Tag Archives: Donald Rumsfeld

‘The Most Important Thing’: Columnist Safire Asks Why Television Media is Largely Ignoring Rumsfeld Warnings?

(Washington, D.C.): In the past twenty-four hours, William Safire — one of the few pundits
whose brilliance, courage and integrity gives that profession a good name — twice
rendered
distinct public service. First, in a nationally televised Sunday morning news program appearance
and then in his syndicated column published today (see the
attached), Mr. Safire called for urgent
attention and concrete responses to the work of the Rumsfeld Commission (formally
known as
the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat which was chaired by former
Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld).(1)

A Singular Exchange

Particularly noteworthy was the response given by the Times‘ columnist to a
question posed to
him and former Lyndon Johnson aide and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin by
the host of NBC’s
“Meet the Press” program, Tim Russert:

    MR. RUSSERT: “Also this week, Mr. Safire, a former White House chief of staff
    named Donald Rumsfeld issued a report about the security risk to the United States
    posed by a missile attack from someone who doesn’t like us.”

    MR. SAFIRE: “This is an amazing moment on television. We’re talking
    about the most important thing that happened in the past week, which was
    not, you know, Linda Tripp’s testimony and the Secret Service fight.     Here
    you have a group of the best men we have in national defense, who have no axes
    to grind, who looked at the — all the CIA studies and said, essentially, ‘You’re
    being complacent. You’re saying that no missile threat — incoming missile threat
    exists for 10 or 15 years. We disagree. We’ve looked at all your information and
    the collusion we’ve come to is that there is a threat of American cities being under
    attack by incoming missiles within five years. And if we don’t start doing
    something about it, we’re…vulnerable.’

    “Now, most of the American people don’t realize we have no missile
    defense.
    We’ve agreed not to have one. And here are these tin-pot dictators coming up
    and buying missiles and developing missiles and putting nuclear warheads on
    them, and we have no defense against it. This is heavy stuff, and this is what we
    really ought to be talking about.”

    MR. RUSSERT: “But the good times roll and the people are building
    second additions, and these kinds of stories don’t seem to concern the
    American people.”

    MS. GOODWIN: “Well, I mean, that’s partly a problem of
    leadership    . I
    mean, it’s a president’s job to get the American people concerned about the
    public issues that are most important to them.     We have a very passive
    citizenry and we have an unaroused group of countrymen, and that’s partly him,
    it’s partly the times — the fragmentation of the media, you know, the good times,
    not making people care about public issues, but it’s not anything that we can’t feel
    bad about. I mean, we’ve got to feel bad about it. I think it’s a bad thing for our
    country…to be content and not care.”

    MR. SAFIRE: “Why isn’t this cover[ed] more on television? Is it
    dull?”

    MR. RUSSERT: “And the newspapers, as well. I mean, it has not been on the front page of
    anything, but it should be, and that’s why we brought it up this
    morning.”

A Singular Column

Bill Safire’s column was no less trenchant in explaining why the United States cannot afford to
remain vulnerable to the sorts of missile threats that are now emerging. He describes how an
American president — and the Nation’s vital interests — could be subjected to blackmail, with
potentially profound diplomatic and strategic implications. He lays out three frighteningly
plausible scenarios in which the use of North Korean, Iraqi or Chinese missiles are threatened to
compel American accommodation. As Mr. Safire put it:

    “Let’s set aside our preoccupation with executive privileges and hospital lawsuits long
    enough to consider the consequences of [the Rumsfeld Commission’s] judgment. The
    United States no longer has the luxury of several years to put up a missile
    defense, as we complacently believed.     If we do not decide now to deploy a
    rudimentary shield, we run the risk of Iran or North Korea or Libya building or buying
    the weapon that will enable it to get the drop on us.”

Thus, the pundit makes explicit a conclusion the Rumsfeld Commission could only
imply
(given that its mandate was limited to addressing the missile threat, not what should be done in
response to it): The United States must promptly begin deploying defenses against
ballistic
missile attack. Mr. Safire endorses an approach that will produce far more effective
anti-missile
protection, far faster and far more inexpensively than any other option — by adapting the Navy’s
AEGIS fleet air defense system to give it robust missile-killing capabilities. href=”#N_2_”>(2)

The Bottom Line

The time has clearly come for a national debate about defending America against
ballistic
missile attack. Tim Russert and NBC News are to be commended for giving Bill Safire
a prime
opportunity to catalyze such a debate on television. For his part, Mr. Safire is to be saluted for
taking full advantage of it — both by making the substantive point on air with
characteristic
deftness and by challenging the television media, in the process, to mount the kind of educational
effort on the missile defense issue that he has made in print before and after this
important
program.(3)

It is especially heartening that Democrat Doris Kearns Goodwin seconded the Safire call for
“leadership” on missile defense and Mr. Russert concluded by agreeing that the missile threat
“should be” on the front pages. The Center for Security Policy urges both to use
their
considerable influence to accomplish these critically important objectives.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Critical Mass # 2: Senator Lott, Rumsfeld
Commission Add Fresh Impetus to Case for Beginning Deployment of Missile
Defenses (No.
98-D 133, 15 July 1998) and Wall Street Journal Lauds Rumsfeld Commission
Warning On
Missile Threat; Reiterates Call for Aegis Option in Response ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-P_134″>No. 98-P 134, 16 July 1998).

2. For more on why this approach is the most near-term, effective and
affordable means of
providing world-wide anti-missile protection, see Irate Senate Supporters of the
‘AEGIS
Option’ for Missile Defense Demand Release of Favorable Pentagon Study ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_119″>No. 98-D 119, 25
June 1998), Words to Live By: Speaker Gingrich Asks Clinton to Use Speech to
the Nation to
Begin Protecting It From Missile Attack (No. 98-D
15, 23 January 1998) and Validation of the
Aegis Option: Successful Test Is First Step From Promising Concept to Global Anti-Missile
Capability (No. 97-D 17, 29 January 1997).

3. See The Tide Rises Further: Bill Safire Calls for
Missile Defense (No. 98-D 105, 11 June
1998).

Wall Street Journal Lauds Rumsfeld Commission Warning On Missile Threat; Reiterates Call for Aegis Option in Response

Contrast Between
Paper’s Editorial Quality and ‘News’ Reporting

(Washington, D.C.): The Wall Street
Journal’s editorial page has once again distinguished itself
as among the most perspicacious and courageous of the Fourth Estate. In a lead editorial
published today, entitled “Zero Warning” (see the
attached), the paper gives due recognition to
the extraordinary report issued yesterday by the Rumsfeld Commission — and the urgent need to
respond to its findings.

The Journal’s well-deserved plaudits go to the nine prominent Republican- and
Democrat-appointed commissioners who prepared, under former Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld‘s
able leadership, a unanimously agreed, 300-page, highly classified report — and its
accompanying
unclassified 27-page executive summary. This remarkable document is the product of six-months
of intensive study, analysis and drafting by the independent, congressionally mandated,
Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States. Its findings, as
summarized by “Zero Warning” are chilling:

    “America’s intelligence community has routinely judged the ballistic missile threat to
    be at least 10 to 15 years away — time enough to come up with a defense. But ‘this is
    not a distant threat,’ counters the report issued by ‘Team B,’     a commission
    established by Congress to offer a second opinion. Iran, North Korea and other
    hostile nations are now able to ‘acquire the means to strike the U.S. within about
    five years of a decision’ to build such a weapon.”

    “Even more worrisome, assorted new ‘means of delivery can shorten the
    warning time of deployment nearly to zero.’     In other words, we may not
    know about an enemy missile armed with a nuclear or biological warhead until it
    is already descending on city hall.” (Emphasis added throughout.)

Commendably, the Journal restates in this editorial the two critical steps
needed to respond
to this now clear and present danger: 1) deploy a missile
defense system based on the Navy’s
AEGIS fleet air defense system(1) and 2)
scuttle the revised ABM treaty the Clinton
Administration has negotiated with Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. href=”#N_2_”>(2)

The intellectual rigorousness and attachment to sound principle that typify the Wall
Street
Journal‘s editorial page was all the more striking by comparison with an article in today’s
editions
written by reporter Carla Anne Robbins. The contrast does not reflect well on
the reporter, or
her superiors in the Journal’s Washington bureau, who allowed her to pass off as
“news” her
expression of sympathy for the arms control theologians who have kept this country vulnerable to
missile (and all other forms of attack with weapons of mass destruction) — people who now find
in the Rumsfeld report and events more generally irrefutable evidence of the error and
recklessness of their views.

