Tag Archives: Congress

Changed Circumstances in Senate Require Bush to Move Now on Missile Defense

(Washington, D.C.): Senator Jim Jeffords’ departure from the Republican caucus may have one therapeutic repercussion: The Bush Administration will have an incentive to act with dispatch on its top national security priority — defending the United States, its forces overseas and its allies against ballistic missile attack.

As the Center for Security Policy’s President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., notes in a column published today in National Review Online, changes in the Senate leadership — notably the expected passing of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committee’s gavels to, respectively, Senators Joseph Biden and Carl Levin — make it imperative that President Bush remove his missile defense initiative from the death-of-a-thousand-cuts fate that awaits should it continue to be pursued in a business-as-usual fashion. The time has come for real presidential leadership. The way to do it is described below.

Boost Phase

By Frank J.Gaffney, Jr.

National Review Online, 24 May 2001

The defection of Sen. Jim Jeffords from the Republican party spells trouble for most of President Bush’s agenda. That is particularly true in one area: His commitment to defend the American people, their forces, and allies overseas against ballistic-missile attack.

The immediate problem is that Senators Jesse Helms and John Warner will, respectively, turn over the gavels of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees to their Democratic counterparts, Senators Joseph Biden and Carl Levin. That transfer of power means that Mr. Bush will no longer be able to count on two pivotal committees being led by legislators who share his sense of urgency about ending America’s present, absolute vulnerability to missile strikes. Now, these committees will fall into the hands of senators who have been the most indefatigable and effective opponents of previous efforts aimed at ending that vulnerability.

Left to their own devices, Messrs. Biden and Levin will do everything in their power to preserve the status quo. In Washington, few things are easier than resisting change. And what President Bush is proposing to do end the impediment to the deployment of effective missile defenses posed by the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, signed in 1972 with the Soviet Union, and initiate deployments impermissible under that accord will require him to overcome immense inertia.

Even before they became chairmen, both senators impeded the confirmation of some of President Bush’s appointees who will be responsible for missile defense and arms-control policy in the State and Defense Departments. Once they assume their chairmanships, it is a safe bet that they and their staffs will work assiduously to interfere with the Bush administration’s missile-defense policies and programs as well.

If the President is serious about deploying effective missile defenses, he will not be able to get there by accommodating, appeasing, or trying to compromise with the likes of Senators Biden and Levin. Adopting such an approach (as is so often the case with conventional opinion) is wrong. These legislators share an ideological commitment to the ABM Treaty and the arms-control house of cards built upon it. They may, for tactical reasons, choose to conceal their antipathy to anti-missile programs at variance with that accord, but they will never willingly agree to approve or otherwise legitimize such programs.

Instead, Mr. Bush’s only hope of realizing his goal of defending America against missile attack is to throw down the gauntlet. As William Kristol put it in an op-ed article in today’s Washington Post: “Bush will have no choice but to follow Reagan’s example. He will have to show that on a few key issues he can use the bully pulpit to strike fear into Democratic hearts. Any successful president needs to be not just liked but also feared.”

Here are the steps Mr. Bush should take at once to provide the needed leadership on missile defense and to minimize the chances that he will be thwarted at every turn by the likes of Messrs. Biden and Levin:

1. Mr. Bush should announce that the United States believes that the missile threat now justifies the immediate, emergency deployment of anti-missile capabilities. The emergency arises from missile developments in Iran, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and China (both vis-a-vis Taiwan and the United States). During recently completed consultations with many nations, his representatives made clear our view on this score and served notice that the president was determined to respond appropriately.

2. As a practical matter, an immediate deployment can only take place at the moment by using the Navy’s Aegis air-defense ships. While the existing Aegis system would have very limited ability to shoot down long-range ballistic missiles, the presence of an American missile defense of even uncertain effectiveness may help dissuade nations contemplating attacks and comfort coalition partners, other allies, and U.S. personnel sent into harm’s way who have reason to fear those attacks. A similar strategic benefit materialized when Patriot air defenses of unknown quality as anti-missile systems were dispatched to the Persian Gulf and Israel at the time of Operation Desert Shield.

3. What is more, six months from now given the appropriate presidential priority and a minimal increase in resources the Navy could introduce several low-cost improvements to the performance of the existing Aegis radar and missile systems so as to increase significantly their probability-of-kill under specified circumstances.

4. Accordingly, the president should immediately announce that, henceforth, Aegis ships equipped with existing Standard Missile II Block IV missiles will be tasked to provide whatever anti-missile protection they can to U.S. forces and allies and to the American people at home. The president has the authority to depart from the ABM Treaty which prohibits the United States from defending its territory against ballistic-missile attack without congressional assent. And, thanks to the negligible marginal costs associated with the first of these initiatives, he can act without having to seek additional funding from Congress.

5. Having set in train his defensive program, Mr. Bush can go to the American people and elicit their support for the next steps initially, the relatively low-cost upgrades to the Aegis system and then, as needed, other complementary and cost-effective anti-missile systems (the most attractive option being space-based defenses). In this fashion, the president has a chance to present Senators Biden and Levin with a fait accompli that will be much more difficult to oppose, let alone undo, than would be the sort of “business-as-usual” approach driven by budget timelines and processes. The latter are mortally susceptible to behind-the-scenes sabotaging at which veteran lawmakers like Joe Biden and Carl Levin are past masters.

As it happens, there will probably be no better time to launch Mr. Bush’s missile-defense initiative than in the midst of the hoopla over the summer’s newest blockbuster movie, Pearl Harbor. After all, the American people have rarely had more occasion to focus on the ineluctable fact that surprise attacks, like that on Oahu, are by definition surprises. With that reminder, President Bush should have to do little more than establish his determination not to leave our nation vulnerable to a future Pearl Harbor one that, if conducted by weapons of mass destruction and delivered via long-range ballistic missiles, could make the destruction on U.S. soil and loss of American lives inflicted by Japan in 1941 pale by comparison.

Mob Rule Evicts America from the U.N. Human Rights Commission

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, a secret ballot was used to deny the United States a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission (HRC) for the first time since that panel was established in 1947. The effect of this action will be to assure that the Commission’s deliberations — and, indeed, those of the UN as a whole — are even more politicized and, therefore, still-less-relevant to the actual abuse of human rights around the world. For Americans still nurturing romantic illusions about the universality of the values we hold dear and the desirability of world government, this action should be a valuable reminder. It underscores the tyranny (not to say the absurdity) that arises from what amounts to mob rule made possible by the UN’s practice of giving every nation equal voting representation (except in the Security Council).

A Rogues’ Gallery’

Matters are made worse on the Human Rights Commission by the representation on that body of a number of the world’s most vicious and systematic abusers of fundamental freedoms. For example, Sudan — whose regime has the dubious distinction of being a perpetrator simultaneously of genocide, slave-trading, terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — was voted onto the Commission on Wednesday. Others who should be in the dock, not on the members’ dais, at the Human Rights Commission include: China, Cuba, Algeria, Syria, Lybia, Pakistan and Vietnam. Human Rights Watch’s representative at the UN, Joanna Weschler, has properly lambasted the Commission line-up as “a rogues’ gallery of human rights abusers.”

