Tag Archives: Congress

Vote — and Defeat — the C.T.B.T. Today

October 13, 1999Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): The Senate is, at present, scheduled to vote on the fatally flawed Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) late this afternoon. Should that vote occur as required under a Unanimous Consent agreement entered into almost two weeks ago, it is expected to resulting in the CTBT’s rejection by perhaps as many as 45 or more Senators (well above the one-third-plus-one or 34 votes required under the Constitution to defeat a treaty).

For that not to happen, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) will have to decide to support a motion to defer further consideration of the treaty. Fortunately, for the national security and interest, Senator Lott has publicly opposed this treaty on the grounds that "It is simply not possible to be simultaneously for nuclear deterrence and for this Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The two positions are mutually exclusive." Additional remarks from his address to the Senate last Friday on this subject are attached. ¹ They can be paraphrased as follows:

Periodic, underground nuclear testing — at the very least at low-yield levels — is essential to the maintenance of a safe, reliable and effective nuclear deterrent. This has been the United States’ historical experience and there is no other technique available that provides anything like the confidence required, nor will there be for at least ten years into the future. So long as we need to rely upon nuclear weapons as the ultimate guarantor of our security, we have no choice but to tests them in a responsible, safe and realistic manner.

The idea of banning nuclear testing is a longstanding objective of the radical anti-nuclear movement; it will lead inexorably to unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament. Without realistic explosive testing, it will be impossible either to modernize our deterrent or refurbish the obsolescing weapons that currently comprise the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Over time, these realities will make it politically, if not technically, impossible to field an American deterrent force.

The CTBT will not prevent a single country determined secretly to acquire nuclear weapons — or to improve them — from doing so. The zero-yield test ban before the Senate is unverifiable; well-understood techniques can be exploited for conducting covert tests that are militarily significant without fear of getting caught — even if the Treaty’s seismic monitoring and on-site inspection provisions come into play. Matters are made worse by the fact that the CTBT lacks a definition of what constitutes prohibited "nuclear test explosions" — guaranteeing that other nations will exploit this ambiguity to conduct tests the United States considers to be prohibited.

Don’t Delay the Vote

President Clinton and his allies, having insisted for months on the Senate’s immediate consideration of this accord in time for a CTBT review conference held last week in Vienna, were initially surprised, then unanimously agreed to a fixed period for debate and a near-term vote. In other words, when they thought they had (or could get) the necessary votes, the CTBT’s proponents were quite content with this arrangement. Now that the full magnitude of their impending defeat is clear, they are frantically trying to intimidate, coerce and/or plead with Senator Lott to grant them a stay-of-execution.

The specifics of this arrangement are not important; the bottom line will be the same: No matter what the Treaty’s advocates promise to do to secure the Majority Leader’s acquiescence, once the vote is postponed today, they will work tirelessly to change votes or, if necessary, the control of the Senate to get the CTBT ratified as soon as possible.

Quite apart from the political repercussions, putting off consideration of the CTBT will pose a dramatic threat to U.S. security for, among others, the following reasons:

An astounding array of former top security policy practitioners opposes this Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. On the grounds that it is unverifiable, unenforceable and inimical to the maintenance of safe and reliable nuclear deterrent it is strenuously opposed by no fewer than six former Secretaries of Defense, four former National Security Advisors to the President, four former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency (including two appointed by President Clinton), three former Secretaries of Energy, three former directors of the nuclear laboratories and over twenty former senior generals and admirals.

For these reasons, even Senators with an unbroken record of support for arms control agreements like Senators Richard Lugar of Indiana, Olympia Snow of Maine and Ted Stevens of Alaska have declared this CTBT to be fatally flawed and announced their intention to reject the Treaty if the vote is held at this juncture.

Should the Treaty not be formally rejected by the Senate, the best that can be hoped for is that a treaty judged by nearly every Republican Senator to be inconsistent with U.S. security will continue to bind the United States for the foreseeable future — in Sen. Lott’s words, "preventing the United States from making our weapons safer and from adapting our nuclear stockpile to new threats." Under Article 18 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties:

A State is obliged to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of a treaty when…it has signed the treaty

until it shall have made its intention clear not to become a party to the treaty…."

Under these circumstances, a vote to defer further Senate action on the CTBT would amount to the worst of both worlds: Open-ended adherence to the Treaty’s prohibition on all nuclear tests — without giving Senators the opportunity to show, by their votes, the unacceptability of such a ban.

The Bottom Line

President Clinton and his allies in the anti-nuclear movement have made clear their intention to use the CTBT issue against Republicans in the course of the 2000 election cycle. Already emotionally charged TV ads — showing nuclear blasts destroying children — are on the air in selected markets like Michigan, targeted at Republican Senator Spence Abraham.

CTBT opponents will likely face this assault whether they vote down the treaty now or leave it pending. They will be far better positioned to take their case to the American people, however, if a near-majority of the Senate votes to defeat the accord as scheduled today.

¹For additional analysis of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’s fatal flaws, see the Center’s CTBT Truth or Consequences Series released on 11 October. These materials may be obtained via the Center for Security Policy website (www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org) or by contacting the Center.

SENATOR LOTT’S REASONS FOR OPPOSING THE C.T.B.T.

October 13, 1999Center for Security Policy

(Excerpts from the Majority Leader’s Senate Floor Statement of October
8)

“The CTBT is itself seriously flawed in many ways, four of which I will discuss.”