– 30 –

1. For more on why this approach is the most near-term, effective and
affordable means of
providing world-wide anti-missile protection, see
Critical Mass # 2: Senator Lott, Rumsfeld Commission Add Fresh
Impetus to Case for Beginning Deployment of Missile Defenses
(No. 98-D 133, 15 July 1998),
Irate Senate Supporters of the ‘AEGIS Option’
for Missile Defense Demand Release of
Favorable Pentagon Study (No. 98-D 119, 25 June
1998), Words to Live By: Speaker Gingrich
Asks Clinton to Use Speech to the Nation to Begin Protecting It From Missile
Attack (No. 98-D 15, 23 January 1998) and
Validation of the Aegis Option: Successful Test Is First Step From
Promising Concept to Global Anti-Missile Capability ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_17″>No. 97-D 17, 29 January 1997).

2. For more on the reasons why the original ABM treaty is now
defunct and the ABM-related
agreements signed last September in New York constitute a new treaty, requiring the
U.S.
Senate’s advice and consent, see a legal memorandum prepared for the Heritage Foundation.

Zero Warning

Wall Street Journal, 16 July 1998

You can tell the world is calm when the biggest summer scare that Hollywood can conjure is
an
asteroid beheading the Chrysler Building. Maybe that’s because our political leaders haven’t been
honest about the much more real, and immediate, threat of a ballistic missile attack on Manhattan.

Or Chicago. Or San Francisco. Or anywhere else in a continental U.S. whose citizens have
come
to believe they are sheltered from enemy attack. Yesterday a bipartisan panel of defense
strategists released a unanimous report that ought to jolt both politicians and the public.

America’s intelligence community has routinely judged the ballistic missile threat to be at least
10
to 15 years away–time enough to come up with a defense. But “this is not a distant threat,”
counters the report issued by “Team B,” a commission established by Congress to offer a second
opinion. Iran, North Korea and other hostile nations are now able to “acquire the means to strike
the U.S. within about five years of a decision” to build such a weapon.

Even more worrisome, assorted new “means of delivery can shorten the warning time of
deployment nearly to zero.” In other words, we may not know about an enemy missile armed with
a nuclear or biological warhead until it is already descending on city hall.

The commission says U.S. analysts have made the mistake of judging new missile threats by
Cold
War assumptions. The U.S. and Russia pursued their missile plans in fairly predictable
ways–development, flight tests, deployment. But your average Saddam Hussein doesn’t care
about the same standards. All he wants is a terror weapon to throw destruction at a target. Even
the threat of its use might deter American action against him. It’s no accident, the report says, that
a Chinese general remarked amid the 1996 Taiwan crisis that the Americans probably didn’t want
to trade Los Angeles for Taipei.

Emerging missile powers also have the benefit of technology that is quickly and easily spread.
Russian technicians are for sale. China has sold complete missile systems to Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan.

New missile powers also have access to technology–for example, the means to quickly dig
underground tunnels–that can disguise the speed of their weapons development. Sometimes this
is even our fault: It was the U.S. that let India in on the means we use to detect nuclear tests, so
India disguised its plans in ways that foiled those means.

And once a missile is built, U.S. enemies have new ways to deliver it. Americans tend to think
we’re only threatened by an ICBM launched from someone’s homeland. But even an enemy
without that capability could hide shorter-range missiles on a commercial ship, sail it to U.S.
waters, and start the first bombardment of American shores since Fort Sumter.

The report is all the more striking because it is the unanimous view of a politically diverse
commission. It’s led by former GOP defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But its members include
former Clinton CIA Director Jim Woolsey and veteran Democratic arms-controllers Barry
Blechman and Richard Garwin. As notable is the assent of retired Air Force General Lee Butler,
former head of the Strategic Air Command, who underwent a very public post-service revulsion
against America’s nuclear strategy. The commission worked for six months and had ready access
to U.S. intelligence.

With this kind of credibility, we’d like to think the report would awaken Team Clinton from
its
missile denial. But the early word is that it will instead quietly trash the report as alarmist and
politically motivated. This would fit the Clinton pattern of sacrificing long-run security for
short-run political convenience.

A more urgent missile threat, after all, could complicate U.S. diplomacy with proliferating
nations,
such as China and Russia. It would require rethinking the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty–which, among other problems, blocks Americans from using a theater-anti-missile system
to defend the U.S. homeland. (We can only use it to defend troops abroad.) And a more urgent
threat would require Mr. Clinton to spend money on defenses rather than other favored White
House causes. Until this odd Administration, we thought a President’s first duty was to the
common defense.

At least Congress is a co-equal branch of government. And armed with the substance of this
report, it has a stronger political case for the more urgent development of missile defenses. One
immediate action would be to throw more resources behind the Navy’s so-called “third-tier”
defense program based around Aegis cruisers. Another would be to scuttle Mr. Clinton’s
misguided ABM treaty revision with Russia.

A complacent public may not signal support for any of this in opinion polls. But someone has
to
tell them, with the Rumsfeld Commission, that a missile attack on America is much more likely
than they know.

Good Riddance: Clinton, Not Congress, Should Be Blamed for Chaos Afflicting U.S. Non-Proliferation Policy, Bureaucracy

(Washington, D.C.): Today’s New York Times assails House Speaker
Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
and House International Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman
(R-NY) for
interring a congressionally-mandated commission concerning the federal government’s
management of non-proliferation issues — a commission that was supposed to have completed its
work three months ago. This criticism entirely misses the point: The
infelicitously named
Commission to Assess the Organization of the Federal Government to Combat the
Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) was a classic example of rearranging
the Titanic’s deck chairs when the problem is with the Captain — President Clinton —
and
the perilous non-proliferation course he has set.

‘No Accident, Comrade’?

Perhaps it is coincidence that this diatribe against key congressional leaders comes on the eve
of
two important — and very much relevant — events on Wednesday, 15 July: 1) The
expected
House override of the President’s veto of the bill that would impose economic sanctions
on
Russian entities involved in the transfer of ballistic missile technology to Iran and 2) the unveiling
of the long-awaited report of another congressionally-mandated, blue-ribbon commission
concerning the threat posed by Iranian and others’ ballistic missiles.

While the missile threat commission, chaired by the estimable former Secretary of
Defense
Donald Rumsfeld, was also plagued by Administration-imposed and other delays
(including
chronic uncooperativeness on the part of the intelligence community href=”#N_1_”>(1)), it has something to show
for its labors. And what it is expected to show, like the Russia-Iran sanctions override, will be the
Administration’s ineptitude, wishful-thinking and misfeance (if not malfeasance)
concerning the
burgeoning problem of proliferating WMD and their delivery systems.

Why Euthanasia Was in Order

The proliferation commission was doomed when President Clinton wasted all but four months
of
this commission’s eighteen-month life-span by failing to designate the commissioners he was
charged with appointing. It is ironic that Speaker Gingrich made his one appointment,
Ambassador Henry Cooper, back in May of 1997. It took the Administration a further seven
months to get around to filling out its four billets.

Once that was done, the problem with the composition of the commission became clear:
It is
hard to see how a genuinely bipartisan outcome could be assured when there were six
Democratic appointees (the President’s four and one each for the Senate and House
minority
leaders) and two Republican ones (Speaker Gingrich’s choice and
one by Senate Majority
Leader Trent Lott [R-MS] — Sen. Arlen Specter [R-PA], author of
the enabling legislation).

Then there is the matter of some of the appointees themselves. The commission’s chairman,
Dr.
John Deutch, was to some extent implicated in the Administration’s hapless proliferation
policy-making machinery — first in his capacity as Under Secretary and then Deputy Secretary of
Defense and finally as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In addition, Amb. Robert Gallucci — who did as much to neuter U.S.
non-proliferation policy as
anyone in the course of the Clinton team’s appeasement of North Korea — remained on the panel
even after he returned to government service in a key Clinton policy-making position,
namely the
special envoy responsible for addressing (read, obscuring) evidence that Russian missile
technology is hemorrhaging to the Iranians.

Finally, there were substantive concerns: The Deutch commission seemed to be straying into
areas it was not mandated to examine, notably with respect to the domestic management of WMD
crises and the use of economic sanctions as a tool in the fight against proliferation. With the
mayhem that passes for a federal non-proliferation bureaucracy, one would have thought the
commission had enough to do without delving into sensitive areas it was not authorized to
explore.

The Bottom Line

Speaker Gingrich and Chairman Gilman are to be commended for bringing to an
early end
an endeavor that was poorly conceived, abysmally executed and unlikely to produce what is
really needed — a sea-change in the Clinton Administration policy of paying
lip-service but
little more to the real, and growing, problem of the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction. Unless and until such a redirection is undertaken by the President and his
Cabinet,
redrawing the wiring diagrams and organizational charts is unlikely to justify the expense or
energy entailed. On the other hand, once there is a change at the top, a balanced, responsible
and
independent commission may be in order to facilitate the long-overdue streamlining of U.S.
non-proliferation policy-making.

– 30 –

1. Interestingly, the coup de grâce to the
proliferation commission was actually provided by the
CIA’s lawyers who insisted on shutting the panel down in the absence of the enactment of
legislation renewing its mandate. Had the Administration wished to do otherwise, knowledgeable
congressional staff tell the Center that the Agency’s lawyers could have found a basis for keeping
the Deutch commission in business.

