(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, by a
stunning, bipartisan 45-1 vote, the House
of Representative’s National Security
Committee (HNSC) rejected the proposition
that national security interests should
be subordinated to the American computer
industry’s quest for short-term economic
advantage through the unregulated sale of
powerful encryption products. The
Committee’s action came at the initiative
of Rep. Curt Weldon
(R-PA) — a long-time member of the
Center for Security Policy’s Board of
Advisors — and Rep. Ron Dellums
(D-CA) on H.R. 695, the so-called
Security and Freedom through Encryption
(SAFE) Act.

This legislation, whose principal
House sponsor is Rep. Robert
Goodlatte (R-VA), would govern
the domestic use and foreign export of
encryption software and related
technology. The bill was sequentially
referred to the National Security,
Commerce and Intelligence Committees
after its earlier, favorable
consideration by the Judiciary and
International Relations Committees. The
House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence (HPSCI) is expected to mark
up H.R. 695 tomorrow.

If the HPSCI follows the HNSC’s lead
by correcting key deficiencies in H.R.
695, it is entirely possible that
these two committees will do no more
important work this year on behalf of
U.S. national security interests.

The Issue

By its very nature, encryption — a
generic name for numerous means of
encoding computer, voice or other
transmissions of data so as to conceal
the contents from unauthorized access —
is one of the most complex and obscure of
sciences. This is especially true given
the direct relevance of this science to
protecting classified U.S. government
information and to penetrating foreign
governments and other entities’ secure
communications.

Due to advances in information
techniques, however, the know-how and
means for providing sophisticated
encryption capabilities has proliferated
dramatically in recent years. With the
burgeoning use of the Internet and other
electronic devices for conducting
business, the demand for means to keep
voice communications, data records and
data transfers private has also grown
tremendously.

U.S. manufacturers of computer
software and hardware — many of whom
have been major supporters of and enjoy
great influence with President Clinton
and his Administration — are demanding
an opportunity to meet this demand with
encryption products that will be
exceedingly robust, if not
impenetrable. These companies, and
their congressional allies like Rep.
Goodlatte on the House side and Senators
Conrad Burns (R-MT) and Patrick
Leahy (D-VT), emphasize the
trade benefits such sales would accrue to
American producers and the U.S. trade
balance. They also contend that foreign
manufacturers of encryption technologies
will gladly supply products not available
from American sources. Similar arguments
have proven effective in obtaining
Administration support for the wholesale
elimination of export controls on
powerful computers — even some
supercomputers with obvious military
relevance.⁽¹⁾

The Risk to National
Security

These arguments ignore, however, a
larger national interest: For years, the
United States has relied upon a highly
sophisticated signals intelligence
(SIGINT) capability to provide timely
access to information not otherwise
available to U.S. government
policy-makers. That information has
frequently served to avoid casualties,
preserve the peace, and help to win wars.
For example, it has recently been
disclosed that SIGINT contributed greatly
to shortening World War II, likely saving
hundreds of thousands of American lives
in the process. Many experts believe
that, without successful U.S. SIGINT
operations, the Cold War might have
turned into an unforgiving hot
war at critical junctures. There is no
reason to believe that signals
intelligence will be less critical to
American security in the dynamic and
increasingly turbulent international
environment of the future.

Unfortunately, it is hard to
quantify the precise dollar value of
American lives saved, terrorist incidents
thwarted or wars avoided thanks to
competent signals intelligence.
This is especially true since the
contribution made by U.S. SIGINT to
achieving such results must generally be
concealed, lest the sources and methods
that enabled the success be compromised
and, therefore, be unavailable for future
use. The unalterable fact is that this
capability will be irreparably harmed, if
not as a practical matter, eliminated if
the best American encryption technology
becomes universally available.

