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Steve Forbes Issues Reaganesque Call to Help Free China

(Washington, D.C.): In a major foreign policy address delivered today at the library of
one
former President, Steve Forbes issued a call for a new approach toward China that was strongly
reminiscent of another President — Ronald Reagan — in its strategic vision, its moral compass
and confidence in the power of American ideas and leadership. In the interest of encouraging a
much-needed debate about the direction and content of U.S. policy vis a vis the PRC, the Center
urges each of Mr. Forbes’ rivals for the presidency — and candidates for other elective offices —
to make known in detail their views on his critique of the Clinton-Gore record and his
recommendations for an alterative approach.

‘No More Business as Usual: A Vision of U.S.-China Policy in the
21st Century’

Excerpts of Remarks by

Steve Forbes

The Nixon Library, Yorbalinda, California
12 November 1999

The China Challenge

The rise of China as a new power is one of the greatest challenges we face as a nation as we
enter
the 21st century. Our failure to properly handle the rise of Germany and Japan earlier in the 20th
century cost the world and us dearly. We dare not make the same mistake with China.

* * *

Some believe that China is like Germany under the Kaiser, an incipient and implacable
enemy
with whom we are destined to clash. Others are premature optimists who see China as
predestined to evolve into a democracy.

I reject both views. Nothing is foreordained in the course of human events.

The only thing we can be sure of is that China is as unpredictable as ever. Indeed, the history
of
China is a succession of despotic dynasties punctuated by volcanic eruptions and fanatical
movements.

* * *

China has a hybrid economy, one that depends on a measure of free enterprise to sustain
shoddy,
state-run outfits and crony capitalism. Such a system can maintain its rule with force. But it can
no longer draw strength from the messianic fervor of Marx, Lenin and Mao.

Such ideological weakness – such intellectual rot – is an invitation for trouble. The
simultaneous
emergence of the Falun Gong cult on the one hand, and the explosive growth of Christianity on
the other, are clear signs that the Chinese people are casting about for a new belief system to fill
the void left by communism.

In short, China is an immensely important yet intensely unstable country.
Its government
seeks to be a global superpower while its people seek freedom and spiritual fulfillment. We must
define U.S. policy towards China and the whole of Asia accordingly.

A Decade of Drift and Indecision

The decade since the massacre at Tiananmen Square has been a decade of drift, indecision
and
plain bad judgment. The Clinton-Gore Administration clearly does not understand the realities
inside China today. It still has no compass, no guiding principles, no sense of direction.

President Clinton calls his China policy “constructive engagement.” I call it a study in
confusion
and mixed signals, often degenerating into appeasement.

In his first term, President Clinton’s approach had all the predictability of a drunk driving on
the
road. We told Beijing terrible things would happen if human rights abuses persisted – and then
backed down. We were ambiguous when China began its saber rattling with Taiwan in 1996 and
let the crisis reach a dangerous level and China began test-launching missiles. Clearly, Beijing
takes our president’s statements no more seriously than he does.

Then there is the espionage. Read the bipartisan report by California Congressman
Christopher
Cox. The evidence is overwhelming. The Clinton-Gore Administration’s national security
ineptitude allowed Beijing to steal or buy America’s most advanced thermonuclear weapons
designs, state-of-the-art ballistic missile designs, high performance American supercomputers,
and advanced satellite technology.

Then there is the subversion of our political system. The sale of political access in
Washington to
agents of Chinese intelligence has encouraged the PRC to believe they can freely ignore
American principles because, after all, we can be bought.

Then there is the systematic demobilization of our armed forces. This Administration’s
budgets
have seriously undercut our military preparedness in the Far East and done precious little to build
ballistic missile defenses for us or our allies.

In short, we have had a non-policy based on non-principles, resulting in almost eight years of
amateur-hour improvisations. If the next U.S. administration continues this drift and zigzagging,
our children and grandchildren will ultimately pay the price.

A New China Policy

It is time to set a new course for American foreign policy in Asia. We need a principled
President who will deal with China from a position of strength. We need a President willing to
say to Beijing in no uncertain terms: No more business as usual.

o No more shutting our ears to the cries of Christians, Buddhists and others suffering
religious
persecution in Chinese gulags.

o No more turning a blind eye to Chinese spies in our nuclear labs.

o No more keeping silent about Chinese slave labor camps, forced abortions and
death-factory
orphanages.

o No more doing business with Chinese military-owned companies trafficking in weapons
of
mass destruction.

o No more leaving our children and our allies vulnerable to Chinese nuclear missiles.

o And no more sweetheart trade deals.

I share the American people’s sense of frustration that our security and our values are
constantly
being trampled by Beijing, and the Clinton-Gore Administration does nothing. It is weak. It is
reactive. It is rudderless – and it is wrong.

The question is: Where do we go from here? How do we get from where we are today to
where
we want to be?

Some believe the right course of action is to immediately revoke Most Favored
Nation trade
status – a form of “shock therapy” – to force China to stop its egregious military and human rights
abuses.

And that is an entirely understandable point of view – especially given the White House’s
approach of “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” towards Beijing.

Indeed, we may very well need to revoke MFN.

But first we need a real China policy, a tough China policy.

We need Beijing to understand the rules of engagement.

And we need to begin using the economic and diplomatic tools at our disposal to effect real
change in China: tough sanctions on Chinese military-owned companies..tough sanctions on
Chinese companies using slave labor.tough sanctions on Chinese companies trafficking in
weapons of mass destruction.and continuous, high-profile condemnations of Chinese human
rights abuses in every international forum possible.

President Clinton won’t do it. Vice President Gore won’t do it. But I will.

As President of the United States, I will put China’s leaders on notice: We want a peaceful
and
constructive relationship with you. But you must understand the rules of engagement. And if you
violate them – if you continue to head down the path towards confrontation – then I will not
hesitate for one moment to revoke Most Favored Nation trade status.

I will never sacrifice American security or values on the altar of trade.

The choice is up to you. The benefits of cooperation and friendship are enormous. But the
days
of appeasement are over. Period.

It is time we put dictators and despots on notice: We will not be intimidated and we will not
be
threatened. We will protect our childrendefend our friends.advance our principlesand
transcend our enemies.

My new China policy will be based upon three strategic objectives:

o First, we will protect American sovereignty and security.

o Second, we will promote individual liberty and human rights.

o Third, we will open new markets and expand existing markets, but never at the expense of
our
security and principles.

U.S. Security and Sovereignty

In a Forbes Administration, American sovereignty and national security will come first. That
means defending our vital national security interests, which include the following:

o Protecting the American homeland, borders, shores and airspace

o Protecting Americans against threats to their lives and well-being

o Preventing a major power from dominating Europe, East Asia or the Persian Gulf

o Preventing hostile interference in the Western Hemisphere by outside powers

o Maintaining the freedom of the seas and maintaining access to vital natural resources.

America must be absolutely committed to remain the premier military power in the Pacific.

The Forbes Administration will rebuild – not run down – our national defenses.

We will strengthen our alliances with key countries in the region to
counterbalance the Chinese
threat.

We will make it clear that we will defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack. As
President, I will
sign the bipartisan “Taiwan Security Enhancement Act” offered by Senator Jesse
Helms and
Senator Robert Torricelli. This will lift restrictions on the sale of defensive weapons to Taiwan,
including missile defense systems.

We will also deploy state-of-the-art missile defense systems – such as the sea-based Aegis
system
– to protect our allies and ourselves.

Indeed, we must dramatically step up our research and development to reopen the technology
gap
and pull away from our adversaries.

When a Chinese general made a not-so-veiled threat to “nuke” Los Angeles over the Taiwan
crisis several years ago, he made one thing abundantly clear: We must not allow China’s
growing nuclear arsenal to continue to threaten American cities and decouple the United
States from our allies.

After all, if America were to leave the Western Pacific, Japan, South Korea, and perhaps
other
powers would have no choice but to rearm, and develop and deploy nuclear weapons of their
own. China must understand the security umbrella America provides in the Pacific promotes
stability and serves the long-term interests of all powers.

At the same time, we must be on the lookout for a continuing Chinese effort to compromise
our
security elsewhere in the world.

The Panama Canal is a good place to start. Having Chinese companies managing both ends
of
this strategic chokepoint between the Atlantic and the Pacific is simply unacceptable to
American security. In the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine, the Forbes Administration will prevent
the hostile interference in the Western Hemisphere by outside powers such as Communist China.

So this is the first strategic objective of the Forbes policy towards China – protecting
American
sovereignty and national security.

Individual Liberty and Human Rights

The second strategic objective of my China policy will be to vigorously and
consistently
champion individual liberty and human rights.

Like all people of goodwill, I hope for a future China that is free and democratic, and I will
do
everything in my power to see that this vision comes to pass. That certainly means making sure
China understands the rules of engagement. But it also means confronting Chinese human rights
abuses.

