Tag Archives: Germany

No Triumph of the Will’ for China

(Washington, D.C.): The Bush Administration is coming under increasing pressure to demonstrate that it truly comprehends the serious shortcomings of its predecessor’s policy of appeasing Communist China. Its recent decisions concerning, among other things, the resolution of the EP-3 affair, Taiwan arms sales, U.S.-PRC military-to-military contacts have caused some to contend that the President has not fully undertaken the necessary course corrections to square with his description of China as a “competitor” — let alone his pledge made last March to “stand up to those nations who deny freedom and threaten [their] neighbors or our vital interests.” The PRC is arguably the most egregious foe of freedom in the world today.

As Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby points out in a column published today, an excellent opportunity is at hand to send the right sort of message to Communist China — and those keenly concerned about the degree to which American policy remains geared towards legitimating the government in Beijing, rather than helping to undermine it: The United States must shortly make known whether it supports or opposes giving the PRC the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Granting China this privilege — and all the attendant political benefits and commercial opportunities — would be to confer upon one of the planet’s most odious regimes a windfall not seen by a totalitarian government since 1936 when Leni Riefenstahl helped Adolf Hitler stage- manage and disseminate images of the Munich Olympics glorifying Naziism in her film, “Triumph of the Will.” The United States must not be party to the desecration of Tiananmen Square; the American flag must not be paraded by U.S. Olympians in China until that long- suffering nation enjoys the freedom for which thousands of Chinese died in Tiananmen at the hands of the same Communist despots now desperately hoping to secure the Games for the PRC.

Olympics 2008: Say No to Beijing

By Jeff Jacoby

The Boston Globe, 7 May 2001

NORMAL HUMAN BEINGS WOULD BLANCH AT THE THOUGHT OF STAGING AN ATHLETIC EVENT AT THE SITE OF AN INFAMOUS MASSACRE. BUT CHINA’S COMMUNIST RULERS, WHO ARE BIDDING HARD TO HOST THE SUMMER OLYMPICS IN 2008, ARE NOT NORMAL HUMAN BEINGS. SO IT COMES AS NO SURPRISE THAT THEY PROPOSE TO HOLD THE OLYMPIC MARATHON, TRIATHLON, AND CYCLING COMPETITIONS IN AND AROUND THE SPOT WHERE THE PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY KILLED AS MANY AS 2,000 STUDENT DEMONSTRATORS IN JUNE 1989: TIANANMEN SQUARE.

The highest aim of the Olympic Games is set out in the Olympic Charter: “encouraging the establishment of a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Would staging races at a place of mass murder demonstrate respect for that goal – or contempt?

That is one question the International Olympic Committee might want to ponder before July 12, when it is to decide which of five cities – Osaka, Paris, Toronto, Beijing, or Istanbul – will host the 2008 Games. Each of the five has its drawbacks. But only Beijing is the capital of a totalitarian dictatorship. Does it make sense to confer the prestige and favorable publicity of the Olympics on a regime that routinely strangles freedom of speech and religion and imprisons millions of its citizens in slave labor camps?

That is another question for the IOC to ponder.

Supporters of China’s Olympic bid argue that the growing prosperity of recent years has brought about a greater openness in Chinese society – that ordinary men and women are increasingly free to live as they like and go where they wish. As the members of the IOC consider that claim, perhaps they will take a few minutes to consult Amnesty International’s recent report on China. This is how it begins:

“Zhou Jianxiong, a 30-year-old agricultural worker from Chunhua township in Hunan province, died under torture on 15 May 1998. . . . He was tortured by officials from the township birth control office to make him reveal the whereabouts of his wife, suspected of being pregnant without permission. Zhou was hung upside down, repeatedly whipped and beaten with wooden clubs, burned with cigarette butts, branded with soldering irons, and had his genitals ripped off.

“This horrific case of abuse is not an isolated case. . . . Torture and ill-treatment of detainees and prisoners is widespread and systemic in China. . . . They have often been perpetrated by officials in the course of their normal duties in full public view, sometimes as a deliberate public humiliation and warning to others.”

There are those who suggest that awarding China the Olympics could help reduce such atrocities. With the eyes of the world on Beijing, they say, the reformers would be empowered and the government would have to be on its best behavior.

But if recent Chinese conduct is any guide, it is more likely that giving the nod to Beijing will embolden the Communists to crack down even more savagely on dissenters and minorities. Instead of giving a boost to prodemocracy activists, the Olympics will strengthen the dictators’ conviction that they can do as they please, both at home and abroad.

No doubt Chinese officials have studied Olympic history; no doubt they know that the IOC has never pulled the Games from a host city because of belligerent or offensive behavior – not even in 1936 and 1980, the only times the Olympics were held in a totalitarian state.

Berlin was awarded the 1936 Olympics in 1931; two years later Hitler came to power and the Nazi terror began. Among many other outrages, Jewish and Gypsy athletes were expelled from German sports facilities. Yet at no point did the IOC seriously consider moving the Games – not even when German troops occupied the Rhineland, an ominous violation of international law.

For the Nazis, the Berlin Games were a propaganda triumph. They conveyed the impression, The New York Times wrote on Aug. 14, 1936, that Germany “is a nation happy and prosperous almost beyond belief.”

In 1974, the IOC chose Moscow to host the 1980 Olympics. Eight months before the torch was lit, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. It was an act of aggression so naked that even Jimmy Carter – who had once urged his nation to get over its “inordinate fear of communism” – was shocked. Some 60 nations, led by the United States, boycotted the Games in protest.

Who knows what China might be tempted to do between now and 2008? Like the USSR in 1980, notes John Derbyshire in the National Review, China today is unstable and unpredictable. Who can be sure it won’t commit another Tiananmen-caliber horror – in response to, say, an uprising in Tibet, or a surge of independence sentiment in Taiwan? And is that a chance the Olympic Committee wants to take?

One day – soon, let us hope – the Chinese people will be free to speak their minds, to worship in peace, to choose their rulers. When that day dawns, it will be time for Beijing to host the Olympics. But not now. Not while the butchers of Tiananmen remain in power.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

(Washington, D.C.): It is a singularly disturbing thought: Could your dinner be your downfall? Daily, headlines from Europe scream about grave new dangers to the food supply. Mad Cow disease fears and the recent outbreak of Hoof and Mouth disease have not only cost countries like the United Kingdom billions of dollars; they have awakened European citizens to the unpleasant fact that nature is not always predictable or forgiving.

But what if an adversary intentionally set out to disrupt or destroy the food supply? The results could go well beyond the economic ruin of agricultural suppliers literally to the very lifeblood of humanity. As Center President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. points out in a column in the American Spectator Online, were such a threat to be carried out against the United States, for example, the impact would be felt not only by Americans consumers but by millions around the globe who depend on U.S. agriculture for their daily bread.

Biowar on the food supply is truly a global menace and one that has heretofore been all but ignored. If any good were to come from Britain and Europe’s current misfortune, it will be a heightened awareness of the real vulnerability of the world’s food supply — and the adoption of a comprehensive program to mitigate the attendant risks.

Biowar and the Food Supply

by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

The American Spectator Online, 5 March 2001

Great Britain’s economy is reeling from the cumulative effect of outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as Mad Cow disease, and more recently Hoof and Mouth disease. Billions of dollars worth of U.K. livestock has had to be destroyed; the British agricultural sector has been severely — if not permanently — harmed; and markets for Britain’s meat exports have cratered.

Germany and other European Union nations have lately begun to confront their own outbreaks of BSE, with traumatic effects on public confidence in the food supply and the governments they hold responsible for assuring its safety. The costs of containing the damage and its economic and potential political repercussions could prove to be immense.
Two questions occur: Could an outbreak of such diseases happen in the United States? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. That is especially true since the second question — Could someone deliberately infect American agriculture with BSE, Hoof and Mouth disease or perhaps plant viruses? — also has to be answered in the affirmative.

In fact, there is growing awareness that the U.S. food supply could be the object of biological warfare (BW) attacks aimed at deliberately achieving what has been accomplished by the seemingly natural outbreaks of veterinary diseases in Europe: the widespread disruption of the American food-producing sector, with incalculable consequences for the health and well-being of not only the farming industry but of the population of the United States more generally — and indeed that of hundreds of millions worldwide who subsist thanks to our agricultural exports.