The Danger of Relaxed
Export Controls on Encryption Technology

The House National Security Committee
vote illustrates the value of heightening
congressional awareness of the gravity of
this situation. In recent months, over a
score of its members have at one time or
another been listed as co-sponsors of the
Goodlatte bill. All but one of them, Rep.
Adam Smith (D-WA) — whose district abuts
the home of Microsoft Corporation —
supported the Weldon-Dellums amendment.
In the course of yesterday’s mark-up, it
became clear that light shed on the
adverse implications of this legislation
persuaded them that encryption exports
must not be permitted if they will cause
“harm to the national security of
the United States.”

Unfortunately, President Clinton has
already issued one Executive Order
substantially weakening restraints on the
export of powerful encryption
capabilities. It did so in several ways:
First, the Executive Order removed
encryption technologies from the
relatively stringent State Department’s
Munitions Control List and made it part
of the notoriously lax Commerce
Department’s purview. Second, it allowed
40-bit encryption programs⁽²⁾
to be exported without a license. Third,
56-bit encryption programs are now
permitted to be exported without a
license, provided the exporter is working
on a public key recovery technology
base. Finally, any product that
is part of a public key recovery system
may be exported without a license ––
even if that key resides with the
purchaser of such encryption.

The Goodlatte bill and its Burns-Leahy
counterpart in the Senate, however, would
go even further, effectively eliminating
all export controls on
encryption technology. As a
result, even the most sophisticated
software currently available, featuring
128-bit coding that is judged to be
unbreakable using available decrypting
techniques, could be provided to foreign
purchasers irrespective of whether they
may be: potentially hostile foreign
governments’ militaries and espionage
services, proliferators of weapons of
mass destruction, terrorist
organizations, drug-traffickers,
organized crime or other threats to U.S.
interests.

Interestingly, lobbyists promoting the
Goodlatte bill have misled some
legislators into believing that H.R. 695
actually tightens encryption
export controls, instead of gutting them.
As the truth has become known, some
co-sponsors — including member of the
HNSC — have begun to remove their names
from the bill. It is a travesty that such
a fraud has been perpetrated on Members
of Congress; this fraud would amount to
malfeasance should it not be corrected
by, at a minimum, ensuring that the
existing export controls on encryption
technology can be preserved as long as
the President deems them required to
prevent “harm to the national
security of the United States.”

Law Enforcement Protections
Must Not Come at the Expense of National
Security

In this connection, there are also
grounds for concern about legislation
being considered in the Senate Commerce
Committee as an alternative to the
Burns-Leahy bill. This legislation has
been drafted by the Committee’s chairman
and ranking member, Sens. John
McCain (R-AZ) and Bob
Kerrey (D-NE) respectively, with
a view to addressing legitimate
domestic law enforcement equities that
would also be seriously compromised by
the Goodlatte approach. This would be
done by creating incentives for U.S.
manufacturers to participate in an
encryption “key management
infrastructure” (i.e., establishing
means whereby federal agencies, with
appropriate court orders, can obtain the
ability to read encrypted
communications). It must be noted,
however, that — while this legislation’s
incentives aimed at encouraging such an
arrangement are significant — the
companies affected would be under no
obligation to take part in this
arrangement.

Unfortunately, in an effort to appease
encryption industry unhappiness over that
measure, the McCain-Kerrey bill would
aggravate the present national security
problem on the export control front.
Notably, it would raise the
threshold for unlicenced exports from 40
bits to 56 bits. This represents
a dramatic increase in the power of
encryption programs that will find their
way into the hands of hostile powers,
international terrorists and other
foreign criminal elements — and will add
substantially to the time and computing
power required by U.S. intelligence to
monitor their activities.