* * *

Fortunately, Congress has begun to move in the right direction. For example, China’s slave
labor
camps operate 140 export enterprises, selling products to over 70 countries, including the U.S.
But in 1997, Congressman Chris Smith, from my home state of New Jersey, introduced a bill to
keep China’s slave labor products out of our country. I supported this bill at the time, and as
President, I will vigorously enforce it and fight slave labor practices in China and throughout the
world.

At the same time, the Forbes Administration will take the lead in forcefully denouncing
Chinese
human rights abuses.

And we will stand up for the inalienable rights of all people to free speech, free assembly and
freedom of religion.

The more we expose their abuses, the more Beijing will protest with angry words and threats.
But we know one thing from our experience with the Soviets: Pressure will yield results. The
process of freedom, once begun, sustains itself internally and spreads.

At the same time, we will seek ways to engage the Chinese people, to meet their yearning for
truth, faith, and higher ideals. For a half-century, Chinese leaders have preached a lifeless,
soulless marriage of materialism and state control. It has created a spiritual vacuum, longing to
be filled.

* * *

Now is not the time to turn our backs on the good people of China, one out of
five people living
on the planet today.

Nor is this the time to maintain business as usual.

Now is the time to intensify our efforts to communicate the good news of
freedom and faith in
God to a people living in great darkness.

From my years as chairman of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, I know that the free
flow of
truth is deadly to dictatorial regimes.

So central to my strategy will be dramatically expanding Radio Free Asia,
which should have
more frequencies, more programming and more power to send its signals so that hundreds of
millions of people can hear its broadcasts.

And in this new Information Age, we will also launch Internet Free China.
We will create
news and informational web sites in Mandarin, Cantonese and other dialects. We will use cutting
edge technology to reach out to the Chinese people, because the Internet is the new frontier of
freedom and democracy in the digital age.

My friends, freedom works. And we must never give up our efforts to communicate the truth,
particularly in China.

Open Markets

Along with protecting American sovereignty and security, and advancing individual liberty
and
human rights, the Forbes Administration will pursue a third objective: opening new markets and
expanding existing markets throughout Asia.

Again, I want China to choose a path of peace and cooperation. I want them to open their
markets and sign honest, enforceable, free trade agreements with us. This would be a huge boon
for American workers, companies and farmers.

And it is true the our ultimate hope for a fruitful, peaceful relationship with the Middle
Kingdom
lies in the rise of pro-freedom, pro-free enterprise forces within it. As we have seen in Chile,
South Korea and Taiwan, economic liberalization can bring in its wake demands for political
reform.

But U.S. security and our vital national interests must always come first.

For example, China’s People’s Liberation Army controls some 15,000 companies with an
estimated $10 billion in worldwide sales. Many of these companies operate here in the United
States.

But if Beijing continues selling dangerous military equipment to rogue states such as North
Korea and Iran, I will apply tough sanctions on one PLA company after another.

If the offenses don’t stop, I will up the ante.

The Clinton-Gore Administration has turned a blind eye to such dangerous arms sales; I will
not.
Too much is at stake.

At the same time, the Forbes Administration will also put an immediate halt to sales of
sophisticated technology to China that can clearly be used for military purposes.

Now let me say a word here about the World Trade Organization.

The Clinton-Gore Administration wants to give China a sweetheart deal, allowing Beijing
into
the WTO on concessionary terms, as though they were some third-world nation rather than a
major economic player. This is a serious mistake.

America is the world’s only economic superpower, and it’s ridiculous to take such a weak
position with an emerging power.

That said, I believe Taiwan should be permitted entrance into the
community of world
commerce.

They have made extraordinary progress in moving towards free markets and free elections
and
they should be rewarded for it.

Let me be clear: Yes to Taiwan in the WTO. No to China. Beijing hasn’t earned it,
and we
shouldn’t give it. Period.

It is time for our government to reward freedom and democracy – not force and demagoguery
–
and let us never forget it.

Benchmarks For Progress

As President I will make clear to China the rules of engagement.

I will also set clear benchmarks to gauge China’s seriousness about a positive relationship
with
the United States.

For example:

The People’s Republic of China must resume diplomatic discussions with Taiwan
and
moderate its threatening language. Taiwan is a new democracy that has emerged from
authoritarian rule. If we are true to ourselves, we must acknowledge that Taiwan deserves the
respect and support of the West in the face of Beijing’s coarse, warlike threats, and bellicose
deeds – and we must pressure Beijing to cease and desist immediately.

China must stop selling weapons of mass destruction to rogue nations.
The proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction – and the means to deliver them – is one of the greatest threats to
peace and security in our time. We must do everything in our power to halt this deadly trade.

China must drop its opposition to countries deploying ballistic missile defense
systems since
they pose no threat to China. Beijing’s hyperbole over American, Japanese and
Taiwanese
missile defenses – and the ABM Treaty – is not helpful. China has nothing to fear – and
everything to gain – from purely defensive technologies.

China must stop religious persecution and immediately begin releasing political and
religious prisoners, such as those identified by Freedom House. The thirst for
individual liberty,
human dignity and spiritual growth is unquenchable, and the United States will never abandon
those for whom it is being denied. Indeed, it will be the explicit policy of the Forbes
Administration to champion a free and democratic China in every manner possible.

The Road Ahead

I know my policy will sound confrontational to official Chinese ears. In truth it is less
confrontational and less dangerous than hiding our convictions and commitments behind a fog of
appeasing rhetoric.

* * *

I am advocating the peaceful application of the same universal principles that Ronald Reagan
applied to the peoples of the former Soviet Union. At the beginning of his presidency, Reagan
told the British Parliament and the world that Soviet communism would be consigned to the ash
heap of history. No one believed him. In 1982, such a prediction sounded preposterous to the
ears of most Western intellectuals and bellicose to the Soviets. But Reagan knew that such a
thing could come to pass-and quicker than most of us thought-because a process of
change was at
work within the Soviet Union.

Reagan wasn’t being hostile. Far from it. His compassion and respect for the people of
Russia
was so great that he believed the day would soon come when they would throw off their shackles
and be free.

Today, I hold the same hope for the people of China. I believe that in my children’s lifetime,
they
will see a free, democratic, peaceful and prosperous China. Not because it is destined
to happen,
but because we helped make it happen.

Bill Clinton, ‘New Isolationist’?
The U.S. Needs a Missile Defense That Defends its Allies, Too

(Washington, D.C.): As the worm turns! In the wake of the U.S. Senate’s crushing rejection
of
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) last month, President Clinton and his supporters
unleashed a torrent of invective against Republicans in the Senate, and their party more
generally. The GOP, it was said, was in the hands of “new isolationists” who were reflexively
opposed to arms control and endangering the Nation’s standing around the world by appearing
indifferent to the will of the “international community.”

Now, having widely promoted this slanderous falsehood, the Administration finds itself
being
tarred with the same brush. The President’s new-found, and long-overdue, enthusiasm for
deploying a limited national missile defense is causing Mr. Clinton’s allies at home and abroad —
and most of our potential adversaries — to portray this initiative as isolationist, a mortal threat to
arms control and insensitive to the preferences of foreign governments.

These anxieties could only have been intensified by a speech the Under Secretary of Defense
for
Policy, Walter Slocombe, gave last Friday about America’s determination to defend itself against
missile attack — whether the Russians like it or not. Slocombe commendably declared that: “We
will not permit any other country to have a veto on actions that may be needed for the defense of
our nation.”

Allied Concerns

Even before this pronouncement, European leaders were expressing alarm. On Thursday,
French
President Jacques Chirac issued a quintessentially Gaullist denunciation of American foreign
policies and the isolationist tendencies that he contends are impelling them. According to the
November 7 New York Times, “French officials close to Mr. Chirac said that one of
the main
causes for concern…was the possible deployment by the United States of a limited missile
defense shield to protect against attack by ‘rogue states’ like Iraq or North Korea….’President
Chirac has told President Clinton that it could open a Pandora’s box that is in none of the allies’
interest.'”

The allies seem particularly upset that the Clinton plan for missile defense appears focused
on
the deployment of a limited anti-missile system that would protect only the United States. On
November 6, the Washington Post reported under a headline “Possible U.S. Missile
Shield
Alarms Europe,” that Germany’s Foreign Minister, Joschka Fisher of the Green Party, declared
during a visit to Washington last week that: “There is no doubt that this would lead to split
security standards within the NATO alliance. I see lots of problems developing in this respect,
which we must discuss calmly and reasonably with our American friends.”

The Post added that “Fischer said Germany’s commitment to be non-nuclear ‘was
always based
on our trust that the United States would protect our interests, that the United States, as the
leading nuclear power, would guarantee some sort of order.’ A drive by the United States to
build its own missile defense, he said, would erode that confidence by effectively putting
European cities at greater risk of nuclear missile attack than those in America.” (Wouldn’t that
be a legacy for Bill Clinton — converting the Greens into advocates of a “German bomb”!)