It is no exaggeration to say that under certain plausible scenarios widespread hunger and malnutrition — if not areas of actual starvation — could ensue, with ominous implications for the domestic rule of law and international stability.

Unfortunately, this dangerous possibility is not a secret. A recent Internet search of the topic of biowarfare against the food supply yielded over 3,000 citations. One of the most informative of these was the report of a symposium convened in Montreal in August 1999 by the American Phytopathological Society (APS) entitled “Plant Pathology’s Role in Anti- Crop Bioterrorism and Food Security.” Among its numerous troubling findings were the following:

“If we are to reduce the potential of deliberate introduction of crop pathogens, we must be able to fingerprint pathogens and discriminate between naturally occurring disease events and those which may be deliberately introduced for harmful purposes. The effective tracking of new and emerging diseases in the U.S. and throughout the world is critically needed to help make these determinations….Unfortunately, because the international infrastructure concerning plant pathology is not well developed, the identification of a deliberate release of a pathogen is difficult to ascertain. A major cause of this deficiency is the absence of a rapid reporting system.”

There is another serious deficiency, however. No one knows exactly what sorts of viruses would-be bioterrorists or their state-sponsors might have in mind for waging war against America’s food supply.

A case in point is Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. International monitors charged with ferreting out Saddam’s secret biological weapons program never were able to wrest from the Iraqi despot any sample from his BW stockpile. As a result, the full dimensions of this program remain what Richard Butler, the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq’s second chairman, has called a “black hole.”

This is all the more worrisome insofar as the Iraqi BW program would be the easiest of Iraq’s proscribed programs to reconstitute. Indeed, it was widely expected that Saddam would be able to do that within six months of the end of the U.N. inspections, something that occurred over two years ago.

Seth Carus of the National Defense University has offered a possible explanation for Saddam’s adamant refusal to reveal anything about his activities: Biological agents, including pathogens useful in attacking the food supply, have DNA. A sample could provide exactly the “fingerprint” needed to ascertain the source of a deliberate outbreak of animal diseases (such as BSE or Hoof and Mouth) or plant pathogens (such as those identified by the APS, including tomato infectious yellows, lettuce chlorosis, and high plains virus of corn). By maintaining the covert status of his entire biological stockpile, Saddam may believe he retains the option of carrying out biological terrorism with impunity. Ditto the Russians, Chinese and others — perhaps to include Osama bin Laden and his ilk — who are capable of waging biological warfare.

The APS report from the August 1999 symposium dryly concludes by “urg[ing] all relevant agencies, to recognize the need to confront this threat and financially support appropriate research for fingerprinting high priority pathogens, detecting deliberate releases, developing rapid genetic-based diagnostic assays, epidemiology and risk prediction, and other scientific and technical approaches to reduce this risk.” The outbreak of agricultural diseases in Europe should powerfully catalyze the new Bush Administration to do all this — and much more — to prepare the U.S. against the possibility that such a fate, or worse, will be deliberately inflicted upon this country.

Newsweek declares the missile defense debate Over’

Newsweek Magazine’s on-line service circulated this week a fascinating assessment of the missile defense debate by one of its most astute reporters, John Barry. His conclusion: "America is going to build a national missile defense" — and everybody who thinks otherwise better think again.

The following highlights of Mr. Barry’s analysis are particularly thoughtful. They add to the sense of inevitability about defending America, as well as her forces and allies overseas, that owes much to the "Rumsfeld effect" — the signal of serious determination conveyed by President Bush’s appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. When combined with poll data released earlier this week by McLaughlin and Associates that confirms anew the overwhelming, bipartisan popular support for U.S. missile defenses (see "The American ‘Mainstream’ Wants a U.S. Missile Defense; Guess That Makes its Opponents ‘Extremists,’" No. 01-D 11, 31 Jan. 2001), it is clear that the question is not if, but when, anti-missile systems are put into place. With proper presidential leadership, a can-do spirit and attendant budgetary priority and an innovative approach to shortening the time- lines to deployment (i.e., by modifying existing Navy Aegis fleet air defense ships to perform this new mission), the United States and her friends will not only be protected, but begin to be protected far more rapidly than many now think possible.

 

Excerpts of:

Looking Forward To NMD: America will definitely build a national missile defense. Here’s why – and what it means

By John Barry

Newsweek, 29 January 2001

World leaders – from Russian President Vladimir Putin to British Prime Minister Tony Blair – talk as if the issue is still unresolved. They act as if their arguments in Putin’s case, threats – could still have an impact. But it isn’t so. The political debate within the United States is over. Finis. America is going to build a national missile defense.

Sure, there will be shouting and even a few demonstrations by what passes for the left in the United States. The old-style arms control community will protest the abandonment of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty and prophesy a new arms race. The New York Times will follow received opinion in New York and denounce the decision. But nobody in Washington will pay the least attention. Al Gore’s lame "me too" stance on missile defense in the election campaign recognized the political reality of the matter – which is that America’s decision to deploy defenses was really made on August 31, 1998.

That was the day that North Korea test launched a Taepo Dong-1 missile which — to the surprise of America’s spooks — turned out to have a third stage. Though it didn’t succeed in launching a small satellite into orbit, as North Korea had hoped, that third stage meant that, theoretically at any rate, the Taepo Dong now had intercontinental range.

Only six weeks before, a bipartisan panel of defense heavyweights, chaired by a former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had concluded that hostile nations were working hard to develop missiles with which to threaten the U.S. and that the intelligence services were failing to keep abreast of their efforts.

The Taepo Dong third stage was thunderous proof of Rumsfeld’s verdict. Overnight, the politics of missile defense were transformed. Sceptics could, and did, claim that the Rumsfeld Commission had made "worst case" assumptions about other nations’ missile programs, whereas the intelligence community had been circulating "most likely" scenarios. But if North Korea — bankrupt, primitive, starving, isolated, paranoid North Korea — could develop something close to an ICBM, the world really was a more threatening place than it had seemed. America’s 35-year debate about the need for missile defenses was suddenly over.

So when President George W Bush and his new defense secretary, the same Donald Rumsfeld, reiterate — as both did this past week — that the U.S. is going to deploy missile defenses, listen up. They mean it.

What remains to be decided are the second-order questions: timeframe, technology, and cost. These are questions America will settle largely for itself. But what also has to be thrashed out – and here the rest of the world can and will have a voice – is the strategic context within which those defenses are deployed.

And that is why the new Administration is banging the drum so loudly so early. Behind the braggadocio is a clear-headed game-plan. President Bush’s advisers have persuaded him that Russia, China and Europe will not even start to negotiate seriously about a new strategic nuclear order – the new framework for deterrence which Bush & Co. believe is needed – unless and until the world accepts that the United States is going ahead with missile defenses no matter what.

This judgement draws heavily on the national security team’s personal experiences of the team. The National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was a mid-level bureaucrat for the outfit she now runs under the first President Bush in 1990, and worked on the then-thorny issue of German reunification. Bush pushed for a Germany whole, free and integrated into NATO from the outset. He got it. Rice has since written that she took this as a lesson to "choose goals that are optimal, even if they seem at the time politically infeasible." Rumsfeld and the new Secretary of State Colin Powell have both negotiated strategic arms agreements. Both have concluded – as have many others over the years – that the Russians will accept a deal only when they become convinced that America is ready to walk away from the table.

The frustrations of the Clinton Administration have only reinforced these views. By 1996, President Clinton had come — grudgingly and under Republican pressure — to accept the case for defense. But Clinton wanted to negotiate a deal with Moscow that through minimal amendments to the ABM treaty would allow a minimal defensive system to protect against a minimal threat. Years of intensive discussions with Moscow to this end got nowhere, even though Russian generals were privately telling their U.S. counterparts that Russia herself was worried by the prospect of missile proliferation around its southern rim.