“Were the CTBT to receive consent to ratification by the Senate I am confident it
would
constrain the ability of the United States to modernize its nuclear
arsenal.”

safer

For those whose ultimate objective is
the denuclearization of the United States, this is a good reason to support the
treaty. But it is not a good reason for those of us who understand the
continuing necessity of nuclear deterrence to the national security of the
United States

“The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty could also have the perverse effect of
engendering
proliferation….The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’s supposed non-proliferation
benefits are
based on hope, not fact.”

“The CTBT verification scheme will have little effect.”

“[The] so-called ‘safeguards’ are themselves deficient. The six conditions that President
Clinton announced are not part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but entirely separate
from the treaty. The safeguards were announced for the simple reason that the treaty is itself
inadequate, or there would have been no need for the so-called safeguards.”

only with the safeguards
package

the Senate is
being asked, essentially, to provide advice and consent to ratification of this
treaty because of words that are not in the treaty.”

“Arms control treaties must be judged by the straightforward standard of whether
or
not they enhance the national security of the United States. The Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty fails to attain this standard.”

it is simply not possible to be
simultaneously for nuclear deterrence and for this Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty. The two positions are mutually exclusive.”

The Gathering Storm

Applying this observation to the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty leaves one no choice but to oppose this treaty.

Top Bush Administration Official Denounces Clinton Test Ban Treaty as Dangerous ‘Unilateral Disarmament’

September 14, 1999Center for Security Policy

Vice President Dan Quayle Urges Senate to Reject C.T.B.T.

(Washington, D.C.): Today, the second-ranking member of George Bush’s administration announced his categorical opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) negotiated and signed in 1996 by President Clinton. Former Vice President Dan Quayle attacked the proposed permanent ban on nuclear testing as "a disarmament mechanism" being utilized by "members of the Nuclear Freeze movement I fought in my days in Congress." The twice-elected U.S. Senator urged those currently serving in that body to "reject the treaty." Indeed, he declared:

It will not be enough for the Senate to refuse to ratify the CTBT. The U.S. Congress must also send a clear message to the rest of the world that we repudiate any commitment made by President Clinton that the U.S. is now — or would ever be — ready to unilaterally disarm.

Vote, Vote

The Vice President’s statement was issued by his presidential campaign committee on what had been declared by the Treaty’s proponents to be "CTBT Day of Action." His denunciation of the object of this call-to-disarm combined with the seemingly desultory response to the Day of Action (measured in terms of phone calls to the Capitol switchboard and attendance at a demonstration on the Hill) can only further dissipate Senate enthusiasm for the Comprehensive Test Ban. It already faced strong opposition from Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, 1 Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms and most (if not all) of the forty-four Senators — nine more than are needed to disapprove a treaty — who voted last October against an amendment described by its sponsors as a "test vote on the CTBT." 2

The prospects that the Senate will heed Vice President Quayle’s advice and reject the CTBT appears even greater, if as seems likely, other members of the Bush Administration join their counterparts in the Reagan Administration (a number of whom recently signed an Open Letter to Sen. Lott counseling against ratification of this accord). 3

If, in contrast to the Chemical Weapons Convention, Republican ranks are unified, this fatally flawed arms control treaty will surely be defeated in the Senate.

The Bottom Line

Vice President Quayle is to be commended for his courageous leadership on this matter. The American people are entitled to know the views of all other candidates for the Nation’s highest office concerning both the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the importance of preserving the sort of credible, safe and reliable nuclear deterrent this treaty would preclude. As a catalyst to such deliberations, the Center for Security Policy recommends the attached two columns by its President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., which appeared in the past forty-eight hours in Investors Business Daily and the Washington Times.

1 See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Charles Krauthammer Launches Surgical Strike on the Anti-Nuke Crowd’s ‘Back-Door’ Disarmament Scheme (No. 99-D 100, 10 September 1999).

2 See R.I.P. C.T.B.: Biden-Specter Amendment’s Phyrric Victory Shows Decisive Senate Opposition to Clinton’s Flawed Test Ban (No. 98-D 158, 2 September 1998).

3 See Center Releases Open Letter to Senator Lott from Fifty-two Top Security Policy-Practitioners Opposing C.T.B.T. (No. 99-P 98, 9 September 1999).

Charles Krauthammer Launches Surgical Strike on the Anti-Nuke Crowd’s ‘Back-Door’ Disarmament Scheme

September 10, 1999Center for Security Policy

Sen. Lott Rains on Byron Dorgan’s ‘C.T.B.T. Day of Action’

(Washington, D.C.): Today’s Washington Post features one of syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer’s finest dissections of the Left phenomenon he has called "a world imagined." His essay, entitled "A Test Ban That Disarms Us" (see the attached), should be required reading by every U.S. Senator, and by all those who wish to understand the unilateral disarmament agenda that is animating the current push by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), the Clinton Administration and their anti-nuclear activist allies aimed at securing Senate approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Importantly, Dr. Krauthammer methodically disposes of the ostensibly serious basis for supporting this accord. With a psychiatrist’s nose for neuroses, he points out that "History has not been kind to [the] argument" that unilateral U.S. restraint and "international norms" translate into universal behavior that mirrors our own. Dr. Krauthammer then applies the coup de grâce: "Whether the United States signs a ban on nuclear testing will not affect the course of proliferation. But it will affect the nuclear status of the United States." (Emphasis added.)