The McCain-Kerrey legislation also
calls for the creation of an industry-government
advisory board tasked to
consider and jointly develop
recommendations concerning future
standards for encryption exports. Such an
arrangement would put those responsive to
multinational stockholders on an
essentially equal footing with government
agencies responsible for the national
security. In addition, the bill would mandate
foreign-availability assessments — a
pretext all-too-frequently used by
industry to argue for even the most
irresponsible transfers of U.S.
technology.⁽³⁾

U.S. Security Requirements
in an Age of Information Warfare

The House Intelligence Committee is
expected to consider one other
shortcoming of H.R. 695 which the
National Security Committee felt was
outside its jurisdiction — namely, the
Goodlatte bill’s failure to address the
urgent national security requirement for
a domestic key management infrastructure.
Such an infrastructure is needed to
mitigate the growing threat posed by
information warfare (IW) against the
United States’ ever more
computer-dependent public services (e.g.,
energy, health, sanitation,
telecommunications, financial
institutions and markets and similar
industries). Put simply, the Nation will
be exceedingly vulnerable to IW if it is
unable to: detect, let alone prevent,
unauthorized penetrations of nominally
encryption-safeguarded computers critical
to large sectors of the economy; ensure
necessary interoperability of computers
using different encryption programs;
and/or assure key recovery where
required.

It is extremely important that members
of the HPSCI constructively address this
subject — as well as reinforce the
stance taken by their colleagues on the
National Security Committee concerning
export controls. Their counterparts on
the House Commerce Committee should —
and, for that matter, the counterpart
Senate committees — be doing no less.

The Bottom Line

Absent such efforts on the part of
national security-minded committees, the
deep pockets and questionable tactics of
interested parties in the computer
industry stand a good chance of pushing
through the Congress legislation that
would cause incalculable harm to the
defense and foreign policy interests of
the United States. This will be the
inevitable effect if H.R. 695 were
permitted to offer a possibly
impenetrable electronic cloak of secrecy
on our foreign adversaries while failing
to protect the public networks on which
our economy depends.

The undeniable fact is that U.S.
national security is dependent upon
America’s ability to collect intelligence
in peacetime on foreign threats — from
the activities of terrorist groups to the
trade in “weapons of mass
destruction” technology to the
status of nuclear-tipped missiles in
potentially unfriendly hands. What is
more, success in foreign affairs (from
trade to diplomacy to support for friends
and allies) often depends critically on
the contribution signals intelligence
makes to identifying and exploiting
opportunities to advance American values
and interests around the world.

As a result, responsible
legislators cannot afford to be
ambivalent about, to say nothing of indifferent
to, initiatives that would make more
difficult the task of preserving the
United States’ ability to gather SIGINT.
Such a vital, long-term national security
priority must take precedence
over the ephemeral, if potentially
lucrative, commercial advantages of
selling powerful U.S. encryption software
abroad.

– 30 –

1. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled What’s Good For
Silicon Graphics Is Not Necessarily Good
For America: Some Supercomputer Sales
Imperil U.S. Security ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_102″>No. 97-D 102, 21
July 1997).

2. Such figures
refer to the number of variables used in
combination to conceal a given piece of
encrypted message traffic, one of several
factors determining the robustness of an
encryption program.

3. As the Center
noted last July, it is unclear on what
basis other industries selling
strategically sensitive products — for
example, the supercomputer, chemical and
biotechnology, machine tool, chip
manufacturers, etc. — would be denied
similar vehicles for demanding the
erosion or elimination of any remaining
export controls on the transfer of their
respective products.

(Washington, D.C.): What will
assuredly be marketed as the
“Princess Diana Memorial
Anti-Personnel Landmine (APL) Ban”
is taking shape in Oslo and the process
is a bitter foretaste of the shape of
things to come, pursuant to the
international community’s “global
agenda”: The United States
is being relegated to the role of just
another nation — not even primer
inter pares — with no more say or
influence on decisions that will affect
vital American interests and the lives of
U.S. servicemen and women than
Mauritania, Malta or Malaysia.

Indeed, the radical tyranny of the
majority of states that is all too
familiar to observers of the UN General
Assembly is much in evidence at the Oslo
negotiations: Language to which the
United States is adamantly opposed is
adopted, at best, by simple majority
vote; at worse, the Chairman, an African
diplomat by the name of Selabi, gavels
the discussion to a close on the grounds
that there is so much opposition to the
U.S. position that it no longer warrants
debate or deserves a formal poll.