The incoming Bush Administration does not intend to walk the same path. Instead, the new Administration’s strategy is to go ahead with the development of missile defenses and invite the Russians and the Europeans to make constructive proposals on how best to integrate these into a new strategic framework. They have, of course, their own ideas what that could be. The Bush Administration is willing to think about moving from strategic arms agreements that limit offensive weapons and ban defensive ones to a new set of mix-and-match totals where offensive and defensive capabilities are somehow reckoned together. They are more willing than Clinton was to think about taking U.S. missile forces off alert status, and they are open to other suggestions for reducing nuclear risk. They would contemplate sharing intelligence, and welcome joint efforts to counter proliferation. They may reduce the size of the U.S. strategic arsenal unilaterally, urging Russia to follow suit but not insisting on it.

The message will be: If Moscow wants to join with the U.S. in these endeavors, fine. If not, that’s Moscow’s choice. Underlying this approach are two fundamental judgements. The first is that, at this point in history, the United States holds all the high cards. The second is that there is no need for haste.

Take Russia. The Russian nuclear submarine fleet rusts at its moorings. By U.S. calculations, Russia’s strategic missiles are so antique that by 2010 or shortly thereafter Russia will likely deploy only 500-800 warheads. So Putin can spend billions of rubles he cannot afford on a new generation of strategic missiles. Or he can do a deal.

Take Beijing. China’s leaders threaten "a spiralling arms race" if the U.S. deploys missile defenses. But to what end? Traditional state-to-state deterrence theory suggests that such a buildup would cost a lot economically while buying nothing of strategic value. China would not lose a deterrent if America installed a missile defense because China does not really have a deterrent against America today, presumably because it doesn’t really think it needs one. The fact that China’s current nuclear arsenal consists of aging, static, highly vulnerable, liquid fuelled ICBMs is proof of that. Why then, Bush’s advisers ask, should Beijing choose to waste resources on a fruitless enterprise ?

Take rogue states. The virtue of missile defenses — or so the Bush team’s thinking runs — is that defenses increase the price of admission to the strategic club. Take Iraq. As the sanctions on Iraq erode, Saddam Hussein will almost certainly be able to afford a clandestine program to develop a handful of missiles with ranges sufficient to hit European capitals. If he can develop even one with a range to hit the United States, Saddam has the tools for a strategy of blackmail. Defenses, even limited defenses, thwart that scenario — though only if both sides have faith in their ability to stop the incoming missile.

Betraying Free Vietnam

(Washington, D.C.): On the eve of President Clinton’s visit to communist
Vietnam, the Victims
of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOCMF) held its annual Truman-Reagan Freedom
Awards dinner. This event, held last night in Washington, D.C., provided a fitting reminder of
what the struggle for freedom in Vietnam and elsewhere throughout the Cold War was about–
and how severely the Clinton/Gore administration has undermined America’s victory in that
twilight struggle through its embrace of communist regimes around the world.

One of those honored by the VOCMF was Doan Viet Hoat — a man who knows well the
Vietnam that President Clinton will be seeing. He spent nearly two decades in Vietnam’s
notorious political prisons for his criticism of the one-party state. He was a political prisoner
from 1976 to 1988 because of his American education and his temerity in forming the “Freedom
Forum” in Vietnam. His refusal to adapt to the regime’s efforts to re-educate him caused him to
be incarcerated again from 1990 to 1998, after he published an essay entitled “The True Nature
of Contemporary Vietnam.”

President Clinton’s draft-dodging opposition to the Vietnam War has already earned him
special
points with the Vietnamese communists. One Vietnamese official was quoted in today’s
Washington Post saying, “the good Americans were the people who opposed the war
and the
crimes that were committed here.” Yet, the Post, not a newspaper known for shrill
anti-communist proclivities, observed in an editorial today:

The (Vietnamese)government still muzzles the media, controls the judges, detains opponents
arbitrarily, restricts travel, forbids advocacy of multiparty politics, and spouts Marxist-Leninist
dogma. The ruling clique views Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms as a lesson in what not to do, since
they unleashed forces that broke the grip of the Communist Party. Instead, China’s iron-fisted
regime is the preferred model. Vietnam’s security apparatus is said to match
East Germany’s Stasi
in omnipresence and ferocity.

We can only hope that President Clinton will explicitly associate himself with the millions of
victims of communism in Vietnam like Doan Viet Hoat, not their odious oppressors with whom
he wants to do business.

Remarks by Doan Viet Hoat

On Receiving the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation’s

Truman-Reagan Freedom Award14 November 2000

I am honored to receive tonight the Truman-Reagan Award presented to me by the Victims
of
Communism Memorial Foundation. I would like to offer this honor to millions of Vietnamese
victims of communism, dead or still alive, inside Vietnam or now living in exile in the United
States and all over the world. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese have been killed by the
communists since the first days of their presence in Vietnam….

We all want to look to the future and not to the past. But the lessons of the past must be
remembered so that the future would be brighter for generations to come. And we have learned
from the past fifty years at least one valuable lesson: Nazi and communist regimes would not
have been defeated if indifference and passivity had prevailed. Our presence here tonight is a
clear proof of our vigorous concern and commitment for the cause of liberty, democracy and
human dignity for all people around the world.

In the past, Vietnam and the United States were bound together by the war to contain
international communism. Nowadays I believe we again share our commitment to a better
Vietnam, a Vietnam freed of all types of dictatorship, a Vietnam of freedom, of justice, of
prosperity, of equal opportunity for every Vietnamese, regardless of differences in religion,
ideology and political opinions.

Such a Vietnam still remains a dream of all Vietnamese, in the country and overseas.
The
present communist leaders, unfortunately, continue to deny the Vietnamese people the
opportunities to realize their dream. After 25 years in peace, Vietnam continues to be
one of
the poorest countries in Southeast Asia and in the world. The government continues to deprive
the people of fundamental freedoms. Abuse of power, corruption, and inefficiency prevail in all
levels of government.

Dissenting voices and popular protests are becoming widespread. Vietnam is in a new crisis,
threatening the sustainable development and the stability of the country and of the region. I
believe that this new crisis is more political than economic.

Since the early 1990’s the United States has begun a new type of involvement in Vietnam,
the
involvement in peace and for a developed and free Vietnam. The signing of the bilateral trade
agreement in July and President Bill Clinton’s visit in two more days culminate the first stage of
this new involvement. In this first stage, the United States has been supporting the communist
government in their economic transition to a market system.

The time has come now for the United States to support the Vietnamese people in their
efforts
make a free market system exist, and to build up an open and democratic civil society. Free trade
and free market system require fundamental freedoms — freedom to pursue happiness,
guaranteed by equal opportunity; freedom to acquire and exchange information and ideas. And
most important of all, freedom to choose the leaders and to make them accountable for their
policies and decisions.

Without these basic freedoms, free trade will hardly take shape, and will benefit the corrupt
minority of officials and not the majority of the people, who live in poverty. The
Vietnamese
people hope that President Clinton will send a clear message of support for freedom and
human rights in his visit to Vietnam. They also expect that American aid would benefit
the
private sectors — and not the government — in all areas, economic, cultural, educational,
informatics.

American engagement will only be positive if it helps strengthen the people’s power
and not
the dictators’. It is only by that that the United States would help to promote the
emergence of a
new Vietnam, the Vietnam of the future — and neither of the past, nor of the present. Only by that
can all of us — Americans, Vietnamese-Americans and Vietnamese — work together to build up a
new world, a world with no more victims of communism, no more victims of backwardness and
dictatorship. We all believe in that future, and we shall work together for that future.

Lights Out at los Alamos?

(Washington, D.C.): On Sunday, the Washington Post gave unusual front-page, above-the-fold treatment to an obituary. Well, technically the article would not qualify as an obit since the subject — the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s nuclear weapons program — has not fully expired just yet. Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe the report entitled “Dark Cloud Hangs over Los Alamos” as a kind of ghoulish death watch or the print equivalent of an electronic life-signs monitor, tracking the ebbing away of the expertise and intellectual vitality that has for three generations made this laboratory a national treasure.

Los Alamos’ death throes should come as no surprise, though. They are the inexorable result of a denuclearization agenda that has animated the Clinton-Gore Administration’s “stewardship” of the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons complex.

What Really Ails the Lab

To be sure, the hemorrhage of the remaining handful of physicists with first-hand experience in the design, testing and long-term maintenance of the U.S. nuclear deterrent is partly a function of actuarial factors and attractive early retirement packages.