Open Letter to the President

Committee for Peace and Security in the
Gulf

1615 L Street, N.W.
Suite 900
Washington, DC 20036

19 February 1998

Dear Mr. President,

Many of us were involved in organizing the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf in
1990
to support President Bush’s policy of expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Seven years later,
Saddam Hussein is still in power in Baghdad. And despite his defeat in the Gulf War, continuing
sanctions, and the determined effort of UN inspectors to fetter out and destroy his weapons of
mass destruction, Saddam Hussein has been able to develop biological and chemical munitions.
To underscore the threat posed by these deadly devices, the Secretaries of State and Defense have
said that these weapons could be used against our own people. And you have said that this issue
is about “the challenges of the 21st Century.”

Iraq’s position is unacceptable. While Iraq is not unique in possessing these weapons, it is the
only country which has used them — not just against its enemies, but its own people as well. We
must assume that Saddam is prepared to use them again. This poses a danger to our friends, our
allies, and to our nation.

It is clear that this danger cannot be eliminated as long as our objective is simply
“containment,”
and the means of achieving it are limited to sanctions and exhortations. As the crisis of recent
weeks has demonstrated, these static policies are bound to erode, opening the way to Saddam’s
eventual return to a position of power and influence in the region. Only a determined program to
change the regime in Baghdad will bring the Iraqi crisis to a satisfactory conclusion.

For years, the United States has tried to remove Saddam by encouraging coups and internal
conspiracies. These attempts have all failed. Saddam is more wily, brutal and conspiratorial than
any likely conspiracy the United States might mobilize against him. Saddam must be
overpowered; he will not be brought down by a coup d’etat. But Saddam has an Achilles’ heel:
lacking popular support, he rules by terror. The same brutality which makes it unlikely that any
coups or conspiracies can succeed, makes him hated by his own people and the rank and file of his
military. Iraq today is ripe for a broad-based insurrection. We must exploit this opportunity.

Saddam’s long record of treaty violations, deception, and violence shows that diplomacy and
arms
control will not constrain him. In the absence of a broader strategy, even extensive air strikes
would be ineffective in dealing with Saddam and eliminating the threat his regime poses. We
believe that the problem is not only the specifics of Saddam’s actions, but the continued existence
of the regime itself.

What is needed now is a comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down
Saddam
and his regime. It will not be easy — and the course of action we favor is not without its problems
and perils. But we believe the vital national interests of our country require the United States to:

  • Recognize a provisional government of Iraq based on the principles and leaders of the
    Iraqi National Congress (INC) that is representative of all the peoples of Iraq.
  • Restore and enhance the safe haven in northern Iraq to allow the provisional government
    to extend its authority there and establish a zone in southern Iraq from which Saddam’s
    ground forces would also be excluded.
  • Lift sanctions in liberated areas. Sanctions are instruments of war against Saddam’s
    regime, but they should be quickly lifted on those who have freed themselves from it.
    Also, the oil resources and products of the liberated areas should help fund the provisional
    government’s insurrection and humanitarian relief for the people of liberated Iraq.
  • Release frozen Iraqi assets — which amount to $1.6 billion in the United States and Britain
    alone — to the control of the provisional government to fund its insurrection. This could
    be done gradually and so long as the provisional government continues to promote a
    democratic Iraq.
  • Facilitate broadcasts from U.S. transmitters immediately and establish a Radio Free
    Iraq.
  • Help expand liberated areas of Iraq by assisting the provisional government’s offensive
    against Saddam Hussein’s regime logistically and through other means.
  • Remove any vestiges of Saddam’s claim to “legitimacy” by, among other things, bringing
    a war crimes indictment against the dictator and his lieutenants and challenging Saddam’s
    credentials to fill the Iraqi seat at the United Nations.
  • Launch a systematic air campaign against the pillars of his power — the Republican Guard
    divisions which prop him up and the military infrastructure that sustains him.
  • Position U.S. ground force equipment in the region so that, as a last resort, we have the
    capacity to protect and assist the anti-Saddam forces in the northern and southern parts of
    Iraq.

Once you make it unambiguously clear that we are serious about eliminating the threat posed
by
Saddam, and are not just engaged in tactical bombing attacks unrelated to a larger strategy
designed to topple the regime, we believe that such countries as Kuwait, Turkey and Saudi
Arabia, whose cooperation would be important for the implementation of this strategy, will give
us the political and logistical support to succeed.

In the present climate in Washington, some may misunderstand and misinterpret strong
American
action against Iraq as having ulterior political motives. We believe, on the contrary, that strong
American action against Saddam is overwhelmingly in the national interest, that it must be
supported, and that it must succeed. Saddam must not become the beneficiary of an American
domestic political controversy.

We are confident that were you to launch an initiative along these line, the Congress and the
country would see it as a timely and justifiable response to Iraq’s continued intransigence. We
urge you to provide the leadership necessary to save ourselves and the world from the scourge of
Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he refuses to relinquish.

Sincerely,

Hon. Stephen Solarz
Former Member, Foreign Affairs Committee, U.S. House of Representatives

Hon. Richard Perle
Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute;
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense

Hon. Elliot Abrams
President, Ethics & Public Policy Center;
Former Assistant Secretary of State

Richard V. Allen
Former National Security Advisor

Hon. Richard Armitage
President, Armitage Associates, L.C.;
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense

Jeffrey T. Bergner
President, Bergner, Bockorny, Clough & Brain;
Former Staff Director, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Hon. John Bolton
Senior Vice President, American Enterprise Institute;
Former Assistant Secretary of State

Stephen Bryen
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense

Hon. Richard Burt
Chairman, IEP Advisors, Inc.;
Former U.S. Ambassador to Germany;
Former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs

Hon. Frank Carlucci
Former Secretary of Defense

Hon. Judge William Clark
Former National Security Advisor

Paula J. Dobriansky
Vice President, Director of Washington Office, Council on Foreign Relations;
Former Member, National Security Council

Doug Feith
Managing Attorney, Feith & Zell P.C.;
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy

Frank Gaffney
Director, Center for Security Policy;
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces

Jeffrey Gedmin
Executive Director, New Atlantic Initiative;
Research Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Hon. Fred C. Ikle
Former Undersecretary of Defense

Robert Kagan
Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Zalmay M. Khalilzad
Director, Strategy and Doctrine, RAND Corporation

Sven F. Kraemer
Former Director of Arms Control, National Security Council

William Kristol
Editor, The Weekly Standard

Michael Ledeen
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute;
Former Special Advisor to the Secretary of State

Bernard Lewis
Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern and Ottoman Studies, Princeton University

R. Admiral Frederick L. Lewis
U.S. Navy, Retired

Maj. Gen. Jarvis Lynch
U.S. Marine Corps, Retired

Hon. Robert C. McFarlane
Former National Security Advisor

Joshua Muravchik
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute

Robert A. Pastor
Former Special Assistant to President Carter for Inter-American Affairs

Martin Peretz
Editor-in-Chief, The New Republic

Roger Robinson
Former Senior Director of International Economic Affairs, National Security Council

Peter Rodman
Director of National Security Programs, Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom;
Former Director, Policy Planning Staff, U.S. Department of State

Hon. Peter Rosenblatt
Former Ambassador to the Trust Territories of the Pacific

Hon. Donald Rumsfeld
Former Secretary of Defense

Gary Schmitt
Executive Director, Project for the New American Century;
Former Executive Director, President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board

Max Singer
President, The Potomac Organization;
Former President, The Hudson Institute

Hon. Helmut Sonnenfeldt
Guest Scholar, The Brookings Institution;
Former Counsellor, U.S. Department of State

Hon. Caspar Weinberger
Former Secretary of Defense

Leon Wienseltier
Literary Editor, The New Republic

Hon. Paul Wolfowitz
Dean, Johns Hopkins SAIS;
Former Undersecretary of Defense

David Wurmser
Director, Middle East Program, AEI;
Research Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Dov S. Zakheim
Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense

Organization affiliations given for identification
purposes only. Views reflected in the letter are endorsed by the
individual, not the institution.

Truth or Consequences #12: The C.W.C.’s Technology Transfer Provisions Will Exacerbate the Chemical Weapons Threat

(Washington, D.C.): Proponents of the
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) are
panicked: With the fate of this treaty
now clearly in Senate Majority Leader
Trent Lott’s hands, his declaration on
CNN last Sunday — to the effect that the
Convention’s provisions requiring
“the fullest possible exchange”
of technologies directly relevant to
chemical warfare represents a fatal flaw
that would have to be fixed — could be
the kiss-of-death for this controversial
accord.