The early returns are in on the
Clinton Administration’s effort to
appease those unwilling to put up with
the ponderous process of achieving
consensus — the principle that has
traditionally governed the work of the
Conference on Disarmament (except when,
as in the case of the Comprehensive Test
Ban, the United States rashly decides to
dispense with that procedure)⁽¹⁾:
As was entirely predictable (and
predicted⁽²⁾),
U.S. positions that have been
formally described as irreducible
“red lines” are being
contemptuously spurned.

For example, an exception permitting
the continued deployment of
anti-personnel landmines near the Korean
Demilitarized Zone has been
rejected (all that remains to be decided
is the length of time we have to remove
them); a caveat that the ban applies only
to “primarily designed”
for anti-personnel purposes has been
defeated; and the effort to defer entry
into force for 9 years was
repudiated without even holding a vote.
Even an ordinarily boiler-plate provision
permitting nations to withdraw from the
treaty if their “supreme
national interests” are
jeopardized appears likely to be dissed.
There are, moreover, indications that the
International Committee of the Red Cross
and the other, like-minded abolitionists
running the “Ottawa Process”
may be so bold as to insist that anti-tank
landmines be explicitly banned,
as well — weapons even General Norman
Schwarzkopf and other ex-military
proponents of the APL ban have said are
necessary.⁽³⁾

The Bottom Line

Events in Oslo add further impetus to
the warning issued by the Center on the
eve of the current talks:

“The stakes for the U.S.
military are extremely high.
After all, the abolitionists have
already made clear that they
intend, after work on the
landmine ban is completed, to
seek new agreements leading to
prohibitions on the following
weapon systems: anti-tank
mines, depleted uranium rounds,
small-caliber (so-called
‘fragmenting’) ammunition,
fuel-air explosives, naval mines,
directed energy systems and
nuclear weapons.

“If the Joint Chiefs of
Staff wish to avoid being
disarmed in detail, they must
defend their present red lines
and, when those lines are
breached, be prepared to urge
defeat of a defective and
dangerously precedential ban on
anti-personnel weapons.”

It is becoming increasingly clear,
moreover, that what is at stake now is
not merely national security equities.
There will be no end of grief for U.S.
diplomatic, economic and strategic
interests — and ultimately, American
rights and liberties — if the Clinton
Administration allows them to be
subordinated at every turn to the
lowest-common-denominator,
one-nation-one-vote mechanics of the
one-worlders.

Having
had its red lines repeatedly crossed with
utter contempt, the U.S. delegation
should have the dignity to leave the Oslo
negotiations and announce its refusal to
sign the unverifiable, unenforceable and
ineffective treaty that is emerging from
them. Ironically, under present
circumstances, only by so doing can the
United States hope to have real influence
on the future of landmine arms control —
and, for that matter, other international
“processes.”

– 30 –

1. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Don’t Fall For It,
Mr. President: Landmine Ban Is Seductive,
But A Bad Public Policy And A Formula For
Killing U.S. Personnel ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_111″>No. 97-D 111, 13
August 1997).

2. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled ‘Welcome To Oslo’:
When the U.S. Gets Rolled On Its
Landmines Exceptions, Will The Joint
Chiefs Hold The (Red) Line(s)?
(No. 97-D 120,
29 August 1997).

3. For more on the
opposition to the ban, see the following
Center products: Celestial
Navigation: Pentagon’s Extraordinary
’64-Star’ Letter Shows Why The U.S.
Cannot Agree to Ban All Landmines
(No. 97-D 97,
14 July 1997) and Many of
Nation’s Most Respected Military Leaders
Join Forces to Oppose Bans On Use of
Self-Destructing Landmines
(No. 97-P 101,
21 July 1997).

(Washington, D.C.): The House of
Representatives is expected shortly to
consider an amendment offered by Rep.
Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) that is intended
to bring a measure of integrity,
accountability and realism to the United
States’ financial relationship to the
United Nations. The debate on the
Bartlett legislation, entitled the
“United Nations Erroneous Debt Act
of 1997,” affords a long-overdue
opportunity for Congress to address not
only what is actually owed and by
whom; it also permits a needed,
critical examination of the portentous
character of the Clinton Administration’s
policy toward this international
institution.