Sen. Lott Serves Notice

Dr. Krauthammer’s arguments — and those of the growing number of national security experts who have publicly declared their opposition to the CTBT ¹ — appear closely to parallel the views of the Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS). In an exchange with Sen. Dorgan on the Senate floor this morning, Sen. Lott cautioned his colleague that he better be careful what he wishes for.

In response to the North Dakotan’s insistence that the Senate open hearings and schedule action on this treaty (an insistence that may translate into an effort to block the chamber’s action on other matters), the Majority Leader made clear that hearings would prominently feature, among others, sharply critical testimony from Dr. James Schlesinger. Few people in the Nation have more authority and credibility on this topic than the only man in history to have held the positions of Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Director of Central Intelligence, Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Energy — a career made even more influential in the Senate by virtue of his service in both Republican and Democratic cabinets. The prospects for favorable Senate action, already troubled, ² can only further decline as a result.

The Bottom Line

That forecast is further reinforced by the unfortunate testimony concerning the CTBT offered yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee by General Hugh Shelton. In connection with a hearing on his nomination for a second two-year term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the General was asked by the Committee’s ranking member, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) to repeat his previous endorsement of the Treaty. Their exchange was instructive:

I think from the standpoint of the holding back on the development of the testing which leads to wanting a better system, developing new capabilities, which then leads you into arms sales or into proliferation. Stopping that as early as we can, I think, is in the best interest of the international community in general, and specifically in the best interest of the United States.

It is to be hoped that, before a vote is taken on his confirmation (let alone on the CTBT) General Shelton will be given an opportunity to clarify his thinking about this defective agreement — and the consistency of his support for a treaty that will contribute to the unilateral nuclear disarmament of the United States with his oath to uphold and defend its constitutional requirement to provide for "the common defense."

¹ See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Center Releases Open Letter to Senator Lott from Fifty-two Top Security Policy-Practitioners Opposing C.T.B.T. (No. 99-P 98, 9 September 1999).

² Last October, in action on what was described by its sponsors as a "test vote" on the CTBT, forty-four Senators — nine more than are needed to deny the two-thirds majority needed for ratification — cast ballots in the negative. See R.I.P. C.T.B.: Biden-Specter Amendment’s Phyrric Victory Shows Decisive Senate Opposition to Clinton’s Flawed Test Ban (No. 98-D 158, 2 September 1999).

C.T.B.T. Proponents Want Senate to Vote on Treaty, But Hope it Will Ignore the Accord’s Fatal Flaws

July 29, 1999Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): Thus, it
begins. The public relations offensive on behalf of what is,
arguably, the least effective, least verifiable and most counterproductive arms control
treaty
in history — the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) — got underway today with
the
publication of two columns in the Washington Post by authors clearly unfamiliar
with the facts
of the case. Instead, Mary McGrory and Geneva
Overholser are reduced to echoing the
arguments advanced by the Clinton Administration, and other devotees of the “arms control
process,” in the hope of badgering the Senate into hasty action on an unworthy accord.

Cases in Point

The following are among the most egregious of the unfounded claims made by the
Post‘s
columnists on behalf of the CTBT:

The Effect of a Lack of U.S. Ratification: Repeating a misrepresentation
advanced last
week by President Clinton, ¹ Ms. Overholser declares that
“Until the U.S. Senate ratifies [the
CTBT]…the test ban treaty cannot go into force for any country.” The implication is that, if
the Senate does agree to the CTBT’s ratification, it will go into force. This is not
true.

have

A Bad Idea, An Unverifiable Treaty: Another claim by Ms. Overholser
is that the treaty is
in the U.S. national interest because, “The United States has already stopped testing nuclear
weapons. Precluding other nations from testing, as this verifiable treaty would do, is
powerfully in the interests of this and other countries.” Neither of these two claims — first,
that the U.S. has stopped testing and, by implication, therefore has nothing to lose and second
that the treaty is “verifiable” — stand up to close scrutiny.

in
the absence of performing actual nuclear tests, it is entirely possible — if not
highly likely — that some weapons in the inventory will not work as designed.

a resumption of underground testing would probably be judged to be
desirable at this point.

President Clinton’s first Director of Central Intelligence, R.
James Woolsey,

I do not believe the zero[-yield] level [test ban] is verifiable. …partially because of the
capability [of a foreign] country…to cheat on such a treaty, [by] decoupling its nuclear tests by
setting them off in caverns or caves and the like. I think I might have felt differently about a
comprehensive test ban that was at a level of a kiloton, or even a few kilotons perhaps; that I
think we had a reasonable chance of verifying. But I think the level of zero is, in my
judgement, not verifiable. And that makes it a treaty that we have to observe
because of
our open society, and the countries like China probably will not. And to my mind, that
makes it worse than a weak reed on which to rely.

Ms. McGrory, whose assigned role was evidently that of hair shirt for a Clinton
Administration seen as inadequately pushing for the CTBT, wrote: “Some say that the
nuclear explosions in Pakistan and India illustrate the futility of the ban now, although
proponents say it would inhibit deadly progress.”

any

without necessarily conducting nuclear tests

The Bottom Line

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman
Jesse Helms are to be commended — not vilified as Mses. McGrory &
Overholser have done —
for their efforts to prevent the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty from being blown through the
“World’s greatest deliberative body.” This is especially true since the only reason for
acting at
this juncture is so that an artificially imposed deadline (i.e., a review conference that
the
Administration convened in September, a year ahead of the CTBT-prescribed schedule)
can be met.