In the face of growing evidence that
Senate concerns about the CWC’s
technology transfer provisions (known as
Articles X and XI) could result in the
treaty either having to be renegotiated
or scuttled, the Clinton Administration
and its surrogates have launched a public
relations blitz. This campaign seems
aimed at confusing the issue and
obscuring the clear danger posed by these
provisions, namely that they will
make the problem of chemical weapons
proliferation worse, not better.

The key arguments being made as part
of the disinformation campaign are to be
found in a publication recently released
by the Henry L. Stimson Center, entitled
“The CWC Critics’ Case Against
Articles X and XI: Nonsense.” In
fact, what does not make sense are the
arguments advanced by the CWC’s
proponents when subjected to close
scrutiny, reasoned analysis and, most
importantly, common sense:

The Fundamental Character
of Chemical Technology

The central problem is that most
advanced chemical manufacturing and
chemical defensive technologies are
inherently dual-use.

  • The former can be applied to
    producing toxic chemicals for
    commercial purposes (e.g.,
    pesticides, fertilizers,
    pharmaceuticals, etc.) or toxic
    chemicals for chemical weapons.
    Depending upon the technology
    used, the change-over can be very
    rapid and virtually undetectable
    after the fact.

  • The latter can be used to protect
    against the effects of another
    party’s chemical attacks or as an
    integral part of one’s own
    offensive chemical warfighting
    capabilities. It could, in
    addition, aid efforts to defeat
    Western protective equipment.
    Interestingly, former Desert
    Storm commander General
    Norman Schwarzkopf     was
    surprised to learn, in the course
    of recent congressional
    testimony, that the CWC — which
    he has endorsed — would have
    such effects.

These realities make any commitment
on the part of the United States or other
advanced industrial nations to transfer
such technologies problematic. No matter
the intention behind providing chemical
manufacturing and defensive equipment and
know-how to potentially hostile states,
there is an inherent danger that the net
effect will be to enhance the chemical
threat posed by those nations.

The Plain Meaning of the
Words

This danger is intensified,
however, by the sweeping character of the
obligations contained in the Chemical
Weapons Convention. As the Stimson Center
paper notes, the words used in the two
Articles bearing on technology transfer
are modeled after the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty’s “Atoms
for Peace” provisions. What even the
Stimson Center now calls the CWC’s
“Poisons for Peace” sections
read as follows:

  • Article 11:
    “…States parties
    shall…undertake to facilitate,
    and have the right to participate
    in, the fullest possible exchange
    of chemicals, equipment and
    scientific and technical
    information     relating to
    the development and application
    of chemistry for purposes not
    prohibited under this
    Convention;” and

    • “[States parties
    shall] not maintain among
    themselves any restrictions    ,
    including those in any
    international agreements,
    incompatible with the obligations
    undertaken under this Convention,
    which would restrict or impede
    trade and the development and
    promotion of scientific and
    technological knowledge in the
    field of chemistry for
    industrial, agricultural,
    research, medical, pharmaceutical
    or other peaceful
    purposes….”

  • Article 10:
    “Every state party
    shall have the right to
    participate in the fullest
    possible exchange of equipment,
    material and scientific and
    technological information
    concerning means of protection
    against chemical weapons….    Nothing
    in this Convention shall be
    interpreted as impeding the right
    of States Parties to request and
    provide assistance bilaterally
    and to conclude individual
    agreements with other States
    Parties concerning the emergency
    procurement of assistance.”

What These Articles Mean

Proponents of the CWC insist that the
plain meaning of these provisions is
countermanded by two provisions:

1) The overarching obligation in
Article I not “to assist, encourage
or induce, in any way, anyone to engage
in any activity prohibited to a State
Party under this convention.”
Unfortunately, the well-established
principle of legal construction is that the
specific (e.g., Articles X and XI)
governs the general (e.g., Article I).
The interest expressed in such an
interpretation by Iran, China, Cuba,
Pakistan and Brazil (among others)
suggests that at least some
countries will find it expedient, if not
obligatory, to seek transfers of dual-use
technologies pursuant to the former
provisions, even though doing so may
result in a violation of the latter
commitment. And

2) The language in Article XI
authorizing only transfers “for
purposes not prohibited under this
Convention.” Two points are in order
here: First, thanks to the dual-use
nature of the technologies in question,
it will not be necessary for any of the
parties to such transfers to acknowledge
that the purpose for which they are being
sold is one “prohibited under this
Convention.” Second, even if this
qualifying language were more
restrictive, it only appears in
Article XI. There is no similar
condition applied to the transfer of
defensive technology mandated by Article
X. Indeed, on a recent National Public
Radio program, the Executive Secretary of
the United Nations Commission for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Ian
Kenyon, affirmed his view that the CWC
obligates parties to transfer defensive
technologies to Iran — a nation widely
regarded as aggressively pursuing
offensive chemical warfighting
capabilities.

Don’t Blame Ronald Reagan href=”97-D56.html#N_1_”>(1)

The CWC’s proponents attempt to allay
concerns about these provisions by
suggesting that they were contemplated by
President Reagan in the draft treaty he
endorsed. There are critical differences
between the language advanced by the
Reagan Administration in 1984 and that
which appears in the final draft. The
closest one comes to language like that
contained in Article XI in the Reagan
draft text is the following commitment:

“This Convention shall be
implemented in a manner designed
insofar as possible to avoid
hampering the economic or
technological activities of
Parties to the Convention or
international cooperation in the
field of peaceful chemical
activities including the
international exchange of toxic
chemicals and equipment for the
production, processing or use of
toxic chemicals for peaceful
purposes in accordance with the
provisions of the
Convention.”

Obviously, there is a profound —
and material — difference between an
undertaking “to avoid
hampering” “insofar as
possible” the exchange of toxic
chemicals and an obligation to
“engage in the fullest possible
exchange” of such chemicals and
related manufacturing technology.
References by the Stimson Center and
others to unagreed language in
the “rolling text” (circa 1988)
that more closely resembles the final
version of the CWC should not be confused
with an endorsement of such language by
Ronald Reagan or those who served in his
Administration (particularly those who
were driving forces behind his first and
early second term — most of whom are
sharply critical of the CWC — but who no
longer held high office by 1988).

Similarly,
the Reagan language concerning
“Assistance to Parties Endangered by
Chemical Weapons” was far different
from that contained in the CWC. The 1984
Reagan draft treaty merely said:
“Each Party undertakes, to the
extent it deems appropriate, to render
assistance to any Party to this
Convention that the Security Council of
the United States decides has been
exposed to danger as a result of a
violation of the Convention.” In
other words, the Reagan
Administration preserved the U.S. option
not only to withhold defensive
technologies should it choose to do so;
it also had leverage to preclude others
from doing so via the exercise of its
veto at the UN Security Council.
While the Clinton Administration has
maintained that it would be obliged under
Article X to do nothing more than
transfer medicines and antidotes to
countries like Iran, it certainly has no
veto comparable to that contemplated by
the Reagan text to prevent others from
doing much more.

Even If the U.S. Refuses to
Sell to Iran…

The Clinton Administration and other
advocates for the Chemical Weapons
Convention claim that, despite the
treaty’s requirements, the United States
will not transfer potentially dangerous
technology to nations like Iran. Much is
made of the fact that the U.S. will only
provide medicines and antidotes — not
the detection, protective or
decontamination equipment, etc. also
identified as “options for
assistance” under the treaty — to
such states and then only when the
prospective recipient has been attacked
or feels threatened by chemical weapons.
They also reject suggestions that
American companies will be allowed to
sell chemical manufacturing technologies.

Even if this were the case and the
United States maintains its embargo
against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary
regime, Articles X and XI will
have the effect of undercutting America’s
efforts to contain Iran by legitimating
the transfer of dual-use technology to
Tehran. Despite assertions that
the Australia Group — a voluntary
chemical supplier group that currently
does not include Russia, China, Iran or
Cuba — will be unaffected by these
provisions, common sense suggests that
making such countries eligible for the
“fullest possible exchanges” of
chemical manufacturing technology, etc.
will complicate (if not undermine) the
work of this informal export control
mechanism.

What is more, one can safely predict
that the prospect of foreign competitors
closing such sales will cause would-be
American suppliers to seize upon Articles
X and XI to argue that Washington has
neither the right to penalize U.S. firms,
nor an interest in doing so. That sort of
pressure is evident in the lobbying for
the CWC being conducted by the Chemical
Manufacturers Association. This
trade association makes no bones about
its expectation that the treaty will
facilitate increased exports of its
member companies’ chemical products,
materials and technology — presumably
largely to countries to whom such
products cannot now be sold for national
security or foreign policy reasons. In
fact, in testimony before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee last week,
CMA President Fred Webber acknowledged
that his organization had been one of the
champions of H.R. 361, legislation
adopted by the House of Representatives
last year that would have authorized
license-free U.S. trade in chemicals with
any Party to the CWC.