By blocking America’s membership on the HRC, these countries are unlikely to be inconvenienced in the future by the damning resolutions the United States has traditionally championed in that body. That prospect may actually encourage their despotic regimes to intensify their domestic repression.

The Mob Punishes’ the U.S.

News reports suggest that some governments voted against U.S. membership on the Human Rights Commission as “punishment” for such offenses as: the American refusal to embrace international agreements deemed unacceptable by Washington — such as the International Criminal Court, the Ottawa Convention banning landmines and the Kyoto Protocol on global warming; President Bush’s determination to defend the Nation against ballistic missile attack; and the United States’ refusal to pay all of its assessed dues to an unreformed United Nations. This vote, however, actually serves to reinforce the wisdom of those U.S. actions, and the attitude from which they generally spring — namely, that decisions bearing upon the security, sovereignty and/or economic well-being of this country cannot safely be subordinated to the lowest-common-denominator served up by the UN mobocracy.

The Bottom Line

In the end, the decision to deny America a place at the UN table with respect to human rights will hurt the cause of freedom more than it will the United States. As the Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Rep. Henry Hyde, rightly pointed out: “The decision may have the unfortunate result of turning the Human Rights Commission into just another irrelevant international organization.” Another collateral casualty may be the United Nations itself if, as seems likely, this deliberate affront to the United States translates into diminished congressional support for pending legislation intended to clean up so-called U.S. “arrearages” to the UN.

The High-Tech for China’ Bill

shington, D.C.): As the Bush Administration and Congress consider ways in which to respond to the increasing belligerence of Communist China so much in evidence in the EP-3 affair, one idea unlikely to top the list is the idea of giving the People’s Liberation Army a massive new infusion of militarily relevant U.S. high technology. Yet that would be just one of the untoward effects of legislation Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, hopes get enacted in the next few weeks.

Sen. Gramm is the chief sponsor of S.149, formally known as the Export Administration Act (EAA). Its working title, however, should be the “Hi-Tech for China” bill since Beijing will be one of the principal beneficiaries of the emasculation S.149 proposes for what remains of U.S. controls on the sale of sensitive equipment and know-how.

Military Fire Sale’ to China?

This bill is basically a reprise of legislation (S.1712) that Mr. Gramm introduced in the last Congress. Fortunately, that version died aborning — despite the Texan’s considerable clout, forceful personality and intensive lobbying on the part of U.S. firms weary of government regulations that interfere with their ability to sell whatever they want to whoever has the necessary cash. Their list includes such militarily useful equipment as: supercomputers, fiber optics, advanced telecommunications switching and routing gear, heat-resistant alloys and carbon-carbon materials, sophisticated machine tools and stealth technology.

Sen. Gramm was stymied last time around by a combination of factors. The most important of these was that national security-minded legislators strenuously opposed his effort to eliminate the vestiges of a real export control regime that survived the Clinton-Gore Administration’s wrecking operation. Led by Senator Fred Thompson, who chairs the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, senior members of the Foreign Relations, Armed Services and Intelligence Committees were able to stymie the chairman of the Banking Committee even though his panel enjoys tremendous institutional advantages under Senate jurisdictional arrangements.

Having a committee dominated by export promoters write export-control laws is about as ill-advised as having the Treasury Department’s champions of foreign investment run the interagency process charged with assessing the national security implications of overseas firms’ purchases of sensitive U.S. companies. The proverbial foxes guarding the latter chicken coop see no harm, for example, in approving the pending sale of Silicon Valley Group — the last U.S. manufacturer of high-end lithography equipment critical to the mass production of state-of-the-art electronic equipment.

Anything Goes?

To their credit, Sen. Thompson and the chairmen of the three national security committees (Sens. Jesse Helms, John Warner and Richard Shelby, respectively) — together the chairman of the influential Senate Republican Steering Committee, Sen. Jon Kyl — have sallied forth once again to resist S.149. They argue persuasively that this bill “will reduce the ability of the United States government to maintain effective export controls on American-made products that can be used for civilian and military uses (so-called dual-use products).”

They are alarmed — as should be all Americans — at the provisions in the Gramm bill (whose other prime-mover is Sen. Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming) that would require the Secretary of Commerce to decontrol any item that is deemed to be available “in volume” in the country that produces it. As Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control recently noted in the Los Angeles Times: “[Electronic switches that can be used as] nuclear weapon triggers, carbon fibers [that can make warhead nosecones more lethal] and maraging steel [needed for nuclear weapon-related centrifuges] are all available in volume in the United States, but that doesn’t mean they are readily available to countries trying to build the bomb.”

The Commerce Secretary would also be obliged to decontrol any technology that “controlled” countries could buy from “sources outside the United States.” Taken to its logical conclusion, if the Russians (or our allies) are willing to sell sensitive dual-use technology to China, then U.S. companies should be able to compete for such deals. For that matter, if German firms want to sell Libya or Iran chemical warfare-related equipment (as they have done in the past), or the North Koreans are prepared to provide ballistic missile technology to those or other rogue states (as they are doing now), shouldn’t Americans be able to get a piece of the action?

Presumably, President Bush’s response would be a resounding “No!” Yet, the Gramm-Enzi bill would significantly interfere with his authority to prevent such U.S. sales. To do so, he would have to intervene personally and make a number of burdensome findings in order to overrule a determination of mass market or foreign availability made by his Secretary of Commerce. The latter would be triggered upon the petition of any “interested party” (read, “interested” in making a dubious sale of heretofore controlled equipment to a controlled end-user). Even then, the President’s objection could only stand for eighteen months.

The Bottom Line

In the aftermath of the Chinese wake-up call near Hainon Island, it would be the height of folly — not to say of ignominy — were the Gramm-Enzi “Hi-Tech for China” bill to become law. This is particularly true in light of the second thoughts being expressed by many in Congress who had previously believed that nothing was more important than opening China’s markets to American sales of non-dual-use goods and services.

Under these circumstances — to say nothing of the even worse ones the People’s Liberation Army evidently has in mind for American interests down the road — it is hard to believe that majorities on Capitol Hill and President Bush will agree effectively to clear the way for the wholesale distribution of militarily relevant U.S. products to Communist China and its friends.

The Bush Doctrine

(Washington, D.C.): With less than sixty days in office, it may seem premature to declare that President George W. Bush has established an approach to foreign policy that friends around the world, potential adversaries and historians will perceive as a “Bush Doctrine.” This is especially true insofar as there has been some notable shaking-out over the past few weeks and, in the process, a number of mixed signals have been sent — some of which have markedly conflicted with the new President’s emerging policy vision.

America Stands for Freedom

Taken altogether, however, Mr. Bush appears to be charting a course for our Nation in the 21st Century that has far reaching, perhaps even decisive implications. The evolving Bush Doctrine might be summarized by the following lines from the address the President gave on March 4 on the occasion of the christening of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan:

“America, by nature, stands for freedom. And we must always remember, we benefit when it expands. So we will stand by those nations moving toward freedom. We’ll stand up to those nations who deny freedom and threaten [their] neighbors or our vital interests. And we will assert emphatically that the future will belong to the free.”