Even if Senators do not resent being shamelessly manipulated in this fashion, they should be
very wary of any effort to foist upon them an accord that has not been realized before now —
not
because it couldn’t be negotiated, but because those responsible for the safety and reliability of
the U.S. nuclear arsenal have consistently, and correctly, judged the CTBT to be incompatible
with these requirements. And they would surely do so to this day, but for the
blackmail to which
they were subjected by President Clinton’s first Secretary of Energy, Hazel
O’Leary, who
compelled them to choose between endorsing this treaty and receiving some $40 billion dollars
for new, experimental facilities or risk possibly terminal cutbacks in funding for the Nation’s
nuclear laboratories. ³

No decision of such gravity should be taken on the basis of this sort of extortion — especially
since it is now clear that neither the Administration nor the CTBT’s champions outside
the
government have any intention of seeing that these funds are forthcoming and the
Stockpile Stewardship program they are supposed to enable is actually realized.

¹ See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Non-Starter: Clinton’s Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty is Unworthy of Senate’s Time — Let Alone Its Consent ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=99-D_82″>No. 99-D 82, 21 July 1999).

²For more on the CWC’s defects and the legislative history of the
debate concerning that
accord, see the Center’s Decision Brief entitled C.W.C. Watch
#1: Russia Defers Ratification,
Seeks Payments For Compliance and a ‘Seat At The Table’ Anyway ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_59″>No. 97-D 59, 30 April
1997).

³See The Most Important Justification for Firing
Hazel O’Leary: Her Role in Denuclearizing
the United States (No. 95-D 90, 10
November 1995).

Don’t Let the F-22 Fall Victim to a Defense ‘Train Wreck’

July 19, 1999Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Washington, D.C.): When the House Appropriations Committee voted
last week to defer
production of the Air Force’s next generation fighter plane, the F-22, the image that came to
mind was that of the cartoon character Pogo who once famously declared, “We have met the
enemy and it is us.” Unless the Republican-led Congress comes to grips with the central reality
of the defense budget — namely, that its present and projected funding levels are woefully
inadequate to meet America’s future security needs — the GOP will become fully implicated in
the Clinton Administration’s hollowing-out of the U.S. military.

The F-22: America’s Qualitative Edge

To be sure, critics of the F-22 cast this fight in narrower terms. They claim that an aircraft
with
its characteristics — low-observability (“stealth”), supersonic cruise capability (that is, the ability
to fly at supersonic speeds without having to utilize afterburners that consume huge quantities of
fuel) and sophisticated avionics and weapon systems — is no longer needed to dominate the skies.
They contend that, with the decline in the technical skills and productivity of the former Soviet
military-industrial complex, the United States can safely make do with far less sophisticated and
expensive warplanes.

Unfortunately, as the war in Kosovo reminds us, threats to U.S. pilots can come from the
ground
as well as the air. We owe it to those asked to fight the Nation’s future wars to ensure
that
they are given platforms for doing so that are as immune as possible to the continuing
improvements being made by potential adversaries in both air-to-air and terrestrial anti-aircraft
weapons. As one retired Air Force general recently put it, “We don’t want a fair fight.
We want to win decisively.”

Bait and Switch

Another source of the flak the F-22 is taking arises from the perennial temptation to forego a
near-term defense expenditure in favor of an outlay that is farther off. In recent years,
Democratic critics of the Pentagon have made an art form of this gambit, promising to support
the next program as long as the present one is terminated, only to oppose its successor when its
turn comes. Even normally responsible Republicans are susceptible to this siren’s song when, as
has been the case with the F-22, the estimated production costs have inexorably grown as the
various technical challenges associated with this extraordinary plane’s development have been
overcome.

The alternative some prefer is to skip the F-22 and procure instead another promising aircraft
called the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), now in the early stages of development. Estimates of the
multi-service, multi-mission, multi-mode JSF’s ultimate price tag and performance
characteristics, however, are currently as soft as the F-22’s used to be. If anything, the
JSF may
cost more than the F-22 when the former reaches the latter’s level of programmatic
maturity.

Others favor a two-step procurement strategy, involving the purchase first of up-to-date
versions
of the F-15 and F-16 as a stop-gap awaiting the maturing of the JSF, which would then be
purchased in quantity when it becomes available. Producing modernized F-15s and
-16s is
probably a good idea under all circumstances, but it would be a mistake to kill the F-22
(which would be the practical effect of the proposed delay in production) to pay for it.

The Coming ‘DoD Train Wreck’

The painful truth is that the problem is far larger than the fate of the F-22, or even
that of the
Pentagon’s aviation account more generally. This reality is evident in the fact that
House
appropriators found lots of areas into which to reallocate the roughly $1.5 billion sought by the
Clinton Administration for the purpose of producing the first six F-22s.

An impressive analysis conducted by Dr. Dan Goure of the Center for Strategic and
International
Studies and Jeffrey Ranney, a strategic planner at the defense consulting firm MSTI, quantifies
this problem. According to these highly respected experts, there is a $376 billion deficit
in the
funding needed over the next five years to meet the Clinton Pentagon’s own modernization
goals as defined in its latest blueprint, the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).
In fact, the
Goure-Ranney study, entitled “Averting the Coming Department of Defense Train Wreck,”
suggests that the procurement shortfall in Fiscal Year 2000 alone is $71
billion. If the QDR
projections prove unduly optimistic, moreover, even that staggering amount would actually
be
understated.