We Gave — and Gave and
Gave — At the Office

President Clinton, former UN
Ambassador and now Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright and other top
officials have repeatedly echoed — and,
thereby, legitimated — the charge that
the United States is the world’s biggest
deadbeat when it comes to paying its
“dues” to the United Nations.
In fact, as a study performed last year
by the General Accounting Office shows, the
arrearage of some $1.3 billion to which
this criticism refers is much more than
offset by the unreimbursed costs of U.S.
involvement in various UN peacekeeping
operations conducted from 1992-1995.

Specifically, the GAO found that
during this period, the U.S. laid out
$1.6 billion for the Haiti operation;
$2.2 billion for the former Yugoslavia;
nearly $600 million for Rwanda; and $2.2
billion for Somalia. Of these sums only
$79.4 million has been reimbursed by the
UN; $1.8 billion has been credited as
U.S. “dues.” This
leaves an outstanding balance due the
U.S. of some $4.7 billion or $3.4
billion more than the United States
“owes” the UN.
While more current numbers are not
available to the Center at this writing,
it is a safe bet that the continuing
costs of UN-mandated peacekeeping
operations in places like Haiti, Bosnia,
Macedonia and Rwanda that are still being
borne by the United States are even
larger — and still substantially
unreimbursed.

Lest there be any doubt, this
is real money. Much of it has
been provided by the taxpayer and
allocated by the Congress for very
different purposes than those to which it
has been applied. For example, over the
period examined by the GAO, the Defense
Department was obliged to divert some
$3.4 billion — coincidentally,
approximately the amount the UN
“owes” the United States —
from already cash-strapped modernization,
research and development and
readiness-related accounts.

Noblesse Oblige

Unfortunately, these unreimbursed
expenses also epitomize tangibly the
Clinton Administration’s attitude toward
international government and the role its
institutions are believed to play in
bringing about a new world order. The
sentiment at work might be described as
that of noblesse oblige — that
it is the duty of the United States not
only to pay a disproportionate share of
the expenses of various peacekeeping
operations, but also to refrain from
seeking the compensation for such
disbursements to which it is entitled. As
a result, the U.S. is neither given
credit, literally or politically,
for the burden it is uniquely bearing.
Insult is added to injury to the
reputation and influence of the American
government when its own senior
representatives dignify charges that the
United States is irresponsibly derelict
in pulling its load at the United
Nations.

The Bottom Line

Rep. Bartlett is to be commended for
his initiative in highlighting the true
nature of the U.S. entries in UN
bookkeeping. His legislation — which
makes payment of “any assessed or
voluntary contribution to the United
Nations or any specialized agency of the
UN” contingent on the President
certifying either that: 1) the U.S. is
being reimbursed for its
as-yet-uncompensated contributions to UN
military peacekeeping or 2) the alleged
U.S. “arrearages” are
eliminated and the United States is given
credit for the roughly $3.5 billion
difference between its outlays to date
and what it “owes” — offers an
opportunity to halt the utterly
unjustified demeaning of America in which
UN bureaucrats, foreign diplomats and
Clinton Administration officials all too
often indulge.

More importantly, the debate on the
Bartlett amendment should catalyze
congressional efforts to end the
practice of considering Pentagon and
other U.S. government accounts as slush
funds to be plundered at will by
an Administration determined to enable
peacekeeping operations that might
otherwise be deemed unjustified. This
practice materially degrades the combat
capabilities of the American military —
both by diverting troops from their
principal missions and training regimens
and by ripping-off needed resources. What
is more, it tends to encourage a lack of
discipline with respect to the real
costs associated with international
interventions in conflict or
proto-conflict situations, a practice
that often exposes the United States to
still more expensive, and unreimbursed,
obligations entailed in sustaining or
withdrawing peacekeeping units.