Indisputably, it has been further exacerbated by the morale-crushing environment at the Lab in the wake of investigations into security lapses that have resulted in the incarceration and prosecution of one long-time Los Alamos scientist, Wen Ho Lee, and that are causing others now under scrutiny in connection with errant, highly classified hard drives to incur each week multi-thousand-dollar lawyer’s bills.

Then there is the lingering effect of a conflagration deliberately set by the U.S. government that destroyed some 400 homes in the community and threatened to immolate parts of the laboratory itself. Such considerations alone would doubtless prompt at least some of the Nation’s most brilliant scientists with rarified computer skills much in demand in the private sector to seek employment elsewhere.

Erosion by Design’

The truth is, however, that as grim as the situation is at Los Alamos it is but a microcosm of the ever-more-moribund condition of the nuclear weapons complex as a whole. And the responsibility for that condition lies squarely with a Clinton-Gore Administration that has deliberately appointed incompetents and anti-nuclear ideologues to run the military part of the Department of Energy into the ground.

This began under President Clinton’s first Energy Secretary, Hazel O’Leary a woman whose lack of expertise in the nuclear weapons arena was matched by her utter disdain for that part of her portfolio, and for those who had devoted their professional lives to it. Her contempt became a matter of public knowledge when in December 1993 she announced her determination to declassify “miles” of secret documents she thought no longer required safeguarding: “I want it clear that I’m gonna be, as usual, the person pushing harder to get it done [i.e., declassifying information] and someone else has the job of looking more carefully at the national security interest.”

Mrs. O’Leary used her four-year tenure as Secretary of Energy to undermine public confidence in the U.S. nuclear weapons program even as she systematically acted — through policy decisions, budgetary actions and programmatic steps — to jeopardize that program’s ability over time to maintain the safety, reliability and credibility of the Nation’s nuclear deterrent.

This sorry record was documented in a scathing assessment issued near the end of the O’Leary era by the House National Security Committee. On the occasion of its release in October 1996, Committee Chairman Floyd Spence, Republican of South Carolina, declared:

The past four years have witnessed the dramatic decline of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and the uniquely skilled workforce that is responsible for maintaining our nuclear deterrent. The Administration’s laissez-faire approach to stewardship of the nuclear stockpile, within the broader context of its support for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, is clearly threatening the Nation’s long-term ability to maintain a safe and reliable nuclear stockpile….In my mind, it’s no longer a question of the Administration’s ‘benign neglect’ of our Nation’s nuclear forces, but instead, a compelling case can be made that it is a matter of “erosion by design.” (Emphasis added).

Unfortunately, neither of Mrs. O’Leary’s successors — two politicians chosen for their Hispanic- American heritage rather than the experience needed to redress their predecessor’s mis- and malfeasance — have made appreciable course corrections. To the contrary, under Federico Pea and Bill Richardson, the wrecking operation has largely continued apace.

As a result, the United States today has no capability to manufacture significant quantities of nuclear weapons. Instead, what remains of its production complex is working “twenty-four/seven” to dismantle what remains of our deterrent arsenal.

Worse yet, rather than focus exclusively on such pressing problems as how to maintain — to say nothing of how to upgrade 1— that obsolescing arsenal, enormous laboratory resources (human and financial) are being diverted to dubious purposes. These include figuring out ways in which to maintain the Russian nuclear weapons program’s scientific and physical infrastructure and how to give away seed-corn technology developed by the national labs at enormous expense taxpayer.

The EUV Debacle

A case in point was the recent decision by the Department of Energy to break with previous policy and allow foreign companies to gain access to extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) technology — a revolutionary means of mass-producing high quality semiconductor chips. As Under Secretary of Commerce William Reinsch wrote his Energy Department counterpart, Ernest Moniz, in May of this year:

The aim [of the government-sponsored EUV program] was to position U.S. companies to lead and hopefully dominate international markets with next-generation semiconductor manufacturing equipment and semiconductor chips. It is an American program with global implications, not a global program that was started with international sponsors….Your decision allows [a wholly owned subsidiary of Germany’s Siemens AG] to take part ownership of the EUV Limited Liability Corporation and overnight to position itself on an equal technology footing with U.S. competitors for what is at best three percent of the value of the technology in its current state.

Implementing an Unratified CTBT

What is more, Clinton-Gore arms control theologians insist that the labs’ scientists must be denied the one tool that has proven effective in assuring the continued safety, reliability and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear arsenal: realistic underground testing. Incredibly, the Administration is proceeding to implement the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty — at a cost of untold millions of dollars and thousands of manhours — as though the Senate had not decisively rejected that accord as inconsistent with America’s national security interests.

Congress should immediately assign the Government Accounting Office the task of assessing the full costs being incurred by the executive branch in this transparently unconstitutional action and take steps to foreclose further U.S. actions aimed at facilitating or otherwise participating in the implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The Bottom Line

Now that Governor Bush has made the Vice President’s responsibility for the erosion of the U.S. military a major element of his campaign for the White House, he would be well advised to add to his indictment the Clinton-Gore legacy of denuclearizing the United States a legacy that may well prove among the most time-consuming, costly and challenging to undo.




1One of the unsung heroes of Los Alamos’ efforts to preserve its trained cadre and continue the lab’s tradition of excellence in the service of national security is its Associate Director for Nuclear Weapons, Dr. Stephen Younger. Dr. Younger has recently written a thoughtful essay entitled “Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty-First Century” that should be required reading for those who wish to understand, and hopefully to fix what is ailing the nuclear weapons complex and the forces it is designed to support.

Spin Control’: Architects of Hollow Military See no Evil’

(Washington, D.C.): There is good news and bad news about the op.ed. article published in today’s Washington Post by former Clinton-Gore Secretary of Defense William Perry and his former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili. The good news is that, with their essay entitled “The U.S. Military: Still the Best by Far,” these prominent Democrats1 have further intensified a needed debate over the condition of today’s armed forces — and tomorrow’s.2

The bad news is that Messrs. Perry and Shalikashvili’s contribution to that debate has been less than helpful. In important respects, their assessment of the question at hand — namely, has the reduction in the size and capability of the U.S. military over the past decade been excessive, leading to a condition where it “cannot adequately protect American national interests?” — is highly misleading, transparently politicized and, since the authors should know better, seemingly intentionally disingenuous.

In the final analysis, it may well be that, as two of the leading architects of the hollow military Mr. Clinton is bequeathing to his successor, Secretary Perry and General Shalikashvili cannot objectively discuss their handiwork. If so, it would be better for all involved if they did not inject themselves into the public debate about their dubious legacy.

A Bill of Particulars

The following are among the more troubling of the arguments and contentions advanced by Clinton-Gore’s first-string defense “spin doctors”:

  • The Peace Dividend’

Perry-Shalikashvili: “[A] dramatic reduction in the threat [following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and USSR ]allowed for…a significant reduction in the size of our military forces….The most obvious benefit of [the resulting] reductions in force and support structure was a reduction in the defense budget. If these reductions had not been made, the current defense budget would be almost $400 billion instead of almost $300 billion.

“This peace dividend,’ amounting to about $100 billion a year, has been a major contributor to the balanced budget that our country now enjoys. The question of course, is did the nation pay too high a price for this benefit? In particular, was the capability of the military forces reduced to the extent that they cannot adequately protect American national interests? Our answer to that question is an emphatic no.”

The Facts: It is, at best, premature to answer this question in the negative since the full costs of the so-called peace dividend’ being touted by Messrs. Perry and Shalikashvili have yet to become clear. Between Fiscal Year 1993 and 2000, the Clinton-Gore team deferred or canceled some $426 billion worth of procurement purchases by the Defense Department. The savings were not a product of sound military policy; rather, they were the result of the Administration ignoring procurement requirements — including many identified in its own four-year plans (i.e., the 1993 Bottom-Up Review (BUR) and the 1997 Quarterly Defense Review (QDR)) — creating false savings in the defense budget that translated primarily into additional funds for domestic priorities.