In point of fact, like the Senate vote to defeat the CTBT, a U.S. deployment of missile
defenses
should not be construed as a national retreat to “Fortress America.” Thoughtful Democrats and
Republicans alike understand that — in a world increasingly awash with ballistic missile threats —
effective anti-missile systems are becoming an essential ingredient to the United States’
engagement internationally, as well as its security at home.

What to Do Now

Assuming President Clinton is not, as Foreign Minister Fischer suggested last week, just
going
through the motions on missile defense “based on political calculations in the upcoming
presidential elections,” it behooves him to consider a alternative approach, one that both meets
American needs and addresses legitimate allied concerns about being left uniquely vulnerable to
ballistic missile attack.

Instead of making the initial “national” anti-missile deployment one involving the
construction
of a fixed, ground-based system in Alaska — a deployment that will not be able to provide
complete protection for all 50 states, let alone provide any anti-missile defense for U.S. forces
and allies overseas 1 — Mr. Clinton should authorize the
Navy’s Aegis fleet air defense system to
be modified so as to make it an effective, world-wide ballistic missile-killer.

As President Clinton’s own Pentagon has begun to acknowledge publicly, by taking
advantage of
the roughly $50 billion investment already made in relevant naval infrastructure, the United
States could acquire a missile defense that is capable of defeating a larger number of incoming
missiles than the present plan, doing it faster and at a fraction of the cost. If done in
collaboration with allied navies — not only the Japanese, who have four of their own Aegis ships,
but the NATO allies, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel, as well — understandable concerns about
leaving their countries undefended could be rapidly dispelled.

The Bottom Line

Of course, such an approach will not end the opposition now being expressed by the
Russians,
Chinese, North Koreans and others who find America’s vulnerability to ballistic missile threats
convenient. (In fact, North Korea’s growing ability to exploit that vulnerability has caused the
United States to become the largest provider of foreign aid to the despotic regime in Pyongyang.)
Neither will it allay the outcry from those at home and abroad who favor American disarmament
and regard the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (which prohibited a territorial anti-missile
defense of the United States) as sacred writ, or in Mr. Clinton’s words, as the “cornerstone of
strategic stability.” 2

For the millions of Americans who believe the United States must be defended against the
scourge of missile attack, if the Clinton Administration is now serious about defending America,
if it really will not “permit any other nation to have a veto on actions that may be needed for the
defense of our nation” and if it pursues missile defenses in a way that enhances alliance cohesion
— rather than divides the U.S. from its allies — the response will be very positive. More to the
point, if our countrymen do not get such leadership from the Clinton-Gore team, they are certain
to hire someone who will follow such a sensible, internationalist course in January 2001.

1 The principal reason for choosing such a system appears to be the
Administration’s belief that
it would involve the smallest departure from the ABM Treaty and, therefore, would be the most
readily acceptable to the Russians. To date, however, the Russians seem no more interested in
legitimating this approach to a U.S. missile defense than any other.

2The Russians are skillfully exploiting the Europeans’ anxieties over
what is perceived to be the
Clinton Administration’s “America First” approach to defending the United States so as to
exacerbate the rift between the U.S. and its allies. Every member of the European Union either
voted with Moscow or abstained in a UN committee’s vote last Friday on a resolution introduced
by Russia calling on the United States to continue to adhere to the ABM Treaty.

Credit Where It is Due on U.S. Financial Support for the U.N.

(Washington, D.C.): According to press reports, the recently confirmed American
Representative to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke has been spending
much of his time
lately as the chief official lobbyist in the Clinton Administration’s campaign to euchre Congress
into paying so-called “arrearages” in U.S. dues. A leitmotif of this campaign is the allegation
that the United States is — in the words of President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, among others who should know better — a “deadbeat.” The truth of the matter is that
such an appallingly defamatory and anti-American claim can only be made if one
ignores
the full extent of this country’s immense financial contributions to the United
Nations.

Just the Facts, Ma’am

Indeed, the Clinton Administration’s own Defense Department has documented that
the
United States has contributed over $15 billion to peacekeeping operations from 1996
through the first quarter of fiscal year 1999. (This does not count the
remainder of FY99,
which would include massive additional contributions the U.S. made in connection with the war
in Kosovo.) The UN bureaucracy calls these contributions “voluntary,” however. As a result,
they are not credited against America’s “dues.” Neither does the United States get much credit
for making these contributions in any other way, either.

This is due, in part, to the Clinton Administration’s unwillingness to acknowledge these
outlays,
presumably lest they — by so doing — encourage efforts to prevent such generous diversions of
resources and in-kind contributions (in the form of heavy utilization of Defense Department
assets) from the Pentagon to UN and related missions. Thanks to Rep. Roscoe
Bartlett (R-MD),
a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, however, the DoD is now
required by
law to report on these expenditures on a quarterly basis.

Enter Rep. Smith

In an important op.ed. article in today’s Washington Times, Rep.
Christopher Smith (R-NJ),
drew on this data to counter the propaganda being put out by Amb. Holbrooke, other
Administration flaks and by a public relations campaign funded by Ted Turner
and
orchestrated, sadly, by former Republican National Committee Chairman-turned-lobbyist
Haley
Barber. As Chairman of the House Subcommittee on International Operations and
Human
Rights, Rep. Smith is able authoritatively to make the case that, properly calculated, the
United
States is — as usual — doing far more than its fair share of supporting the United
Nations
and its activities. The following are among the highlights of Rep. Smith’s article:

    The Administration is once again trying to railroad Congress on the issue of the
    disputed U.N. arrearages. Its argument is simple: Anyone who opposes giving a blank
    check to the United Nations must be an isolationist.

    This accusation is almost as outrageous as the charge that the United States has
    been a deadbeat when it comes to the United Nations. Indeed, it would be far
    more accurate to say that the United States is the United Nation’s largest
    benefactor.

    A narrow focus on the arrearages — the cumulative result of 17 separate disputes
    over such issues as U.N. assistance to the Palestine Liberation Organization and
    kickbacks paid to communist governments out of U.N. employees’ salaries —
    ignores the crucial fact in the equation: The United States contributes about $2
    billion to United Nations organizations and activities every year. This is
    almost twice the total amount of all disputed arrearages. It is also roughly
    three times more than Germany and the United Kingdom pay annually, five
    times more than France, and 35 times more than China.

    Overall, the United States has paid more than $35 billion in direct payments to
    the U.N. system in the first 53 years of its existence. We have also paid at least
    $22 billion since 1992 in additional costs in support of U.N.-authorized
    peacekeeping missions. These amounts dwarf the total contributions of all
    other countries in the world.

The Bottom Line

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

George Will, Richard Perle Sing Senate Majority’s Praises For Courageous Vote Against the Defective C.T.B.T.

(Washington, D.C.): Amidst the echo chamber of Washington spinmeisters, members of the
United States Senate — to say nothing of the public at large — could be forgiven for thinking that
the vote to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was a reckless mistake, born of
misconceptions about the merits of the treaty, an action that must be undone at the earliest
possible opportunity. Fortunately, one of the Nation’s most respected opinion-makers, href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=99-D_120a”>George F.
Will, and one of its leading security policy practitioners, former Assistant Secretary
of Defense
Richard Perle, have recently published essays (see the
attached) that debunk these claims — and
powerfully affirm the wisdom of the Senate majority’s action.

In a column entitled “Politics and the Test Ban Treaty” — an essay that can only be described
as
Churchillian which appears in the current edition of Newsweek — Mr. Will wrote:

“Now, at long last, the spell cast by arms control has been broken. The Senate did no more
than
its constitutional duty. The Senate opponents, all Republicans, acted after prolonged tutoring by
experts, one of the most persuasive of whom was a Democrat, James Schlesinger.
He was one
of six former secretaries of Defense, and other former high officials, including two CIA directors
appointed by Clinton, who urged rejection of the treaty. The 51 senators (17 more than the
number necessary to defeat a treaty) who voted no, acted on their politically hazardous
conclusion that the treaty is unverifiable, unenforceable and incompatible with the security of the
U.S. nuclear arsenal. Rejection of this treaty may improve future treaties by stiffening
the
spines of U.S. negotiators, who will know that there are things the Senate will not swallow
just because they bear the label arms control.“

Secretary Perle made a similar case in a splendid op.ed. article published in yesterday’s
New
York Times entitled “Neither Isolationists nor Fools”:

    “Contrary to the claim that the Senate could have fixed its deficiencies, the treaty, by
    its terms, is not subject to unilateral amendment or reservation….For Senators who
    were persuaded that the treaty is inimical to American security interests,
    delaying its consideration while the Clinton Administration sought to neutralize
    their opposition and gain the votes for ratification would not have been
    sensible    ….As our diplomats seek to improve the treaty by better drafting, by
    eliminating unverifiable prohibitions and by providing for minimal safety and security
    testing, they will have a powerful new argument to make to other countries: They will
    be able to say they cannot muster the votes to ratify the treaty until it is fixed.”