What’s to be Done?

The good news is that the procurement “gap” — and similar, although less acute,
shortfalls
in the research and development, operations and maintenance and personnel pay accounts
— would essentially disappear if the United States were willing for the foreseeable future to
allocate 4% of its Gross Domestic Product to defense, rather than today’s less than 3%.
Such
a proportion of GDP is well below the more than 5-6.7% that President Reagan dedicated during
the 1980s to rebuilding our military after its last hollowing-out. And this percentage is a small
fraction of the allocations the Nation made to national security earlier on, notably during
John F.
Kennedy’s administration.

The bad news is that, despite the surging U.S. economy and the attendant increase in tax
revenues, Republicans in Congress find themselves opposing the sorts of defense spending
increases that are clearly required if the American military is to be able to preserve its decisive
qualitative edge via modernization of its inventory, without further reducing an already
overstretched force structure and/or the global commitments it is being asked to fulfill. It’s not
that most Republicans are averse to additional funding for the armed forces. Rather, they fear
that — were they to rupture the “caps” on Pentagon accounts agreed to in the 1997 budget deal
with President Clinton — it would be impossible to maintain the constraints that deal imposed on
the growth of spending on popular domestic programs.

The Bottom Line

As the F-22 episode makes clear, however, unless there is relief from the Pentagon
caps, there
is a defense “train wreck” coming. Military leaders know this to be true, as do their
more
responsible civilian counterparts. The so-called “bow-wave” of deferred procurement, like
compounded interest, is intensifying daily. The attendant risks of an inadequate defense posture
are increasing concomitantly.

If the present Congress does not come to grips with this reality — not by cutting needed
defense
modernization programs, but by adding the funds necessary to buy them and to
cover other
Pentagon shortfalls –– the next President will face an even more dangerous deficit in our
national security capabilities. and an even more daunting price tag for correcting it.
And the
Republicans will lose one of their most important planks in their campaign for renewed
control of the legislative branch, namely their ability to understand our vital national
security interests and their willingness to provide the resources needed to safeguard them.

The Case Against Holbrooke

July 12, 1999Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Washington, D.C.) The pressure is building on the Senate to confirm Richard
Holbrooke as
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Senators should resist it for one overriding reason:
Holbrooke uniquely personifies the Clinton practice of appeasing — rather than resisting
—
war criminals and terrorists in the pursuit of expediency-driven, but ultimately
counterproductive, “peace processes.”

In his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month, Holbrooke
spoke
with characteristic condescension about those who opposed his efforts to cut deals with Slobodan
Milosevic. He described them as “people who haven’t been there, who haven’t tried to end wars
and prevent wars.” Holbrooke told the Committee how he — unlike those “people” whom he
went on to demean as “moralists and political pundits and columnists” — was willing to do the
“tough slogging” (“this isn’t fun; this isn’t bridge or tennis”) involved in negotiating with the
likes of Milosevic.

An Absence of ‘Moral Judgment’

Never mind that the un-fun “tough slogging” transformed Holbrooke into a internationally
renowned figure, able to command huge speaking fees, book advances and salaries from Wall
Street investment banks — all of which prompted questions about the Ambassador’s ethical
conduct. Worse yet was his explanation of what was entailed: He had to avoid “making
a
moral judgement…about somebody with whom I’ve had to negotiate.”

There may be no better enunciation of the real “Clinton Doctrine,” and
no more
compelling reason for preventing the promotion of one of its most aggressive
advocates.

The fact is that the Clinton Administration has repeatedly shown itself willing to suspend
“moral
judgments” in the name of using diplomacy to “end wars and prevent wars.” Unfortunately, this
is a rationalization for appeasement — an approach that has proven to be a costly failure, time and
again.

A particularly egregious example of this Doctrine has been evident in Amb. Holbrooke’s
willingness to suspend “moral judgments” in order to negotiate with Milosevic. The Serbian
dictator has been able to exploit the successive agreements with the U.S. and its allies that ensued
in order to legitimate his hold on power at home, usually at horrible expense to adjacent
non-Serb populations and territories.

The Clinton ‘Doctrine’ at Work

This is hardly the only instance of the phenomenon, however. Consider the following bill of
particulars:

China: The Clinton team has suspended “moral judgment” about
Communist China — most
dramatically, by declaring that human rights would no longer be taken into account in
fashioning U.S. economic and other relations with Beijing. It has even gone so far as
effectively to reward the PRC for China’s intensified crackdown on civil liberties, its
theft of
U.S. nuclear secrets, its sacking of our embassy in Beijing, its efforts to garner influence with
the American government via illegal contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign and its
increasingly hostile assertiveness in East Asia and elsewhere. For example, in recent weeks,
the Administration has granted the Chinese: new licenses to launch sensitive satellites;
essentially unlimited access to powerful computers; and concessions intended to restart
negotiations on China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

North Korea: The Administration has also been working closely with
former Secretary of
Defense William Perry to develop a new “roadmap” for normalizing relations with
North
Korea. To do so, of course, the United States will have to ignore the North’s behavior that is
clearly threatening (for example, Pyongyang’s continued pursuit of long-range ballistic
missile programs and nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, and its proliferation of
these weapons) — to say nothing of the immorality of a Stalinist regime that is, at the same
time, permitting its people to starve by the millions.