Needless to say, pressure to
permit the U.S. to compete in exports of
chemicals and manufacturing technology to
countries like Iran and Cuba will almost
surely weaken the American embargoes
against those countries as they apply to
non-chemical areas of trade and
investment, as well. This would
have the effect of undermining the
leverage this tool affords to weaken
those countries’ dangerous regimes. With
or without such American participation,
the net result is likely to be an
increased capability on the part of both
the Iranian and Castro regimes to
threaten the U.S., its allies and
interests with weapons of mass
destruction.

The Bottom Line

There are ample grounds for concern
that the Chemical Weapons Convention’s
“Poisons for Peace” provisions
will prove every bit as counterproductive
and damaging as have the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty’s “Atoms
for Peace” arrangements —
arrangements that have been employed as
cover for prohibited nuclear weapons
programs in Iran, Iraq, North Korea,
India, Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil and
Algeria, to name a few. Far from being
“nonsense,” warnings issued
about Articles X and XI are well-founded.
Only the most naïve and/or deluded
proponent of arms control or other,
similar world-order “solutions”
to intractable problems would dismiss as
“nonsense” warnings about
Articles X and XI issued by such sensible
people as former Defense Secretaries Dick
Cheney, Caspar Weinberger, Jim
Schlesinger and Donald Rumsfeld.

Senator Lott is right to express, as
he did last Sunday, his opposition to a
Chemical Weapons Convention that contains
Articles X and XI. Unless these
provisions of the CWC are deleted prior
to the U.S. becoming a state party,
American ratification of this Convention
would effectively make the United States
a party to exacerbating the
danger of chemical warfare.

– 30 –

1. See in this
regard Truth or Consequences
#4: No DNA Tests Needed to Show That
Claims About Republican Paternity of CWC
Are Overblown ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_24″>No. 97-D 24, 10
February 1997).

White House Lobbying Group Discredits Itself, Not Luntz Poll, In Attack On Finding That Americans Oppose A Flawed C.W.C.

(Washington, D.C.): On 14 April, a
U.S. government interagency team
responsible for coordinating the lobbying
effort on the controversial Chemical
Weapons Convention (CWC) stooped to new
lows in the campaign to foist a fatally
flawed treaty on the Senate and the
American people. It castigated as
misleading and “fatally flawed”
a national poll conducted for the Center
for Security Policy by a respected
opinion research firm, Luntz Research
Companies — then lauded the results of
an earlier poll, whose results suited the
Administration but which was, itself,
highly misleading.

This lobbying team is dubbed the
“White House Working Group on the
Chemical Weapons Convention” and
issues periodic “News Alerts”
offering the Administration’s spin on
selected developments that might affect
the prospects for ratification of the
CWC. The degree to which this Working
Group and its sales job for the treaty
are divorced from reality can be
discerned in the motto displayed on the
Group’s Alerts: “Making the first
century of chemical weapons the
last.” There is zero prospect that
chemical weapons will cease to exist in
the 21st Century — with or
without this treaty.

The Critique — and the
Facts

The White House lobbyists criticize
the Luntz poll for failing to tell
respondents that the United States
decided to eliminate “nearly all of
its chemical weapons with or without the
CWC.” By its own terms, this
statement acknowledges that under
the approach adopted by President Reagan,
the U.S. would have retained some
chemical weapons. href=”97-D54.html#N_1_”>(1)
It seems unlikely that noting this policy
context would have materially affected
the dramatic results of the Luntz poll.

The Working Group’s real complaint is
not that the Center for Security Policy
gave those polled too little information,
but too much. The White House
clearly preferred the context-free
question most often cited from the
Wirthlin Group survey conducted last
February: “Should the United States
Senate ratify a treaty which would ban
the production, possession, transfer and
use of poison gas worldwide?” Since
this formulation says the treaty would
ban poison gas — suggesting that the
result would be a world in which chemical
weapons actually would be eliminated —
it is surprising that only 84% of those
polled said they would be in favor of it.

As noted in a press release issued by
the Center for Security Policy last week,
the more interesting test is how
the public would feel about a treaty that
did not accomplish that noble — but
unachievable — goal and that had,
instead, certain undesirable results.
Unlike the Wirthlin poll, the Luntz
survey did not assert that the CWC
“would” have the effects in
question but simply asked how the
respondents would feel were the treaty to
have such effects.

In fact, testimony before the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee over
the past ten days by distinguished former
officials, businessmen and other
authorities has established the validity
of each of the concerns
identified in the Luntz poll.
Consider the four questions polled, the
White House critique and the facts as
they now are known:

    1. An Ineffective Treaty

“Would you support the
treaty…if only the United States and
its allies wound up obeying it while
other, potentially hostile countries like
Russia, China, Iran, Iraq or North Korea
keep their chemical weapons?”
The Luntz poll found that only 31% of
those surveyed would support a treaty
that had this effect compared to 60% who
would oppose it. (The spread among
Republican voters was even more
pronounced: 25-68%, with 50% saying they
would “strongly oppose” it
compared with 44% who did so in the
general population.)

The White House
Working Group supports its claim that
such a question is
“disingenuous” by noting that
Russia, China and Iran are all
signatories and will be subjected to the
treaty’s “extensive verification
procedures” if they become parties.
It acknowledges that other rogue states
may remain outside the treaty, but
contends that the treaty will provide
“new tools” that will make
their efforts to “acquire or produce
chemical weapons…more difficult than it
would be without the treaty.”
Finally, it asserts that allowing fears
about rogue states retaining chemical
weapons to call into question the value
of the CWC is akin to saying we should
not pass anti-drug smuggling laws for
fear they will not be obeyed.

Four former Secretaries of Defense — James
Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Caspar
Weinberger and Dick
Cheney — and a number of other
authorities have made clear that the
“extensive verification
procedures” provided by the CWC will
not be sufficient to catch potential
adversaries determined to maintain covert
chemical stockpiles. Some rogue states,
like Iran, are known by the U.S.
government to be benefitting from
assistance in building chemical weapons
from another prospective state party,
China. It is untenable to claim that such
assistance will end simply because such
countries enter into this unverifiable
Convention — particularly since the
treaty’s Article XI will actually provide
legitimacy to cover-operations (for
example, by allowing China to describe
the transfer of chemical weapons
technology as merely cooperation in the
development of Iran’s pesticide or
fertilizer industry).

Numerous witnesses have made the point
that Article XI is inconsistent with the
effort to maintain supplier controls on
the transfer of such technology to rogue
states. If, as seems likely, the most
successful such effort — known as the
Australia Group — is undermined or
effectively put out of business by the
CWC, among the beneficiaries could be
rogue states outside the regime.
Certainly having one rogue state, Iran,
which has strategic ties to others
(notably Syria, Libya and Sudan) inside
the proverbial tent makes a mockery of
the idea that the treaty will
significantly control the rogues’ access
to chemical weaponry.

Finally, there is a clear difference
between a U.S. law which the full power
of the government can be brought to bear
to enforce and an international treaty
that even the more honest CWC proponents
acknowledge is unenforceable. Even in the
case of some domestic laws — for
example, Prohibition — the infeasibility
of a making a ban work has prompted the
Nation to forego that ban in favor of
other, more practical approaches. (It is
a safe bet that many among the CWC’s
advocates on the Left would favor
decriminalizing marijuana, and perhaps
other drugs, on these grounds among
others.)

    2. A Treaty That Exacerbates
    Proliferation

“Would you support the
treaty…if it would result in the
transfer of technology that could help
countries like Iran, Cuba or China increase
their ability to fight chemical
wars?”

Respondents said
they would oppose such a treaty by a
19-70% margin, with Republicans again
opposing it even more dramatically (i.e.,
by a 17-76% margin with 62%
“strongly opposed” compared to
53% in the general population).

The Administration’s lobbyists dismiss
concerns that the CWC could actually exacerbate
the problem of chemical weapons
proliferation by: 1) reciting the
treaty’s general prohibition against
transferring chemical weapons and 2)
selectively quoting from the specific
obligation that would — consistent with
the practice of legal construction over
the past few millennia — govern the
general obligation.

Unfortunately, as noted above,
the treaty’s Article I prohibition can be
readily circumvented by countries willing
cynically to use its Article XI as cover
for the transfer of chemical
weapons-relevant technology. The
White House Working Group’s “News
Alert” reproduces the latter article
in the following, selective fashion:
“…States Parties shall
facilitate…and have the right to
participate in…information
relating…to chemistry.” A more
complete — and accurate — quote would
read: “…States parties
shall…undertake to facilitate, and have
the right to participate in, the
fullest possible exchange of
chemicals, equipment and scientific and
technical information relating to the
development and application of
chemistry….”