(Washington, D.C.): A U.S. delegation
led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State Eric Newsom has the unenviable task
of laboring through the holiday weekend
— and most of the next three weeks — in
Oslo, Norway. There they will be
subjected to the diplomatic equivalent of
drawing-and-quartering at the hands of
nations and non-governmental
organizations, led by the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), bent
on quickly completing an
unverifiable, unenforceable and
ineffective ban on anti-personnel
landmines (APLs).

The question is not whether
the outcome of the Oslo negotiations will
produce an accord to be signed in Ottawa
in December 1997 that is inconsistent
with the Clinton Administration’s own
negotiating instructions — and, more
importantly, with the Nation’s security
requirements as defined by the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. After all, it
requires only a simple majority of the
countries present to vote down changes to
the draft treaty that President Clinton
has said he would seek. And the
ICRC, which is devoting millions of
dollars to the APL ban campaign, has
already issued what amount to
instructions to sympathetic nations’
negotiators that the U.S. changes are
to be rejected.

The Shape of Things to Come

As a result, the treaty is expected to
take the following form:

• It will ban basically any
  ordnance that is capable of
  having the effects of
  anti-personnel landmines by not
  differentiating between those
  weapons “primarily
  designed” to act as
  APLs and those that are not. This
  would have a profound and adverse
  effect on the U.S. ability to
  deploy and use an array of weapon
  systems (e.g., including
  submunitions, anti-armor mines,
  artillery, etc.) It could also
  translate into onerous and
  expensive obligations to clean up
  unexploded ordinance. It would
  certainly impede the sale or
  transfer of such weapons to
  allied and friendly states.
• The United States will not only
  be required to eliminate its
  entire inventory of
  free-standing,
  self-deactivating/self-destructing
  anti-personnel landmines
  (including those in the kits of
  special operations forces); it
  will also have to dismantle such
  short-duration APLs that
  are packaged together with
  anti-tank landmines.
  This will involve significant and
  unwarranted expenses. It will
  also reduce the effectiveness of
  anti-tank landmines by making it
  far easier to clear them.
• The United States may also be
  obliged to eliminate the
  long-duration (i.e.,
  non-self-deactivating/self-destructing)
  landmines it currently
  deploys only in the Korean
  demilitarized zone to
  help defeat or at least impede a
  North Korean invasion of the
  South. At a minimum, the Ottawa
  treaty will require the phasing
  out of such mines within a fixed
  period of time — whether
  alternatives capable of
  performing the mission have been
  discovered, or not.

Whither the Chiefs?

The Joint Chiefs of Staff have made
clear their view that such outcomes would
breach their “red lines” —
arrangements that are minimally
compatible with the requirements of U.S.
troops if they are to survive and prevail
on the battlefield. Apparently, the
Clinton Administration’s instructions to
Secretary Newsom and his team reflect the
Chiefs’ stance.

The question then arises: What
will happen when such red lines
are inevitably breached over the next few
weeks in Oslo? Even before it
has left Washington, some among the U.S.
delegation have displayed a tendency to
accommodate the sentiments of the
“abolitionists,” regardless of
whether doing so contravenes the Chiefs’
best professional military advice. The
pressure to do so in Norway, and in the
aftermath of the meetings there, will be
intense. In the final analysis, the
question of whether that pressure will be
resisted — if not by the Clinton
Administration, then by the U.S. Senate
which must approve ratification of any
landmine ban — will lie with the Joint
Chiefs of Staff and other top military
commanders.

On 10 July 1997, all sixteen of the
Chiefs and the regional CINCs wrote the
Senate making clear their opposition to
bans that would prevent the use by the
U.S. military of
self-deactivating/self-destructing
landmines.

“Until the United States has
a capable replacement for
self-destructing APL, maximum
flexibility and war-fighting
capability for American combat
commanders must be preserved. The
lives of our sons and daughters
should be given the highest
priority when deciding whether or
not to ban unilaterally the use
of self-destructing APL.”⁽¹⁾

Unless they formally change that
position, it seems inconceivable that 67
Senators would put American troops at
risk by disregarding the professional
military’s judgment, even if President
Clinton ultimately decides to do so.

