Tag Archives: Germany

What Not to Do About Iraq: Send in Inspectors

March 7, 2002Center for Security Policy

David Kay Calls to Mind Why They Have not, and Cannot, Work

(Washington, D.C.): It is a safe bet what will come out of today’s discussions between an Iraqi delegation led by Foreign Minister Naji Sabri on the one side and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and Hans Blix, the UN’s chief arms inspector, on the other: An agreement to continue talking. After all both Messrs. Annan and Blix are creatures of and devoted adherents to multilateralism and its institutions. (Notably, Hans Blix served for years as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was, under his leadership, repeatedly fooled by Saddam into certifying that Iraq had no nuclear weapons program.) They are convinced that military action — particularly by the United States — must be avoided at all cost and, therefore, that is not only possible but always preferable to “do business” with the likes of Saddam Hussein.

Only one thing could be more disastrous for U.S. policy and security interests — and those of other freedom-loving people — (which require regime change in Iraq) than this transparent bid to buy Saddam Hussein more time to amass more weapons of mass destruction (WMD): An Iraqi agreement to readmit UN inspectors.

Reenter David Kay

The reasons why the United States cannot live with a resumption of even the kind of relatively intrusive inspection regime established after the 1991 Gulf War — let alone a far less rigorous one likely to emerge from any negotiation between Saddam’s own toadies and his cat’s paws at the UN — were lucidly described last week in testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee by a man who knows whereof he speaks: David Kay, the first chief inspector dispatched to Iraq after Operation Desert Storm was concluded. The following were among the most relevant highlights of this important presentation:

“Saddam’s Iraq was — and is — a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship that can survive as long as it maintains coercive power over its citizens. Once Saddam’s survival became a fact [in 1991], then all hope of his voluntarily yielding up the very weapons that allow him to hope to dominate the region was lost….Simply put, Iraq is…very much like post-Versailles Germany in terms of its ability to maintain a weapons capability in the teeth of international inspections. As long as a government remains in Baghdad committed to acquiring WMD, then that capability can be expected to become quickly a reality when sanctions are eased, or ended.”
Iraq has not abandoned its efforts to acquire WMD. A recent defector has stated that an explicit order to reconstitute the nuclear teams was promulgated in August 1998 — at the time Iraq ceased cooperation with UN-led inspections. There should be no doubt that Iraq, under Saddam, continues to seek nuclear weapons capability and that given the time it will devote the resources and technical manpower necessary to reach that goal.
“What is [not] well understood is the impact that the discovery of the gigantic scope and indigenous nature of Saddam’s weapons program had on the prospects of being able to eliminate this program by inspection alone. We now know that the Iraqi efforts to build an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction: spanned more than a decade; cost more than $20 billion; involved more than 40,000 Iraqis; and succeed in mastering all the technical and most of the productions steps necessary to acquire a devil’s armory of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as well as the missiles necessary to deliver them over vast distances.
The capability to produce weapons of mass destruction that arises from a national program on this scale is [such] that, to eliminate by inspection, is, quite frankly, a fool’s errand. We…overestimated at the beginning what inspections could accomplish.
“Even if inspections were to begin tomorrow it would be impossible to answer [whether Saddam has nuclear weapons] without a very long, sustained period of unfettered inspections. The baseline of Iraq’s nuclear program is broken and it will be impossible to quickly re-establish that baseline. There should be no doubt that Iraq, under Saddam, continues to seek nuclear weapons capability and that given the time it will devote the resources and technical manpower necessary to reach that goal.”
“The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) is a product of a successful effort to remove UNSCOM from Iraq and replace it with an inspection regime more acceptable to Iraq….It took a year to negotiate, was to be more acceptable to Iraq, led by a commissioner that Iraq, and Iraq sympathizers on the Security Council, would find acceptable [i.e., Hans Blix].”

“The Iraqi complaints concerning UNSCOM related to its insistence on unrestricted access to anything in Iraq it deemed relevant to determining the scope of Iraq’s WMD program and an equal insistence that they would not accept any time limit on how long it might take to accomplish this objective. If UNMOVIC were to compromise on either of these, we might end up with Iraq begin declared free of WMD, when if fact all that would be certain is that UNMOVIC could not find any evidence of WMD.”
“Unless we take immediate steps to address the issue of obtaining fundamental political change in Iraq, we will soon again face a rearmed and embolden Saddam.”

The Bottom Line

During a recent appearance on CBS News’ Sunday program “Face the Nation,” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld caustically recalled the previous experience with inspectors in Iraq:

Go back to when we did have inspectors in there, which was years ago. When they were there, they had an enormously difficult time finding anything. Under the rules and restrictions that were imposed on them by Iraq, the only real information they got was not by snooping around on the ground, finding things and discovering things, because [the Iraqis] were able to move [such things], hide them underground, lie about them, not allow [the inspectors] to go in, wait long periods before they could go in. The only real information they found was from defectors [who] got away from Saddam Hussein, got out of the country, told the inspectors where to look, which they then did, and they then found some things.

With these and similar words, Secretary Rumsfeld has conveyed the strong impression that the Bush Administration — or at least most of it — is under no illusion that inspections will solve the problem we confront in Saddam Hussein’s misrule of Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld and his more thoughtful colleagues understand that the mere fact that the inspection “process” has been resumed, let alone the actual presence of inspectors on the ground in Iraq, will greatly exacerbate the already considerable international opposition to American action required to end Saddam’s reign of terror.

For these reasons, in addition to the futility of inspections experienced by Mr. Kay and his successors, the U.S. government better be prepared to block the resuscitation — in whatever form it may take — of a UN inspection regime spawned by the machinations of Messrs. Hussein, Annan and Blix.

Loose Lips’: U.S. Capabilities Vital to War on Terror Being Jeopardized by Dangerous Disclosures

March 1, 2002Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): Today’s Washington Post features a front page news article disclosing the existence of what it ominously calls a “shadow government” — a cadre of as many as 200 senior officials said to be working outside of the Nation’s capital in two secret locations. This is a most regrettable revelation as it will almost certainly lead to the compromise of one of the most sensitive and, arguably, one of them most important federal activities since September 11th: Ensuring the continuity of accountable and representative government in the face of terrorists’ manifest ambitions to “decapitate” our country by destroying its leadership.

While the Post exercised a modicum of restraint by acceding to Bush Administration demands not to identify the two locations, it is predictable that, by calling attention to the existence of such facilities, the paper has effectively challenged every other reporter on the planet to be the one to get credit for disclosing their precise whereabouts. One of the authors of the initial article, Barton Gellman, gave further, tantalizing hints in an interview on National Public Radio this morning: Both facilities are on the East Coast; one is in the military chain of command; one has been routinely updated, the other has obsolescent equipment dating from the Cold War days. Ready, set, go!

A few years back, in a fit of the “Cold War’s over” irresponsibility, congressional leaders saw fit to reveal the existence of a secret bunker at the Greenbrier Hotel complex, created covertly in the 1950s for the purpose of evacuating and surviving the legislative branch in the event of emergency. It can only be hoped — probably vainly — that some other such facility has been prepared in the meantime. If so, there is a chance that our constitutional form of government could continue to function at some level, even under the extremely difficult circumstances imposed by a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) attack on Washington.

More likely, no such preparation has been made, in light of the high costs associated with replicating compromised facilities and the extreme contempt for Continuity of Government (COG) activities expressed by people like former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State/White House Chief of Staff James Baker during the Bush 41 era and the Clinton national security team.

In World War II, those with knowledge of the movements of convoys were warned that “Loose Lips Sink Ships.” Today, in what some have called World War IV (III having been the Cold War), indiscreet comments about the existence and functioning of COG operations, personnel and sites invites their compromise. At best, that will mean relocation with all of the attendant expense and disruptions; at worst, it will mean the destruction of these vital “nodes” and with them, perhaps, the government we will then need more than ever.