Syria: President Clinton is managing to rise above a “moral judgment”
about Syrian despot
Hafez Assad. Even as the United States was warning the Russians not to sell new, more
powerful weapons to Syria on the grounds that the State Department is obliged to list Assad’s
nation as a sponsor of terrorism, the Administration is making clear its eagerness to get
progress in the Syrian-Israeli “peace process.” It is so anxious, in fact, to get a deal between
the parties that Mr. Clinton is expected to promise Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak when
the two meet on Thursday that U.S. peacekeepers will be available for deployment on the
Golan Heights — a step designed to help sell Israel’s withdrawal from this strategic high
ground but that will have the effect of exacerbating the dangers associated with doing so.

Cuba: The New York Times reported last week that the
Clinton Administration has also
decided to rise above moral sensibilities by beginning to normalize relations with Castro’s
Cuba. The Administration is, of course, at pains to describe this initiative as a people-to-people
one, rather than an embrace of Fidel and his regime. (For example, the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce has been authorized to send a delegation to Cuba on these grounds, even though
the transparent agenda for such a trip is further to increase political pressure from selfish
American business interests for an end to the embargo.)

Times’

El Nuevo
Herald

If I formed an investment corporation with European partners, I could earn millions of
dollars in Cuba. But I prefer to lose those millions than to lose my
self-respect. I prefer to
dispense with that type of profit than to become a financial supporter of one of the most brutal
dictators in the world, a man who once was willing to collaborate in the destruction of my
country. For me, there are no doubts regarding the embargo. Of course we must keep
the
embargo. We must keep it until Castro goes.

The Bottom Line

The Senate should not dignify, let alone endorse, the Clinton policy of pursuing “processes”
that
simply cannot produce genuine peace — or other, durable benefits for U.S. interests — based as
they are on treating with known war criminals, “ethnic cleansers,” genocidal maniacs and state
sponsors of terrorism. The last thing the United States needs as U.N. Ambassador, a
position
that will do much to shape and explicate American foreign policy in these and other areas
around the world, is a man like Richard Holbrooke who believes that that policy can be
safely and securely made in the absence of “moral judgments.”

Saving Lieutenant Colonel McCallum

June 1, 1999Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): The good news on the ominous Chinese technology-acquisition front ¹ is
that Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has promised that heads will roll this week in the
Department of Energy. The bad news is that it looks as though those really responsible may be
spared. ² Worse yet, one of the heads on the chopping
block belongs to Ed McCallum — an
individual who has done more than practically anyone else at the Department of Energy to raise
alarms about an environment that Richardson now acknowledges to be replete with
“communications breakdowns…incompetent acts…[where] security was not considered
important.”

Gottemoeller vs. McCallum

Indeed, with Secretary Richardson’s blessing, a senior official deeply implicated in the
aforementioned insecurity practices — Assistant Secretary of Energy for
Nonproliferation and
National Security Rose Gottemoeller ³ — has
already put McCallum, the Director of DOE’s
Office of Safeguards and Security, in bureaucratic limbo. On 19 April, she
placed the retired
Army lieutenant colonel on indefinite administrative leave (with pay) on the basis of what ten
Members of Congress have described in a letter to Richardson as “trumped up and insupportable
accusations that he has violated rules for handling classified information.”

On 26 May, these Congressmen — among them, the Number 3 man in the
House Republican
leadership, Majority Whip Tom Delay — correctly described Mr. McCallum as
“one of the few
high-ranking DOE employees who has vigorously striven to implement and enforce a safeguards
policy for DOE and the National Laboratories.” They declare that this conscientious public
servant is being harshly “repaid for his unfashionable commitment and inconvenient
effectiveness in doing his job” in exposing and counteracting “the systematic and flagrant
disregard for security issues that has thrived in the highest levels of [DOE] for several years.”

Richardson’s Contempt for Congress

Richardson’s response to this letter was astoundingly contemptuous. According to
the
Chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Rep. Dan
Burton,
the Secretary of Energy declared in a meeting with McCallum that the letter “doesn’t intimidate
me, this isn’t [expletive deleted]. These guys are my basketball buddies.” In a letter to
Richardson dated May 28, Congressman Burton said the Secretary seemed to be suggesting that
“you had the ability to dissuade Members of Congress who might be inclined to pursue matters
brought to our attention by Mr. McCallum.”

Regrettably, ex-Congressman Richardson has grounds for believing he can work his will
with his
former colleagues. Chairman Burton’s missive describes how “when we met earlier this week
[Richardson] asked me not to hold a hearing regarding the Department of Energy which would
include as a witness Mr. Edward McCallum.” Rep. Burton reluctantly acceded to the request,
despite the fact that “[McCallum] appears to be uniquely qualified to address the many current
oversight concerns facing Congress in light of the Cox Report’s revelations.” Earlier on, another
personal intervention by Secretary Richardson had a similar result with Rep. Thomas
Bliley,
chairman of the House Commerce Committee, resulting in the abrupt cancellation of a
Commerce subcommittee hearing at which Mr. McCallum had been invited to testify.