The Bottom Line

Essays like those by Messrs. Perle and Will (together with those published in recent days by
former Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates, former U.S.
Ambassador to Germany
and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt and former acting Director of
the U.S. Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency James Hackett, which were circulated by the Center
yesterday) demonstrate the strength of the Loyal Opposition’s intellectual firepower — and the
high stakes involved in its laudatory efforts to halt defective arms control agreements like the
CTBT.

The End of Arms Control as We Have Known It

(Washington, D.C.): An extraordinarily important, emerging reality is for the moment being
obscured by the vitriol and frenzied misrepresentations emanating from the Clinton
Administration and its allies in the wake of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’s crushing
rejection by the United States Senate: Unverifiable and unenforceable multilateral arms
control treaties do not advance American security interests, will not enjoy the support
of the
necessary two-thirds of the Senate and must be eschewed by the U.S. executive branch.

Fortunately, three well-credentialed security policy practitioners with considerable
experience in
the negotiation and implementation of arms control agreements — former Director of
Central
Intelligence Robert Gates, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany and Assistant
Secretary of
State Richard Burt and former acting Director of the U.S. Arms Control and
Disarmament
Agency James Hackett — have each recently published essays making this point in the
New
York Times, Washington Post and Washington Times,
respectively (see the attached). Highlights
of each of these op.ed. articles include the following (emphasis added).

  • Gates: “Multinational cooperation is absolutely essential to slowing or
    containing such
    threats as chemical, biological and nuclear weapons proliferation and the spread of ballistic
    missile technology. But I question whether formal, ratified treaties are the most
    effective
    way to deal diplomatically with such threats.     Multilateral treaties often offer only a
    pretense of effective monitoring. Furthermore, treaties ‘in perpetuity’ are nearly impossible to
    adjust to today’s rapidly changing technological and security realities. And to ratify a treaty
    when we can confidently predict that key governments either will not sign it or, if they sign
    will not observe its terms, undermines the legitimacy and value of the arms control process
    itself.”
  • Burt: “…It is unclear how a test ban would curb nuclear proliferation. In
    the bipolar
    international system of the Cold War, nations took their cue on nuclear matters from the two
    superpowers. In the increasingly fragmented and decentralized world of the 21st century,
    nations such as Iraq and North Korea refuse to follow Washington’s lead. Pakistan and India,
    which have acquired nuclear arsenals despite concerted opposition by the United States and
    others, are cases in point. Like some earlier accords, such as the 1972 American-Soviet
    agreement curbing anti-missile defenses, the test ban treaty represents an anachronistic
    approach to arms control.     Despite numerous complaints, however, the
    Clinton
    Administration has insisted on pursuing an outmoded agenda unsuited to a new security
    environment.”
  • Hackett: “The Senate vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
    (CTBT) was more than
    just the defeat of a flawed agreement, it signaled the coming of age of a majority of
    Americans on the futility of trying to defend the country through arms control….Unverifiable
    treaties that ban weapons and limit technologies are dangerous.”

The Bottom Line

The time has come for a frank and rigorous reappraisal of the contribution that arms control
as
we have known it can make to U.S. security and world peace. Senators who voted to defeat the
CTBT and Messrs. Gates, Burt and Hackett who have helped underscore the larger importance of
that action deserve the Nation’s gratitude and support for setting the stage for such a reappraisal.

Richard Perle Discounts Allies’ Objections to Senate Rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

(Washington, D.C.): In an op.ed. article slated for publication in a major British daily
newspaper tomorrow, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle puts in perspective
recommendations made last week by the leaders of Britain, France and Germany that the Senate
agree to the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Mr. Perle — an
accomplished security policy practitioner widely respected on both sides of the Atlantic and,
indeed, around the world — powerfully argues that the objections heard from Messrs. Tony
Blair, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder in an op.ed. article published in the New York
Times on 8 October should not dissuade the United States Senate from doing what American
national security and interests dictate: defeating the CTBT.

Passion’s Slave and the CTBT

by Richard Perle

Always generous with advice, a chorus of European officials has been urging the United
States
Senate to ratify the “Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.” Last Friday, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac
and Gerhard Schroeder (BC&S for short) issued what Will Hutton, writing in the
Observer,
called “a passionate appeal” to the American Senators whose votes will decide whether the
United States signs up to the fanciful conceit that the CTBT will halt the testing of nuclear
weapons.

Advice giving is contagious, and Hutton has some of his own: to encourage the U.S. to ratify
the
CTBT, he urged Britain and France to phase out their nuclear weapons entirely–a suggestion
they will passionately reject.

Now, the prospect of crowning the Western victory in the Cold War with a piece of
international
legislation that will stop the spread of nuclear weapons is certainly appealing. After all, a
signature on a piece of paper would be a remarkably cheap and efficient way to keep nuclear
weapons out of the hands of Kim Jong-il, Saddam Hussein and the other 44 regimes now
deemed capable of developing nuclear weapons.

So what explains the need for passionate appeals from politicians and strident comment from
leader writers? Why doesn’t the Senate congratulate its friends on their wise and timely counsel
and vote to ratify the treaty?

I suspect that one reason is the Senators–or at least the more responsible among them–have
actually read the treaty and understand how deeply flawed it is, how unlikely it is to
stop
nuclear proliferation or even nuclear testing, and how it has the potential to leave the United
States with an unsafe, unreliable nuclear deterrent.

Arms control agreements–especially ones affecting matters as sensitive as nuclear
weapons–must be judged both in broad concept and in the details of their implementation.
As a device for ending all nuclear tests, the CTBT fails on both counts.

It is characteristic of global agreements like the CTBT that they lump together, under a
single set
of constraints, states that can be counted upon to comply and those which intend either to find
and use loopholes–the CTBT is full of them–or to cheat to defeat the constraints of the
agreement. To make matters worse, states joining global conventions, even if they do so in bad
faith, obtain the same treatment as those who join in order to advance the proper purposes of the
agreement.

There can be little doubt that Indian participation in the “atoms for peace program” facilitated
New Dehli’s acquisition of nuclear weapons by legitimating the construction of a Canadian
designed reactor from which India extracted the nuclear material to make its first bomb. We now
know that Saddam Hussein made full use of the information provided by Iraqi inspectors on the
staff of the International Atomic Energy Agency (set up to police the Non-Proliferation Treaty)
to conceal his clandestine nuclear weapons program. With knowledge of the sources and
methods by which the IAEA attempts to ferret out cheating, Iraqis ensconced there (by virtue of
Iraq’s having signed the NPT) were better able to circumvent treaty’s essential purpose.

In domestic affairs, no one would seriously propose that the police and criminals come
together
and sign agreements according to which they accept the same set of constraints on their freedom
of action. Yet that is the underlying logic of the CTBT: a compact among nation states, some of
which are current or likely criminals, others–the majority–respectful of international law and
their treaty obligations. Because there can be no realistic hope of verifying compliance with the
CTBT, this fundamental flaw, which is characteristic of global agreements, is greatly magnified.
The net result of ratification of the CTBT would be (a) American compliance, which could leave
the U.S. uncertain about the safety and reliability of its nuclear deterrent; and (b) almost certain
cheating by one or more rogue states determined to acquire nuclear weapons.

Among the leaders in Congress who have taken a keen interest in arms control is Senator
Richard
Lugar from Indiana, a senior member of the Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees. A
frequent floor manager in favor of arms control legislation, he has supported every arms control
treaty to come before the Senate and has often led the proponents in debate. Last week he
announced that he would vote against ratification of the CTBT.

I would be willing to bet that Senator Lugar has spent more time studying this treaty than
Blair,
Chirac, Schroeder and Hutton combined–which may explain why his view of the treaty is one of
reason and not passion. Senator Lugar opposes ratification–not because he shares my view that
the treaty is conceptually flawed–but because he believes it cannot achieve its intended purpose
but it could “risk undermining support and confidence in the concept of multi-lateral arms
control.”

Arguing that the CTBT is “not of the same caliber as the arms control treaties that have come
before the Senate in recent decades,” Lugar concludes that the treaty’s usefulness is “highly
questionable,” and that it would “exacerbate risks and uncertainties related to the safety of our
nuclear stockpile.” He rightly points to the treaty’s “ineffective verification regime” and
“practically nonexistent enforcement process.”

Senator Lugar’s careful, detailed assessment of the treaty contrasts sharply with the rugby
cheering section coming from the London, Paris and Berlin offices of BC&S. Do
BC&S know
that the treaty actually lacks a definition of the term “nuclear test?” Rushed to completion before
the 1996 Presidential election, Clinton abandoned in mid-stream an effort to negotiate a binding
definition. Do they know that advances in mining technology permit tests to be smothered so
they cannot be detected? Do they understand the composition and complexities of the U.S.
nuclear stockpile or the importance of future testing to overcome any potential problems? Can
they get beyond their passion?