Similar indiscretion has recently taken another casualty in the U.S. capabilities to wage the war on terrorism as effectively as possible: False, but widely repeated, claims by unnamed sources in the Defense Department that the recently established Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) was planning to use disinformation to manipulate foreign media and governments. These unsubstantiated charges were repeated and amplified by the New York Times and other media to the point that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld felt the OSI had been so badly “crippled” that he had no choice but to shut it down.

Even though the Office of Strategic Influence was not going to engage in disinformation, the fact is that keeping such vital activities as strategic influence and continuity of government as far removed as possible from the enemies’ eyes is not only necessary to maximize the effectiveness of such operations. It is usually essential to their ability to operate at all. Joseph Persico op.ed. article published in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal makes the case for secrecy in such matters. His injunction “Shhhhh!” should be followed scrupulously lest we be obliged to fight the war on terror disarmed of needed capabilities and more vulnerable to our enemies than we can afford to be.

Deception Is Part of the Art of War, But Shhhhhh!

By Joseph E. Persico
The Wall Street Journal, 28 February 2002

A scene takes place in Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” in which a subordinate, Menas, sidles up to the Roman general, Pompey, and says he could easily cut the throats of Pompey’s rivals, including Marc Antony, thus leaving Pompey in power. Pompey responds that Menas should have just done it. “And not have spoke on’t! In me ’tis villany; in thee’t had been good service.”

This situation seems to reflect the fate of the Defense Department’s Office of Strategic Influence. Good idea, chaps, if you’d just kept your mouths shut. But once it became public knowledge that part of the office’s function was, allegedly, to sow deliberate misinformation to confound our adversaries, President Bush and his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, backed off as if someone had handed them a dead rat. The falsehood is the weapon of nasty guys. Remember Hitler and his “Big Lie”?

The apparently swift rise and fall of the OSI may have given strategic lying a bad name. The real test is who is being lied to, about what, and, in history’s timeline, when.

Those now iconographic scenes of Allied troops successfully storming the Normandy beaches were underpinned by a lie of Paul Bunyanesque proportions. That American scrapper, Gen. George S. Patton, much to his chagrin was given command of a phony force which was supposedly preparing to invade occupied France across the Dover Straits, the narrowest neck of the English Channel as part of a deception plan labelled “Fortitude.” A theatrical set designer was fabricating thousands of rubber planes, tanks and artillery and inflating them near the Straits to reinforce the deception for spying eyes and aerial photographers.

It worked. Just one week before D-Day, Adolf Hitler confided to the Japanese ambassador to Germany, Hiroshi Oshima, that while the Allies might make diversionary feints in Norway, Brittany, and Normandy, the Allies actually “will come with the establishment of an all-out second front in the area of the straits of Dover.”

Oshima thereupon did what diplomats do. He cabled Hitler’s words back to the Japanese foreign office. The United States was cracking the Japanese code; and thus, the Allies learned that Hitler’s major force would not be awaiting them at Normandy, but, mistakenly, at the Dover Straits.

In the extremis of war, even lying to actual or potential allies has its own integrity. When, in 1940-41, his country stood alone and vulnerable, Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s keenest objective was to draw the United States into the war against Germany. Indeed, he charged British intelligence with advancing that end.

Consequently, British spooks provided President Franklin Roosevelt with a purloined map showing how the Germans intended to divide South America into five Nazi vassal states; showed him a stolen document revealing a German plot to overthrow a pro-American regime in Bolivia; and even provided proof that the Germans already had 5,000 troops in Brazil poised to threaten the Panama Canal. FDR cited this intelligence in his speeches and fireside chats.

It was all a tissue of lies fabricated by the British. But Roosevelt was not about to scrutinize to death intelligence that would help him lead American public opinion along the course he wanted, war against Germany.

When Roosevelt was planning to invade North Africa in 1942, key to his strategy was to minimize French resistance to the seizure of these African colonies before the Germans could grab them. A key weapon? The baldfaced lie. Roosevelt had his secret emissary to the French, Robert Murphy, inflate the number of Americans in the U.S. invasion fleet by 400%, a disincentive for the French to put up much of a fight.

That’s the upside of disinformation employed against friend or foe. The dread downside is the “blowback” in which deceptions planted among one’s enemies — and expected to go no further — come back to haunt the planter. Unwitting allies may believe the lie and act on it to our detriment. Newspapers report the falsehood to unintended readers in the wrong countries. Our own government agencies, not in on the scam, act on erroneous information. All of this has happened, at one time or another, to U.S. disinformation efforts.

Even this newspaper was a blowback victim in the 1980s when it innocently reported a story based on Reagan administration disinformation concocted to show that Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi faced serious internal opposition. Likewise, the Pentagon’s inflated body counts and unfounded optimism during the Vietnam War, when subsequently exposed, served only to damage the military’s credibility. The blowback is the gas attack in which the wind wafts the poison back onto the sender.

But let’s be frank. Even though the Office of Strategic Influence has been strangled in its cradle, the function of deceiving our adversaries will live on in one form or another, practiced in one place or another, just as deception has gone on ever since the serpent misled Eve and the Greeks left the Trojans a gift horse. The point is, as Pompey said, “Don’t tell me, just do it.”

Mr. Persico is the author, most recently, of “Roosevelt’s Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage” (Random House, 2001).

What To Do Now About Iraq

November 28, 2001Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): A growing focus of policy debate in Washington and around the world is whether, and if so when, President Bush will launch a second phase of the war on terrorism against Iraq. While there is a growing appreciation that Saddam Hussein must be removed from power, there is considerable uncertainty about–and in some quarters adamant opposition to–the United States launching military operations for that purpose in the foreseeable future.

Fortunately, there is much that the Bush Administration could do short of open hostilities to begin the necessary effort to liberate the people of Iraq, as has recently been done for most of the people of Afghanistan. A blueprint outlining such steps was provided to President Bush’s predecessor in February 1998 by the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf. Since many of the authors of this plan are now senior members of the Bush team– including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage–its early adoption and implementation should be accomplished without further, undue internal debate or delay.

Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf

Open Letter to the President

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

Just Do It’: Wall Street Journal Urges President to Jettison A.B.M. Treaty, Not Breathe New Life Into It

November 6, 2001Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): As George W. Bush nears an historic decision on his missile defense legacy, one of the most influential editorial pages in the world has weighed in. The Wall Street Journal today urged the President to stay the course and free the United States, once and for all, from the tyranny of an arms control treaty that requires it to remain vulnerable to ballistic missile attack.

The Journal editorial says all that needs to be said about the folly of thinking it will be easier to get out from under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty’s prohibition on deployment of missile defenses later on, rather than doing it now. In fact, as a practical matter, if President Bush passes up the opportunity to take this step now — when he is at the peak of his personal popularity, with strong public support for his missile defense program and at a moment when Russian opposition, if any, can be safely discounted — he runs a serious risk that he may not be able to deploy such defenses at all during his term in office.

The Journal makes a particularly trenchant and practical point: If President Bush winds up, in effect, “buying” relief from the ABM Treaty’s constraints on development and testing of anti-missile systems with a commitment to cut U.S. nuclear forces to very low (possibly even problematically low) levels — “What does Mr. Bush offer next time?” (i.e., when he needs relief from the Treaty’s prohibition on deployment, which would reportedly be left intact under the deal now in the works).

It would be a travesty if a president committed to defending America were to wind up getting even less than his predecessor, who had no such commitment, but nonetheless sought a “Grand Bargain” with the Kremlin — a compromise that envisioned exchanging deep cuts in strategic nuclear arms for Russian agreement to a limited deployment of anti-missile systems in Alaska.