It is particularly fitting that these words were uttered in connection with Mr. Reagan’s national security legacy. After all, the “Reagan Doctrine” sought to spread freedom by aiding those who were prepared to resist the tyranny of their oppressive governments (as in Sandinista-controlled Nicaragua) or the predations of those who were inflicting violence and suffering across international borders (as in the case of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Nicaragua’s guerrilla war against El Salvador).

Operationalizing the Doctrine

The early indications are that Mr. Bush intends to make a main feature of his Administration the use of American power and influence to challenge and delegitimize the governments of those nations who are enemies of freedom. Although this approach has not been a prominent part of U.S. government policy for most of the past decade, it has been used in the past to powerful effect.

In fact, at a Cold War retrospective conference held over the weekend in New Jersey, President Carter’s former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, claimed that in 1979 he had set in train a policy aimed at delegitimating the USSR. Whether this program amounted during the last year of the Carter Administration to much more than blocking U.S. participation in the Moscow Olympics is debatable. But it certainly gives a bipartisan coloration to the campaign of delegitimization that Ronald Reagan pursued towards the Soviet Union as part of his larger effort to destroy the “Evil Empire.”

Just how purposeful was this presidential vision became evident in an extraordinary event convened by the Center for Security Policy on the margins of the christening of the magnificent aircraft carrier, Ronald Reagan. The participants were a number of those who had worked most closely with President Reagan in crafting and implementing his approach to national security based on “Peace Through Strength” — the U.S.S. Reagan’s motto: William P. Clark, former National Security Advisor; Edwin Meese, former Counselor to the President and Attorney General; Jeane Kirkpatrick, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; John Herrington, former Secretary of Energy; and John Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy. Each, in turn, underscored the commitment to freedom that animated Mr. Reagan’s purposeful and ultimately successful “take-down” of the nation that posed the greatest international threat to liberty during his day: the Soviet Union.

Importantly, the Center’s symposium also offered cause for hope that the Reagan national security legacy is truly a living one, epitomized by the new carrier that should serve this nation for the next four decades. Christopher Cox, U.S. Represenative from California and a former Associate Counselor to President Reagan, described the ways in which the 40th President’s security policy torch is being carried forward in the principles and policies being articulated by the new Bush-Cheney Administration. Mr. Cox read a statement by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld affirming that he and his colleagues intended to be keepers of the flame of freedom.

This does not appear to be mere rhetoric. Mr. Bush’s actions to date suggest that he intends to deny enemies of freedom the legitimacy to which they invariably aspire — and the international influence that flows from it. For example, last week he served notice on South Korean President Kim Dae Jung that the latter’s so-called “Sunshine Policy” of detente with North Korea could not be safely pursued with a regime in Pyongyang that was an unreliable partner in disarmament and other agreements. He pointedly contradicted Communist China’s lies concerning the involvement of its nationals in beefing up Saddam’s air defense network — so as to make it a more lethal threat to American personnel patrolling Iraq’s skies. And he has explicitly condemned the genocide-, terrorist- and slavery-sponsoring regime in Sudan.

More to the point, President Bush is appointing experienced individuals to key Defense and State Department posts who have for three years urged the United States to recognize a provisional government of Free Iraq and strip Saddam’s regime of the trappings of international legitimacy. While the messages sent by various statements about “smart sanctions” and renewing international inspections of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs have been confusing, to say the least, the sorts of steps long advocated by senior members of the new Bush team would — if adopted as part of a comprehensive effort — have the greatest chance of undermining and ultimately bringing an end to the Iraqi despot’s hold on power.

The Bottom Line

Other enemies of freedom around the world are also worthy targets of a Bush Doctrine challenging their legitimacy. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Libya’s Muamar Quadafi, Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez come to mind. By “standing with” fellow democracies and those most at risk from such autocrats and by “standing against” the latter (notably by refusing to give them financial assistance, access to U.S. capital markets, and, most especially, by not treating them as peers and worthy interlocutors), we have a chance of forging international conditions that offer real hope for that the future will indeed belong to the free.

Will Bush Team End the Ongoing Defense Fire Sale’?

(Washington, D.C.): This afternoon, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) will meet to consider the proposed purchase of an American manufacturer of exceptionally sensitive and highly militarily relevant equipment by a Dutch company. As a column in today’s Washington Times by Center for Security President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. makes clear, should CFIUS approve this transaction, the Nation would lose the world’s foremost innovator of lithography technology (used to manufacture top quality computer chips) and one of its principal suppliers of optical systems (used in state-of-the-art intelligence satellites and other defense hardware).

If past practice is any guide, the Dutch company, ASML, would probably move the bulk of the research and development and production performed by the American concern — Silicon Valley Group (SGV) and its subsidiary, Tinsley Laboratories — offshore. It may also make the fruits of such work available to clients in China and elsewhere.

Leading Members of Congress, including Senators Robert Bennett (R-UT) and Representatives Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Jim Gibbons (R-NV), have urged that — given the stakes — a more in-depth investigation be performed over the next forty-five days, pursuant to the Exon-Florio Act, in order to assess the implications of the proposed SVG sale. This is especially desirable insofar as it seems the only way to ensure that officials who actually support President Bush’s agenda of rebuilding the military have an opportunity to participate in the associated deliberations.

These legislators are to be commended for seeking, in addition, oversight hearings on Capitol Hill to consider the proposed ASML purchase and the larger problem of reckless “fire sales” of U.S. technology — sales that were encouraged, or at least approved, by the Clinton-Gore Administration and many of its hold-overs who are currently trying to engineer the Bush Administration’s acquiescence to one more, ill-advised transaction.

Defense Fire Sale

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

The Washington Times, 20 February 2001

The new Bush-Cheney team has rightly made rebuilding the U.S. military one of its top priorities. Unfortunately, its predecessor’s legacy is not only one of leaving the armed forces in a deplorable state requiring such repairs; Messrs. Clinton and Gore also did much to diminish — and, in many cases, to eliminate altogether — the defense industrial base that will be needed to effect the rebuilding.

This was not, as the Leninists say, “an accident, comrade.” Early in the first Clinton administration, then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin convened what came to be known as the Last Supper for the Nation’s defense contractors. He advised them that there would not be enough work for all of them in the post- Cold War future. They were put on notice that there was going to have to be a significant contraction in the number and production capacity of their firms.

In the years that followed, some went out of the defense business; many others were gobbled up by a few conglomerates. Recent, grievous depreciation of stock values imperils the viability of one or more of even these giant concerns.

Perhaps even more troubling was the encouragement the Clinton team gave to foreign acquisition of U.S. defense contractors. This practice often conduced to the transfer of key research and development and manufacturing capabilities overseas — further exacerbating the worrisome trend towards ever-greater Pentagon dependence on overseas suppliers for its gear. At the Conservative Political Action Conference last Friday, Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, pointed out a relatively benign, if absurd, example this phenomenon: the black berets the Army has decided to issue to all its soldiers — despite nearly universal opposition to the idea of degrading this traditional symbol of the service’s elite Ranger units — will be bought from Communist China.