“Give me that man/That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him/In my heart’s core”
Sound
advice from Will (Shakespeare, not Hutton).

Message to Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue: Bank of New York’s Russian Debacle is but a Symptom of a Larger Problem

(Washington, D.C.): With breath-taking speed, the scandal described by the New York
Times as
“one of the biggest money-laundering operations ever unearthed in the United States” is
expanding with implications for the future position of a major U.S. commercial bank, the
presidential election prospects of Vice President Al Gore and the Kremlin’s
relationships with
the United States, the International Monetary Fund and other benefactors.

The Clinton Administration is in a desperate damage-control mode. Yesterday,
Treasury
Secretary Lawrence Summers was reduced, it seems, to echoing House Banking
Committee
Chairman Jim Leach’s (R-IA) recent admonition that the U.S. should not support future IMF
disbursements to Russia “without adequate safeguards to assure that any funds disbursed are
used properly (and) without adequate accounting for the previous use of funds.” The question
now is: Will the next shoe to drop, in the absence of these and other “safeguards,” be
one
that affects (literally) a host of American equities, via the Nation’s capital markets?

A Bill of Particulars

A recap of some of the relevant highlights of the current drama, which began last month with
the
publication of reports that the Bank of New York (BoNY) was suspected of laundering at least
$4 billion — and perhaps as much as $10 billion — in funds possibly tied to Russian organized
crime and/or top Kremlin officials and their associates, includes the following:

  • According to various reports, the BoNY account maintained by the Russian firm, Benex
    Corporation, alone saw over 10,000 transactions involving some $4.2 billion between October
    1998-March 1999. Law enforcement and other U.S. officials, moreover, are currently said to
    be investigating thirty-three companies that have done business with the bank to determine
    whether any others have engaged in suspicious Russian-related financial activity.
  • The misappropriation of taxpayer-funded aid flows to Russia from the International
    Monetary
    Fund and the U.S. Agriculture Department has also been alleged. While both agencies have
    vehemently denied such charges, the IMF has admitted that monitoring internal disbursement
    of aid flows has proven to be more challenging than it previously anticipated. In fact,
    according to a Wall Street Journal article of 25 August, investigators have identified
    at least
    $200 million in IMF funds which surfaced in a Russian Channel Islands account for a short
    period before it was diverted to an unknown location. It is impossible to say with certainty
    how much of the more than $20 billion in Western taxpayer funds that the IMF has lent
    Russia since 1992 has met a similar fate.
  • Russian organized crime syndicates are not the only entities suspected of laundering funds
    through the Bank of New York, and perhaps other Western financial institutions. President
    Yeltsin’s political “families” — the latter prominently including a number of former
    apparatchiks-turned-“oligarchs” — have also been implicated. Of particular concern is the
    apparently deliberate leaking of closely-held Russian plans to devalue the ruble and default on
    some $40 billion in GKO debt. Insider-dealing seems to have contributed to the accelerated
    movement of capital out of Russia that immediately preceded this action taken on 18 August
    1998.

Importantly, much more appears to be in jeopardy than the interests of an American
commercial bank and U.S. and multilateral financial institutions. Consider the following recent
revelations that indicate the U.S. capital markets are also being penetrated by “bad actors” 1:

  • A U.S. company named YBM Magnex — which has been linked to the same
    Russian-owned
    entity, Benex Corporation, that has been accused of facilitating the money transfers via its
    Bank of New York account — was once publicly traded on the Canadian stock
    exchange    .
    According to a 19 August New York Times report on the matter, American
    officials believe
    that the YBM case “was one reflection of the success of Russian organized crime in
    infiltrating Western financial markets.”
  • On 30 August, USA Today reported a troubling — and possibly related — story
    of Bank of
    New York assistance to another questionable Russian institution, Inkombank,
    in winning
    regulatory approval to sell the Russian bank’s stock in the U.S. equity market via American
    Depository Receipts (ADR’s). It is said to have done so at a time when even Russian
    regulators had the bank under investigation    .

    According to USA Today, the bank avidly promoted
    Inkombank’s 1995-96 bid to sell
    bank shares to U.S. investors through the ADR mechanism. According to Russian
    investigators cited in the article, Inkombank had “inflated its income in 1995 by tens
    of billions of rubles” and had “violated numerous laws and accounting standards.”
    Incredible as it may seem, the bank still received permission to trade its ADR’s on the
    U.S. equity market in 1996 — even though regulators in Moscow were not the only
    ones aware of the apparent scam: The SEC and the Federal Reserve Board
    reportedly also received notice of these suspected misrepresentations,     as well as
    English translations of Inkombank’s financial reports. The bank was declared
    insolvent following the Russian financial collapse of last year.

  • According to the New York Times of 29 August, investigators suspect
    Semyon Mogilevich, a
    shadowy Russian operative who Western intelligence sources claim is “a major figure in
    Russian organized crime,” is a primary player in the money-laundering scandal. Mogilevich
    is reportedly engaged in, among other activities, international arms trafficking. As the
    Times
    noted: “An F.B.I. report on Russian organized crime said that when the Soviet Union
    withdrew its military forces from East Germany, many Russian generals sold their weapons to
    Mr. Mogilevich, who in turn sold them, at much higher prices, to countries like Iraq, Iran and
    Serbia.”

The Gore Policy Toward Russia’s Systemic Corruption: ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell’

The Center for Security Policy and its Casey Institute have long been concerned about the
apparent, if (in some cases, at least) unwitting, collusion between the Clinton-Gore
Administration and corrupt elements in both official and unofficial circles in Russia. 2 The now-unfolding scandal only serves to reinforce this
concern. The difference is that, today, it is a
widely shared apprehension.

For example, in response to a condescending call published this week in
Newsweek by Deputy
Secretary of State Strobe Talbott — one of the principal architects of the Clinton Administration’s
failed Russia policy — for the world to “calm down,” long-time Washington Post
foreign
correspondent and columnist David Ignatius wrote in today’s edition:

    The strategist Albert Wohlstetter 3 liked to
    observe that when policymakers talk
    about a “calculated risk,” it usually means they haven’t done any calculation.
    What they’re really describing is a simple gamble, a roll of the dice.     Wohlstetter’s
    remark is a useful rejoinder to recent characterizations of the Clinton administration’s
    policy toward Russia as a calculated risk — a reasoned bet that the benefits of
    economic reform would outweigh the dangers of corruption….

    It would be more reassuring if these folks told the truth: Our policy
    toward
    Russia has been a crap-shoot, and growing evidence — symbolized by recent news
    reports on the alleged $10 billion Russian money-laundering operation through
    the Bank of New York — suggests that it hasn’t worked….    The bottom line is that
    Clinton and Gore had lots of warnings about Russian corruption under Yeltsin’s
    banner of reform. And the question continues to be: Why didn’t the Administration
    do more to stop it?     (Emphasis added throughout.)

The ‘Culture of Corruption’

In addition to strengthening an already robust Russian “moral hazard” trap — Russia’s
financial
and political elite are well-versed in capitalizing on Western bailouts — the kind of
non-transparent official relationship epitomized by the secretive Gore-Chernomyrdin sessions
has served to
encourage Russia’s thriving system of corruption by refusing to penalize corrupt financial and
political behavior.

This week’s edition of the Economist gives a name to this sort of relationship
and the behavior it
spawns: a “culture of corruption,” a culture, unfortunately, that extends far beyond Russia. In a
powerful editorial, this respected journal declared:

    Far from “civilizing” the wreckage of the Soviet economy, economic transactions
    between Russia and the West are running the risk of corrupting the Western side, if
    only by forcing it to wink at practices which would be outlawed in more established
    economies. There is a particular irony in the fact that one western party is the IMF,
    whose stated purpose is to propagate virtues of sound economic policy and good
    governance. But if the IMF’s integrity has been compromised, the cause does not
    lie in its own sloppy controls; it lies in the collusion of the American and Russian
    governments     to cover up failures and press the Fund into treating Russian with
    greater generosity than its economic performance would warrant.     (Emphasis
    added.)

The Bottom Line

The multi-billion-dollar scale of this latest financial scam by global “bad actors” in
the U.S.
financial markets calls into question the SEC and other official regulators’ ability to
monitor effectively transactions involving dubious foreign entities — let alone their ability
to protect adequately U.S. investors and depositors, to say nothing of the national
interest.
Among the “follow-the-money” questions which should now be asked are: What were the
precise sources of cash profits being funneled through U.S. institutions? Which specific
individuals and/or enterprises were involved? What policy and procedural changes need to be
made to prevent a repetition of such misconduct?