The Bottom Line

The stakes for the U.S. military are
extremely high. After all, the
abolitionists have already made clear
that they intend, after work on the
landmine ban is completed, to seek new
agreements leading to prohibitions on the
following weapon systems: anti-tank
mines, depleted uranium rounds,
small-caliber (so-called
“fragmenting”) ammunition,
fuel-air explosives, naval mines,
directed energy systems and nuclear
weapons.

If the Joint Chiefs of Staff
wish to avoid being disarmed in detail,
they must defend their present red lines
and, when those lines are breached, be
prepared to urge defeat of a defective
and dangerously precedential ban on
anti-personnel weapons.

– 30 –

1. For the full
text of this letter, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Celestial
Navigation: Pentagon’s Extraordinary
’64-Star’ Letter Shows Why the U.S.
Cannot Agree to Ban All Landmines
(No. 97-D 97,
14 July 1997). Also see Many
of Nation’s Most Respected Military
Leaders Join Forces To Oppose Bans on Use
of Self-Destructing Landmines
(No. 97-P 101,
21 July 1997).

(Washington, D.C.): In the ten days
since James Rubin was formally installed
by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
as the new State Department Press
Spokesman, he has displayed an unsettling
tendency. He has repeatedly made sweeping
statements — some flatly in error, some
simply fatuous and many inappropriately
flippant — that threaten to disserve
U.S. interests. At the very least, they
reinforce the international perception
that the Clinton Administration is not
serious about the conduct of the Nation’s
foreign and defense policies.

Consider the following sampler from
Jamie Rubin’s first days as State’s
Mispokesman:

• As noted by the Center last week,⁽¹⁾
  Rubin disputes any suggestion
  that Yasser Arafat is part of the
  problem, not the solution to
  bringing peace to the troubled
  Middle East, with an increasingly
  unpersuasive mantra:
  “Chairman Arafat was on the
  White House lawn with the
  President. He signed a peace
  agreement with the Israelis. We
  regard him as a partner in our
  effort to find peace in the
  Middle East.”
• Even a veteran State Department
  journalist felt constrained to
  upbraid Rubin a week ago for
  cynically announcing that the
  Clinton Administration takes U.S.
  law seriously but would do
  nothing to prevent the PLO from
  flouting it. That is the
  practical effect of Arafat’s
  organization’s maintaining a
  Washington office and operation
  in all but name — despite the
  expiration of a waiver to
  statutes prohibiting such
  activities in the United States.
• On Monday, Rubin enthused about
  North Korea’s compliance with its
  obligations under an multilateral
  agreement to suspend its nuclear
  operations. He declared that
  there is “major progress and
  significant progress” in
  ensuring that the North’s
  “nuclear program will stay
  frozen and ultimately be
  dismantled.” Indeed, Rubin
  announced that, “We have
  stopped the possibility of a
  major nuclear program breaking
  out in the dangerous Korean
  Peninsula.”
• This is, of course, seriously
  misleading. On August 13, the
  Clinton Administration issued a
  report on compliance with arms
  control agreements that notes
  that North Korea “has not
  allowed ‘special inspections’
  pursuant to the Nuclear
  Non-Proliferation Treaty”
  and continues to “obstruct
  the full implementation” of
  safeguards required by that
  accord. Such behavior
  significantly diminishes the
  value of the multilateral
  “agreed framework” and
  Pyongyang’s selective
  “compliance” therewith.
• What is more, the North is now
  widely believed to have at least
  a few nuclear weapons. It remains
  in a position to utilize the
  by-products of its previous
  nuclear program to make more and
  will, thanks to the new reactors
  being built with U.S., South
  Korean and Japanese help, obtain
  far larger quantities of the
  materials needed to manufacture a
  substantial arsenal of these
  weapons.
• As noted by the Center yesterday,⁽²⁾
  in response to an important
  op.ed. article published in the Washington
  Times by retired Lieutenant
  General Gordon Sumner and Howard
  Phillips on August 18, Rubin
  pooh-poohed concerns about
  ominous developments in Panama.
  For example, he sweepingly
  dismissed concerns about the
  security threat to the Canal
  posed by the apparent interest of
  the People’s Republic of China
  and drug-traffickers to fill the
  vacuum being created by the U.S.
  retreat from the isthmus,
  declaring “…None of the
  activities that may or may
  not be going on there is
  going to affect our national
  security.”