A Better Missile Deal

The Wall Street Journal, 6 November 2001

It looks like a deal to revise the ABM Treaty may be in the offing, to be announced when Presidents Bush and Putin meet at Mr. Bush’s ranch next week. In the strongest hint yet, Russian Defense Secretary Sergei Ivanov said yesterday that the two sides have made “clear progress” in their Treaty discussions.

It’s not over yet — Mr. Bush is said to be making a decision this week — but the basic thrust is as follows: The U.S. would agree to delay withdrawing from the Treaty in return for Russia allowing the U.S. to proceed with anti-missile tests the Treaty now bans. In addition, both countries would agree to cut their nuclear arsenals to fewer than 2,000 warheads.

While we wait for the details, mark us down as preferring a complete, final break from the 1972 accord, as permitted under Article 15. Compromises are sometimes necessary, but this is one of those moments in history when a clean break from the “arms control process” would be better for both countries. And the moment may not easily come again.

The ABM Treaty was written when Russia and the U.S. were historical rivals. Today both countries want a closer relationship with each other, and both share the same common threat, which is Islamic fundamentalism armed with weapons of mass destruction. More than two dozen nations either already possess long-range ballistic missiles or will soon have them. If anthrax and Osama bin Laden have taught us anything, it is that arms control and defense are not the same things.

We agree that it would be no small thing if post-Cold War Russia aligns itself more closely with the West. This has been a goal of Russian reformers since Peter the Great, and it’s worth it for America to pay some price to help it occur. But we disagree with the State Department view that Mr. Putin won’t budge unless Mr. Bush gives in on missile defenses.

Debt over defenses

Mr. Putin has his own reasons for pursuing better U.S. ties, most of them well beyond the old Cold War military issues. Some of them are economic, such as the renegotiation or forgiveness of Soviet-era debt, as well as faster entry into the World Trade Organization. The latter requires the repeal of Jackson-Vanik, the 1974 law that links Soviet emigration to trade, and which Mr. Bush has already agreed to push through Congress. The U.S. has already toned down its criticism of Russia’s war in Chechnya.

With his own approval rating at more than 75%, Mr. Putin ought to be able to explain a U.S. Treaty withdrawal to the satisfaction of most Russians. All the more so if he can return to Moscow with significant cuts in offensive weapons. Russia retains thousands of missiles, but the cost of maintaining them is high and he’d like to spend the money elsewhere.

U.S. strategists say our arsenal can safely fall to below 2,000 warheads, down from 7,000 or so today, but Mr. Bush can only cut that arsenal once. It would be a mistake to offer those cuts merely in return for a deal that allows some missile testing today, with more negotiation to come in six months or a year. What does Mr. Bush offer next time?

For his part, Mr. Bush is being told he needs the political cover of Russian agreement to help push missile defense through Congress. But that was before September 11. Domestic political support for missile defense has since soared, especially among women, so Mr. Bush doesn’t really need the Russian’s imprimatur. In a recent Pew Research survey, support has climbed to 64%, and 49% now believe it should be developed immediately. Seventy-three percent of mothers now support missile defense, up from 53% before September 11.

It’s true that the U.S. isn’t yet ready to deploy a missile defense, so waiting wouldn’t have to cripple future efforts. And unlike some of our friends on the right, we don’t doubt Mr. Bush’s sincerity on the subject. At every juncture when he might have wavered, Mr. Bush has pressed for missile defenses without apology. Even last month, amid cries that defenses weren’t needed when terrorists could use a suitcase bomb, Mr. Bush called the ABM Treaty “dangerous.”

But these same circumstances won’t always hold. Mr. Bush’s own political stature might not be as high a year from now, and Mr. Putin might have problems of his own. Far better to strike a deal now, when both sides have the political capital to spare. And far better to set the U.S.-Russian relationship on a path away from the “arms control process” that has dominated it for so long. Arms control is something that exists between adversaries, not friends. The U.S. doesn’t negotiate missile treaties with Germany, or Turkey. If this really is going to be an historic Russia realignment toward the West, then who needs arms control?

By remaining inside the ABM Treaty, even with a wink and a nod, the U.S. would also be living a lie. Mr. Bush would be insisting he can build a national missile defense at the same time that he agreed to abide by a Treaty that pledges us not to build one. That’s no way to defend a nation.

Who is the Enemy and How They Must Be Fought

September 13, 2001Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): Press accounts detail how the Bush Administration and the Congress are reacting to the “acts of war” unleashed upon the United States two days ago. Much of what is being said is commendable. And it is commendable that expedited efforts are now underway to provide the emergency resources needed to address the immediate repercussions of the attacks in New York and Washington, and readying our national response.

Still, as two important essays — one an unsigned editorial in the Jerusalem Post (written by editorials editor and former Senate staffer Saul Singer) and the second by the superb (and recently rehabilitated/reinstated) Boston Globe columnist, Jeff Jacoby — make clear that the President and the American people need to be as clear about the nature of the enemies we face as they currently are about the need to wage war against them.

As the Post put it: “America’s first task is defining the enemy. In this war, the enemy’s attempt to distort and obscure its identity is its primary line of defense. The enemy is not merely Osama bin Laden or whatever terrorist organization carried out the monstrous attack….If the bin Ladens of the world are defined as the enemy, terrorism has won; if the governments that sponsor terrorism are the enemy, then terrorism can be defeated.” It may suit the Russians’ purpose to encourage American retribution against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that is hosting Osama bin Laden, but the United States must deal at least as forcefully and comprehensively against other terrorist-sponsoring governments that happen to be clients of Russia (notably, Iraq, Iran and North Korea).

In his complementary essay, Mr. Jacoby notes that, now that murderous terrorism has been visited upon us, no American officials are employing the kind of rhetoric so recently used to discourage Israel from dealing as effectively as possible against the same (albeit smaller scale) “acts of war” that the Jewish State has confronted in recent months. It can only be hoped that the United States government will not only adopt the techniques employed by its Israeli allies to detect and destroy its enemies, but display a long-overdue appreciation of the legitimacy of such acts of self-defense.

Defining the Enemy

The Jerusalem Post, 13 September 2001

As Americans try to recover from and comprehend the most devastating terrorist attack ever, it is not surprising that US leaders are groping for a new language and way of thinking to confront the new reality.

There is general agreement that America is and must be “at war.” But the pledge of President George W. Bush and many others to “find those responsible and bring them to justice” sounds not like war, but a police action against criminals.

The distinction between fighting a war and bringing criminals to justice is not a merely semantic one. It is a distinction over the nature of the enemy.

America’s first task is defining the enemy. In this war, the enemy’s attempt to distort and obscure its identity is its primary line of defense.

The enemy is not merely Osama bin Laden or whatever terrorist organization carried out the monstrous attack. The enemy is the states that sponsor terrorists and the ideology that animates them.

Imagine for a moment that bin Laden is proven to be the immediate culprit and the US were to successfully bomb him and his organization out of existence. Would terrorism have been defeated? No – such a success would be the equivalent of destroying a kamikaze or Nazi unit while leaving the wartime governments of Japan or Germany in place.

If the bin Ladens of the world are defined as the enemy, terrorism has won; if the governments that sponsor terrorism are the enemy, then terrorism can be defeated. As Israel learned in Lebanon, it was impossible to defeat Hizbullah while holding that organization’s Syrian, Iranian, and Lebanese sponsors were effectively immune from attack.
The idea that regimes, not just organizations, must be held responsible may seem obvious. Indeed, Bush has stated that the US will “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these act and those who harbor them.” But even before the rubble has ceased to smolder doubts are being expressed.

In its editorial on the attack, The New York Times mused that “this is an age when even revenge is complicated, when it is hard to match the desire for retribution with the need for certainty.” What retribution? What need for certainty? To talk about retribution and certainty is to act as if the task after Pearl Harbor was to prove which unit had attacked America and to punish that unit – rather than to defeat and replace the governments of Japan, Germany, and Italy.