It is heartening that Rep. Leach’s Banking Committee will shortly be holding hearings (at
this
point scheduled for September 21-23) at which, it is to be hoped, these and related questions
about the emerging scandal and its implications will be addressed. The Casey Institute urges the
Senate Banking Committee — and other relevant panels on Capital Hill (especially
those with
oversight responsibility for arms trafficking and proliferation matters) — to convene their own
companion hearings on this long-neglected subject. As Steve Forbes (the
1994 recipient of the
Center for Security Policy’s “Keeper of the Flame” award) observed yesterday, Vice
President
Gore should properly be among those high-level Administration officials (notably, Strobe
Talbott, Sandy Berger and Larry Summers) called to testify at such hearings.

Such hearings should also give fresh impetus to the need for legislation like “The
U.S. Market
Security Act of 1999″ (H.R. 2204), sponsored by House Banking Subcommittee
Chairman
Spencer Bachus (R-AL) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich
(D-OH). This bill would require an Office
of National Security to be established at the Securities and Exchange Commission
charged
with reporting to responsible congressional committees on a quarterly basis the names of foreign
government-connected entities seeking to enter the U.S. capital markets. Even though the
mandate of such an office would be modest and limited in scope (i.e., a far cry from undesirable
capital controls 4), it would send a needed
message to global wrong-doers that the United
States is, at long last, following the money.

1For example, the issuance of some $800 million in U.S.
dollar-denominated bonds and roughly
$2.5 billion in yen-denominated bonds by arms dealer Wang Jun’s China International Trust and
Investment Corporation.

2 For example, see the Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Clinton Legacy Watch # 33: ‘See-No-Evil’ Security
Policy-making (No. 98-D 189, 23
November 1998). It stated, in part:

    Today’s New York Times discloses that in 1995 Vice President Al Gore
    chose not to
    be ‘bothered with the facts’ — even though they called into question the premises of
    foreign policy initiative in which he and the rest of the Clinton Administration had
    hugely over-invested: a policy of U.S. ‘support’ for Russian ‘reformers’ led by
    President Yeltsin and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, no matter what. As the
    Times put it:

“When the CIA uncovered what its analysts considered to be conclusive evidence of
the
personal corruption of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin of Russia in 1995, they sent it to the
White House, expecting Clinton administration officials to be impressed with their work. Instead,
when the secret CIA report on Chernomyrdin arrived in the office of Vice President Al Gore, it
was rejected and sent back to the CIA with a barnyard epithet scrawled across its cover,
according to several intelligence officials familiar with the incident.

“At CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., the message seemed clear: The vice president did not
want to hear allegations that Chernomyrdin was corrupt and was not interested in further
intelligence reports on the matter. As a result, CIA analysts say they are now censoring
themselves.”

    But the Times report makes clear that the Russians have been making
    choices for
    years now, many of them seriously wrong. Specifically, under Prime Minister
    Chernomyrdin, the Kremlin embraced crony capitalism with a vengeance — the
    thoroughly corrupt mutant “market” system that has brought grief to economies
    throughout Asia and, most recently, in Russia itself. In fact, Chernomyrdin could have
    been the poster-child for this practice of self-dealing and -enrichment at the expense of
    the state and its citizenry.

    Obviously, the highest levels of the Administration — most especially Vice
    President Gore, Chernomyrdin’s interlocutor in a highly secretive joint
    commission — did not want to change American policy towards Russia in light of
    the thoroughly dishonest character of the government in Moscow. It did not even
    want to know about the Kremlin’s dishonesty.

3In 1993, Dr. Wohlstetter was recognized for his innumerable,
brilliant contributions to U.S.
security policy over five decades with the Center’s distinguished “Freedom Flame” award. For a
text of his remarks on that occasion, see Aspin, Woolsey Join Center in Honoring
Albert
Wohlstetter, Winner of the 1993 ‘Freedom Flame’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=93-P_81″>No. 93-P 81, 21 September 1993).

4See the following Casey Institute Perspectives
entitled Bipartisan Congressional Letter Is
Wake-up Call To State Officials Re: Portfolio Security Concerns ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=99-C_88″>No. 99-C 88, 4 August
1999); Casey Initiative to Increase Transparency Re: Bad Actors’ Efforts to
Penetrate U.S.
Capital Markets Gains Momentum (No. 99-C 80,
13 July 1999); A Job for C.F.I.U.S.:
Proposed Chinese Buy of U.S. Telecommunications Assets Needs National Security
Scrub
(No. 99-C 75, 3 July 1999); and ‘Follow the Money’:
The Next Shoe to Drop on China Scandal
Should be Its Penetration of the U.S. Bond Market (No.
99-C 57, 13 May 1999).

‘Peace in Our Time,’ Take Two

(Washington, D.C.): At this writing, the particulars of the deal struck with the Serbian
government by Strobe Talbott, Victor Chernomyrdin and the EU’s representative, Martti
Ahtisaari, remain less than clear. Still, the broad outlines conform to the deal the Center for
Security Policy critiqued on 6 May 1999, following the announcement of the so-called “G-8”
agreement in Bonn. 1 For the following reasons,
the present agreement seems exceedingly
unlikely to work out in a way that will be consistent with long-term U.S. interests:

  • Milosevic will remain in power, relegitimated and unrepentant despite
    his indictment on war
    crimes, and in a position to strike again — perhaps next in Montenegro.
  • The Russians will be rewarded for their role in brokering this deal with
    the opportunity to
    reoccupy part of Eastern Europe — at that a part they were unable to wrest from Marshal Tito
    five decades ago.

    We can only guess at what the full cost will ultimately prove to be, in political,
    strategic and economic (e.g., additional billions of dollars sluiced from the IMF and
    World Bank’s coffers into Russian bank accounts in Switzerland, Cyprus and the
    Cayman Islands and other black holes) terms.

  • It will entail the open-ended deployment of at least seven-thousand heavily armed
    U.S.
    troops     — which means, effectively three-times that number committed to the mission
    (when
    those training to go in and those who have just rotated out are included). These forces will be
    redeployed, probably permanently, from Germany. The costs of
    these deployments will,
    inevitably (at least over time), come out of the Pentagon’s hide. 2

    In addition, America’s defense resources are already being sorely depleted
    by the
    diversion of funds needed to pay for the care and feeding of the refugees (not only at
    Fort Dix, but in-theater). Replenishment of the war stocks squandered in this
    campaign will be slow in coming and probably incomplete — leaving the U.S. military
    even less prepared to deal with the real, strategically significant “contingencies” now
    in the offing.

  • As the UN Security Council will be asked to mandate the operation, that body will
    probably be the final arbiter concerning its nature and conduct     — a further sign that
    NATO’s, to say nothing of the United States’, freedom of action will be circumscribed. Let us
    be clear: The emphasis on an “international” force does not mean that NATO will avoid
    having to foot the bill, just that it will not run the show.
  • Of particular concern is the fact that U.S. forces in Kosovo will apparently
    not be under
    American command.     This only increases the danger that our deployment there will
    risk
    another Somalia debacle if it turns out not to be a “permissive” environment.

    In fact, there is little likelihood that Serb forces will completely
    leave.     (Claims that
    we will be able to verify their full departure are laughable; we don’t know how many
    are there now or their whereabouts.) Certainly, the Kosovo Liberation
    Army will
    not be completely disarmed.

    Consequently, we should expect to see American and perhaps other international
    forces caught in the cross-fire. Under those circumstances, it seems hard to
    believe that “all the refugees” will actually return home     — even if they had
    someplace to which to return.

  • Perhaps most odious of all, the American taxpayer will be obliged to pay the lion’s
    share
    of the huge costs associated with rebuilding not only Kosovo, but Serbia,
    as well. To the
    extent that Serbia remains under Milosevic’s control, such payments will amount to war
    reparations to his regime     — a moral abomination, as well as a strategic disaster.

The Bottom Line

The deal negotiated by Strobe Talbott and Slobodan Milosevic via Russian and European
intermediaries is what one would expect: A Faustian compromise that gets President Clinton off
his latest petard at a monstrous expense. NATO may never recover from its pyrrhic victory; the
U.S. military’s hollowed-out status has been enormously exacerbated; Russia’s mischievous
pass-interference for an odious client has been rewarded and encouraged; and we are poised to
provide political and economic life-support for Milosevic’s regime.

At an absolute minimum, the price for any of this going forward and enjoying
congressional
support must be the immediate removal of Milosevic and the other indicted war criminals
to stand trial in The Hague.

1 See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
‘Peace in our time’ (No. 99-D 55, 6
May 1999).

2This deployment will also doubtless be cited to justify the next
disastrous shoe to drop: a U.S.
posting of “peacekeepers” on the Golan Heights as part of a deal between Israel and Syria.

Now for an Honest Look at China

By Jim Hoagland,
The Washington Post, 13 May 2002

TOKYO–NATO says it will rain tens of thousands of rockets, bombs and shells on Serbia if
they
are needed to win the Kosovo war. But none of those deadly munitions is likely to have greater
strategic consequence than the misguided missile that destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade
last week.