The key differences between the two
versions, of course, is that the White
House left out the inconvenient modifiers
“fullest possible” and failed
to note that much more than just
chemistry information would be shared.
Some signatories (notably, Iran, China,
Pakistan, Brazil and Cuba) have made
clear their view that this language
supercedes — and requires the
dismantling of — export controls and
other inhibitions to trade. So have U.S.
chemical manufacturers, who (despite
vehement denials that they are interested
in opening up new markets in countries
like Iran) acknowledged Tuesday under
questioning by Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman Jesse Helms that they
had supported H.R. 361 last year. This
legislation would have created
license-free U.S. trade in chemicals with
states parties to the Chemical Weapons
Convention, effectively gutting American
export controls in this area.

The White House release does note that
the “fullest possible exchange”
contemplated by Article XI is supposed to
be limited to “purposes not
prohibited under this Convention.”
Unfortunately, as former Director of
Central Intelligence and Defense
Secretary James Schlesinger, among
others, has pointed out, there is
no material difference between advanced
chemical facilities designed to produce
fertilizers, pesticides or
pharmaceuticals and plants capable of
turning out large quantities of lethal
chemical agents for weapons purposes.
The transfer of the former for ostensibly
non-prohibited purposes assures the
acquisition of the latter by any state
party that wants such prohibited military
capabilities.

    3. A Treaty that is Unenforceable

“Would you support the
treaty… if countries that violated its
prohibitions went unpunished?”

The Luntz poll determined that such a
treaty would be opposed by the American
people by a margin of 16-73% and by
Republicans by a spread of 16-76% (with
61% “strongly opposed” compared
to 56% in the general population).

The Clinton Administration professes
an unwavering commitment to enforce the
Chemical Weapons Convention and insists
that, by being party to this Convention,
it will have tools with which to
“prevent, stop or punish those who
would produce or acquire chemical
weapons.” Unfortunately, in
our past experience with this
Administration — or, for that matter,
any other Administration — nothing
suggests that violators will actually be
punished. Invariably, it is
argued that the evidence of a violation
is inconclusive or unpersuasive,
especially to those sympathetic to the
accused. Testimony before the Foreign
Relations Committee makes clear that this
will almost certainly be true of the
Chemical Weapons Convention as well,
since samples suggesting traces of
illegal chemical weapons activities will
lend themselves to intense scientific
challenge and debate.

In any event, in the case of
violations of the CWC — as with every
previous arms control agreement — the
argument will be made that preserving the
treaty regime is more important than
taking divisive action against a
suspected violator. To be sure, this is,
as treaty supporters contend, primarily a
matter of will. Regrettably, the
proponents of arms control agreements
always show more will to enforce their
accords at the time of ratification than
after they are in effect and being
violated.

    4. A Treaty With Ominous
    Inspection Arrangements

“Would you support the
treaty…if it would authorize UN
inspectors to go to any site in the
United States, potentially without legal
search warrants and potentially risking
American business or military
secrets?”

The Luntz
survey indicates that such a treaty would
be opposed by a 22-68% margin with
Republican voters opposing it 16-76%
(with 57% “strongly opposed,”
compared to 49% among the general
population).

The White House lobbying group claims
that “The United Nations will have
no role in implementing the CWC.” In
fact, the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)
is, like the International Atomic Energy
Agency, affiliated with the UN. What is
more, enforcement of this treaty is, by
the treaty’s own terms, a responsibility
of the UN Security Council.

That there will be constitutional
problems with the CWC’s inspection
arrangements — a fact conclusively
demonstrated by two of the Nation’s
leading authorities on the Constitution href=”97-D54.html#N_2_”>(2)
— has been acknowledged by one of the
treaty’s principal champions, Senator Joe
Biden (D-DE). Sen. Biden has agreed to
attach a condition to the resolution of
ratification that would require criminal
search warrants for all involuntary
challenge inspections. There remains
concern, however, that American citizens
and companies may find themselves euchred
into “volunteering” to accept
such inspections. For example, the
Clinton Administration’s draft
implementing legislation allows the
government to assess companies for the
cost of obtaining criminal search
warrants and/or to deny uncooperative
companies the opportunity to do work for
the U.S. government. It seems entirely
possible that those unwilling to
voluntarily submit to inspections could
also be subjected to harassment from such
agencies as the EPA, OSHA or the IRS.

As numerous industry experts,
including Donald Rumsfeld,
Malcolm “Steve” Forbes
and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s Dr. Kathleen
Bailey explained to the Foreign
Relations Committee, it is unclear
exactly how many U.S. businesses will
ultimately be caught up in the Chemical
Weapons Convention’s reporting,
regulatory and inspection regime. That
said, these experts agree that the number
of “fewer than 2,000 American
companies” being cited by the White
House lobbyists is almost certainly too
low. Neither is it correct to believe, as
the 14 April “News Alert”
contends that “any
challenge inspections are expected to be
directed largely at military
facilities.” (Emphasis added.) Even
if that were true, the result would
likely be the loss of classified
information relevant to the national
security.

In fact, in the words of James
Schlesinger, these inspections
will be a “godsend” for foreign
intelligence operatives seeking
commercial secrets. At least some of
those serving on the OPCW’s inspection
teams will be trained and assigned to
conduct economic espionage against
American companies. The opportunities and
techniques authorized by this treaty will
afford them an unprecedented chance to do
just that — with potentially devastating
effect on the competitiveness of the
affected companies. It is naive — if not
thoroughly disingenuous — to suggest
otherwise.

The Bottom Line

Notwithstanding the Clinton
Administration’s intense sales campaign,
the facts about the Chemical Weapons
Convention are getting out to the
American people. When they learn that the
treaty will not work, will have real and
unjustifiable costs and may actually make
the danger of chemical attacks worse,
they overwhelmingly oppose this treaty.
If their elected representatives in
Washington vote on the basis of those
facts — rather than the misleading
information being promulgated by the
White House lobbyists and like-minded
special interests — there is little
doubt that this public sentiment will be
translate into a rejection of the CWC by
the Senate.

– 30 –

1. It is
noteworthy that the Clinton
Administration is now prepared to
acknowledge that the decision to
eliminate all U.S. chemical
weapons was not made by Ronald Reagan or
by statute. The draft CWC negotiated
during the Reagan Administration
explicitly contemplated the retention by
the United States of a 500 agent ton
stockpile of modern, binary chemical
weapons as a credible retaliatory
stockpile until such time as the Soviet
Union and/or all other nations’ chemical
arsenals were approaching the point of
being verifiably eliminated.

2. See John Yoo’s
op.ed. article in yesterday’s Wall
Street Journal entitled “The
Chemical Weapons Treaty is
Unconstitutional” and Ronald
Rotunda’s detailed analysis sent to
Senator Jesse Helms on 6 April 1997.

New National Poll Shows Overwhelming Public Opposition To A Flawed Chemical Weapons Convention

(Washington, D.C.): On 4-5 April 1997,
the Luntz Research Companies conducted a
national poll of 900 American adults
concerning the controversial Chemical
Weapons Convention (CWC). This poll was
intended to ensure that public sentiments
about the present treaty were properly
understood — an objective made all the
more necessary by earlier canvass
performed by the Wirthlin Group. The
Wirthlin poll suggested overwhelming
support for a treaty that “would ban
the production, possession, transfer and
use of poison gas.”

The Luntz Poll

This poll — which was sponsored by
the Center for Security Policy, a
non-partisan educational organization
specializing in national defense and
foreign policy issues — asked
respondents whether they would support
the CWC if it had certain troubling
characteristics and/or implications. The
text of the questions and the responses
follow (including a breakout of the views
of the respondents who identified
themselves as having voted Republican in
the 1996 congressional election, since
the treaty’s fate will be decided by the
Senate’s GOP members) href=”97-P50.html#N_1_”>(1):

“President Clinton will ask
the U.S. Senate to vote in the
next few weeks for an arms
control treaty called the
Chemical Weapons Convention. It
is supposed to ban the production
and stockpiling of nerve gas and
other chemical weapons worldwide.
Let me read you two opinions
about the treaty [order of
following two paragraphs reversed
in every-other question]:

“Treaty supporters point out
that more than 160 countries have
signed the Chemical Weapons
Convention and believe it would
create international pressure to
get rid of such weapons — and
punish those who keep them. They
say that, even if it does not
work perfectly, it will still be
better than having no treaty at
all.

“Treaty opponents —
including four former Secretaries
of Defense — believe there are
serious problems with this
treaty. If they are right, it
will not rid the world of
chemical weapons and may,
instead, have even more
undesirable effects. They believe
that such problems could make the
result of this Convention worse
than having no treaty at all.

“With these views in mind, I
would like to ask you whether you
would strongly support, somewhat
support, somewhat oppose or
strongly oppose the Chemical
Weapons Convention if it did the
following things:

  1. “If only the United
    States and its allies wound up
    obeying it while other,
    potentially hostile countries
    like Russia, China, Iran, Iraq or
    North Korea keep their chemical
    weapons?”