Misrepresenting the New
U.S. Position on Banning Anti-Personnel
Landmines

Perhaps Jamie Rubin’s most
unforgivable gaffe to date occurred when
he mischaracterized an important aspect
of President Clinton’s latest initiative
to appease those pressing for a ban on
anti-personnel landmines (APLs). On
August 18, Rubin amplified on an
announcement issued from the presidential
vacation site in Martha’s Vineyard to the
effect that the Administration had
decided after all to “participate in
the Ottawa process.” This is
diplospeak for a new-found willingness to
reach agreement on a Canadian-sponsored
treaty by the end of December — even
though it will represent a
less-than-global, assuredly unverifiable
and certifiably ineffective ban on APLs.

According to Rubin, the United States
will seek certain changes to the draft
treaty now under consideration. It would
insist, for example, on preserving the
U.S. right to use long-duration
anti-personnel landmines in Korea.⁽³⁾
Rubin also says the Clinton team will
seek to alter the information exchange
provisions and definitions used in the
Ottawa treaty so as to “improve
verification” and prevent non-APL
weapons (for example, anti-tank
landmines) from being captured by this
accord.

Unfortunately, Rubin
mischaracterized the new U.S. position in
one key respect. He declared
three times that the United States would
not insist on an exclusion for
self-destructing/self-deactivating or
short-duration (sometimes called
“smart”) anti-personnel
landmines. In fact, at the insistence of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the
presidentially approved initiative would
allow continued American use of such
weapons, as long as they are packaged
together with anti-tank landmines. This
synergistic practice minimizes the
prospect that enemy forces will readily
be able to clear areas sowed with
anti-tank mines. It represents an
enormous concession on the part of the
Chiefs who, until last Friday, had
correctly maintained that their forces
required the ability to use
short-duration APLs, with or without
anti-tank devices.

The Bottom Line

It remains to be seen how lasting will
be the damage caused by Jamie Rubin’s
pronouncements on the landmine issue.
Presumably clarifications of the U.S.
stance will be forthcoming and the team
being dispatched to Oslo next month to
participate in the fast-track treaty will
have clear instructions. Still, the
combined effect of the eroding American
position and the Press Misspokesman’s
erroneous characterization of what
remains of it will presumably serve to
make all the more problematic the
negotiation of a landmine treaty with
which the U.S. military can literally
live.

The larger question, of course, is:
How much damage will Rubin inflict on
other vital U.S. interests with
ill-considered, intemperate or inaccurate
statements? He evidently enjoys Mrs.
Albright’s confidence; if the first ten
days of his tenure are any guide, he will
not long enjoy that of the rest of the
Nation.

–
30 –

1. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Denial Is No Basis
For Securing A Durable Mideast Peace
(No. 97-D_110,
11 August 1997).

2. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Will The U.S. Cede
The Strategic ‘Path Between The Seas’ To
The People’s Republic Of China And/Or
Narco-Traffickers? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_113″>No. 97-D_113, 18
August 1997).

3. Rubin seemed to
justify this demand as much on the
grounds that that mission was an
internationally sanctioned one as on the
fact that such weapons are deemed by the
American military to be essential to the
defense of South Korea — and the
protection of U.S. troops deployed on the
peninsula for that purpose. Evidently,
the Administration’s multilateralist
impulses cause them to believe that, in
circumstances where the U.S. decides it
has to be prepared to fight without
a UN mandate, APLs cannot be justified.