The Trulock Precedent

Secretary Richardson is evidently determined to prevent Mr. McCallum from achieving the
sort
of transformation Notra Trulock has recently undergone. Mr. Trulock, it will
be recalled, is the
man who — as Director of Intelligence for the Department of Energy — first blew the whistle on
the apparent Chinese penetration of the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories.

Unfortunately for him, Mr. Trulock’s warnings conflicted with the Clinton Administration’s
policy of “engaging” Beijing and were repeatedly suppressed. Like Ed McCallum, a job action
was taken against him by Ms. Gottemoeller, in this case demotion to the temporary position of
Acting Deputy Director of Intelligence. His career would have been permanently blighted but
for the opportunity afforded Mr. Trulock by the Congress publicly to illuminate the penetration
made easier by Clinton policies, and the cover-up mounted to keep it from coming to light. Last
week, Secretary Richardson gave him a performance bonus and professed his desire to keep Mr.
Trulock on his “team” (a sentiment that appears, however, not to extend to giving him his old job
back!)

Will Lt. Col. McCallum Get His Day in Court?

In the absence of a comparable public platform, Lt. Col. McCallum is suffering one indignity
after another. In addition to having to retain a lawyer at his own considerable expense to defend
himself against Richardson-Gottemoeller’s “trumped-up” charges, he has been given an
ultimatum: Accept banishment to a DOE facility in Albuquerque, acknowledge a
security
infraction and agree to have an official reprimand placed in his personnel file — to put it mildly, a
career-blighting deal — or face unspecified, but dire, consequences.

Even more Kafkaesque, Assistant Secretary Gottemoeller reportedly last week held a
meeting in
which she indicated that McCallum’s Office of Safeguards and Security may lose 10%
of its
budget. (This would come on top of a roughly 20% cut it has sustained in recent years.)
Such an
initiative seems more consistent with the DOE policies Mr. Richardson now decries than with his
endlessly repeated assurances that — thanks to his leadership in tightening up security practices —
the Department’s proverbial barn door is now certifiably closed.

The Bottom Line

To his credit, Chairman Burton last week served notice on Secretary Richardson that he
intends
to have Mr. McCallum testify before his committee in the near future. This hearing should not
only put a spotlight on the witness’ years of heretofore unrecognized efforts to protect the
Nation’s nuclear secrets. It should also make clear that substantial responsibility for the
egregious insecurity at DOE facilities and the national laboratories in recent years rests
with senior policy-makers — whose disdain for time-tested physical, information and
personnel security practices appears to rival Mr. Richardson’s apparent contempt for
Congress.

If Secretary Richardson’s purge is to be at all just, to say nothing of complete, it had
better
include among its targets political appointees like Rose Gottemoeller. Congress
should, in
addition, ensure that some good comes out of all this by seeing to it that Ed McCallum’s
reputation and career are fully rehabilitated, either by entrusting to him the new job of “security
czar” at the Department of Energy or by creating an independent position from
which he can
perform this critical function.

The latter approach is likely to prove needed if Sec. Richardson approves a draft decision
memorandum dated 17 May 1999 that would reorganize “Safeguards and Security Roles and
Responsibilities.” This plan would appear to give the nuclear weapons laboratories and DOE
“field offices” latitude on security matters that their track record suggests they have not exactly
earned. Mr. Richardson would be ill-advised to provide critics with such compelling proof that
his damage-control operation is about political cover, not protecting what remains of the
Department of Energy’s secrets.

¹In the process of denying the Cox Committee’s charges that it had
acquired U.S. nuclear
weapons secrets via espionage, the People’s Republic of China yesterday called attention to the
irresponsible practice of organizations like the Natural Resources Defense
Council and the
Federation of American Scientists of putting sensitive weapons-related data on
the Internet.
The Chinese clearly “doth protest too much” in arguing that the information they have let the
United States know they have came from these open sources. In fact, the detailed designs for
American thermonuclear weapons known to be in their possession could only have come from
secret data bases. With its public relations stunt, however, China has helped to underscore the
irresponsible folly of anti-nuclear activists who — against all logic — believe that the cause of
non-proliferation is being served by their efforts to spread around materials helpful to those
interested in designing or otherwise acquiring nuclear arms.

² This is especially true since the problem with Chinese
acquisition of sensitive U.S.
technology has not been limited to the Department of Energy. While most of the
attention
generated by the Cox Report — and most of the smoke blown on the Administration’s behalf —
revolves around the allegations of espionage at DOE facilities, the bulk of that study and the
majority of its thirty-eight recommendations deal with the acquisition, diversion and/or theft by
China and other potential adversaries of militarily relevant U.S. non-nuclear
technology. Those
in the White House, National Security Council, Commerce, State and Defense Departments and
elsewhere responsible for allowing the wholesale loss of such technology deserve censure every
bit as much as those culpable for the compromise of America’s nuclear secrets.

³ See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Giving ‘Clinton’s Legacy’ New Meaning: The
Buck Stops at the President’s Desk on the ‘Legacy’ Code , Other D.O.E. Scandals
(No. 99-D
52, 29 April 1999), Senate Given Another Opportunity to Reject Clinton’s
Policy of
Denuclearization: the Gottemoeller Nomination ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_166″>No. 98-D 166, 29 September 1999) and
Clinton’s Reckless Nuclear Agenda Revealed? Study Co-Authored By Candidate
For Top
Pentagon Job Is Alarming (No. 97-D 96, 12
July 1997).

