Tag Archives: John Kerry

Will Clinton Just Pay Lip-Service to the ‘Liberation’ Iraq — Or Will He Take Concerted Action to Achieve it?

(Washington, D.C.): Surprisingly few surprises have come out of the latest “crisis” with Iraq.
Indeed, the behavior exhibited by Saddam Hussein, by President Clinton and by the so-called
“international community” was absurdly predictable — and the outcome predictably ominous for
U.S. interests and the prospects for peace.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Consider a few of the non-surprises:

President Clinton is Misusing the U.S. Military: As in the past, President
Clinton employed
the U.S. armed forces in a manner that simultaneously called into question his
competence as
Commander-in-Chief and raised suspicions about his true motivation
for calling upon them at
this juncture. As regards the former, for example, Mr. Clinton telegraphed his planned attack on
Iraq so completely that Saddam was able to calibrate his latest diplomatic feint down to the
minute. This only served to reinforce the widespread perception that the Iraqi leader’s cunning
continues to permit him to run circles around the United States. (At a minimum, there is a critical
need for a review of “opsec” — measures taken to assure the security of a military operation.
Depending upon how much the Iraqis knew about the character and timing of the strike, the
mission could have been seriously compromised and American lives needlessly sacrificed.)

The perception of American haplessness is further compounded by the sense that the
President
has once again acted — this time, after the mid-term elections and in the run-up to his
impeachment hearings — for reasons having to do mostly with domestic political calculations, not
U.S. security interests. While the number of cruise missiles slated for use against Iraq was
apparently considerably higher than the strike executed a few months ago against Osama bin
Laden’s facilities in Afghanistan and the alleged chemical weapons factory in Sudan, the suspicion
that the attack twice aborted last weekend against Iraq was more “dog-wagging” only serves to
undermine America’s credibility around the world.

Iraq is Offering Up Fraudulent Assurances: Saddam Hussein has again
made empty promises
of cooperation, confident that the much-ballyhooed resolve and unanimity of the international
community would prove ephemeral, as it has so many times before. Even his first letter to
Secretary General Kofi Annan — which National Security Advisor Sandy Berger properly
described as “unacceptable” — was deemed by the Russians, Chinese, French and by Annan
himself as an adequate basis for renewing their objections to an American use of force. Suddenly,
it was the U.S. and its British allies who were once again isolated, not Saddam.

Neither is it a surprise that, having thwarted the United States one more time, the Iraqis are
now
starting to quibble about the extent of their commitments. It is equally predictable that the
UNSCOM inspectors being returned to Iraq will shortly find themselves, as ever, harried and
hampered Saddam’s officials. When that occurs, however, don’t count on an international
consensus to emerge that it is intolerable, let alone that it warrants a forcible response.

The U.S. is in No Position to Keep Deferring Military Action: There is no
surprise, either,
that this latest yo-yoing of U.S. forces to Persian Gulf is taking a tremendous toll on personnel
and equipment. Saddam correctly calculates that the Clinton Administration lacks the will, the
resources and the latitude to leave a large presence in place. Drawdowns necessitated by financial
realities, morale considerations and/or pressure from regional allies embolden Baghdad. They
also ensure that the costs associated with responding to its provocations, made under
circumstances and timing of Saddam’s choosing, become ever more prohibitive. It is not clear
how many more chances the U.S. will have before Saddam is able to deter American military
action by wielding a formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

Removing Saddam?

The one seemingly surprising turn of events in the weekend’s drama occurred when President
Clinton declared on Sunday: “…Over the long-term the best way to address [Saddam’s] threat is
through a government in Baghdad — a new government — that is committed to represent and
respect its people, not repress them; that is committed to peace in the region.” He went on to
profess that:

    “Over the past year we have deepened our engagement with the forces of change in
    Iraq, reconciling the two largest Kurdish opposition groups, beginning broadcasts of a
    Radio Free Iraq throughout the country. We will intensify that effort, working with
    Congress to implement the Iraq Liberation Act which was recently passed;
    strengthening our political support to make sure the opposition, or to do what we
    can     to make the opposition, a more effective voice for the aspirations of the Iraqi
    people.”