Unfortunately, there are many other instances in which far more sensitive military requirements are becoming reliant upon foreign manufacturers. These include: precision gears and gear boxes; certain types of sophisticated microchips used in guidance systems and other weapons applications; pan carbon fiber, the precursor to “stealth” composites; and computer monitors and printed circuit boards. There are obvious national security implications involved in having U.S. combat capabilities depend to a critical degree on companies — and, in some cases at least, countries — who may not prove reliable suppliers in time of need. As the military increasingly turns to commercial off- the-shelf technologies, this trend will only grow.

Matters are made still worse by another consideration: Foreign purveyors of sensitive dual-use technology (that is, equipment and know-how relevant to both military and civil applications) are, as a general rule, willing to sell their goods not only to the United States but to the military-industrial complexes of her enemies, as well.
The Clinton Defense Department’s response to such developments was like that of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman: “What, me worry?” To the extent the subject received any policy consideration at all, the Administration’s willingness to promote trade and “globalization” at the expense of American sovereignty and prudent security practices usually was sufficient to trump misgivings expressed by more sober policy-makers in the executive branch and Congress.

Today, Clinton appointees who have burrowed into various agencies around town, including notably Pentagon official David Tarbell, will be meeting in the hope of adding yet another U.S. technology of critical importance to the American military to the list of foreign- supplied equipment. This afternoon, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) will hold discussions with representatives of the Netherlands’ company known as ASML, the world’s second largest manufacturer of lithography machines used to produce high-quality silicon chips. ASML is trying to buy Silicon Valley Group (SVG) — the planet’s most creative innovator in lithography technology and the last American supplier of such equipment. If approved by CFIUS, the Dutch would also pick up SVG’s subsidiary, Tinsley Laboratories, which manufacturers state-of-the art mirrors and lenses for the Nation’s spy satellites and other military users.

Without assured access to the fruits of the work done by SVG and Tinsley, such priority Bush programs as effective missile defenses and information-based “revolutionary” weaponry would be rendered problematic. Should ASML wind up selling these companies’ high tech products to China — as the Dutch (and many others) have done — moreover, such technology could well wind up being used against American personnel and interests.

A growing chorus from Capitol Hill, led by Senator Robert Bennett and Representatives Jim Gibbons and Duncan Hunter, is calling on the Bush Administration to take charge of the CFIUS process on the SVG deal. This can most easily be done by taking another forty-five days to conduct a more formal investigation of this proposed transaction. This would, in addition, afford Donald Rumsfeld and his counterparts at other agencies a chance to put in place subordinates who share their commitment to rebuilding, rather than selling off, America’s defense capabilities. As today’s meeting of the CFIUS will underscore, there isn’t a moment to lose.

Will Sam Nunn Give Political Cover’ to Left Disarmers?

In her column today, the Washington Post’s unreconstructed liberal columnist, Mary McGrory, spilled the beans on the new agitprop organization that former Senator Sam Nunn will be heading and CNN founder Ted Turner will be bankrolling — to the tune of $250 million over five years:

Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee are delighted that the Turner-Nunn team has taken the field. One of the welcome side effects is that it makes life easier for them when they question Rumsfeld at his confirmation hearings. Arms controllers were pleased when Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came out in favor of reviving the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty [sic]. Democrats who were humiliated by its rejection blame President Clinton for a limp performance on its behalf. They also fault him for not killing National Missile Defense when he had the chance. Now Sam Nunn will be providing them cover on these issues. (Emphasis added.)

Ms. McGrory has thus confirmed the essence of two articles by Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. that have appeared in National Review Online in recent weeks: Senator Nunn is no conservative. He may not even qualify any longer as a "New Democrat" — to the extent that term still connotes greater robustness on national security positions in the wake of Senator Joe Lieberman’s dismal performance as the party’s Vice Presidential candidate.

If Sen. Nunn now proceeds to employ the Turner millions to promote anti-defense, pro- unilateral disarmament agreements — like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty — far from providing political cover, he will be uncovering the left-of-center line to which he has been increasingly hewing.

One wonders whether, as the Soviets used to say, it is "a coincidence" that in the same week when Mr. Turner launches his $50 million a year agitprop campaign — a budget that would have been the envy of any Cold War era active measures agent — he has announced that he will seek Vladimir Putin’s approval to take a $100 million plus stake in fugitive Vladimir Gusinsky’s media empire. Putin — who Turner first met in his role as KGB official/Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg when Turner was promoting his Goodwill Games — could hold Turner’s investment hostage, because assuming he grants the license, as a strategic foreign investment it can be rescinded at any time.

Also curious is that this investment comes at a time when other foreign investors have fled and are staying away from the Russian market, state security organs have been implicated in a series of assassinations of journalists and human rights advocates and Turner himself has announced that he will lay off some 1,000 journalists in CNN’s U.S. offices.

 

Nunn, Turner Pick a Fight

By Mary McGrory

The Washington Post, 11 January 2001

Two big-footed Georgians came to town this week to announce their intention of getting the country’s attention on the subject of arms control, which hasn’t been seriously discussed since the Senate voted down the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty over a year ago. Media mogul Ted Turner thinks that nuclear weapons should be eliminated while former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) does not. But they’re teaming up because they think they offer a combination of money and clout that could get things going.

Turner is giving $ 250 million to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and Nunn, who was revered in the Senate for his military expertise, will be its chief executive.

Arms control may rank behind even campaign finance reform in the incoming administration’s preferences. George W. Bush is surrounded by veteran hawks such as Vice President-elect Cheney and Defense Secretary-designee Donald H. Rumsfeld. Except for a glancing reference to nuclear weapons as "expensive relics of dead conflicts" and a vague statement about reducing them, Bush has discussed his intentions of building up the military, tearing up the ABM treaty and putting up the National Missile Defense system.

NMD is a deal-breaker for any arms control accord — it roils the Russians and alienates allies. But the Bush circle is so keen about it that they have indicated that if the Russians refuse to cooperate in revising the ABM treaty so that deployment is allowed, they’ll blast forward anyway, even though the machinery doesn’t work.

At the Turner-Nunn press conference at the National Press Club, Nunn was serene about the adverse climate for official new measures. During his Senate career, he came to control as many as a dozen votes on military matters. He was treated like a god by both parties. When the Senate was wrestling with the nomination of Sen. John Tower (R-Tex.) to be secretary of defense, Nunn’s decision that Tower would not do was crucial. When, as they so often do, the Republicans were trying to torpedo the ABM treaty, Nunn delivered a series of three stately speeches against the notion, and the Republicans fell back.

With Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who is on the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Nunn pushed through a dubious Senate a bill that authorized cooperation with Russia on nuclear weapons and fissile materials and some kind of welfare for Russian nuclear scientists. It had been tough sledding at the beginning, Nunn said complacently.

Under the present charter, Nunn will not be using his formidable lobbying skills in the new venture. He will be organizing, choosing non-governmental peace groups like the Center for Defense Information, Peace Links and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities to help with additional funding for public campaigns.

Turner will write the checks. He has a weakness for endangered species. He has bought huge chunks of ranch lands in five western states and is trying to return them to a natural state. He has come to the rescue of the United Nations with a gift of $ 1 billion, and recently presented a check to cover our past-due arrearage to the U.N. Turner talks a lot, and puts his money where is mouth is.

Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee are delighted that the Turner-Nunn team has taken the field. One of the welcome side effects is that it makes life easier for them when they question Rumsfeld at his confirmation hearings. Arms controllers were pleased when Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came out in favor of reviving the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Democrats who were humiliated by its rejection blame President Clinton for a limp performance on its behalf. They also fault him for not killing National Missile Defense when he had the chance. Now Sam Nunn will be providing them cover on these issues.

Rumsfeld, who led a study commission on NMD, concluded that the United States is within a few years of being vulnerable to North Korea. Rumsfeld and company ignore the heroic efforts of South Korea’s Kim Dae Jung to reconcile the north and south and to coax the volatile northern leadership away from its preoccupation with missiles.

One of Capitol Hill’s stalwarts on arms control, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) of North Dakota, welcomes the addition of two strong voices such as Turner and Nunn to the small chorus on nonproliferation.

"I was excited to see what they are doing," he said. "We need to tell the American people that security just doesn’t come from military buildup and missile shields. It comes from moral leadership. We should be the leading nation on curbing the spread of nuclear weapons. Sam Nunn is conservative enough that he gives respectability to the cause. This is one of the most important issues facing humankind, and maybe Turner and Nunn can get Congress and the country to pay attention to it."

Clinton Legacy Watch # 54: An International Criminal Court that Erodes U.S. Sovereignty, Constitutional Rights

(Washington, D.C.): At the last possible moment,1 President Clinton inflicted upon the Nation and, in particular, its military what may prove to be one of his most damning legacies — by making the United States a signatory to the 1998 Treaty of Rome establishing an International Criminal Court (ICC).

This action was especially outrageous insofar as the President felt compelled in announcing his eleventh-hour decision to subject the U.S. to the ICC to declare that:

In signing…we are not abandoning our concerns about significant flaws in the Treaty. In particular, we are concerned that when the Court comes into existence, it will not only exercise authority over personnel of states that have ratified the Treaty, but also claim jurisdiction over personnel of states that have not….Court jurisdiction over U.S. personnel should come only with U.S. ratification of the Treaty. The United States should have the chance to observe and assess the functioning of the Court, over time, before choosing to become subject to its jurisdiction.

President Clinton went on to declare that, in light of these problems, “I will not, and do not recommend that my successor, submit the Treaty to the Senate for advice and consent until our fundamental concerns are satisfied.”

Clinton Flim-Flam

Unfortunately, this arrangement reeks of Mr. Clinton’s characteristic disingenuineness. As an excellent op.ed. column by former Assistant Secretary of State John Bolton that appears in today’s Washington Post makes clear, pursuant to Article 18 of the Vienna Convention on Treaties, the President has now obliged the United States “not to undertake any actions that would frustrate [the Treaty of Rome]” prior to ratification.2

In other words, unless and until the United States government formally serves notice that it is not going to proceed with ratification — in Mr. Bolton’s turn of phrase “unsigns” the ICC treaty — the Nation will be bound to observe its provisions and obligations. That prospect is unacceptable in the extreme, both for practical reasons that have prompted vehement opposition to the ICC from the U.S. military and for the Treaty of Rome’s larger implications for American sovereignty and constitutionally defined jurisprudence.

A Bill of Particulars

The concerns expressed by the U.S. military and others about the Treaty of Rome can be summarized as follows:

  • In the absence of a clear UN Security Council veto over war crimes prosecutions, American troops and civilian leaders could be subjected to politically motivated trials without the protections built into our system of jurisprudence derived from the U.S. Constitution and, in the case of the armed forces, enshrined in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). And, in a broader context, oversight by the Security Council is necessary to ensure a meddling court does not interfere, or otherwise endanger peacekeeping efforts aimed at resolving conflicts.
  • Of particular concern is the prospect that without an agreed definition in the Treaty of Rome of the crime of “aggression,” U.S. political and/or military leaders could be arrested and tried in the future in connection with combat operations simply because others do not approve of those operations. For example, had the ICC been in place at the time of President Bush’s 1989 incursion into Panama to end Manuel Noriega’s despotic rule, it is entirely possible that the incoming President’s father and his Secretary of State-designate, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell, might have been subjected to prosecution over charges of inordinate loss of civilian life.
  • The United States military has a highly refined legal code with an established record of bringing to justice in a fair and dispassionate manner those suspected of perpetrating, among other things, crimes against humanity. By dint of their unique global responsibilities and deployments, America’s armed forces have concerns about being subjected to extra-national systems of justice that simply do not apply to other countries’ militaries. It is essential to the maintenance of good order and discipline that the UCMJ be preserved as the preeminent code of conduct for U.S. service personnel.
  • A related concern is that the ICC creates a mechanism for producing highly prejudicial developments in the body of international law known as the “law of war.” –the legal regime defining acceptable miliary conduct developed through the customary practice of states in which humanitarian concerns are balanced with the military necessity of bringing a conflict to a rapid and successful conclusion. The manner in which the Court itself came into being is illuminating — and worrisome: In the end, American objections to the Treaty of Rome were simply voted down, 120-7 vote with 21 abstentions.

    Without the protections inherent in consensus-based decision-making, U.S. constitutional rights and other aspects of our sovereignty are likely to be jeopardized whenever it suits a majority of the “international community.” The mere act of defending legitimate national security interests accepted as legitimate under traditional notions of customary international law could now subject our military and political leaders to ICC war crime prosecutions.

Post-Americanism

The last of these represents the larger problem with the ICC — and the notion that the United States will be subjected to it: The Treaty of Rome is a product of a phenomenon John Fonte of the Hudson Institute has dubbed “post-Americanism.” According to this school of thought, the nation-state is pass; in particular, American exceptionalism is a relic of an earlier age that must give way to the imperatives of globalist supranationalism. Its adherents believe that inequities in the distribution of power and resources — especially the United States’ disproportionate allocation of both — mean that multinational institutions must be devised to level the field. The rule is one country-one vote and the lowest-common-denominator produced by majority rule must govern.

As Secretary Bolton put it:

…The ICC’s supporters have an unstated agenda, resting, at bottom, on the desire to assert the primacy of international institutions over nation-states. One such nation-state is particularly troubling in this view, and that is the United States, where devotion to its ancient constitutional structures and independence repeatedly brings it into conflict with the higher thinking of the advocates of “global governance.” Constraining and limiting the United States is thus a high priority.

The reality for the United States is that over time, the Rome Statute may risk great harm to our national interests. It is, in fact, a stealth approach to eroding our constitutionalism and undermining the independence and flexibility that our military forces need to defend our interests around the world.

This is no exaggeration. One of the principal U.S. champions of the ICC is the World Federalist Association. As Walter Cronkite, the former CBS news anchor and recipient of the organization’s 1999 “Norman Cousins Global Governance Award” put it on receiving this dubious distinction:

Those of us who are living today can influence the future of civilization. We can influence whether our planet will drift into chaos and violence, or whether through a monumental educational and political effort we will achieve a world of peace under a system of law where individual violators of that law are brought to justice. We need a system of enforceable world law — a democratic federal world government — to deal with world problems.