According to Daniel Goure and Jeffrey Ranney, authors of Averting the Defense Train Wreck in the New Millennium:

The military departments already deferred $426 billion of procurement purchases during FY 1993- 2000. These deferred purchases accounted for 52 percent of the procurement budget demand during this period. Under the February 1999 military spending plan for FY 2000-2005, DOD plans to defer during FY 2001-2005 another $389 billion….These deferred purchases in turn raise future procurement budget levels — if QDR forces are to be maintained. For example, if the $815 billion cumulative deferred purchases are added to the procurement demand for the next 15 year period (FY 2006-2020), the procurement budget will be $4,367 billion or 23 percent higher than if no deferrals been made since FY 1993. (Emphasis added.)

In short, the “peace dividend” is not only a myth, but the United States has actually been earning negative interest on this dividend — and we will be lucky if the only currency in which the full price has ultimately to be paid is in dollars.

  • One Major Regional Conflict

Perry-Shalikashvili: “The United States has a military force that is capable of dealing decisively with any likely regional conflict (and the convincing demonstration of this capability in Desert Storm, Bosnia and Kosovo decrease the likelihood of such a confrontation).”

The Facts: One should not need to remind a former Secretary of Defense and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the standard against which U.S. forces have been supposed to be sized and equipped is to deal with not a single major regional theater war (MTW) but two, “nearly simultaneous” ones. And current military leaders — the men and women who understand all too well the limitations with which they have been saddled, thanks to the cumulative effect of years of underfunding — are under no illusion about the United States’ ability to execute the two-MTW strategy. For example, on 10 February 2000, the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Eric Shinseki, told Congress: “The first MTW would be moderate risk. The second one, risk would be in the high category with risk here measured in the amount of time it would take us to bring that second MTW to conclusion. You measure that risk in national treasure, lives, and expended dollars.”

More recently, the Commander of the U.S. Air Force’s Air Combat Command, General John Jumper, USAF, elaborated further on the degree of risk we are currently running. In an interview with CBS News last week, General Jumper revealed that the entire Air Force had to be drained to perform its operations in Kosovo, which meant that if it had to face a second major campaign, it would have been “unable to perform. We would have had very great difficulty trying to respond to a crisis of equal proportion.”

What is more, what the former Secretary and JCS Chairman euphemistically call “convincing demonstrations [that would] decrease the likelihood of [even one future] confrontation” actually suggest no such thing. These “demonstrations” — i.e., Iraq, Bosnia, and Kosovo — have not ended, to say nothing of ended satisfactorily. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein has defied the West and survived to resume his rebuilding of conventional and unconventional weapons with which to threaten its vital interests. Bosnia is at peace only as long as armed international forces stand between the warring factions. And Milosevic remains the leader of Serbia, poised to strike again at Kosovo, Montenegro or others when it suits his purposes.

Messrs. Perry and Shalikashvili also conveniently failed to mention other, not-so-successful Clinton-Gore military campaigns in places like Somalia and Haiti, in which thugs and gangs have successfully withstood the “overwhelming force” brought to bear, at least temporarily by the United States. It is hard to imagine that their ilk — far from being deterred — have been other than emboldened by the experience and will be tempted to do worse should the U.S. military be weakened further.

  • How Much is Enough?

Perry-Shalikashvili: “During the force reductions of the ’90s, we reduced the procurement budget disproportionately in order to preserve force readiness. This was an appropriate decision at that time, but its legacy today is a due bill as our military equipment ages. Substantial increases must be made in the procurement account to modernize equipment at an accelerated rate, since the aging equipment is itself becoming a readiness problem. This has been recognized both by the Department of Defense and Congress, and procurement authorizations have increased from $40 billion to $60 billion during the past two years. In our judgment, these authorization levels will have to be sustained for a number of years at this level or somewhat higher to effectively recapitalize the force.

“We…believe that this force superiority can be sustained at current budget levels (but to do so will take careful management by the Defense Department and uncommon discipline by Congress).” (Emphasis added.)

The Facts: The apparent internal contradiction of these statements — unless Messrs. Perry and Shalikashvili mean that they favor raping maintenance and pay accounts to compensate for “recapitalization” programs they acknowledge are needed so as to stay within “current budget levels — is all the more astounding in light of the actual budgetary realities. As Dan Goure and Jim Ranney have noted:

If defense spending was maintained at [Clinton’s proposed] Gross Domestic Product level for FY 2001-2010, it would leave enough procurement dollars to pay for modernization and replacement of only 44 percent of the QDR force equipment…A 56 percent reduction of the QDR forces would clearly call into question the capabilities of the U.S. armed forces to carry out the national military strategy.

  • We Spend More Than Anybody Else

Perry-Shalikashvili: “While American defense spending is (in current dollars) about $100 billion a year less than Cold War levels, it is still greater than the combined defense budgets of Russia, China, Germany and France. As a result of this investment, combined with the U.S. military’s advantage in technology and training, the United States today has the dominant military force in the world, and whichever nation is second is far behind.”

The Facts: The idea that gross U.S. defense expenditures must somehow relate to the size of those of potential adversaries (and/or friends) is one of the most insidious of arguments advanced by the “see no evil” crowd.3 It makes about as much sense as saying that local police departments should receive no more for protecting their communities than criminals spend in connection with the commission of their crimes.

Overwhelming force — not the relative size of one’s defense budget — is the only thing that deters the aggression of other nations and, in the event deterrence fails, that permits the situation to be remedied with a minimum of wasted lives and national treasure.

The United States will simply not be able to ensure that it can apply overwhelming force in the future without a significant increase in defense spending to ensure that both today’s military is fully combat-ready and to recapitalize that force so that tomorrow’s will be able to meet the Nation’s defensive requirements. Consider the following warning signs: In 2010, the average age of Apache helicopters, Abrams main battle tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles will all be beyond their design life — and there are currently no funded plans to buy replacements. Despite the decreased size of the Army, about $5,000 less will be spent per soldier on modernization in Fiscal Year 00 than was spent in FY 89. Despite the reduction in ships, the Navy is still facing a personnel shortage resulting in around 12,000 unmanned at-sea billets. In the past 7 years, Air Force readiness for combat units has declined from 85 percent to just 65 percent. By 2010, the average age of Air Force strategic bombers will be 36 years — well in excess of their 15-25 year estimated service half-life, and there are no approved plans to buy more.

The Bottom Line

As the Center noted on 10 August:

A nation with a projected $1.9 trillion budget surplus can afford consistently to allocate a minimum of four percent of its Gross Domestic Product to ensure its security. Such an commitment of resources would assure the readiness of both today’s armed forces and tomorrow’s for many years to come, while allowing important new defense initiatives — like Gov. Bush’s laudable pledge to protect the American people against ballistic missile attacks at the earliest possible time — to be fulfilled. We must not forget that the alternative has, in the past, often proven to be far more costly: unnecessary, avoidable wars whose price in blood and treasures dwarfs the savings achieved via pound-foolish “peace dividends.”

This election is an opportunity not only to acquaint the American people with the full magnitude of the crisis facing our military, but to seek a mandate from them for correcting it by adopting what might be called the “Four Percent Solution.” If all candidates will pledge, as Gov. Bush did so eloquently last week, to “use these good times for great goals,” there is surely no greater goal than assuring we have the freedom to pursue our other ones in peace and security.




1While, like most military officers, Gen. Shalikashvili has not publicized his party affiliation, a report that appears in today’s New York Times makes clear his intimate connection to the Gore political machine: “Mr. Gore…instructed Mr. Christopher to consult freely and frequently with an informal group that consisted of Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman and former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros, both of whom have faced ethics inquiries, and Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

2 For more on this developing debate, see the Center’s Decision Brief entitled The Four Percent Solution’ (No. 00-D 72, 7 August 2000).

3See Whose Foreign Policy, Mr. President? (No. 00-D 55, 8 June 2000).

Sanity Check: Fifty Years After it Started the War, North Korea Remains a Dangerous, ‘Rogue’ State

(Washington, D.C.): Amidst the hoopla surrounding the summit meeting earlier
this month
between the leaders of North and South Korea, the impression has taken hold that the United
States, its allies and interests are no longer threatened by the Communist regime in Pyongyang.
South Korean businessmen are besotted with the idea of exploiting slave labor conditions in the
North and Seoul has decided not to acquire medium-range ballistic missile capabilities that
would ensure that the North’s capital is at least a fraction as vulnerable to attack as is that of the
South.