For those familiar with President Clinton’s modus operandi, however, even this apparent
turn-about should not be astonishing. After all, his present embrace of the Iraqi opposition —
after six years of steadfastly opposing and sabotaging their efforts to organize themselves and
their countrymen for the purpose of liberating Iraq — reeks of characteristic insincerity and
opportunism.

The fact is that leaders representing virtually the entire American political
spectrum — from
John Kerry and Joe Biden on the left to John McCain and Dick Lugar in the establishment center
to Trent Lott and Steve Forbes on the right — now agree that the United States can
settle for
nothing less than the elimination of Saddam Hussein’s regime. href=”#N_1_”>(1) The question is: Has the
President finally gotten serious about adopting such a course of action?

The Bottom Line

Unfortunately, if unsurprisingly, the answer appears to be “No.” Immediately after the
President
uttered the preceding words on Sunday, Secretary of Defense William Cohen made clear that the
President “was not calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.” Instead, Mr. Cohen said that
bringing about such a change in Iraq is merely a “long-term goal.”

President Clinton really has no choice any longer. He must get serious about ending
Saddam’s
reign of terror in Iraq — and the menace it poses to the rest of us — by starting at once to work
assiduously, overtly and through every available means to create conditions that will liberate parts
of Iraqi territory, delegitimize Saddam Hussein and make possible his ultimate removal from
power. Military action should be used to advance that end. href=”#N_2_”>(2) If we persist in failing to bring it
about, there should be little doubt that Saddam will give us a truly nasty surprise down the road.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Bipartisan Initiative to Liberate Iraq Offers
Effective Alternative to Clinton’s Unraveling Containment ‘Strategy’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_168″>No. 98-D 168, 1
October 1998), Sen. Lott Shows How and Secures Means to Topple
Saddam (No. 98-D 73, 28
April 1998) and ‘Serious Consequences’: If Clinton Means It, Here’s the Alternative
to His
Failed Strategy of ‘Containing’ Saddam (No. 98-D
33, 24 February 1998).

2. For more on the specific steps that should be taken to support the
Iraqi opposition and
encourage Saddam’s downfall, see Read Our Lips: It’s Not the Weapons, Stupid —
It’s the
Regime (No. 98-D 183, 12 November 1998).

Shame, Shame Redux: As Clinton Presidency Melts Down, 41 Democrats Continue Filibuster of Bill to Defend America

(Washington, D.C.): For the second time in four months, forty-one Senate Democrats voted
to
prevent debate on a bill that would make it the policy of the U.S. government to deploy
effective anti-missile defenses of the territory of the United States as soon as technologically
possible.(1) This legislation — known as “the
American Missile Protection Act of 1998″ (S. 1873)
— is co-sponsored by a majority of the Senate, led by Senators Thad
Cochran (R-MS) and
Daniel Inouye (D-HI). When S.1873’s proponents again fell one vote short of
the sixty votes
needed to halt this filibuster, a harsh reality became clear: Each and every one of those
who
voted to obstruct Senate action on this measure — on both 13 May href=”#N_2_”>(2) and during this
morning’s proceedings — must be personally held accountable for leaving America
vulnerable to missile attack.