Tellingly, Mr. Cronkite — who was introduced at the World Federalist Association event by then- First Lady/now-Senator Hillary Clinton — added that, in order to achieve world government: “Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. The notion of unlimited national sovereignty means international anarchy.”

Affirming the ICC Won’t Help the U.S. Fix It

Another powerful indictment of Mr. Clinton’s eleventh-hour rejection of his Defense Department’s opposition to the Treaty of Rome appeared as an op.ed. in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. Its author, Dr. Jeremy Rabkin, emphasized what this action actually does to the President’s stated interest in fixing the ICC’s “serious flaws”:

…Mr. Clinton has undercut our actual leverage as a critic of the court. We should be saying that we don’t want to see this court come into existence at all in its current form. We should be exerting pressure on allies and friends not to ratify. Instead, we have now blessed the existing treaty by signing it, hoping the world will heed our cavils more than our blessing….

…Mr. Clinton has repeatedly signed treaties that have no hope of Senate ratification and then simply declined to submit them to a vote there. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming is but the most notorious example. This practice enables the president to cast the U.S. as a willing partner in ventures that actually command very little domestic support. Instead of rallying domestic consensus for international commitments, such maneuvers leave our diplomacy in a fantasy land of good intentions, which the president then doesn’t dare put to the test.

First into the Dock — Ehud Barak?

With his authorization of a U.S. signature on the Treaty of Rome, President Clinton knocked the pegs out from under those in Israel who were resisting international pressure to enroll as well. This may shortly produce a most ironic result: Palestinian and other Arabs have repeatedly cited Israeli activities such as the construction of settlements as “war crimes.” Then, on 1 October, the Arab League issued a communique following an emergency session in Cairo declaring that it held Israel “fully responsible” for the deaths of Palestinians resulting from the latest Intefada. The League called for an international investigation “into the horrible crimes carried out against the Palestinian people, and the trial of the Israeli officials responsible for them by the International Criminal Court.”

Recently, the UN Human Commission met in a rare emergency session and found Israel guilty of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” in the “occupied Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem” and created its own human rights investigation on all Israeli activities. Of course, this is the same commission which is regularly unable to condemn China, Cuba or even Yasser Arafat for their human rights violations. More to the present point, this situation illustrates how counterproductive an interloping court can be to efforts to achieve a just and durable peace.

As a result, Prime Minister Barak — having made the mistake (among many others) of allowing his country to join the ICC — may be one of the first to be prosecuted by the Court, and there will be nothing the Israeli government or, for that matter, the U.S. government can do about it. If so, it seems unlikely that friends of Israel in the United States and elsewhere, to say nothing of the people of the Jewish State themselves, will enjoy very much what Mr. Clinton called “the chance to observe and assess the functioning of the Court.”

The Bottom Line

President-elect Bush’s press spokesman Ari Fleisher announced in the wake of Mr. Clinton’s New Year’s eve announcement that the new Administration will not submit the Treaty of Rome to the Senate for its advice and consent. While that is a positive step, because of the Vienna Convention Article 18 problem, it is wholly insufficient.

Mr. Bush should make the “unsigning” of the ICC treaty one of his first orders of business upon taking office. By so doing, he will send an incalculably important message to his troops that help is no longer “on the way,” as Vice President-elect Cheney put it in the course of the campaign — it has arrived. No less importantly, the Bush-Cheney team will be serving notice on the international community: The incoming team is determined to be an American administration, not a post-American one.



1In so doing, Mr. Clinton departed somewhat from his usual practice of taking controversial actions in the news-cycle’s equivalent of a black hole by announcing them on Friday afternoon, or better yet the eve of a holiday weekend. In the case of the ICC, the President waited until New Year’s eve Sunday to unveil his odious decision.

2Of course, as with the Clinton Administration’s fealty to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the U.S. adherence to the Vienna Convention’s requirements are a function of policy rather than legal obligation since, as Secretary Bolton notes in today’s Post: “Relying on Article 18, which cannot sensibly apply to our government of separated powers, is wrong in many respects, not least that the United States has never even ratified this Vienna convention.”

Clinton Legacy Watch # 51: What a President Bush M

(Washington, D.C.): A whirling dervish would envy the public relations “spin” Samuel Berger is performing concerning President Clinton’s foreign policy accomplishments. In a friendly interview with Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland published on Sunday, the lobbyist for Communist China-turned-National Security Advisor to the President even went so far as to claim that “I hate [the word legacy’] and I forbid it here.” This sure will come as news to the thousands of Clinton Administration personnel who have been working non-stop over the past year to produce what have been explicitly called “deliverables” for the Clinton legacy.

Chances are, however, that as much as Sandy Berger hates the term, the rest of us are going to loathe the content of this President’s legacy — and all that is left in its wake. What Berger claims is the “beginning of a foreign policy for the global age” looks a lot more like the detritus of a “me-generation” Administration, willing to do anything to secure desired short-term results, without regard to the long-term consequences. Recent developments in four areas are cases in point:

A Bill of Particulars



  • Phony “nation-building.” When President-elect George W. Bush challenged Vice President Gore during the campaign about the Administration’s penchant for using U.S. troops inappropriately, the Veep was indignant. He went so far as to compare what he and Bill Clinton were doing in Bosnia, Kosovo and Haiti to what George Marshall and Douglas MacArthur did for Europe and Japan, respectively.

    Nothing could be farther from the truth. To be sure, elections have been held with some regularity in all three nations. But unlike the post-World War II efforts to create viable democracies and economies, the Clinton-Gore team was more concerned with creating the appearance of tranquility than creating the conditions needed to assure it over the long haul. This gave rise to the worst of both worlds: huge expenses to the United States and little, if any, durable progress to show for it.

    In fact, despite billions of dollars spent and the squandering of U.S. military personnel and resources on what have tended to be open-ended constabulary operations, nothing approximating functioning governments and societies are to be found in any of these three beneficiaries of American intervention and largesse. To the contrary, Clinton is bequeathing to his successor situations in Bosnia, Kosovo and Haiti that are ripe for renewed bloodletting, leaving a President Bush with few attractive options.



  • Fraudulent “peace processes.” The process conjured up at Dayton in 1995 is not the only one to come a cropper even before Mr. Clinton leaves office. His insistence on Israeli concessions deemed necessary to secure yet another agreement with the Palestinians before the 2000 election encouraged Arafat to hold out for still more — and to incite violence against Israel to get it. Far from a Peace Prize, the upshot is a region on the verge, if not actually in the opening stages, of its first major Arab-Israeli conflict since 1973.

    We can only hope that President Bush will recognize that, if a durable peace can be achieved at all in the Middle East, it will not result from negotiations in which the United States bribes or euchres Israel into compromising its sovereignty and its ability to defend itself. President Clinton has proven that this approach only whets Arab appetites to realize the abiding goal of destroying the Jewish State altogether.



  • Feckless diplomacy to counter proliferation. Unfortunately, the Dayton and Oslo accords look like works of genius compared to the agreements the Clinton-Gore team has conjured up in the name of curbing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and their long-range ballistic missile delivery systems. Last week, the Administration announced that it would not impose sanctions on the world’s leading proliferator, Communist China, for its failure to adhere to previous non-proliferation agreements on the grounds that Beijing had just made a new promise not to transfer dangerous technology to its rogue state clients.