The Clinton-Gore Administration has acted no less hastily and irresponsibly. In the wake of
the
summit, the President has lifted most economic and trade sanctions against Kim Jong Il’s
government. Opponents of U.S. missile defenses are urging him to go farther by delaying a
deployment decision on the start of construction of the controversial, ground-based anti-missile
system Alaska. It now appears that he is inclined to do just that.

Fortunately, two highly relevant articles have appeared over the past few days on the op.ed.
page
of the Washington Post — the latest evidence of a significant improvement in the
quality of that
important vehicle for opinion and commentary since Fred Hiatt was made its editor. The
following, excellent essays by former Under Secretary of Defense Fred Iklé and Robert
Kagan
constitute helpful correctives to such foolish notions as: one meeting has fundamentally (to say
nothing of irreversibly) changed the character of the North Korean government; the United States
and other Western powers can safely do business with and otherwise equip “rogue states” like
North Korea, as though there is no danger of the proceeds simply making them more formidable
adversaries; and the ultimate triumph of the democratic world is assured.

Washington Post, 23 June 2000

Evil Without End?

By Fred Iklé

A half-century ago Sunday–on June
25, 1950, a date that should live in infamy–North Korea
started a war that killed millions of people, greatly aggravated East-West tensions and burdened
U.S. relations with China and Russia with problems that remain to this day.

Before the attack on South Korea, NATO was largely a paper alliance. Afterward it built up
its
conventional forces, while America’s deterrent grew from barely 300 atomic bombs to 30,000
nuclear weapons in 10 years. The Soviet Union, in turn, built up its own nuclear forces
massively. And what has North Korea done to China? In January 1950,
President Truman
declared the United States had no territorial designs on Taiwan, sought no bases there and would
provide no further military aid. Soon after North Korea’s attack, the United
States moved to
protect Taiwan with its Seventh Fleet, and after China intervened in North
Korea’s war to save it
from defeat, the United States decided to give military aid to Taiwan.

As clearly as Adolf Hitler is to be blamed for starting World War II, North
Korea’s dictator Kim
II Sung must be blamed for attacking South Korea, coercing a reluctant Stalin to back his
aggression, and thus implanting the Cold War all over Asia. But unlike Nazi Germany, now
safely a thing of the past, Kim II Sung’s regime of cruelty and terror still rules
North Korea and
keeps denying every aspect of the holocaust it caused.

Amazingly, though, the victims of North Korea’s policies–the United
States, South Korea, Japan,
China and Europe–have been donating more and more aid to this source of evil.

It would be too ulcerating to our self-esteem to trace this story to its beginning a half-century
ago. Even in our more recent dealings with North Korea we have been had
more often than most
American diplomats would care to admit. In 1991, for example, the United States tried to
improve relations with North Korea by scaling back U.S. military exercises in
South Korea and
withdrawing all nuclear weapons there. In return, North Korea promised to
accept nuclear
inspections, not to seek nuclear weapons and not to extract plutonium from its “peaceful” reactor.

Each one of these commitments North Korea has violated. The Clinton
administration turned the
other cheek and agreed to give North Korea two “peaceful” reactors to replace
an old one, plus a
continuing supply of fuel oil and food aid. In return, North Korea promised
again to accept
nuclear inspections, not to seek nuclear weapons and not to extract plutonium.

Congress, which keeps paying for these warmed-over promises, evidently does not think it
can
count on them; for if it could, North Korea would have no nuclear weapons
and hence no nuclear
missiles. Instead, Congress seems willing both to pay for promises that preclude North Korean
nuclear missiles, and to pay for a costly radar in Alaska to defend against these very missiles.

Ten days ago, Kim Jong II, the junior tyrant of North
Korea, beguiled world opinion at his
meeting with South Korea’s president by acting almost normal. The jovial appearance of Kim
Jong II has convinced otherwise sober governments, business leaders and charities that they must
rush new aid and “investments” to the world’s worst tyranny.

The Clinton administration showed the way by hastily lifting many economic sanctions.
South
Korean businesses are following close behind by establishing plants in the North. Samsung, for
example, may build a large electronics plant in North
Korea, thereby transferring not just money
to the North but technology as well. Several other South Korean business conglomerates have
been frank about their intent to exploit the disciplined labor in the North, and some have already
started their slave labor factories.

Japan, meanwhile, is debating whether it should consent to pay North
Korea billions of dollars as
“reparations” for the time when Korea was a Japanese colony. (Never mind that the Koreans in
the North were much better off under Japanese rule than today.) And since Russia’s President
Vladimir Putin will visit Kim Jong Il next month, Western money donations to
North Korea will
come in handy to buy those advanced weapons that the Russians love to sell for cash.

After the Korean summit, scarcely anyone noticed that the human rights catastrophe in the
North
was not on the agenda, but the future of the U.S. forces in the South was. Since South Koreans
are now so awestruck by the smiling North Korean “leader,” many will be receptive to the
North’s propaganda that the American forces must leave. Demonstrations against U.S. bases have
already started. It is to be feared that the U.S. military presence in the South will be diminished,
slice by slice.

Meanwhile, as South Korea’s president announced, railroads, power grids and industries in
the
North will be strengthened with South Korean help. Add to this the Japanese cash donations and
the allegedly peaceful nuclear establishment that the United States is promoting with its reactors,
and it becomes plausible that the world will make the North Korean dictatorship stronger again.

How can such a small, backward tyranny inflict so much evil on the world–repeatedly,
through
half a century and now beyond–while receiving ever more generous gifts from its victims?

The writer was undersecretary of defense in the Reagan administration.

Washington Post, 25 June 2000

Springtime for Dictators

By Robert Kagan

Something called the Community of Democracies Conference opened in Warsaw today. It
seems
a bit anachronistic, though. These days it is the dictators who are in vogue, not the democrats. In
life and in death, the Kim Jong Ils and Hafez Assads get more respectful, even celebratory press
than the world’s elected leaders.

Not so long ago, being a tyrant was hazardous to your health. The fall of the Soviet empire in
1991 capped a decade and a half during which more than a dozen dictatorships collapsed under
various forms of American and West European pressure–from Marcos, Pinochet, Duvalier,
Somoza and Noriega on the right to Ortega, Jaruzelski, Honecker, Ceaucescu and Gorbachev on
the left.

In the intermediate aftermath of the Cold War it was commonly assumed that the world’s
remaining dictators would soon be swept away, too. But since the early 1990s only a handful
have lost their jobs. Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman, Nigeria’s Sani Abacha, and now Assad
conveniently died. Indonesia’s Suharto fell victim to the impersonal forces of the international
economy–the United States didn’t even lift a finger to ease him out the door. Only Haiti’s Raoul
Cedras managed to get himself ousted by the Americans. Cedras must feel like an idiot, because
the rest of the world’s dictators have sailed through the storm and see brighter skies ahead. Even
the embattled and despised Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic are about to survive their
second American president.

The truth is, the democratic world has become a bit flaccid and is in a more forgiving mood
than
it was a decade ago. This week’s democracy conference has the worthy goal of fostering
cooperation to consolidate the many democracies born in the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s–in the
so-called Third Wave of democratization. But promoting democracy where it doesn’t exist?
Setting off a Fourth Wave? That’s not part of the agenda.

Indeed, the conference organizers were hesitant to make clear distinctions between real and
phony democracies. Attendees include such notable democracies as Algeria, Egypt, Kenya and
Yemen. Meanwhile, Jiang Zemin is the toast of the corporate world and of the governments that
do its bidding. Alberto Fujimori is deemed too valuable to be lost to a mere election, and so his
recent electoral theft is winked at by his Latin neighbors. Fidel Castro is the great reuniter of
broken families. Presidents-for-Life Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and Aliyev of Azerbaijan are
accorded the respect appropriate to 21st-century sultans. And as Vladimir Putin clamps down on
the Russian press, after stomping on Chechen throats, his chief punishment is to be slobbered
over by Gerhard Schroeder and Tony Blair.