In a second editorial, the Times argued that “part of the challenge for the United States is to recognize that the roots of terrorism lie in economic and political problems in large parts of the world.” This is errant nonsense.

As Michael Kelly points out in The Washington Post, “The whole world was stolen from somebody, most of it repeatedly; there are claims and counterclaims and counter-counterclaims for every inch of the planet that is desirable and for much that is not.” If poverty, corruption, tyranny, suffering, ethnic conflict, and territorial disputes were the sources of terrorism, sub-Saharan Africa would be terror center of the world.

To “recognize the roots” of terrorism is to harbor the notion that terrorism can be justified. Worse, it directly fulfills the goal of terrorism, which is to blackmail the world into addressing “grievances.” The obstacles to addressing real suffering are the regimes that are behind terrorism, which not coincidentally oppress and impoverish their own people.

For the free world, the war against terrorism cannot be limited to punishment, retribution, or sending signals. Those who sent the terrorists to attack America would be only too pleased to absorb a less than tit-for-tat cruise missile attack in response.

The free world must recognize that is in a war of self-defense whose goal is victory. The concept of a war against terrorism is meaningless without the goal of removing terrorist regimes. The exact combination of diplomatic, economic, and military tools to be deployed toward this goal is a legitimate matter of debate. But a war against terrorism that avoids the issue of regime change in countries such as Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan cannot be won, because it has not even really been joined.

On the War We Are Now In

September 12, 2001Charles Krauthammer

(Washington, D.C.): The explosions that destroyed the World Trade Center, wreaked havoc on the Pentagon and shattered American illusions of invulnerability have also unleashed a torrent of editorial commentary and punditry. Two of the most trenchant were authored by good friends of the Center for Security Policy — Syndicated columnist and television pundit Charles Krauthammer and the recipient of CSP’s 2001 "Mightier Pen" award, Mark Helprin. Their essays about the character of the war thus thrust upon the United States and the responses required of our leaders and countrymen should be required reading for all those in with an interest in the freedom and security of this nation’s society at home and its equities around the world.

To War, Not to Court

By Charles Krauthammer

The Washington Post, 12 September 2001

This is not crime. This is war. One of the reasons there are terrorists out there capable and audacious enough to carry out the deadliest attack on the United States in its history is that, while they have declared war on us, we have in the past responded (with the exception of a few useless cruise missile attacks on empty tents in the desert) by issuing subpoenas.

Secretary of State Colin Powell’s first reaction to the day of infamy was to pledge to "bring those responsible to justice." This is exactly wrong. Franklin Roosevelt did not respond to Pearl Harbor by pledging to bring the commander of Japanese naval aviation to justice. He pledged to bring Japan to its knees.

You bring criminals to justice; you rain destruction on combatants. This is a fundamental distinction that can no longer be avoided. The bombings of Sept. 11, 2001, must mark a turning point. War was long ago declared on us. Until we declare war in return, we will have thousands of more innocent victims.

We no longer have to search for a name for the post-Cold War era. It will henceforth be known as the age of terrorism. Organized terror has shown what it can do: execute the single greatest massacre in American history, shut down the greatest power on the globe and send its leaders into underground shelters. All this, without even resorting to chemical, biological or nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

This is a formidable enemy. To dismiss it as a bunch of cowards perpetrating senseless acts of violence is complacent nonsense. People willing to kill thousands of innocents while they kill themselves are not cowards. They are deadly, vicious warriors and need to be treated as such. Nor are their acts of violence senseless. They have a very specific aim: to avenge alleged historical wrongs and to bring the great American satan to its knees.

Nor is the enemy faceless or mysterious. We do not know for sure who gave the final order but we know what movement it comes from. The enemy has identified itself in public and openly. Our delicate sensibilities have prevented us from pronouncing its name.

Its name is radical Islam. Not Islam as practiced peacefully by millions of the faithful around the world. But a specific fringe political movement, dedicated to imposing its fanatical ideology on its own societies and destroying the society of its enemies, the greatest of which is the United States.

Israel, too, is an affront to radical Islam, and thus of course must be eradicated. But it is the smallest of fish. The heart of the beast — with its military in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and the Persian Gulf; with a culture that "corrupts" Islamic youth; with an economy and technology that dominate the world — is the United States. That is why we were struck so savagely.

How do we know? Who else trains cadres of fanatical suicide murderers who go to their deaths joyfully? And the average terrorist does not coordinate four hijackings within one hour. Nor fly a plane into the tiny silhouette of a single building. For that you need skilled pilots seeking martyrdom. That is not a large pool to draw from.

These are the shock troops of the enemy. And the enemy has many branches. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Israel, the Osama bin Laden organization headquartered in Afghanistan, and various Arab "liberation fronts" based in Damascus. And then there are the governments: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya among them. Which one was responsible? We will find out soon enough.

But when we do, there should be no talk of bringing these people to "swift justice," as Karen Hughes dismayingly promised mid-afternoon yesterday. An open act of war demands a military response, not a judicial one.

Military response against whom? It is absurd to make war on the individuals who send these people. The terrorists cannot exist in a vacuum. They need a territorial base of sovereign protection. For 30 years we have avoided this truth. If bin Laden was behind this, then Afghanistan is our enemy. Any country that harbors and protects him is our enemy. We must carry their war to them.

We should seriously consider a congressional declaration of war. That convention seems quaint, unused since World War II. But there are two virtues to declaring war: It announces our seriousness both to our people and to the enemy, and it gives us certain rights as belligerents (of blockade, for example).

The "long peace" is over. We sought this war no more than we sought war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan or Cold War with the Soviet Union. But when war was pressed upon the greatest generation, it rose to the challenge. The question is: Will we?

We Beat Hitler. We Can Vanquish This Foe, Too.

by Mark Helprin

The Wall Street Journal, 12 September 2001

America, it is said, is slow to awaken, and indeed it is, but once America stirs, its resolution can be matchless and its ferocity a stunning surprise.

The enemy we face today, though barbaric and ingenious, is hardly comparable to the masters of the Third Reich, whose doubts about our ability to persevere we chose to dissuade in a Berlin that we had reduced to rubble. Nor is he comparable to the commanders of the Japanese Empire, whose doubts about our ability to persevere we chose to dissuade in a Tokyo we had reduced to rubble. Nor to the Soviet Empire that we faced down patiently over half a century, nor to the great British Empire from which we broke free in a long and taxing struggle that affords a better picture of our kith and kin than any the world may have today of who we are and of what we are capable.

And today’s enemy, though he is not morally developed enough to comprehend the difference between civilians and combatants, is neither faceless nor without a place in which we can address him. If he is Osama bin Laden, he lives in Afghanistan, and his hosts, the Taliban, bear responsibility for sheltering him; if he is Saddam Hussein, he lives in Baghdad; if he is Yasser Arafat, he lives in Gaza; and so on. Our problem is not his anonymity but that we have refused the precise warnings, delivered over more than a decade, of those who understood the nature of what was coming — and of what is yet to come, which will undoubtedly be worse.

The first salvos of any war are seldom the most destructive. Consider that in this recent outrage the damage was done by the combined explosive power of three crashed civilian airliners. As the initial shock wears off it will be obvious that this was a demonstration shot intended to extract political concessions and surrender, a call to fix our attention on the prospect of a nuclear detonation or a chemical or biological attack, both of which would exceed what happened yesterday by several orders of magnitude.

It will get worse, but appeasement will make it no better. That we have promised retaliation for decades and then always drawn back, hoping that we could get through if we simply did not provoke the enemy, is appeasement, and it must be quite clear by now even to those who perpetually appease that appeasement simply does not work. Therefore, what must be done? Above all, we must make no promise of retaliation that is not honored; in this we have erred too many times. It is a bipartisan failing and it should never be repeated.