    This act of appeasement makes a mockery of Administration warnings to Russia of unspecified but “serious consequences” if the Kremlin follows through on its stated intention no longer to be bound by an agreement barring the sale of advanced weaponry to Iran — an agreement forged in secrecy in 1995 by Vice President Gore and honored in the breach by the Russians ever since. President Bush will have his work cut out for him restoring American credibility and effectiveness in the fight against the ominous trade by the PRC, Russia and their friends in weapons of mass destruction and related technologies.



  • Mindless multilateralism. President Clinton is leaving behind a mess in two other areas as well — a multilateral process on Global Climate Change that has just foundered in the Hague; and a new multilateral process bearing on access to outer space intended to be propelled by a bilateral accord with Russia that has just been launched in Vienna.

    Although the Kyoto process seems in extremis at the moment, unless President Bush directs otherwise, it will doubtless be resuscitated and once again pose a threat to American economic growth and sovereignty, with uncertain — if any — benefit to the earth’s temperature.

    Even more troublesome to the incoming Bush Administration may be the Clinton-Gore effort to tie its successor’s hands with respect to space policy. Where the United States clearly requires its own rapid, reliable and cost-effective means of putting payloads into space, if Mr. Clinton has his way, his legacy will be an undue and strategically reckless U.S. reliance on Chinese and Russian rockets for access to space and accords that effectively preclude promising alternative American approaches (such as reusable, vertical-launch/vertical-landing technologies).1


The Bottom Line

There is, of course, one bit of good news. Assuming Vice President Gore stays beaten, the Nation at least has a chance of undoing, rather than perpetuating, the Clinton legacy in international relations. Accomplishing that must be one of President Bush’s top priorities.



1See Clinton Legacy Watch #50: Stealthy Accord with Russia Threatens to Foreclose U.S. Space Power, (No. 00-D 91, 21 November 2000).

Clinton Legacy Watch #50 : Stealthy Accord With Ru

(Washington, D.C.): In the waning hours of Bill Clinton’s presidency, his Administration stands poised to sign a bilateral agreement with the Russians that is, at a minimum, inconsistent with long-term U.S. national security and commercial interests. At worst, this accord — called the “Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Missile Launch Notification” — will grievously compromise both.

All other things being equal, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will sign this MOU on Monday, 27 November, with her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minsiter Igor Ivanov on the margins of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe meeting in Vienna. With her signature — and without benefit of congressional debate, Senate advice and consent or public scrutiny — the United States will become legally bound to provide the Russians with “pre-launch and post-launch notifications for launches of ballistic missiles [whose planned flight range is in excess of 500 kilometers or the planned apex altitude is in excess of 500 kilometers].” It will also be obliged, “with rare exceptions,” to give Moscow “pre-launch and post-launch notifications for launches of space launch vehicles.”

Assault on U.S. Space Power

The sort of information exchanges such an accord will require in the name of “transparency” have profound and adverse implications for the United States’ ability to act on the Clinton-Gore Administration’s own space policy. As stated in A National Security Strategy for a New Century released by the White House in December 1999, this policy says:

We are committed to maintaining U.S. leadership in space. Unimpeded access to and use of space is a vital national interest….We will deter threats to our interest in space, counter hostile efforts against U.S. access to and use of space and maintain the ability to counter space systems and services that could be used for hostile purposes against our military forces….We will maintain our technological superiority in space systems….” (Emphasis added.)

In his Annual Report to the President and Congress for 1999, Secretary of Defense William Cohen put an even finer point on what is required: “Access to, use of, and control of space are fundamental to this strategy [i.e., the Department’s strategic vision for the 21st century]….Space systems are an integral part of the deterrent posture of the armed forces, and they confer a decisive advantage upon U.S. and friendly forces.”

Given the inextricable connection between “unimpeded access to space” and the “use of and control of space,” however, one truth should be self-evident: The United States will simply not be able to exercise space power if it must provide between 30 days and twenty-four hours advance notice of space launches to a foreign government — especially one that may prove hostile or at least allied with those who are. To do so would be a formula for compromised operational security, intelligence debacles and probably mission failure.

More to the point, the exercise of space power in the future will require the United States to move in the direction of far less costly, more reliable and more timely — if not actually on-demand — means of getting into space. The Clinton-Gore MOU is at cross-purposes with this wave of the future. To the contrary, this Luddite accord will have the effect of adding layers of unhelpful international bureaucratic rigamarole to the already-too-great impediments (notably, huge boosters that take thousands of people weeks to assemble and launch from a few fixed — and highly vulnerable — launch facilities) that presently preclude ready and efficient access to space.

The Pentagon Non-Concurs’

The genesis of this initiative lies in the 1995 flight of a sounding rocket out of Norway carrying a scientific experiment. The Norwegians sent notification of the launch to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow which failed to pass the information on the Ministry of Defense. When Russian sensors detected an ambiguous but potentially threatening situation, the standard procedures were followed, leading to a heightened state of alert and preparations for ordering a retaliatory strike. In the event, the situation clarified itself before any launch orders were issued.

Pressure for “deliverables” for President Clinton’s legacy nonetheless produced an agreement in September 1998 — when he and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin each found themselves in domestic political difficulty — on a “cooperative initiative regarding the exchange of information on missile launches and early warning.” The first effort to commit the United States to such an arrangement in a legally binding way came a cropper in late 1999, when military and civilian officials in the Clinton Pentagon insisted that only a voluntary agreement would be supportable.

In the months that followed, however, a closely held negotiating effort was mounted without the knowledge of or inputs from virtually any of the relevant Defense Department organizations. Not surprisingly, when word that a legally binding agreement was again in the offing finally came to the attention of responsible figures in the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and armed services in October 2000, their opposition to the draft accord was strong and virtually unanimous. In fact, the Air Force, Marines and Army and the three-star directorates responsible for plans, policy and requirements in the OJCS all formally rejected it (or, in Pentagonese “non-concurred”). For their parts, the Navy and National Reconnaissance Office expressed strong reservations about the agreement.

While wording changes were belatedly introduced so as to mollify the military, the reality is that these fixes were of limited practical utility and do not begin to correct the underlying reality: Obligatory launch notifications as required by this MOU are ill-advised in the extreme.

The PLNS Agreement’s Serious Defects

Consider a few of the abiding problems with the MOU (emphasis added throughout):



  • It won’t address the ostensible problem. Since most sounding rockets fly over ranges less than 500 kilometers and to altitudes of less than 500 kilometers, they would not be covered by the PLNS MOU. And, since the MOU is bilateral in nature, it will not cover Norwegians, Swedish or other sounding rockets that might alarm the Russians. Furthermore, it is far from self-evident how creating yet another information center (in addition to the already extant Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers) will eliminate an internal Russian data dissemination problem like that of 1995.


  • There appears to be some confusion about whether all space launches have to be pre- and post-notified or not. In one section, provision is made for “rare exceptions”; in another, the language makes reference to the first section but says “all launches of…space vehicles” from a party’s territory are to be notified.


