclear
programs and prevent further hemorrhaging of
thermonuclear technology.

Unfortunately, the DLC “no-nukes” proposal
sounds eerily like the Clinton Administration’s
“denuclearization” policy — the product of
precisely the sorts of “Old Democrat”
influences Messrs. McCurdy, From and Marshall have been
so lucidly denouncing. In particular, Energy Secretary
Hazel O’Leary and a cadre of anti-nuclear activists she
has entrusted with senior positions in the Department of
Energy have been engaged in a systematic effort
unilaterally to disable and dismantle the U.S. nuclear
weapons complex.(1)
When coupled with a gratuitous swipe at the Republican
Contract for being “bent on reviving ‘Star Wars’ and
needless military spending,” the DLC/PPI program
sounds in the defense field decidedly out of touch with
the American political mainstream.

The Bottom Line

The new majority in Congress was elected on a platform
of restoring U.S. national security — not unilaterally
dismantling it, pursuing fatuous and inevitably futile
arms control agreements or foreclosing prudent
investments in defensive technologies and systems. Early
orders of business — consistent with real mainstream
political views — should, therefore be to:

  • Enact the Contract With America’s
    commitment to “deploy at the earliest
    possible moment an anti-ballistic missile system
    that is capable of providing a highly effective
    defense of the United States against ballistic
    missile attacks    …[and] to
    forward-deployed and expeditionary elements of
    the Armed Forces of the United States and to
    friendly forces and allies of the United
    States.”

    • In this connection, the Center applauds
    remarks made by the incoming Speaker of the
    House, Newt Gingrich, in a 5 December interview
    with Aviation Week and Space Technology:

    “‘I would rather rely on engineers
    than diplomats for security,’ Gingrich
    asserted. ‘I think with the rise of Iran,
    North Korea, Iraq, Syria and China…we
    should be rapidly developing a capacity to
    defeat a limited missile threat. I think we
    clearly have the capacity to defeat a threat
    of 10 or 15 or 20 missiles. And yet, in the
    scale of horror that an outlaw regime could
    rain on the United States if one missile got
    through is unimaginable. And nobody is taking
    this seriously.'”

  • Investigate the Clinton
    Administration’s dangerously misguided policy of
    denuclearizing the United States.     Such
    an investigation should examine, among other
    things, Mrs. O’Leary’s astounding personnel
    practices, the deteriorating security condition
    at sensitive DOE facilities and the strategic
    implications of: having no reliable source of
    tritium (a radioactive gas that is crucial to the
    operation of modern nuclear weapons); the
    subordination of key Energy complex activities to
    paralyzing environmental impact proceedings; and
    the cumulative effects of budget cuts on
    weapons-related development, testing and
    production and on the maintenance of the existing
    stockpile.

    • Such an investigation, if rigorously pursued,
    should precipitate the prompt removal from office
    of Mrs. O’Leary and her cohorts and the adoption
    of urgent course corrections for the weapons
    complex they are so egregiously mismanaging.

– 30 –

1. One year ago today, Mrs.
O’Leary took an important step in this direction by
announcing the wholesale declassification of large
quantities of classified materials. In a Decision
Brief entitled U.S.
‘Denuclearization’: Who’s Minding the Store?
(No. 93-D103, 9
December 1993), the Center for Security Policy described
this step as “…Arguably the most devastating
single attack on the underpinnings of the U.S. national
security structure since Japan’s lightning strike on the
7th Fleet fifty-two years ago.” The Decision
Brief went on to enumerate several other areas
in which Mrs. O’Leary’s self-declared policy of U.S.
denuclearization was manifesting itself. The Center will
issue an update on this subject shortly.

A Dinner Party

By WILLIAM SAFIRE
The New York Times, November 24, 1994

As soon as he arrived at the dinner for him at the Israeli Ambassador’s residence, Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin took me aside to chastise me for opposing his desire for U.S. troops on the Golan
Heights.

“The whole idea was Bush and Baker’s,” he insisted, as if that were in its favor. “They proposed
a whole division.”

To check out that secret proposal to commit 15,000 troops, I walked over to Dennis Ross,
who had been Secretary of State James Baker’s top Middle East aide, and continues in that post
under Warren Christopher. “Source says back in ’91 you guys promised a whole division on the
Golan — true?”

“An American military presence was discussed with Prime Minister Shamir,” Ross admitted,
“but no numbers were ever used. Shamir said, ‘Very interesting, I’ll think about it,’ and later turned
it down.”

Went back to Rabin and related the response. “Not only did they promise a division,” he said,
reddening, “but a security pact as well. You don’t believe me? Ask Shamir!”

(Next day I called Shamir, who said, “I always opposed U.S. forces to defend Israel, and I don’t
remember any such proposal to me, because I always opposed withdrawal from the Golan.” Three
memories conflict; go figure.)

At the dinner table, with Secretary Christopher between us, Rabin charged I had been
“brainwashed by the Gang of Three” (a trio of Likud spokesmen). He suggested that my Times
colleague Abe Rosenthal and I should read Evans and Novak. (Gee, what a turnover in the Amen
Corner.)

I was deeply perturbed — not at my old friend Rabin, with whom I can disagree without rancor
— but at my lack of notepaper at a newsworthy moment. Chris came to the rescue, slipping me
one of the index cards he had used for his toast.

Did Israel really need the Americans on the border to make a deal with Syria?

“The gap in our negotiations,” the Prime Minister said, lighting a cigarette that nearly
asphyxiated Donna Shalala, seated to his right, “is not related to the presence of American troops.
It is not a major issue.”

Great, said I; if it’s no big deal to the Syrians, and it’s so disruptive to Israelis and Americans,
then why not drop it?

“It could become one,” he replied.

C’mon, Yitzhak, don’t you want those U.S. troops on the Golan to sell your withdrawal from
the Golan to Israelis?

“If I listened to public opinion, I wouldn’t do anything,” he countered gutsily. “As long as I have
a majority of one, I’ll continue.”

Secretary Christopher, taking Rabin’s side in this dinner-debate, asked what my reasons were for
opposing U.S. “monitors.” I said I’d answer that in a column, and he smiled, “I withdraw the
question.”

Some reasons are: (1) the U.S. would then become “neutral” in the struggles between Syria and
Israel, in lieu of continuing as Israel’s ally — a State Department Arabist’s evenhanded dream; (2)
the U.S. troops would become targets of terrorist attempts to upset the peace process; (3) Israel’s
freedom of action would be compromised, with no pre-emptive action possible without U.S.
permission; (4) America’s admiration for Israelis as militarily self-reliant would be replaced by
resentment about risking U.S. lives patrolling their borders.

Rabin brushed all that off. “Menachem Begin set the precedent by arranging for American
monitors in the Sinai,” he argued. But wouldn’t Golan units be at much greater risk? Chris slipped
me another index card. “Just the opposite,” Rabin held. He waved aside what happened to U.S.
marines in nearby Lebanon.

I tried to tell him that if he bottomed his negotiation with Syria on being able to deliver
American troops to the Golan, the negotiation would fail. Bill Clinton, who has foolishly promised
both Rabin and Hafez al-Assad to “make the case” for a permanent American border patrol,
would lose that case.

Why are senators holding credentials as unwavering supporters of Israel — Moynihan, D’Amato,
Packwood — against an American tripwire on the Golan? Why are they joined by most of Israel’s
strongest defenders in U.S. media?

We’re not against risks for peace; we’re against imperiling the alliance between Israel and the
U.S.