Let this spectacular act of terrorism be the decisive repudiation of the mistaken assumptions that conventional warfare is a thing of the past, that there is a safe window in which we can cut force structure while investing in the revolution in military affairs, that bases and infrastructure abroad have become unnecessary, that the day of the infantryman is dead, and, most importantly, that slighting military expenditure and preparedness is anything but an invitation to death and defeat.

Short of a major rebuilding, we cannot now inflict upon Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden the great and instantaneous shock with which they should be afflicted. That requires not surgical strikes by aircraft based in the United States, but expeditionary forces with extravagant basing and equipment. It requires not 10 aircraft carrier battle groups but, to do it right and when and where needed, 20. It requires not only all the infantry divisions, transport, and air wings that we have needlessly given up in the last decade, but many more. It requires special operations forces not of 35,000, but of 100,000.

For the challenge is asymmetrical. Terrorist camps must be raided and destroyed, and their reconstitution continually repressed. Intelligence gathering of all types must be greatly augmented, for by its nature it can never be sufficient to the task, so we must build it and spend upon it until it hurts. The nuclear weapons programs, depots, and infrastructure of what Madeleine Albright so delicately used to call "states of concern" must, in a most un-Albrightian phrase, be destroyed. As they are scattered around the globe, it cannot be easy. Security and civil defense at home and at American facilities overseas must be strengthened to the point where we are able to fight with due diligence in this war that has been brought to us now so vividly by an alien civilization that seeks our destruction.

The course of such a war will bring us greater suffering than it has brought to date, and if we are to fight it as we must we will have less in material things. But if, as we have so many times before, we rise to the occasion, we will not enjoy merely the illusions of safety, victory, and honor, but those things themselves. In our history it is clear that never have they come cheap and often they have come late, but always, in the end, they come in flood, and always in the end, the decision is ours.

U.S. Sovereignty, Not Isolationism, is What Guides Bush Rejections of Defective Treaties

July 26, 2001Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): The common if rather sophomoric response to President Bush’s recent decisions to disassociate the United States from five defective bilateral and multilateral agreements is to denounce him as an “isolationist.” The following essay by Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. published in today’s National Review Online, makes clear, however, that — far from being impelled by isolationist impulses — Mr. Bush is acting to assure that this nation remains an engaged and effective actor in international security and global affairs.

President Bush appreciates that that goal is far more likely to be advanced if the United States retains the formidable military strength and economic power that flows from its civil society rooted in the American Constitution than by its participation in any number of international accords. This is all the more true to the extent that, notwithstanding the large numbers of other nations that have agreed to sign the agreements in question, at least some will actually fail to honor their obligations.

Mr. Bush is to be commended, not criticized, for recognizing the threat to American sovereignty, interests and even its security posed by agreements like the Kyoto Protocol, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the International Criminal Court treaty, the original Small Arms Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention Protocol. Had the President yielded to the immense pressure to do otherwise, he might temporarily have gotten better press and a fleeting respite from the criticism of foreign capitals and domestic opponents. Ironically, though, history would likely judge him harshly had he endorsed accords that had the unintended — but unavoidable — effect of weakening the United States and its people’s support for American engagement, thereby undermining the international environment that makes it possible for freedom-loving nations to operate in prosperity and security.

The Isolationist President? It’s U.S. Sovereignty, Stupid

by Frank Gaffney, Jr.

National Review Online, 26 July 2001

In recent weeks, the drumbeat of criticism of Bush administration foreign policies has sharpened considerably. TV pundits, editorial cartoonists, journalists, allied governments, and prominent Democrats, including notably Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, have been denouncing the president for acting “unilaterally.” They fret that he is putting the United States squarely at odds with the will of the “international community.” His is an “isolationist” approach, they say, one that threatens to alienate our friends and undermine our interests around the world.

There is no disputing the fact that Mr. Bush has adopted policies at odds with what passes for an international consensus on a number of topical issues. He has, in particular:

Rejected as unworkable and unacceptably costly the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing manmade greenhouse gas emissions that are said to contribute to global warming.
Declared his intention to “move beyond” the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with or without Russian assent in order to develop and deploy effective missile defenses prohibited by that accord.
Refused to pursue ratification of the Treaty of Rome which establishes an International Criminal Court (ICC) on the grounds that such a mechanism is likely to become politicized and may be abused to prosecute American leaders, military personnel, and other U.S. citizens without regard for their constitutional rights.
Opposed efforts to impose via an international treaty controls on Americans’ right to bear arms that were deemed unconstitutional. And,
Most recently, decided not to agree to a protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). After exhaustive study, the Bush administration concluded that, while the BWC annex is intended to make that treaty prohibiting the production, possession, and use of biological and toxin weapons more verifiable and enforceable, it won’t do either. Yet, it would have other, real, and very undesirable costs.

What these examples illustrate is not that President Bush is willfully and recklessly disregarding America’s responsibility to be a world leader and exemplar to others. Rather, he is assuring that the nation retains the military power, economic strength, institutions of free and representative governance, and constitutional liberties that enable this country to play such a role.

To paraphrase Bill Clinton’s mantra from the 1992 campaign, “It’s U.S. sovereignty, stupid.”

The immutable fact is that each of the agreements to which President Bush has objected infringe unacceptably on American rights, prerogatives, and/or responsibilities:

U.S. accession to Kyoto would compel the federal government, American businesses and individual citizens to make significant changes in their day-to-day activities, changes that would impinge upon the productivity, welfare and possibly even the security of this nation. Mr. Bush appreciated, moreover, that these burdens would not be equally shared by other leading developed nations (Britain and Germany being spared significant economic dislocation thanks to their previous closure of obsolete greenhouse gas-emitting steel plants) or by large developing nations like China and India. Worse yet, the Kyoto Protocol like virtually every other multilateral accord would cede U.S. sovereignty to a supranational institution. In this case, the “international community” would assert oversight authority concerning American CO2 emissions and, at least indirectly, the energy use largely responsible for producing them.

Mr. Bush has similarly refused to allow anybody else to determine whether and how the United States will be defended against ballistic-missile blackmail or attack. To be sure, one of his predecessors nearly 30 years ago and under altogether different strategic circumstances decided to give the Soviet Union a veto over American missile defenses in the form of the ABM Treaty. Fortunately for all Americans, this president understands that, in the wake of the demise of the USSR and the emergence of missile threats from a number of other quarters, it is not only imprudent to leave the Nation unprotected; it is contrary to the federal government’s sovereign responsibility under our Constitution to provide for the “common defense.”

Speaking of the Constitution, President Bush appreciates that its protections and rights would not be guaranteed to Americans prosecuted by the International Criminal Court. After all, the court is to adopt, and its activities are to be governed by, a hodgepodge of legal codes and practices. These will not, however, include such pillars of U.S. criminal jurisprudence as a trial by a jury of the defendant’s peers or the right to confront his or her accusers. The president cannot in good conscience agree to surrender cardinal principles of our Constitution to unaccountable international prosecutors, judges, and institutions.

Foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations have made no secret of their desire to use the Convention on Small Arms as a means of overriding Americans’ deeply cherished, if hotly contested, right to own and bear arms. While President Bush did go along with a new international agreement meant to make it more difficult to engage in illegal international trafficking in light weapons, he properly refused to subordinate domestic ownership of such weapons to supranational purview and dictates.

The Biological Weapons Convention would afford foreign intelligence services and business competitors access to many of the United States’s most sensitive proprietary processes and data in the fields of biotechnology and genetic engineering all without contributing appreciably to the deterrence or detection of covert and illegal BW activities.