The air-launched U.S. rocket blasted a final gaping hole in the shaky foundation of the
“strategic
partnership” that President Clinton has sought to construct with China’s Jiang Zemin. Jiang’s
refusal to take a call from an apologetic Clinton over their symbolic “hot line” underlines the
fragility of that overly personalized attempt to reconcile two historical and political adversaries.

Paradoxically, the diplomatic damage from the attack could yet be turned to useful purpose. It
should force the badly needed rexamination of U.S.-Chinese relations that Clinton has resisted at
every turn. A new, more realistic basis for a sustainable (if necessarily wary) cooperation now can
be established.

And the attack should remind all of the world’s major powers, including China and Russia,
how
dangerous this war has become to their own interests. It should spur them to work seriously to
end Serbia’s systematic massacre of an ethnic nation. This would allow NATO to stop its
bombing.

The initial fallout of the mistaken U.S. targeting is admittedly all cloud and no lining. There is
no
way to gloss over the personal tragedy this regrettable attack inflicted on the Chinese unfortunate
enough to have been in the embassy, and on their families and friends.

But the general Chinese reaction to that loss needs to be carefully analyzed. It comes in two
separate if related parts: genuine anger and sorrow over the bombing, and careful, cynical
orchestration of those emotions by an aging Communist leadership fearful of losing power.
Americans should not underestimate either reaction.

Both emotion and calculation are glimpsed in the shocking images of Beijing students burning
the
American flag and boisterously hurling bricks through U.S. Embassy windows as Chinese police
passively watch.

There should be no surprise at the genuine emotion sparked by the killing of Chinese citizens
by
U.S. arms, or even at the refusal of many Chinese to believe U.S. explanations of how the
accident occurred.

China has felt humiliated and abused by militarily superior colonial powers for most of this
century. Pride in the country’s economic rise in this decade and the return of Hong Kong have
mitigated China’s deep historical sense of victimization by outside powers, but they have not
erased it.

Moreover, China’s last serious, costly war — against U.S.-led forces in Korea — ended
without
clear resolution or cathartic vindication for either side. One of the mistakes of those U.S. officials
who have rushed to proclaim a strategic partnership with China has been to ignore the residue of
that experience for both sides.

American relations with Japan and Germany today illustrate how quickly wartime foes can
reconcile and become partners when the political values and interests of former foes become
genuinely compatible. There is no immutable hostility in international relations.

But in the case of China and the United States, the same political systems and types of
leadership
that directed the Korean War are still in place. On the Chinese side, some of the military men who
fought the war in Korea are still prominent in government.

China and the United States shared temporary, limited strategic interests during the Cold War.
Both faced a general Soviet threat. But today neither interests nor values bind Beijing and
Washington together in a relationship strong enough to withstand the shocks of the discovery of
wholesale Chinese theft of U.S. nuclear secrets, the mistargeted missile in Belgrade or even the
tensions that China’s widespread human rights abuses of its own citizens produce.

For all the impressive economic liberalization it has promoted, the Chinese leadership remains
totalitarian in outlook and practice. Truth, whether about what is happening in Kosovo or what
happened in Tiananmen Square a decade ago, must be controlled and organized to be useful for
the party or it is withheld or distorted. Clinton’s repeated apologies for the Belgrade error were
not relayed to the Chinese people for nearly a week because they did not fit Jiang’s purposes.

U.S.-Sino relations cloaked in an illusory “strategic partnership” are hostage to
misunderstanding,
mishap and manipulation of the kind provoked by the Belgrade embassy bombing. Better for each
side to look soberly at the true nature of the relationship and to manage it as a difficult and
basically adversarial one, in which principles and respect are more important than flattery.

Jim Hoagland is a columnist for the Washington Post.

Arafat’s Bait and Switch on Statehood: Resolution 181

(Washington, D.C.): Today is the day Yasser Arafat had announced that he would
declare a
Palestinian state. Although he chose not do it today — so as not to hand Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu a potentially winning issue in the upcoming Israeli elections, Arafat’s
agenda remains unchanged: to challenge Israel’s legitimacy, strip away its territory and
ultimately to destroy the Jewish State. Two outstanding essays describing the newest gambit in
this
long-standing campaign are printed below as contributions to the security policy debate.

‘MAY 4TH AND THE DECLARATION OF A PALESTINIAN
STATE’

By Meyrav Wurmser and Aaron Mannes,
Middle East Media &
Research Institute

The PLO’s aspiration for Palestinian statehood was the center of its political activities for the
last
decade. Nevertheless, in 1993 the PLO engaged in an interim agreement with Israel that only
granted it a limited self-rule, the final status of which remained open-ended. For the PLO, May 4,
1999, the date on which the five-year interim period ends, is the day when the PLO must return
to its primary political course and unilaterally re-declare its state. Arafat’s spokesman, said: “the
4th of May [1999] is a holy date. The Palestinian state is a finalized historic fact; the struggle
today is not for the [Palestinian] state, but over its territory. The whole world knows it and treats
us accordingly.”(1)

But, on April 29th, the PLO Central Council adjourned until June 1999, postponing the
discussion of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) until after the
Israeli elections
on May 17, 1999 due to international, (mostly American) opposition.

Nevertheless, the PLO turned its retreat into political gain. It managed to separate its
unqualified
right to a state from the bounds of negotiations with Israel (2) and it succeeded in reintroducing
UN General Assembly Resolution 181, of 1947, as the source of legitimacy for Palestinian
claims to statehood.

To Declare or Not to Declare?

Despite the fact that in 1988 the Palestinian National Council [PNC] had already declared the
State of Palestine based on UNGA Resolution 181, a declaration that was recognized by over 100
states, Palestinians say a second declaration is needed to consolidate the state’s sovereignty over
its territories.(3)

Three rationales underpinned the planned May 4th UDI. First, since no agreement was
reached
on final settlement by May 4th – the PLO would be free of the Oslo Accord’s restrictions,
particularly those enforcing the continuity of the political and legal status quo in the West Bank
and Gaza. Second, the PLO believed that by declaring a state they would change the legal status
of the territories under Israeli control from “disputed land” to “occupied land.” (4) Finally, the
PLO feared that the termination of the interim stage would create a political and judicial vacuum
in the PA territories, and that the validity of the PA, its institutions and its Chairman would
expire, making a UDI on May 4th an absolute necessity.

Most Palestinians supported the UDI. Some, primarily in the Islamic camp, opposed it
because
“a UDI prior to the liberation of all Palestinian lands would mean a concession of legitimate
Palestinian rights.” (5) Also, it would transform what remains of the Palestinian question —
Jerusalem, the refugees, land still under Israeli occupation, and the settlements — into marginal
issues.(6) Despite the fact that these arguments did not attract wide followings, Arafat worked to
turn the UDI into an issue of the broadest possible national consensus, including the Hamas
leader Sheik Yassin in the PLO Central Council’s discussions. Yassin attended despite
opposition and public criticism from the Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Jordan. Hamas
agreed to support any decision that the PLO’s Central Council makes regarding the UDI as long
as Hamas’ goal, abandonment of the Oslo accords, is fulfilled on May 4th. (8)

International Reactions

The PLO claims that international reactions to the Palestinian UDI were generally
supportive.(9)
Most states support the Palestinian UDI in principle, except the US (and Israel) who opposed any
unilateral action. This opposition was shared, as a matter of tactics only, by the EU, Egypt and
Jordan, all of which were concerned that the UDI would help reelect Netanyahu.(10)

In light of this opposition, Arafat launched a series of international meetings in an attempt to
trade postponing the UDI for a recognition of the independent Palestinian state at a later date. He
was partially successful. The EU meeting in Berlin on March 26, 1999, declared its
reaffirmation of “the continuing and unqualified Palestinian right to self-determination
including the option of a state” and announced its “readiness to consider the recognition of
a Palestinian state in due course.”(11) But, President Clinton’s letter to Arafat, a few
days
before the Central Council convened, did not go beyond his speech in Gaza [December 1998],
and evaded any reference to the term “self-determination,” which the PLO sought. Minister of
Planning and International Cooperation, Nabil Sha’ath, admitted that President Clinton’s letter
did not contain any of the expected guarantees. He added, “Guarantees would mean that the
Americans would be willing to add [to their commitment] the missiles of Kosovo, but they are
not ready to direct the missiles from Kosovo to Israel. “(12)

Expanding the Boundaries of the Future Palestinian State

The discussions of the boundaries of the future state paralleled the discussion of the UDI. In
the
last year, PLO leaders stated that the final settlement should be modeled on the UNGA
Resolution 181, (13) the Partition Resolution of 1947. Over the last five months, Resolution 181
has been transformed from a marginal demand that was only discussed in local forums in the
Palestinian Authority’s areas, to the centerpiece of PLO diplomacy in the UN and around the
world.