Even pariahs are getting a chance at redemption. Kim Jong Il’s smile has the American press
swooning and the State Department dropping the word “rogue” from its vocabulary. Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright has learned that Kim is “jovial and forthcoming and interested and
knowledgeable.” And who imparted this insight to her? The famously jovial and forthcoming
party bosses in Beijing.

The new, softer approach to dictators is buttressed by grand theories about life in the
post-Cold
War world. The idea of forcing dictators to open their political systems now seems so 1980s.
American conservatives fret about “cultural imperialism”; the left, such as it is, cares more about
punishing the old Pinochet than about stopping a new Pinochet from emerging in Peru. In
respectable circles the “inevitability thesis” reigns. The forces of globalization and the modern
international economic system must spell doom for all dictatorships, regardless of what the
United States and its allies do. So why do anything? Liberals who once demanded that the United
States topple right-wing dictators, and conservatives who once toiled to undo communist
governments, now worship at the same shrine of economic determinism, insisting that commerce
and trade are the great solvent of international tyranny.

Republicans and Democrats alike put their faith in an imagined “iron law,” according to
which
democracy must follow inexorably in the wake of economic development. Focus less on
elections, they say, and more on building the “institutions” of democracy–as if the institutions of
democracy in, say, Peru could be of much use when the elections are rigged or stolen.

Whether anyone actually believes all this is an open question. These are comfortable
doctrines of
passivity, well suited to these comfortable and complacent times. How nice to imagine that
merely by enriching ourselves we can spread the blessings of democracy to everyone else. How
much easier to provide endless democracy assistance to oppressed peoples than to confront their
oppressors.

Someday we may pay a price for our present lassitude. The community of dictators works
together at least as effectively as the community of democracies. Chinese hard-liner Li Peng just
paid a friendly visit to Belgrade bearing millions of dollars in credits for Milosevic’s starving
economy. Milosevic, meanwhile, may be contemplating a sale of uranium to Iraq. Russia and
China routinely defend both Iraq and Serbia in the U.N. Security Council.
North Korea shares its
missile technology with Iran. Iran buys cruise missiles from China. It’s all very chummy.

And who says you can successfully consolidate existing democracies while giving a pass to
the
dictatorships in their midst? Would-be autocrats around the world won’t abide by democratic
norms if there is no penalty for flouting them. We may already be seeing a “Fujimori effect” in
Venezuela.

Even in this globalized age of economic and technological miracles, the international club of
dictators may well get bigger and more firmly entrenched. According to the Chinese press, Jiang
Zemin recently offered Kim Jong Il some sage advice on how to evade the West’s iron law:
“Snuff out all [political] challenges when they are still at the embryonic stage.” The son of Kim Il
Sung probably doesn’t need any lessons in snuffing. Nor does any other dictator canny and
ruthless enough to have survived the 1980s intact. As the democracies consolidate, so do the
dictators.

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, writes a
monthly column for The Post.

Clinton Must Cease and Desist’ Efforts to Conclude Flawed Arms Control Accords

(Washington, D.C.): Recent evidence of the Clinton-Gore Administration’s wholesale mismanagement of nuclear strategy and related matters adds urgency to what amounted to a recent “stop-work” order conveyed in a letter to the President from Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and twenty-four of his colleagues. At this rate, Congress may feel compelled to issue an actual injunction directing Mr. Clinton to cease and desist before this pursuit of a presidential “legacy” — at seemingly any price — translates into additional, real and lasting harm to America’s capability to deter and, if necessary, to defeat attacks on its vital interests.

A Bill of Particulars

  • Last Monday, representatives of what is, arguably, the most anti-nuclear American administration in history agreed to a joint statement with Russia, China, Britain and France to ban the bomb. To be sure, the utterly addled idea of ridding the planet of nuclear arms has been a rhetorical goal of the U.S. government for some time. This pointed affirmation of an “unequivocal commitment to complete disarmament,” however, is certain going to greatly intensify pressure on the United States to take concrete, near-term steps in this direction — and, thus, set an example for others to follow.

    Notably, at the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference in New York where this statement was unveiled, some among the roughly 500 participating non- governmental organizations (NGOs) declared their intention to ask the World Court to order the nuclear weapon states to set a timetable for complete nuclear disarmament. These groups take full advantage of their accreditation (some of their representatives are even part of official national delegations!) to influence the deliberations and outcomes of such multilateral forums. They reportedly are planning to gain jurisdiction over the United States by bringing a case against one of its NATO partners (perhaps Germany, whose Green Party Foreign Minister might readily agree to jurisdiction) on the grounds that U.S. allies participate in setting nuclear policy for NATO.

    Never mind that others will not follow America’s lead, should it make the mistake of actually eliminating its nuclear arsenal — certainly not the rogue nuclear wannabes we currently have to be most worried about deterring. It is, moreover, inconceivable that Russia and China would actually comply with such an obligation, either, given its inherent unverifiability.

    But now, as always, for the West’s anti-nuclear crowd, the idea is to disarm the one you’re with. And the United States’ actual or potential adversaries are only too happy cynically to promise to do the same. After all, they stand to benefit from a huge shift in what the Soviets used to call the strategic “correlation of forces” should America actually follow through with this sort of unilateral disarmament.

  • Last week, the New York Times released the text of the “Grand Compromise” to which the Clinton- Gore Administration hopes the Russians will agree. It proposes to purchase Moscow’s assent to a ground-based U.S. “national missile defense” that is so limited it will not cover all of the country or protect against more than a handful of incoming ballistic missiles. The price: reductions in U.S. nuclear forces to such low levels that it would be impracticable to maintain a strategic “Triad,” long understood to be essential to a robust deterrent posture.

    Worse yet, in their effort to sell the Russians on such a “compromise,” the Administration is resorting — whether out of incompetence or by design is unclear — to arguments likely to make it even harder either to provide credible nuclear deterrence or competent missile defenses.

    Specifically, the Administration has advised the Russians that they can always rely upon a “launch on warning” strategy to mitigate stated concerns that American defenses could presage and enable a preemptive U.S. nuclear strike. By dignifying this absurd proposition — even before the end of the Cold War made such fears preposterous, the idea was inconceivable — the Clinton-Gore team is only reinforcing the Kremlin’s propaganda line that nuclear war will be made more imminent by our pursuit of protection against missile attack.

    One upshot of this gambit is renewed energy behind another hardy perennial on the anti-nuclear community’s agenda: the idea of “de-alerting” of U.S. — and, ostensibly, Russian — nuclear forces. Were American weapons on day-to-day alert to be dismantled or otherwise disabled, however, more than a “launch on warning” option would be foreclosed: The deterrent value of the United States’ arsenal would be eviscerated since, as a practical matter, it would be politically (if not technically) problematic to restore these weapons to operational status.

  • The Clinton-Gore Administration is also inflicting unnecessary injury on America’s alliance relationships with its approach to missile defense. This is the effect of allowing the desire to preserve the obsolete 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty to drive policy and programmatic decisions, rather than a goal of optimizing the coverage, cost-effectiveness or speed with which anti-missile systems can be deployed.

    The latter considerations argue for an aggressive near-term effort to adapt the Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense ships for this purpose. By so doing, the United States could make clear that its “national” missile defense system will actually be a global capability, thus denying critics and those who would divide America from her allies the argument that the former will be protected at the latters’ expense. These risks could be even further reduced if, thanks to the generally excellent ties maintained by our Navy with those of allied nations, opportunities for cooperation in adapting various friendly countries’ ships for missile defense purposes are fully exploited.

The Bottom Line

It looks as though differences between the Gore and Bush camps on foreign and defense policy are going to feature prominently in the 2000 election, after all. The radical and/or reckless disarmament policies being pursued by President Clinton, with the aggressive support of his Vice President, offer the Texas governor a particularly promising opportunity to showcase a contrasting vision of an American deterrent that remains strong and credible and that is complemented as quickly as possible with a global, anti-missile defense, starting at sea. In the meantime, it behooves Gov. Bush and like-minded Members of Congress to find ways of compelling President Clinton to refrain from further compounding the damaging legacy in these areas now being left to his successor.

When Goldman Sachs Talks, Will Japan Listen?