The United States already made this mistake once, in connection with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Thanks to that treaty, countries like Iran that are known to have ongoing covert chemical-weapons programs are being given a wholly unwarranted clean bill of health. Meanwhile, U.S. government facilities and private companies are being subjected to disruptive, potentially damaging, and certainly costly on-site inspections by an international inspectorate. America simply cannot afford to extend and compound the CWC’s damage to its cutting-edge industries in the highly competitive biotech and genetic-engineering fields.

It is regrettable that President Bush has been put in the position where he has to stand up again and again for American sovereignty which is now being threatened by so many ill-advised agreements. Had his immediate predecessor been more protective of our institutions, rights and equities, he would have refused to allow these accords to metastasize as they have. Interestingly, even Bill Clinton felt compelled to act in what would now be called a “unilateral” fashion by refusing to sign onto a fatally flawed ban on anti-personnel landmines. He also declined to recommend to the Senate ratification of the ICC Treaty in its present form which he described as “deeply flawed,” even though at the last moment he buckled into pressure to sign it.

Clearly, it would be far easier for Mr. Bush to go with the flow, earning the kudos of the chattering classes at home and abroad by allowing agreements reflecting the lowest common denominator of scores of nations to become part of the growing body of supranational institutions and legal structures. It is to the president’s great credit that he has not done so, given the high costs associated with such a course of action.

When all is said and done, though, not only will the United States be better off as a nation if George W. Bush succeeds in enhancing American sovereignty than if he embraces treaties that erode it. With its economic and military strength and constitutional arrangements secure, America will also be a more effective and engaged world power. That will benefit every law-abiding member of the “international community” far more so than they would from any number of agreements with those who do not respect the rule of law or intend to honor their treaty commitments pursuant to it.

Trade as An Engine for Democracy in China: The Big Lie

July 9, 2001Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): Despite last week’s resolution by the European Parliament opposing Beijing as the site of the 2008 Summer Olympic games, the International Olympic Committee is poised to announce its selection of the PRC. This is due, in no small measure, to the Bush Administration’s deplorable decision to “remain neutral” on the question.

Perhaps, as William Safire suggests in his column in today’s New York Times, the Administration was moved not to oppose the Chinese Olympic bid — despite their persecution of American citizens and U.S.-based scholars, their reckless action against a U.S. military aircraft and detention of its crew, their offensive build-up and threatening behavior towards Taiwan, etc. — because of bad intelligence served up by the CIA.

If so, a presidential announcement that the United States does, in fact, oppose any Olympics in China until the Communist Party’s misrule there is ended should only be the beginning of an overhaul of American policy towards the PRC. Mr. Bush should also adopt the recommendations of a congressionally driven, blue-ribbon commission charged with reviewing the assumptions and results of U.S. intelligence with respect to Communist China. According to a report by Bill Gertz in the Washington Times, this panel has reportedly concluded in a sharply critical classified assessment that a sort of pro-Beijing “group think” is skewing the hiring and products of analysts in the Nation’s intelligence community. Specifically, this mindset appears to be dismissive of the growing body of evidence that China is consciously preparing for a potential conflict with the United States.

There can be no doubt, however, that at least one other misperception is at work in the Bush position on the Olympics, and China more generally — namely, that doing business with the PRC will transform its despotic government. Fortunately, a corrective to this illusion is also at hand, in the form of a cover article by Lawrence Kaplan published in the 9 July edition of The New Republic. Mr. Kaplan’s essay establishes persuasively that increased Western trade with and investment in China is not having any appreciable positive effect on the repressiveness of the Communist regime, its strategic ambitions and/or movement to a full free-market economy.

Excerpts from:

Trade Barrier

By Lawrence F. Kaplan

The New Republic, 9 July 2001

On February 25, business professor and writer Li Shaomin left his home in Hong Kong to visit a friend in the mainland city of Shenzhen. His wife and nine-year-old daughter haven’t heard from him since. That’s because, for four months now, Li has been rotting in a Chinese prison, where he stands accused of spying for Taiwan. Never mind that Li is an American citizen. And never mind that the theme of his writings, published in subversive organs like the U.S.-China Business Council’s China Business Review, is optimism about China’s investment climate. Li, it turns out, proved too optimistic for his own good. In addition to rewarding foreign investors, he believed that China’s economic growth would create, as he put it in a 1999 article, a “rule-based governance system.” But, as Li has since discovered, China’s leaders have other plans.

Will American officials ever make the same discovery? Like Li, Washington’s most influential commentators, politicians, and China hands claim we can rely on the market to transform China. According to this new orthodoxy, what counts is not China’s political choices but rather its economic orientation, particularly its degree of integration into the global economy. The cliche has had a narcotic effect on President Bush, who, nearly every time he’s asked about China, suggests that trade will accomplish the broader aims of American policy.

Bush hasn’t revived Bill Clinton’s recklessly ahistorical claim that the United States can build “peace through trade, investment, and commerce.” He has, however, latched onto another of his predecessor’s high-minded rationales for selling Big Macs to Beijing–namely, that commerce will act, in Clinton’s words, as “a force for change in China, exposing China to our ideas and our ideals.” In this telling, capitalism isn’t merely a necessary precondition for democracy in China. It’s a sufficient one. Or, as Bush puts it, “Trade freely with China, and time is on our side.” As Congress prepares to vote for the last time on renewing China’s normal trading relations (Beijing’s impending entry into the World Trade Organization will put an end to the annual ritual), you’ll be hearing the argument a lot: To promote democracy, the United States needn’t apply more political pressure to China. All we need to do is more business there.

Alas, the historical record isn’t quite so clear. Tolerant cultural traditions, British colonization, a strong civil society, international pressure, American military occupation and political influence–these are just a few of the explanations scholars credit as the source of freedom in various parts of the world. And even when economic conditions do hasten the arrival of democracy, it’s not always obvious which ones. After all, if economic factors can be said to account for democracy’s most dramatic advance–the implosion of the Soviet Union and its Communist satellites–surely the most important factor was economic collapse.

And if not every democracy emerged through capitalism, it’s also true that not every capitalist economy has produced a democratic government. One hundred years ago in Germany and Japan, 30 years ago in countries such as Argentina and Brazil, and today in places like Singapore and Malaysia, capitalist development has buttressed, rather than undermined, authoritarian regimes. And these models are beginning to look a lot more like contemporary China than the more optimistic cases cited by Beijing’s American enthusiasts. In none of these cautionary examples did the free market do the three things businessmen say it always does: weaken the coercive power of the state, create a democratically minded middle class, or expose the populace to liberal ideals from abroad. It isn’t doing them in China either….

China’s market system derives…from a pathological model of economic development. Reeling from the economic devastation of the Mao era, Deng Xiaoping and his fellow party leaders in the late 1970s set China on a course toward “market socialism.” The idea was essentially the same one that guided the New Economic Policy in Soviet Russia 50 years before: a mix of economic liberalization and political repression, which would boost China’s economy without weakening the Communist Party….

The reason isn’t simply that government repression keeps economic freedom from yielding political freedom. It’s that China’s brand of economic reform contains ingredients that hinder–and were consciously devised to hinder–political reform. The most obvious is that, just as the state retains a monopoly on the levers of coercion, it also remains perched atop the commanding heights of China’s economy….

Washington’s celebrations of the democratic potential of the new Chinese “middle class” may be premature. “Entrepreneurs, once condemned as `counterrevolutionaries,’ are now the instruments of reform….[T]his middle class will eventually demand broad acceptance of democratic values,” House Majority Whip Tom DeLay insisted last year. Reading from the same script, President Bush declares that trade with China will “help an entrepreneurial class and a freedom-loving class grow and burgeon and become viable.” Neither DeLay nor Bush, needless to say, invented the theory that middle classes have nothing to lose but their chains….