Dishonor Roll

The following are the legislators who bear this appalling responsibility (Senators whose names
are
accompanied by asterisks are standing for reelection in 1998):

Max S. Baucus (D-MT)

Joseph R. Biden (D-DE)

Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)

Barbara Boxer (D-CA)*

John Breaux (D-LA)*

Richard Bryan (D-NV)

Dale Bumpers (D-AR)

Robert C. Byrd (D-WV)

Max Cleland (D-GA)

Kent Conrad (D-ND)

Thomas A. Daschle (D-SD)

Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT)*

Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND)*

Richard J. Durbin (D-IL)

Russell D. Feingold (D-WI)*

Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

Wendall H. Ford (D-KY)

John Glenn (D-OH)

Bob Graham (D-FL)*

Tom Harkin (D-IA)

Tim Johnson (D-SD)

Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA)

Robert Kerrey (D-NE)

John F. Kerry (D-MA)

Herbert Kohl (D-WI)

Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA)

Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)

Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT)*

Carl Levin (D-MI)

Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD)*

Carol Moseley-Braun (D-IL)*

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY)

Patty Murray (D-WA)*

Jack Reed (D-RI)

Harry Reid (D-NV)*

Charles S. Robb (D-VA)

John D. Rockefeller, IV (D-WV)

Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD)

Robert Torricelli (D-NJ)

Paul Wellstone (D-MN)

Ron Wyden (D-OR)*

Arguments a Majority of Senators Reject

Arrayed against this cloture-blocking minority were every Republican Senator and four
prominent
Democrats — Sens. Inouye, Fritz Hollings (SC), Joseph
Lieberman (CT)) and Daniel Akaka
(HI). By their votes, the latter demonstrated that a clear and bipartisan majority of the Senate
rejects the scare-mongering and distortions offered by the filibusterers. These include:

  • Claims made, among others, by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and
    Joseph Biden (D-DE) to
    the effect that — if the Senate adopted S.1873 — the Russians would respond by building up
    “thousands” of additional nuclear weapons, ending the possibility for future reductions in such
    arms. Most experts agree, however, that Russia would have been hard-pressed to
    maintain
    its current nuclear arsenal — let alone to expand it significantly — even before its
    current
    economic and political meltdown.     With or without additional treaties, the Kremlin will
    almost surely have to cut back the size of its strategic arms as their existing delivery systems
    reach block obsolescence and as economic, industrial and strategic considerations preclude
    their replacement on anything like a one-for-one basis. href=”#N_3_”>(3)

    • More to the point, Russia is no longer the only nuclear-armed ballistic missile-wielding
    potential adversary with whom the United States may have to contend. As a practical
    matter, even if the Russian nuclear threat were to be substantially increased,
    the
    marginal additional danger thus posed to this country would pale besides the
    menace posed by a Kim Jong-Il or Saddam Hussein brandishing just a few long-range
    missile-borne weapons of mass destruction against which the U.S. has no
    defense.

  • The laughable contention that the opponents of S.1873 are really champions of missile
    defense    . Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad
    of North Dakota have been absolutely
    steadfast in their opposition to the deployment of effective, national anti-missile systems.
    While they may try to conceal this reality from their constituents — by supporting development
    of an ABM Treaty-compliant missile defense that might at some point be based in Grand Forks
    — the reality is that any treaty-compliant system will not defend all of the United States
    and will not provide reliable defense against more than a handful of incoming missiles
    for such territory as it does protect. This sort of masquerade suggests, however, that at least
    some legislators are now starting to appreciate that there may be political
    consequences for
    opposing the deployment of missile defenses.

    • A variation on this theme was the purported desire not to deploy an inferior anti-missile
    system when a better one might be just around the corner. This subterfuge has been
    used repeatedly by opponents of missile defenses and other military hardware. It is a
    transparent scam, as anyone who understands that the only practical way to build
    defense equipment is to design, deploy and evolve it. As Senator Jim Inhofe
    (R-OK)
    noted in the course of today’s “debate,” the way to begin doing so in the missile
    defense area would be to modify the Navy’s existing AEGIS fleet air defense
    system     — an approach that offers vastly more flexible, comprehensive and effective
    anti-missile protection for both U.S. forces and allies overseas and for the American
    people — at far less cost than the so-called “3+3 deployment readiness program”
    favored by the Clintonites.(4)