Elder Statesmanship: Dole Says ‘No Deals With Milosevic’

June 1, 1999Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): What a difference a week makes! Last Thursday, the Washington
Post
published an intemperate op.ed. by Victor Chernomyrdin — the former
Russian Prime Minister
who now serves as President Yeltsin’s consigliere for the Butcher of Belgrade, Slobodan
Milosevic. Apart from warning of an imminent nuclear war and an end to his missions to
Belgrade if NATO did not stop bombing at once, its principal message seems to have been that
there was no alternative but to do a deal with Milosevic.

Then came the Serbian dictator’s indictment Friday on war crimes. And today, the
Post
published an extremely powerful essay (see the attached) by
former Senate Majority Leader
and Republican Presidential candidate Robert Dole. Entitled “No Deals with
Milosevic,” it
declares that:

“It is…incomprehensible for the administration to offer Serbia a deal that contains terms that
are
equal or more favorable to Milosevic than the terms he rejected at Rambouillet
immediately
before the massive attacks. Yet, this is precisely what appears to be happening. Even to
sit
down and negotiate terms with an indicted war criminal would be a blow to American
moral leadership, a travesty of justice and a slap in the face of the tribunal.” (Emphasis
added.)

Sen. Dole is, of course, entirely correct in his assessment of the repercussions of what
amount to
direct or indirect negotiations with Milosevic. Among these will be the following:

First, America will find itself humiliated, its strategic interests harmed and its Treasury
depleted by the obligation to pay costly war reparations.

Second, the victors — Slobodan Milosevic and his Russian sponsors — will find new
legitimacy, an enhancement of their strategic position in the region and more generally, the
benefit of vast sums of U.S.-subsidized international largesse. In Yugoslavia’s case, these
will amount to war reparations. In Russia’s, these will be billed as a reward for its “positive”
contribution to “peace” from the international community.

Third, and perhaps worst of all, such a deal will signal to other odious regimes — from
North
Korea to Iraq to Cuba — that this U.S. government can be counted on to reward, rather than
punish, the most despicable and aggressive behavior. History teaches us that such signals
tend to beget such behavior, not deter it.

The Bottom Line

Over the past four years, Senator Dole has repeatedly suppressed his fully justified criticism
of
the Clinton Administration’s hapless policy (if it can be called that) regarding the Balkans.
Unfortunately, in so doing, he has occasionally provided indispensable political cover as they
first fashioned, and then foisted, successive dubious Balkan policies on the American people.

The least the Administration can do now is heed his wise counsel:

“For eight years, Milosevic has carried out genocidal policies that have made him an
international
pariah. At long last, the UN War Crimes Tribunal has given legal weight to this reprobation.
Rather than negotiating with Milosevic, the United States should reinforce the principles of
justice embodied in the new indictment by purging Serbia of the source of its
ruination.”
(Emphasis added.)

Wall Street Journal‘s Melloan Inveighs Against Russian Aid

May 18, 1999Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): The recently completed Senate Armed Services Committee mark-up of
the
Fiscal Year 2000 defense authorization bill includes calls for long-overdue improvements in the
management and oversight of — and for greater accountability for — several Defense and Energy
Department non-proliferation programs in the former Soviet Union. Of particular concern have
been those pursued in connection with the so-called Cooperative Threat Reduction (or
Nunn-Lugar) program, whose stated purpose is to reduce the danger posed by the
Kremlin’s ongoing
weapons of mass destruction activities.

This legislative action appears to have been prompted by growing concerns about the
diversion of
such funds into foreign bank accounts and undesirable military-related activities in Russia —
concerns that have only been exacerbated by the increasingly chaotic, not to say revanchist, state
of the Russian political system. These apprehensions are enunciated with characteristic eloquence
in today’s Wall Street Journal in an opinion piece by editorial board member and
columnist
George Melloan. In the attached op.ed.,
entitled “Naiveté in ‘Engaging’ Russia Carries a High
Price Tag,” Mr. Melloan properly takes the Clinton Administration to task for its failure to
understand the true character of the present Russian government, to which Messrs. Clinton, Gore
and Talbott remain wedded:

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

The Bottom Line

The Clinton Administration’s Russia policy is in urgent need of congressional oversight. In
particular, General Accounting Office audits and other investigations are required into the policies
and practices of those like Assistant Secretary of Energy Rose Gottemoeller 1 and others who
have used the Cooperative Threat Reduction accounts as a slush-fund for appeasing corrupt
Russian apparatchiks and subsidizing the military work of the Kremlin’s weapons of mass
destruction scientists.

Such adult supervision is especially needed at a moment when the Administration is frantically
trying to purchase Russian mediation as a deus ex machina for its Kosovo debacle. 2 It is a safe
bet that the Clinton Administration — if left to its own devices — will pour further money down
Russia’s black hole, in amounts that will make the latest, wasted $4.6 billion IMF disbursement
pale by comparison.

1 See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Clinton Legacy Watch #41: Security Meltdown at
DOE (No. 99-D 48, 26 April 1999),
Senate Given Another Opportunity to Reject Clinton’s
Policy of Denuclearization: the Gottemoeller Nomination ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_166″>No. 98-D 166, 29 September 1998),
and Study Co-Authored By Candidate for Top Pentagon job Is
Alarming (No. 97-D 96, 12 July
1997).

2 See Russia Ex Machina ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=99-D_45″>No. 99-D 45, 20 April 1999).