Once the Oslo agreements, based on 242, expire on May 4, the PLO argued, 242 should be
replaced by the preceding Resolution 181. As the PNC Chairman Salim Za’anun, said, “On May
4 the situation will return to the international [status] that Palestine had prior to the Oslo
agreement. namely [the status of] an independent Palestinian state according to 181.”(14)

On March 25, 1999 the PLO officially introduced Resolution 181 in a letter to the UN
insisting
that Israel “explain to the international community the illegal steps it took when it applied its
authority and jurisdiction to the territories it captured in the 1948 war, beyond the areas allocated
to the Jewish state in Resolution 181.” (15) On April 26, 1999 the Palestinian Legislative
Council, convening to discuss the UDI, stated that the ultimate goal of the Palestinian people, an
independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, is based “first and foremost [on] UN Resolutions
181 and 194 [Right of Return]…”(16)

PLO Central Council, having postponed the UDI until after Israel’s elections, also concluded
that
Resolution 181 is the source of legitimacy of the Palestinian state: “…a total consensus
has
been reached that the state of Palestine and its capitol, Jerusalem, is an existing reality on
the basis of the natural right of the Palestinian people to establish its state and on the basis
of Resolution 181…”(17)

The UN’s reaction to the PLO’s revival of 181 has yet to be determined. UN
Secretary-General
Kofi Annan did not confirm Arafat’s claim to have secured his “support for UN General
Assembly resolutions, including Resolution 181.”(18) In contrast, the UN Human
Rights
Commission in Geneva passed, on April 26, 1999, a resolution supporting UN Resolutions
181 and 194, while ignoring 242, 338 and the Oslo Accords.(19)

The US did not react to the PLO’s revival of Resolution 181. The official American
statement on
the Peace Process, made on April 26, 1999, ignored PLO claims based on UN Resolution 181.
The statement only reaffirmed that Resolutions 242 and 338 are the basis of the peace process.

Conclusions

By insisting on an unqualified right for a Palestinian state, Arafat managed to
separate the
issue of Palestinian statehood from the Final Settlement negotiations with Israel.
Focusing
attention on the May 4th date allowed Arafat to change the fundamental question from whether
or not the PLO could have a state, to the question of when its independence could be declared. In
exchange for postponing the UDI he received some international recognition of his right to
declare a state at a later date. In addition he managed to forge some unity within his own camp.

Removing the debate from the Oslo framework also gave the Palestinian leadership
the
opportunity to revive the Partition Plan of 1947 as a source of legitimacy for the Palestinian
state. This initiative, which allowed the Palestinians to expand their territorial claims,
also
received some international support. Stepping outside of the bilateral Oslo framework to the UN
forum opens new political options for the Palestinians. (20)

Dr. Meyrav Wurmser is the Executive Director of MEMRI. Aaron Mannes is
MEMRI’s Director
of Research.

1. Nabil Abu Rudeina, Al-Ayyam, February 16, 1999

2. Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, Nabil Sha’ath, Al-Ayyam, April 24,
1999.

3. PNC Member Mahmoud Al-‘Ajarmi, Al Quds, August 28, 1998.

4. Salim Za’anun, PNC Chairman, in an interview with UAE paper Al-Halij, reprinted by
Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, April 24, 1999.

5. Hamas spokesmen in Jordan Ibrahim Ghosha, Al-Quds, August 19, 1998.

6. MK Azmi Bishara, “4 May 1999 and the Palestinian Statehood,” Journal of Palestine
Studies,
Vol. 28, No. 2, Winter 98.

7. As a goodwill gesture towards Hamas, three Hamas activists who were involved in the
1996
suicide bombings against Israel were freed from a PA prison. “PA Frees Three 1996 Bus Bomb
Planners,” Ha’Aretz, April 27, 1999.

8. Sheik Isma’il Abu Shanab on PA TV, April 28, 1999.

9. Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, Nabil Sha’ath, Al-Ayyam, April 28,
1999.

10. David Makovsky, “If it is Good for Netanyahu then it is Bad, ” Ha’Aretz, January 19,
1999.

11.”EU Declaration on Middle East Peace Process,” from the EU’s Jerusalem Office on-line.

12. PA TV, April 28, 1999.

13. UNGA Resolution 181, granted 54% of the land is given to a Jewish state, 46% to an
Arab
state. Jerusalem was internationalized.

14. UAE paper Al-Halij, reprinted by Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, April 24, 1999.

15. “Back to 181?” Ha’aretz, Tuesday, April 27, 1999.

16. Al-Ayyam, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, and Al-Quds, April 26, 1999.

17. Al-Ayyam, April 29, 1999.

18. Reuters report, March 25, 1999

19. Ha’aretz, April 27, 1999.

20. One such option which the PLO seeks is the Namibia model. “Palestinians Reveal
Long-term
Plans,” MEMRI Special Dispatch, No.31, Apr. 23, 1999.

‘181- A DECLARATION OF WAR‘

Editorial, Ariel Center for Policy Research

In its session in Gaza on Tuesday, April 29, l999, the Palestinian National Council (PNC)
discussed the postponement of the declaration of Palestinian statehood, scheduled for May 4.
The debate centered primarily on the demand to establish a Palestinian state which will include
all territories designated as Arab land in UN Resolution 181.

For about a half a year now, the Palestinian Authority has vigorously pushed forward a
political
initiative calling for the implementation of UN Resolutions 181 (November 1947) and 194
(December 1948). In other words, fulfilling those resolutions which call for the State of Israel to
return to the partition borders and for millions of Arabs to overrun the emasculated stump which
will remain of the Jewish state.

After a series of meetings with personalities in Europe in which this matter was raised,
Arafat
met with Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the UN, on March 21, 1999 and received his
blessing. Annan claimed that Arafat’s demand was firmly anchored in the General
Assembly’s
resolutions.

After receiving the green light from the UN Secretary-General on March 25, the PLO, now
operating in its role as the Palestine Liberation Organization, submitted an official request for a
General Assembly session in which Israel be called upon to explain its violations of the UN
Resolutions. The PLO demand is supported by all of the Arab states — led by
Egypt.

Europe, at the insistent urging of Germany, the dominant force on the continent and the
nation
currently presiding over the European Union, supports the Arab demand. It was Germany which
raised the demand for the internationalization of Jerusalem by transforming it into a separate
entity (corpus seperatum) based on the partition borders. The UN Human Rights Commission (a
body which enjoys great prestige and influence), in its annual meeting in Geneva on April 28,
l999, adopted a resolution calling for self-determination for the Palestinian nation on the basis of
Resolution 181 from November 1947, and demanding that Israel fulfill Resolution 194 from
December 1948. Of the committee’s 53 member nations (Israel’s candidacy was rejected due to
the claim that Israel violates human rights), 44 voted in favor of the resolution, including all the
European nations, and 8 abstained. Though the United States voted against, it adamantly
refused to accede to the Israeli request to expend efforts to prevent the resolution’s
adoption.

As a result, within a short time, the residents of Jerusalem, Nahariya, Lod, Ramle,
Jaffa
and Beersheba, to name but a few, can anticipate their cities being labeled “illegal
settlements and obstacles to peace” by the international community. The precedent for
the
new Arab demand is a direct result of the strategic abuse to which Israel has been subjected since
1990 (better known by its sarcastic euphemism: “peace process”). From the moment that Israel
waived its basic right as an attacked nation to maintain territories which served the aggressor as a
springboard for war, the return to the partition borders and the liquidation of Israel have become
merely a function of time.

Now that all pretenses have been eliminated and the malicious Arab intentions to annihilate
the
Jewish state have been exposed, the critical mass which demands courageous action required of
any sane nation standing on the verge of a national catastrophe has crystallized. The minimal
response required to upset the Arab strategy would be to immediately announce
suspension of
the “peace process”, annexation of those parts of Judea and Samaria which have not yet
been relinquished to the Palestinian Authority, expulsion of the PLO from Jerusalem and
disarming the “Palestinian police force”.

This step will almost certainly lead to the severing of diplomatic relations with Egypt and
Jordan,
riots in Judea and Samaria and possibly economic sanctions by the European Union. Taking all
factors into account, it is a reasonable price to pay. The probability of a comprehensive war is
low, as the Arabs are unprepared at this point. On the other hand, if the Arabs decide to wage a
war, there is a reasonable chance that they would be routed, as Israel has not yet squandered its
strategic holdings in Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights.

If Israel does not take the above actions and chooses “disgrace instead of war”, ultimately, to
paraphrase Churchill (“You chose disgrace instead of war, you got disgrace and war as well.”),
Israel will get both “disgrace and war”. However, one major distinction exists: Disgrace
was
the worst that Churchill feared as he never considered the possibility that Britain might be
destroyed. The Jewish state does not have that sort of British luxury at its
disposal.