  • Potentially significant new obstacles will be created to commercial innovation and competitiveness: “Each Party shall provide notifications in accordance with paragraph 2 of this Memorandum…of all …launches of ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles owned, possessed or controlled by that Party or by any corporation, partnership, joint venture, association or other legal or natural person (either government or private, including international organizations), organized or existing under the laws of that Party.” Issues about proprietary information add to concerns raised by these notification requirements.


  • It will likely capture future space systems. “If methods are subsequently developed for launching objects into space that are fundamentally different from those which exist at the time this Memorandum enters into force, the Parties will discuss how the PLNS might apply to notifications of such launches.”


  • It will capture missile defenses. Some supporters of the development and deployment of U.S. anti-missile systems take comfort from the other part of Paragraph 3: “Once the PLNS is in full operation, the Parties shall consider the possibility of, and need for, exchanging information on missiles that intercept objects not located on the earth’s surface.” Unfortunately, even if the “arms control process” that will inevitably begin with the promulgation of this accord fails to impose launch notifications on missile interceptors, the fact that the ballistic missiles that are used as targets for such inteceptors will be covered means that the Russians will be able to interpose further obstacles in the way of American anti-missile systems.

    What is more, the notification arrangements that will apply to such ABM tests appear to represent a back-door effort by the Clinton-Gore team and the Russians to foist upon the United States “confidence-building measures” contained in the so-called “demarcation agreements” signed in September 1997 but never submitted to the Senate (out of a legitimate concern that they would be rejected).



  • Space launch concepts that envision allowing forward deployed forces rapidly to launch and, if necessary, to re-launch small, reusable rockets for theater reconnaissance, strike and other purposes are among those that would be effectively foreclosed. “Notification shall be provided by the Party from whose territory that launch is conducted. If the launch is not conducted from the territory of a Party, the Parties shall hold consultations to determine which Party will provide the notification.”


  • The duration is effectively permanent, notwithstanding a withdrawal clause. The MOU “shall remain in force for ten years” and “may be extended by agreement by the Parties…for successive five-year periods.” Although “a Party may withdraw from this Memorandum upon six months written notice…,” as a practical matter — as the ongoing experience with the ABM Treaty demonstrates — exercising this right is so difficult as to render it inoperative.


  • Last but hardly least, this initiative is explicitly envisioned to become part of a multilateral endeavor known as the Global Action Plan that has as its explicit purpose weaning the world from ballistic missile and, even more bizarre, from space launches. “The PLNS and the Joint Data Exchange Center (JDEC) design, when implemented, will create the conditions for the preparation and maintenance of a unified database for a multilateral regime for the exchange of notifications in accordance with paragraph 2 of this Memorandum. The Parties shall seek the participation of other countries in providing such notifications. The Parties shall seek, as soon as possible, agreement on how the PLNS will be opened to the voluntary participation of all interested countries, and shall coordinate this activity with other national, bilateral and international efforts to enhance strategic stability and curtail missile proliferation.

    Unexplained is why the United States should be bound by a legal commitment but others, who may have access to the data the U.S. has to provide, are allowed to participate on a “voluntary” basis.


The Bottom Line

The United States is already suffering from a profound, and potentially quite dangerous disconnect between its stated space policy and its actual capabilities. The Memorandum Mrs. Albright is expected to sign next week will only exacerbate this strategically ominous problem.

For the Clinton-Gore Administration to commit the Nation to an understanding with such long- term and potentially fatal implications at a moment when its mandate has run out and its successor is not yet in a position to express forceful objections is reprehensible in the extreme. It is, of course, hardly coincidental that the Administration is doing so in the Thanksgiving weekend window and during a period when Congress is in recess.

Especially insidious is the fact that the Administration is effectively preempting a congressionally chartered commission chaired by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and tasked with assessing what the U.S. needs to do in space and what America requires to do it. All other things being equal, the second Rumsfeld Commission stands to be every bit as influential with respect to the need to rethink and reorient American policy and capabilities for space power, as was the first panel Secretary Rumsfeld which addressed the long-range ballistic missile threat in 1998.

The Clinton-Gore Administration must not be allowed to get away with this preemptive strike on the Rumsfeld Commission, especially insofar as it would, in so doing, oblige the Nation to adhere to approaches and practices with respect to space clearly at odds with American military and commercial interests in space. Mrs. Albright should be directed to stand down and the Rumsfeld Commission should be given an opportunity to take stock of the implications of this agreement for the recommendations it is preparing and undertake thorough review with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others about the wisdom of entering into a legally binding agreement on missile launch notification.

A Bullet Dodged: House Leadership, Clinton Administration To Be Commended for Withdrawing Anti-Turkey Resolution

(Washington, D.C.): In the face of mounting opposition from the national security community and an 11th hour, personal appeal from President Clinton yesterday, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) canceled a scheduled vote on a resolution that would have condemned the Turkish for the “genocide” of Armenians from 1915-1923. Speaker Hastert is to be commended, as are President Clinton and his senior subordinates, for their appreciation of the disastrous effect such a resolution could have had at a critical time for U.S. foreign policy in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.

Special appreciation should be expressed to Rep. Jim Rogan (R-CA), a courageous and valued legislator, whose constituency is the most heavily Armenian-American in the Nation. He has been targeted by Mr. Clinton and other Democrats for defeat this fall due to his leading role in the Clinton impeachment battle. Rep. Rogan has valiantly represented his constituents and indisputably was responsible for putting the Armenian genocide resolution on the map in a way that no legislator has done before. In the end, however, Mr. Rogan agreed to place the larger national interests first, permitting Speaker Hastert to vitiate his commitment to bring the issue to a vote before the election, and both men should be applauded for doing so.

What Was at Stake

As the Center noted in a 21 September Decision Brief, these larger interests include the following:

If the full House of Representatives approves [the then-pending] “Armenian genocide” resolution…U.S. relations with Turkey will suffer serious — and possibly irreparable — harm. Turkey is one of the most strategically important nations on the planet, situated at the cross-roads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, with important — and generally very complex — ties to each. With the Cold War’s passing and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Turkey is surrounded by potential instability and conflict, a situation that shows no sign of change in the foreseeable future.

To make matters worse, such a rupture [in U.S.-Turkish relations] would come at a particularly unpropitious time. For instance, Saddam Hussein is emerging once again as a mortal threat to his neighbors and Israel. Uncertainties about the future course of pivotal Persian Gulf states like Iran and Saudi Arabia are exacerbating concerns about future oil shocks and their economic consequences. And Israel may be on the brink of a new outbreak of violence as the Palestinians prepare to liberate the rest of “Palestine” — with or without another fraudulent “peace agreement.”

A stable, secure Turkey closely tied to the West is an indispensable counterweight to these and a number of other worrisome developments. It behooves the House Republican leadership, therefore, to find ways to secure a renewed mandate without jeopardizing vital national interests.

The Bottom Line

If Congress does decide at some future point to consider the esoteric question of whether the treatment early in the 20th Century of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks constituted genocide, it is to be hoped that it will take testimony from skeptical experts in the field, like Princeton’s Dr. Bernard Lewis, as well as proponents of Rep. Rogan’s resolution. In the meantime, the Center for Security Policy is gratified that its cautions against taking up this matter, in a less balanced way and at this volatile juncture, have been heeded.