(Washington, D.C.): The reverberations from a front page article in this
morning’s Financial
Times will likely be felt in the global financial system for some time to come. According
to the
FT, Japan’s Ministry of Finance is thinking about barring Goldman Sachs from
advising the
Japanese government on privatization — including the next tranche of shares to be sold by
Japanese telecom company, NTT — due to the Ministry becoming “increasingly alarmed about
Goldman’s management of some recent international share issues.”

The recent debacle involving PetroChina‘s Initial Public Offering on the
New York Stock
Exchange was prominently mentioned as an example of what a “senior [MoF] official” called
“four or five initial public offerings where Goldman Sachs has been the adviser and the best that
can be said is that there was a lack of judgment involved.” The FT observes (with
characteristic
British understatement) that “It is highly unusual for government clients of leading investment
banks to allow any concerns that they might have to become public. The MoF’s worries are
likely to prove a severe embarrassment to Goldman.” (Emphasis added.)

The Japanese government’s concerns about Goldman Sach’s “judgment” can only have been
intensified by a rather haughty op.ed. article authored by Goldman’s Chairman, Henry Paulson,
Jr., that appeared in the New York Times on 15 April. As interesting as Paulson’s
boasting about
his company’s role as “a proud underwriter of the [PetroChina IPO]” was what he did
not say:

  • In the face of strenuous opposition from a broad-based coalition of national
    security-minded,
    human rights, religious freedom, environmental and trade union organizations, the IPO
    underwent draconian down-sizing from the originally-targeted amount of $10 billion to $2.89
    billion.
  • Had PetroChina not “privately placed” as much as half of the total amount of the IPO with
    BP
    Amoco and several Hong Kong firms under Beijing’s influence the deal may have collapsed
    altogether (i.e., been “withdrawn.”)
  • In its first day of trading in Hong Kong, the PetroChina stock suffered a 4.7% decline in the
    value and a 7.5% drop in the New York market on April 8, the first day of genuine market
    trading. At this writing, it is currently trading at roughly 10% below the opening price.
  • A number of leading U.S. pension funds — with over $1 trillion in funds under management
    —
    were persuaded to state publicly that they would not purchase PetroChina stock, in most cases
    before SEC approval of the prospectus.
  • The PetroChina debacle was reportedly an important contributor to the postponement of
    near-term IPO’s on the New York Stock Exchange by Sinopec (China’s second largest oil
    company reported to be seeking $6 billion) and Baoshan Iron and Steel Company (estimated
    to be a $1-2 billion offering).

Financial Times, 20 April 2000

Goldman May Lose Japanese Advisory Role

By Paul Abrahams and Gillian Tett

Japan’s ministry of finance is considering barring Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank,
from
advising it on privatisations – notably the next sale of government shares in NTT, Japan’s
dominant telecoms group.

The ministry has become increasingly alarmed about Goldman’s management of some recent
international share issues.

A ban would be a blow to Goldman’s franchise in Japan, where it has been aggressively
building
up its operations. It has the highest profile and is the most successful of western investment
banks in Tokyo.

The ministry is particularly concerned about last month’s $2.9bn offering for World Online,
the
Netherlands-based internet group, whose issue was co-managed by Goldman Sachs. Nina Brink,
World Online chairman, sold most of her 9.5 per cent stake before the offer.

Although the transfer of Ms Brink’s shares was included in the prospectus, she did not tell
the
media about it before the issue.

Goldman and ABN Amro Rothschild, the advisers, are facing compensation claims from
VEB,
the Netherlands’s largest shareholder association, after World Online shares fell more than 60 per
cent. Ms Brink resigned as chairman last week.

“There have been four or five initial public offerings where Goldman Sachs has been the
adviser
and the best that can be said is that there was a lack of judgment involved,” said a senior official
at Japan’s ministry of finance.

It is highly unusual for government clients of leading investment banks to allow any
concerns
that they might have to become public. The MoF’s worries are likely to prove a severe
embarrassment to Goldman.

Among recent international deals involving Goldman that have aroused questions are
PetroChina, one of China’s largest offerings, which had to be scaled back from an initial $10bn
to $3bn and faced heavy criticism over the company’s investments in Sudan during a roadshow
in the US.

The shares made a lacklustre debut earlier this month despite heavy support from Goldman.

In Europe, Goldman played a key role in the abortive planned merger of Germany’s Deutsche
Bank and Dresdner Bank, and has been criticised by some for allowing its client, Dresdner, to
sign up for a deal whose details had evidently not been fully worked through.

In Germany, Goldman sold shares in Ixos, a German software company, on March 10, just
three
weeks before the group issued a profits warning. Goldman says it had no knowledge of the
warning.

Goldman Sachs said it had received its first request for clarification on its role in the World
Online launch from the Japanese ministry of finance on Friday, had provided material on
Monday and would be sending a team into the ministry to explain its position later this week.

Goldman has generated large fees as joint global co-ordinator for the fourth and fifth
tranches of
NTT, the telecoms group, and NTT DoCoMo’s initial public offering.

NTT 4 was a $7.4bn deal, and the three global co-ordinators and syndicate generated fees of
$159m. NTT 5 was a $15bn deal, the world’s largest secondary offering, and generated fees
worth $247m. NTT DoCoMo’s initial public offering was the world’s largest share issue.

There is likely to be another NTT share issue this year during the fourth quarter. The
ministry is
set to sell a further 1m shares or 6 per cent of the company, worth 1,400bn ($13.4bn) at
yesterday’s close.

The government still owns 53 per cent of the company, and is keen to sell its holdings down
to
33 per cent. That suggests there could be at least three more tranches, offering a lucrative source
of fees for investment banks. Other large privatisations next year could include rail companies JR
East and JR West, as well as Japan Tobacco.

Goldman had already been facing growing criticism from some politicians and bureaucrats in
Japan over alleged potential conflicts of interests in its advisory work. This criticism forced it to
change a team that is advising Softbank, the internet group, on its attempted purchase of Nippon
Credit Bank, the nationalised bank.

The concerns had arisen because Goldman Sachs advised the government last year on the
sale of
Long Term Credit Bank, another nationalised bank.

Investor’s Business Daily Pays Tribute to Former CIA Director; William J. Casey Institute Proudly Carries on His Legacy

(Washington, D.C.): The unique career and issues portfolio of William J. Casey were the subject of a laudatory retrospective last week in Investors Business Daily (see the attached). As it happens, this tribute coincided with the latest contribution of the institution that bears the former CIA Director’s name, the William J. Casey Institute of the Center for Security Policy: The hugely successful effort to publicize and oppose the Initial Public Offering on the New York Stock Exchange by PetroChina, a subsidiary of the PRC’s largest state-owned energy corporation, China National Petroleum Company.

As this effort indicates, the Casey Institute, which was founded some four years ago on the anniversary of its namesake’s birth, represents a living tribute to his exemplary public policy contributions: the nexus between global finance, trade, energy and technology flows and traditional national security concerns. Despite the obvious and growing salience of this work program, the Institute has since its inception been the only public policy organization in the United States exclusively concerned with it.

The Casey Institute’s path-breaking “Capital Markets Transparency Initiative” and related educational activities led by its Chairman, Roger W. Robinson, Jr., have been a particularly important legacy for Bill Casey, carrying forward into the future the kind of “cutting edge” contributions this extraordinary attorney-financier-public servant made to his country. Among these were: a keen sense of how to mitigate America’s vulnerabilities while exploiting those of its adversaries; a deft understanding of economics and finance and the skill to vector these disciplines into vital national security undertakings; an exceptional ability to identify and cultivate talented individuals and recruit them into the service of the country; and an indefatigable championing of freedom, while safeguarding America against global oppressors.

In addition to Bill Casey’s chairmanship of the Securities and Exchange Commission, presidency of the U.S. Export-Import Bank and highly successful Wall Street ventures, his partnership with Ronald Reagan literally changed the course of human events. Without their leadership and steely resolve, the bright light of freedom for some 300 million people laboring under the yoke of Soviet totalitarianism would likely have remained elusive.

As Investor’s Business Daily eloquently put it: “The most powerful director in the Central Intelligence Agency’s history wrapped up his life having had a history-changing role in the demise of both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.” The Casey Institute is enormously honored and proud to carry forward the visionary work and name of this exceptional public servant.