But middle classes aren’t always socially moderate, and they don’t always oppose the state. Under certain conditions, late modernizing economies breed middle classes that actively oppose political change. In each of these cases, a strong state, not the market, dictates the terms of economic modernization. And, in each case, an emerging entrepreneurial class too weak to govern on its own allies itself — economically and, more importantly, politically — with a reactionary government and against threats to the established order….

In China, which killed off its commercial class in the 1950s, the state had to create a new one. Thus China’s emerging bourgeoisie consists overwhelmingly of state officials, their friends and business partners, and — to the extent they climbed the economic ladder independently — entrepreneurs who rely on connections with the official bureaucracy for their livelihoods. “It is improbable, to say the least,” historian Maurice Meisner writes in The Deng Xiaoping Era: An Inquiry Into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, “that a bourgeoisie whose economic fortunes are so dependent on the political fortunes of the Communist state is likely to mount a serious challenge to the authority of that state….the members of China’s new bourgeoisie emerge more as agents of the state than as potential antagonists.”
* * *

Beijing requires foreign investors in many industries to cooperate in joint ventures with Chinese partners, most of whom enjoy close ties to the government. These firms remain insulated mainly in three coastal enclaves and in “special economic zones” set apart from the larger Chinese economy. Moreover, they export a majority of their goods — which is to say, they send most of their “seeds of change” abroad. At the same time, their capital largely substitutes for domestic capital (foreign-owned firms generate half of all Chinese exports), providing a much-needed blood transfusion for China’s rulers, who use it to accumulate reserves of hard currency, meet social welfare obligations, and otherwise strengthen their rule.

Nor is it clear that U.S. companies even want China to change. If anything, growing levels of U.S. investment have created an American interest in maintaining China’s status quo. Hence, far from criticizing China’s rulers, Western captains of industry routinely parade through Beijing singing the praises of the Communist regime (and often inveighing against its detractors), while they admonish America’s leaders to take no action that might upset the exquisite sensibilities of China’s politburo. Business first, democracy later….

…[T]he best measure of whether economic ties to the West have contributed to democratization may be gleaned from China’s human rights record. Colin Powell insists, “Trade with China is not only good economic policy; it is good human rights policy.” Yet, rather than improve that record, the rapid expansion of China’s trade ties to the outside world over the past decade has coincided with a worsening of political repression at home. Beijing launched its latest crackdown on dissent in 1999, and it continues to this day. The government has tortured, “reeducated through labor,” and otherwise persecuted thousands of people for crimes no greater than practicing breathing exercises, peacefully championing reforms, and exercising freedom of expression, association, or worship…Nor is it true that linking trade and human rights will necessarily prove counterproductive. When Congress approved trade sanctions against Beijing in the aftermath of Tiananmen, China’s leaders responded by releasing more than 800 political prisoners, lifting martial law in Beijing, entering into talks with the United States, and even debating among themselves the proper role of human rights. As soon as American pressure eased, so did China’s reciprocal gestures.

Turning a blind eye to Beijing’s depredations may make economic sense. But to pretend we can democratize China by means of economics is, finally, a self-serving conceit. Democracy is a political choice, an act of will. Someone, not something, must create it.

Honesty is the Best Policy: Bush Must Do With The A.B.M. Treaty as He Has Done to the Kyoto Protocol

June 25, 2001Center for Security Policy

(Washington, D.C.): In an extraordinary op.ed. article published last week in the Washington Post, syndicated columnist Robert Samuelson breaks ranks with virtually every other journalist on the planet. In contrast with the conventional wisdom that global warming is an imminent catastrophe that can and must be remedied by U.S. adherence to the Kyoto Protocol, Samuelson declares forthrightly that “we don’t know” whether climate change portends, literally, a planetary melt-down. He actually commends President George W. Bush for renouncing the Protocol on the grounds that its required reductions were arbitrary, not based on science and, if implemented, would likely be gravely injurious to the U.S. economy.

Even more extraordinary, Samuelson assails those in power at home and abroad (and, by implication, his colleagues in the media) whom he says have engaged in a systematic distortion of the facts regarding global warming and Kyoto. In his view, this explains their vehement antipathy towards, and condemnation of, Mr. Bush:

Bush has discarded all the convenient deceits. He has brought more honesty to the global warming debate in four months than Bill Clinton did in eight years — and this, paradoxically, is why he is so harshly condemned. He must be discredited because if he’s correct, then almost everyone else has been playing fast and loose with the facts.

The Samuelson essay is noteworthy in its own right. It is even more valuable, however, insofar as the paradigm it describes (i.e., that of an American president whose straightforward view of the facts is seen as an affront to elites in Europe and his own country) also applies to another delusional international accord — the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty — that should be dealt with in the same way as Mr. Bush has treated Kyoto.

Like the Global Climate Change protocol, the ABM Treaty is a fraud. The other party was liquidated a decade ago; first the Soviet Union and then Russia massively violated its terms; and it clearly disserves American interests in the post-Cold War world. Mr. Bush, who has talked about “setting aside” and “going beyond” the ABM Treaty must now act in the same forthright and legally efficacious way he did with respect to the Kyoto Protocol: Announce that the United States will no longer be bound by it, and begin deploying the kind of effective missile defenses it prohibits within at most six-months’ time.

The Kyoto Delusion

By Robert J. Samuelson

The Washington Post, 21 June 2001

The education of George W. Bush on global warming is simply summarized: Honesty may not be the best policy. Greenhouse politics have long blended exaggeration and deception. Although global warming may or may not be an inevitable calamity (we don’t know), politicians everywhere treat it as one. Doing otherwise would offend environmental lobbies and the public, which has been conditioned to see it as a certain disaster. But the same politicians won’t do anything that would dramatically reduce global warming, because the obvious remedy — steep increases in energy prices — would be immensely unpopular.

By rejecting the Kyoto protocol, which would commit 38 industrial countries to control greenhouse emissions, Bush has discarded the convenient deceits. He has brought more honesty to the global warming debate in four months than Bill Clinton did in eight years — and this, paradoxically, is why he is so harshly condemned. He must be discredited because if he’s correct, then almost everyone else has been playing fast and loose with the facts.

Bush says that the Kyoto commitments were “arbitrary and not based on science.” True. Under Kyoto, the United States would cut its greenhouse gas emissions 7 percent below their 1990 levels by the years 2008 to 2012. Japan’s target is 6 percent, the European Union’s 8 percent. Russia gets to maintain its 1990 level, and Australia is allowed an 8 percent increase. Developing countries (Brazil, China, India) aren’t covered. These targets reflect pragmatic diplomacy and little else.

Because so many countries are excluded, it’s also true — as Bush indicates — that even if Kyoto worked as planned, the effect on greenhouse gases would be almost trivial. In 1990, says the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, totaled 5.8 billion tons of “carbon equivalent.” The EIA predicts that if nothing is done, emissions will rise 34 percent to 7.8 billion tons by 2010. With Kyoto, the increase would be only 26 percent to 7.3 billion tons. The reductions of industrialized countries would be more than offset by increases from developing countries.

Finally, Bush is correct when he says that reaching the Kyoto target would involve substantial economic costs for Americans. Strong U.S. economic growth has raised emissions well above their 1990 level. To hit the Kyoto target would require a cut of 30 percent or more of projected emissions. Under the Clinton administration, the EIA estimated that complying could raise electricity prices 86 percent and gasoline prices 53 percent. Higher prices are needed to induce consumers and businesses to use less energy (the source of most greenhouse gases) and switch to fuels (from coal to natural gas) that have lower emissions.