    2. Total Sample Republicans
    15% Strongly support 13% Strongly support
    16% Somewhat support 14% Somewhat support
    Total Support 31% Total Support 27%
    16% Somewhat oppose 16% Somewhat oppose
    44% Strongly oppose 50% Strongly oppose
    Total Oppose 60% Total Oppose 66%
    9% Other (No opinion/Don’t know/Refused)
  2. “If it would result in
    the transfer of technology that
    could help countries like Iran,
    Cuba or China increase
    their ability to fight chemical
    wars?”









    3. Total Sample Republicans
    9% Strongly support 7% Strongly support
    10% Somewhat support 10% Somewhat support
    Total Support 19% Total Support 17%
    17% Somewhat oppose 14% Somewhat oppose
    53% Strongly oppose 62% Strongly oppose
    Total Oppose 70% Total Oppose 76%
    11% Other (No opinion/Don’t know/Refused)
  3. “If countries that
    violated its prohibitions went
    unpunished?”









    4. Total Sample Republicans
    7% Strongly support 8% Strongly support
    9% Somewhat support 8% Somewhat support
    Total Support 16% Total Support 16%
    17% Somewhat oppose 15% Somewhat oppose
    56% Strongly oppose 61% Strongly oppose
    Total Oppose 73% Total Oppose 76%
    11% Other (No opinion/Don’t know/Refused)
  4. “4. If it would authorize UN
    inspectors to go to any site in
    the United States, potentially
    without legal search warrants and
    potentially risking American
    business or military
    secrets?”









    5. Total Sample Republicans
    10% Strongly support 6% Strongly support
    12% Somewhat support 9% Somewhat support
    Total Support 22% Total Support 16%
    19% Somewhat oppose 19% Somewhat oppose
    49% Strongly oppose 57% Strongly oppose
    Total Oppose 68% Total Oppose 76%
    11% Other (No opinion/Don’t know/Refused)

The CWC Does Have
These Flaws

Thanks to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee under the leadership of its
chairman, Senator Jesse Helms, there
is now little doubt that the Chemical
Weapons Convention awaiting Senate advice
and consent is defective in each and
every one of these respects. In
the course of hearings the Committee held
this week, an array of unimpeachable
authorities highlighted the treaty’s
flaws with respect to its
ineffectiveness, its technology transfer
implications, its unenforceability and
its ominous implications for American
constitutional rights and businesses.

Such points were underscored by four
former Secretaries of Defense (James
Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Caspar
Weinberger and Dick Cheney [in
the form of a letter]), a former Director
of the Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency (Fred Iklé), a
former UN Ambassador (Jeane
Kirkpatrick) and two other,
prominent former Defense Department
officials (former Assistant Secretary of
Defense Richard Perle
and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense Douglas Feith).

The Center anticipates with pleasure
further hearings next week by the Foreign
Relations Committee that are expected to
address in greater detail the business,
constitutional, intelligence and military
issues associated with the Chemical
Weapons Convention. It calls upon the
Senate Armed Services Committee and
Intelligence Committees to exercise their
respective oversight responsibilities as
well before the full Senate is asked to
address this fatally flawed treaty. Such
hearings can only serve to inform the
debate about the CWC and reinforce
the need for it to be conducted in a
rigorous and deliberate manner —
not the artificially constrained,
superficial and disinformed consideration
the Clinton Administration would prefer
from the Senate.

– 30 –

1. The poll has a
margin of error of 3.3%. Subtotals
reflect rounding of responses.

Truth or Consequences #10: Clinton’s White House Snow Job Cannot Conceal the Chemical Weapons Convention’s Defects

(Washington, D.C.): The latest
installment in the Clinton
Administration’s campaign to browbeat the
United States Senate into ratifying a
fatally flawed Chemical Weapons
Convention (CWC) failed to live up to its
advance billing — in more ways than one.
Despite repeated press reports to the
effect that former President George Bush
and General Colin Powell were to play
active roles in an “event” on
the South Lawn of the White House, the
former was nowhere to be seen and the
latter had a letter he signed
acknowledged by the President, but was
otherwise scarcely in evidence. (The
Center for Security Policy would like to
think that the force of its argument in a
paper released last night href=”97-D49.html#N_1_”>(1)
encouraged these two influential figures
to reconsider the active role as flacks
that the Clintonistas have in mind for
them.)

Please…

Even more disappointing was
the case the President made for this
treaty. On issue after issue, he
persisted in grossly overselling the
benefits of this Convention,
misrepresenting its terms and/or
understating its costs. Consider
the following:

  • Item: The CWC
    Will Not ‘Banish Poison
    Gas’

The President declared that by
ratifying the CWC, the United States has
“an opportunity now to forge a
widening international commitment to
banish poison gas from the earth in the
21st Century.” This is
the sort of wish-masquerading-as-fact
that has been much in evidence in
presidential statements to the effect
that “there are no Russian missiles
pointed at our children.”

The truth — as even more-honest CWC
advocates acknowledge — is that not
a single country of concern, or for that
matter any sub-national terrorist group,
that wishes to maintain a covert chemical
weapons program will be prevented from
doing so by this treaty. Neither
are they likely to be caught at it if
they do. And even if they are, there is a
negligible chance the “international
community” will be willing to punish
them for doing so. This is hardly the
stuff of which effective banishment is
made.

  • Item:
    ‘Poisons for Peace’

The President claimed that: “The
Convention requires other nations to
follow our lead, to eliminate their
arsenals of poison gas and to give up
developing, producing and acquiring such
weapons in the future.” There is
clearly no such requirement on the rogue
states that decline to participate in
this treaty (e.g., Iraq, Syria, Libya,
Sudan and North Korea).

What is more, the Convention’s
Articles X and XI may well accelerate
the proliferation of chemical weapon
technology. This is because these
provisions obligate parties to
“facilitate the fullest
possible” transfers of technology
directly relevant to the manufacture of
chemical weapons and those used to defend
against chemical attack — a highly
desirable capability for people
interested in waging chemical wars. href=”97-D49.html#N_2_”>(2)

  • Item: The CWC
    Will Not ‘Help Shield
    Our Soldiers’

President Clinton repeated a
grievous misrepresentation featured in
his State of the Union address: On the
South Lawn he declared, that “by
ratifying the Chemical Weapons
Convention…we can help shield our
soldiers from one of the battlefield’s
deadliest killers.” As noted above,
the CWC may actually make our soldiers more
vulnerable to one of the
battlefield’s deadliest killers — not
least as a result of the insights shared
defensive technology will afford
potential adversaries about how to
reverse-engineer Western protective
equipment, the better to exploit its
vulnerabilities.

  • Item: The CWC
    Will Not Protect Our
    Children

President Clinton shamelessly claimed
that “We can give our children
something our parents and grandparents
never had — broad protection against the
threat of chemical attack.” Just how
irresponsible this statement is can be
seen from a cover article published last
month by Washington City Paper.
The report disclosed that the
people of the Washington, D.C. area and,
indeed, the rest of the Nation are sitting
ducks for chemical attacks. href=”97-D49.html#N_3_”>(3)
This problem, which arises from a
systematic failure to apply resources to
civil defense that are even remotely
commensurate with the danger, will only grow
as people like the President compound the
CWC’s placebo effect of this treaty by
exaggerating its benefits.

  • Item: The CWC
    Will Not Help in the
    Fight Against Terrorism

While the President proclaimed that
ratifying the CWC will “bolster our
leadership in the fight against
terrorism,” the reality is that this
treaty may actually facilitate terrorism.
This could come about as a result not
only of the dispersion of chemical
warfare relevant technology and the
placebo effect but also by dint of the
sensitive information the Convention
expects the United States to share with
foreign nationals. At least some of these
folks will be working for potentially
hostile intelligence services —
including those of states, like Iran,
known to sponsor terrorism. Compromising
what U.S. intelligence knows about
international terrorists and their
sponsors will only intensify the danger
posed by such actors. href=”97-D49.html#N_4_”>(4)

  • Item: Flogging a
    Phony Deadline

The President further claimed that
“America needs to ratify the
Chemical Weapons Convention and we must
do it before it takes effect on April 29th.”
While the treaty will enter into force on
that date, with or without the U.S. as a
party, the dire consequences that are
endlessly predicted if America is not in
are being wildly exaggerated. Anytime the
United States joins, the 25 percent of
the tab that it is supposed to pick up
will give Washington considerable
influence in the new UN bureaucracy set
up to implement the CWC.