Europeans boast they’ve done better, implying that America’s poor showing reflects a lack of will. By 1998, the 15 countries of the European Union had reduced greenhouse emissions 2.5 percent below the 1990 level. But the comparison is bogus, because Europe’s performance reflects different circumstances — and luck. Through 1998, only three countries (Germany, Britain and Luxembourg) had reduced their emissions, and these improvements were mostly fortunate accidents. The shutdown of inefficient and heavy-polluting factories in eastern Germany cut emissions. And in Britain, plentiful North Sea gas propelled a shift from coal. Generally speaking, slow population and economic growth — meaning fewer cars, homes and offices — helps Europe comply with Kyoto. From 1990 to 2010, the European Union’s population is projected to rise 6 percent compared with a 20 percent U.S. increase.

The Clinton administration expressed alarm about global warming even while delaying effective action. Under Kyoto, countries can buy “rights” to emit greenhouse gases from other countries where — in theory — reductions could be more cheaply achieved. Called “emissions trading,” this approach was championed by Clinton. But as David Victor of the Council on Foreign Relations argues in his book “The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol,” the scheme is an unworkable sham. Some countries — notably Russia and Ukraine — got emissions targets well above their needs. So they could sell excess emission “rights” to Americans. The result: The United States wouldn’t cut its emissions and neither would Russia or Ukraine. Because Europeans distrusted this and other U.S. proposals, the final negotiations over Kyoto deadlocked last year.

As Bush says, we know that global temperatures are rising — but we don’t know the speed or the ultimate consequences. On all counts, his candor seems more commendable than the simplifications and evasions of his critics. And yet, his policy has stigmatized him as an environmental outlaw and earned him ill will in Europe and Japan. These are high costs. What went wrong? Just this: People say they like honesty in politicians, but on global warming, the evidence is the opposite. People prefer delusion. Kyoto responded to this urge. People want to hear that “something” is being done when little is being done and, in all likelihood, little can be done.

Barring technological breakthroughs — ways of producing cheap energy with few emissions or capturing today’s emissions — it’s hard to see how the world can deal with global warming. Developing countries sensibly insist on the right to reduce poverty through economic growth, which means more energy use and emissions. (Much is made of China’s recent drop in emissions; this is probably a one-time decline, reflecting the shutdown of inefficient factories. In 1999 China had eight cars per 1,000 people compared with 767 per 1,000 for the United States. Does anyone really believe that more cars, computers and consumer goods will cut China’s emissions?) Meanwhile, industrialized countries won’t reduce emissions if it means reducing living standards. There is a natural stalemate.

Because this message is unwanted, politicians don’t deliver it. Someone who defies conventional wisdom needs to explain his views well enough to bring public opinion to his side. Bush has, so far, failed at this critical task. Ironically, he might have fared better if he had stuck with Clinton’s clever deceptions.

With Friends Like These….

June 4, 2001Frank Gaffney, Jr.

(Washington, D.C.): Last week, President Bush’s commitment to defend the American people, their forces overseas and allies against ballistic missile attack sustained what are widely perceived to be two serious, if not fatal, body blows.

The first occurred when Secretary of State Colin Powell proved unable to get the French and German governments to agree to consensus wording in a NATO document to the effect that the Atlantic Alliance faced a common threat of ballistic missile attack. The second was the result of Senator Jim Jeffords’ defection from the Republican caucus in the U.S. Senate – – a step that is expected to bring to power Democrats who also seem, to varying degrees and at varying times, to discount the danger posed by missile-delivered weapons of mass destruction.

Not So Fast

Before the obituaries are written on the centerpiece of Mr. Bush’s national security and foreign policy agenda, however, a bit of perspective is in order. If one understands the nature of the allied governments in question, their behavior is easily understood — if indefensible. And, while the hostility of the likes of incoming Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden to the deployment of missile defenses is visceral and politically ingrained, it is not universally shared by their colleagues in the Democratic caucus.

Some Friends’

It turns out that the problem with the French and Germans is not that they are so strategically incompetent as to be unable to recognize a real and growing danger from missiles capable, first and foremost, of targeting their territories. Rather, the issue is that the governments now in charge in Paris and Berlin give new meaning to the question, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?”

While most of our countrymen fail to appreciate it, the leaders of these and most other governments in Western Europe (with the notable exception of the newly elected Berlusconi administration in Italy, which supports missile defenses) are individuals who cut their political teeth demonstrating their opposition to U.S. military power, the NATO alliance and America more generally. Germany’s Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder and his Green Party Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, are pedigreed leftists who were active in the pro-Soviet European Left’s campaign in the early 1980s aimed at preventing the deployment of U.S. intermediate- range nuclear missiles in five allied countries. Ditto France’s Socialist premier, Lionel Jospin, and, for that matter Britain’s Tony Blair and his Foreign Minister, Robin Cook. Even the present and immediate past Secretaries General of NATO, Britain’s George Robertson and Spain’s Javier Solana respectively, were determined opponents of the U.S. leadership of the Atlantic Alliance in the face of manifest Soviet threats.

The hostility being exhibited (to varying degrees) by these allied leaders toward American leadership today on missile defense is reminiscent of another difficult moment in U.S.-European relations. In the mid-1980s, American intelligence discovered a huge missile- detection and -tracking radar being built by the Soviet Union near the Western Siberian town of Krasnoyarsk. The character, capabilities and location of this radar made it as clear-cut a violation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty as the United States was ever likely to find. When I and others briefed NATO defense ministers about this discovery, however, Britain’s Michael Heseltine — then the Minister for Defense in Margaret Thatcher’s government — strenuously refused to agree that the Krasnoyarsk radar breached the ABM Treaty. Subsequently, in private conversations, he admitted the real reason: It was not that he was unpersuaded of the merits of the case but was simply determined to prevent the United States from having an excuse to pursue a President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, to which he from the political Right and virtually everyone on the European Left vehemently objected.

Meanwhile, Back at NATO Headquarters

Similar considerations are likely to be at work later this week when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld addresses his counterparts at a NATO defense ministerial meeting in Brussels. Thanks to his brilliant leadership of a 1998 blue-ribbon commission on the dangers posed by ballistic missile proliferation, scarcely anyone is better equipped than Mr. Rumsfeld to elucidate the nature of the “common threat” posed to our allies and us by such weapons. Insofar as the left-wing Europeans don’t wish to be confused with the facts — any more than Michael Heseltine did a generation ago — Secretary Rumsfeld needs to make four points:

First, of course there is a threat. For example, Libya — a country whose megalomaniacal leader has already launched a missile aimed at a NATO installation in Italy (happily, without effect) has recently taken possession of some forty North Korean No Dong missiles, capable of ranging much of southern Europe. He is not alone, or necessarily the most dangerous of those who will brandish ever- longer-range ballistic missiles in the future.
Second, Secretary Rumsfeld needs to reinforce a message he first delivered in Europe last February — namely, that the decision to deploy U.S. missile defenses has already been taken. We are not going to be talked or euchred out of doing so by either friends or foes.
Third, the United States is going to provide such protection to its forward-deployed forces and its allies, first from the sea using existing Aegis air defense ships, and will do so at no cost to allied nations — unless they wish to contribute. If, on the other hand, allied populations really don’t wish to be defended, we can make arrangements to leave them as vulnerable as they are today.
And finally, the Kremlin under both the Soviet and Russian governments, has breached the ABM Treaty so comprehensively as to make the subsequently admitted Krasnoyarsk violation pale into insignificance. Indeed, that radar was but one piece of the sort of “territorial defense” against long- range ballistic missiles specifically prohibited by the ABM accord, the rest of which is now in place. NATO should be briefed on this heretofore unpublicized fact to counter persistent claims about the Treaty’s indispensability and sacrosanct nature.

The Bottom Line

These representations will also serve the Bush Administration as it seeks to regain traction on Capitol Hill. While the new Democratic leadership in the Senate will make common cause wherever possible with like-minded (though far more radical) leftists in Europe and elsewhere, at the end of the day, there are clearly Democrats with whom President Bush can work to defend America et.al., if he provides the requisite leadership. With friends like these and the common threat we face, he has no choice but to do so.