The Clinton Administration’s real —
but largely unacknowledged concern — is
that this arms control house-of-cards may
collapse if the United States
does not ratify the treaty. After all, in
its absence, not one party to
the Convention is likely to be an
acknowledged chemical weapons state. The
unfunded costs, combined with the
inability to inspect American companies while
possibly exposing their own to undesired
inspections, will almost certainly
prompt most states parties to think
better of the whole idea. href=”97-D49.html#N_5_”>(5)

  • Item: The CWC
    Will Harm American
    Business Interests

President Clinton further claimed
that, “If we are outside this
agreement rather than inside, it is our
chemical companies, our leading
exporters, which will face mandatory
trade restrictions that could cost them
hundreds of millions of dollars in
sales.” The truth is that no one
has yet been able to document the $600
million cost the Chemical Manufacturers
Association incessantly claims will arise
from trade restrictions on U.S. industry
if America is not a treaty party.

What is more, the actual cost
(probably closer to $30 million) arising
from such restrictions will be
insignificant compared to the additional
costs treaty participation will impose on
taxpayers and private companies
(conservatively estimated to be in the
billions of dollars). href=”97-D49.html#N_6_”>(6)

Jane’s Underscores
the Irresponsible Nature of the Clinton
Snow-Job

Today’s CWC photo opportunity at the
White House seems all the more
ignominious against the backdrop of a
news item carried in this morning’s Washington
Post. It seems that the forward to Jane’s
Land-Based Air Defense 1997-98, a
highly respected London-based defense
publication, confirms that “Russia
has developed a new variant of the lethal
anthrax toxin that is totally resistant
to antibiotics” — in flagrant
violation of an earlier
“international norm” governing
biological weapons activities.

More to the present point, Jane’s notes
that the Russians have also
developed three nerve agents “that
could be made without using any of the
precursor chemicals, which are banned
under the 1993 Chemical Weapons
Convention.” It added that
“two of the new nerve agents are eight
times as deadly as the VX nerve
agent that Iraq has acknowledged
stockpiling, while the other is as deadly
as VX.” (Emphasis added.)

Unfortunately, this information is but
the latest indication of bad faith on the
part of the Russian government of Boris
Yeltsin. One would have thought, for
example, that the Kremlin’s complete
reneging on the Wyoming Memorandum and
the Bilateral Destruction Agreement would
have shamed their co-author, former
Secretary of State James Baker, into
staying away from the White House
fandango for a CWC that was supposed to
have been critically underpinned by these
earlier agreements. href=”97-D49.html#N_7_”>(7)

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
believes that it is becoming increasingly
clear why the Clinton Administration and
its allies on the Chemical Weapons
Convention are relying on razzle-dazzle
power-plays like today’s — and eschewing
opportunities for a real debate: The
CWC is unlikely to be approved if its
fate is determined on the merits.

By contrast, critics of the CWC are
committed to fostering a real, thorough
and informed debate. Toward that end, it
looks forward to the start of hearings
next week in the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, led off by three of this
century’s most distinguished American
public servants: Former Secretaries of
Defense James Schlesinger href=”97-D49.html#N_8_”>(8),
Donald Rumsfeld and Caspar Weinberger.
Let the debate begin!


– 30 –

1. See Just
Which Chemical Weapons Convention Is
Colin Powell Supporting — And Does He
Know The Difference? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_48″>No. 97-D 48, 3
April 1997).

2. For more on this
absurd ‘Poisons for Peace’ aspect of the
CWC, see Truth or
Consequences #8: The
C.W.C. Will Exacerbate The
Proliferation Of Chemical Warfare
Capabilities ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_38″>No. 97-D 38, 6
March 1997).

3. See “Margin
of Terror: In the two years since the
Tokyo subway incident, local and federal
officials have had a chance to prepare
Washington for a devastating chemical or
biological attack. So why haven’t
they?” by John Cloud in the 14 March
1997 issue of the Washington City
Paper.

4. For more on the
threat of chemical weapons, see Truth or
Consequences #6: The C.W.C.
Will Not Prevent Chemical
Terrorism Against the U.S. or its
Interests ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_30″>No. 97-D 30, 22
February 1997).

5. For more on this
fraudulent timeline, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Truth
or Consequences #2: Senate Does Not Need
To Sacrifice Sensible Scrutiny of C.W.C.
to Meet an Artificial Deadline
(No. 97-D 18,
31 January 1997). For more on the
non-declaration problem, see Truth
or Consequences # 9: C.W.C. Proponents
Dissemble About Treaty Arrangements
Likely To Disserve U.S. Interests
(No. 97-D 46,
27 March 1997).

6. For more on the
costs — both direct and indirect to
American firms– see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Truth
or Consequences #5: The C.W.C. Will Not
Be Good for Business — To Say Nothing of
The National Interest ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_27″>No. 97-D 27, 17
February 1997).

7. For more on
Russia’s chemical weapons programs, its
behavior on the Bilateral Destruction
Agreement and their implications, for the
Chemical Weapons Convention, see the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Russia’s Covert
Chemical Weapons Program Vindicates Jesse
Helms’ Continuing Opposition to Phony
C.W. Arms Control ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_19″>No. 97-D 19, 4
February 1997).

8. While all three
of these gentlemen have held other,
distinguished positions, it is noteworthy
in the present context that Secretary
Schlesinger also served as a Director of
Central Intelligence in the Nixon
Administration and as a Secretary of
Energy for President Jimmy Carter, a
Democrat.

Casey Institute Salutes Ed Meese; New York Symposium Warns Of Emerging Crises In Global Markets

(Washington, D.C.): On 13 March 1997,
the William J. Casey Institute of the
Center for Security Policy marked the
occasion of the eighty-fourth birthday of
the man for whom it is named by hosting a
major conference in New York City. The
subject was one near-and-dear to Bill
Casey’s heart: “The Growing Nexus
Between Geopolitics and the
Markets.”

Immediately preceding this symposium
— the second in a series of semi-annual
meetings(1)
to be convened on an alternating basis in
Washington and New York — an elegant
luncheon was held to salute Edwin
Meese III. In the presence of
Mr. Casey’s widow, Sophia Casey,
and his daughter, Bernadette
Casey Smith, and over one
hundred and twenty well-wishers drawn
from Wall Street, Washington and around
the Nation, Mr. Meese was awarded the
inaugural “Casey Medal of
Honor.” This tribute recognized his
tireless public service over the past
three decades, culminating with his
appointment by President Ronald Reagan as
the Seventy-fifth Attorney General of the
United States.

Among the corporate and industry
leaders representing many facets of
international business and finance,
former government officials, attorneys,
diplomats and members of the media in
attendance were: Robert Bartley,
the Pulitzer Prize winning
Editor-in-Chief of the Wall Street
Journal; former Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld; the
Chairman of J.F. Lehman & Co. and
former Secretary of the Navy John
F. Lehman; one of Secretary
Lehman’s successors as Navy Secretary, Sean
O’Keefe; John O’Sullivan,
Editor of the National Review
and representatives from Solomon
Brothers, Smith Barney, Moody’s Investor
Services, Bankers Trust, Bear Stearns and
U.S. Trust.

Mr. Meese was introduced by Evan
Galbraith — whose service as
U.S. Ambassador to France during the
Reagan Administration and accomplished
Wall Street career were very much in the
Bill Casey mold. The “Casey
Medal” was presented to Mr. Meese by
Mrs. Casey and her daughter. Closing
remarks were offered by Roger W.
Robinson, Jr., the current
holder of the Institute’s William J.
Casey Chair.

Immediately following the luncheon,
participants took part in a half-day
symposium, also held at the prestigious
Harvard Club. The lead discussants for
this lively and thought-provoking session
were: Mr. Bartley, who provided a
“Strategic Overview of Breaking
Geopolitical Flashpoints”; Secretary
Lehman, who outlined “The Likely
Evolution of the International Economic
Security Portfolio Under Current U.S.
Leadership”; and Mr. Robinson, who
elaborated on “Potential Policy
Initiatives Aimed at Mitigating the Risks
to U.S. Economic and Financial
Security.”

While no effort was made to reach a
group consensus, it was clear that the
majority of panelists and participants
appreciate the growing interaction of
international developments and global
currency, equities and credit markets —
a reality that obliges U.S. business and
government leaders to monitor such
political, national security and economic
developments around the world with ever
greater care.

The Casey Institute, and the Center
for Security Policy of which it is a
part, are dedicated to encouraging and
supporting that sort of real-time
strategic tracking. These institutions
were proud to host the luncheon honoring
a great American and the Casey symposium
addressing the nexus between geopolitics
and the markets.

Those interested in participating in
the next Casey symposium, tentatively
scheduled for June 1997 in Washington,
should write to or fax the Center — as
should those interested in receiving href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-R_45at”> a summary of the
day’s proceedings, which will be made
available shortly.

– 30 –

1. For more on the
first such gathering, see Center
Inaugurates William J. Casey Institute
With Symposium On Emerging Crisis In The
Caspian Basin ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-R_27″>No. 96-R 27,
14 March 1996) and New
Institute Launched With Tribute To Bill
Casey As Steve Forbes Provides Seminal
Security Policy Address ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-R_28″>No. 96-R 28,
15 March 1996).