  • Sen. Levin’s bizarre assertion that S.1873 was actually a “pro-proliferation bill.” If
    anything
    would be likely to dissuade rogue nations from proliferating missiles it would be the
    prospect that such missiles would be shot down.     In light of recent developments from
    Iran
    to North Korea to China to Iraq, it is a grave disservice to the debate (were one to be
    permitted to occur) to suggest that arms control is a more efficacious means of slowing, to say
    nothing of stopping, this dangerous trend.(5)

  • The canard that we should not deploy anti-missile defenses because doing so would take
    funds
    away from defenses against other delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction — from
    suitcase bombs to tramp steamers. The unpleasant truth is that the United States is not
    doing nearly enough to deal with any of these threats. Nor will it likely do so unless and
    until it abandons the posture of “assured vulnerability” that is the insidious legacy of the
    1972 ABM Treaty.

    • Just as prudent homeowners understand you need fire insurance even if you might
    experience a flood, common sense argues for ensuring that the United States has in
    place defenses against the evident weapons of choice for most of the United
    States’
    potential adversaries — ballistic missiles — as well as investing whatever is required to
    mitigate the risks of attacks from other quarters.

  • Not surprisingly, given the untenableness of these arguments — and their demonstrated lack
    of
    appeal to the American people(6) — it should come as no
    surprise that Senate opponents of
    deploying missile defenses routinely cite the authority of someone else to bolster their case. In
    late 1995, their poster-child was then-CIA Director John Deutch who, in the middle of a floor
    debate, unveiled a classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that claimed the United
    States would face no threat of missile attack for at least fifteen years. href=”#N_7_”>(7)

    • In today’s debate, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh
    Shelton
    (USA), was the man whose counsel Senators were encouraged to accept uncritically.
    Unfortunately for the country, Gen. Shelton’s advice — the equivalent of saying “Wait
    until you see the whites of their eyes before you buy the musket“     —
    bespeaks a lack
    of common sense, not to say an absence of sound military judgment.

The Bottom Line

The shameful situation in which the Senate of the United States — long reputed to be the
World’s
Greatest Deliberative Body — is effectively denied the opportunity to debate and vote on a
measure as important as the American Missile Protection Act of 1998 is most immediately the
handiwork of Sen. Levin. In his capacity as the ranking minority member of the Senate Armed
Services Committee and the most cunning of anti-defense liberals, he has served as point man and
floor-manager for the filibusterers.

The filibuster mounted against S.1873 bears, however, the unmistakable imprint of the
Clinton-Gore Administration. The Administration understands all too well, what Alan Keyes
described in
a recent interview: “There are certain topics in America where people know the instant you have
the discussion, common sense is going to win the day. So don’t present the discussion. Keep
people from focusing on this issue because once we get into it, they will be persuaded. I think
that’s true of the effort with respect to missile defense.”(8)

The fact that the Clinton Administration is able to maintain the extraordinary party discipline
necessary to leave the Nation defenseless against ballistic missile threats, in the face of so much
evidence that this posture is reckless and a potential invitation to disaster, is all the more stunning
in light of the hemorrhage of political support the President has been experiencing among Senate
Democrats — even before the arrival on Capitol Hill this afternoon of Judge Starr’s portentous
report.

As one influential congressional staffer observed in the wake of today’s failed cloture motion
on
S.1873, Senate Democrats have twice been given a chance to provide the votes needed
to
begin defending America. It will now be up to the American people to provide those votes
— and we must all pray they will do so in the election this November.

– 30 –

1. For more on the Cochran-Inouye legislation, see the Center’s
Decision Brief entitled Senate
Should Vote to Defend America ‘As Soon As Technologically Possible’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_79″>No. 98-D 79, 6 May
1998).

2. See Shame, Shame: By One Vote, Minority of
Senators Perpetuate America’s Vulnerability
to Missile Attack (No. 98-D 84, 14 May 1998).

3. See What Can Possibly Come of a Moscow
Summit Under These Circumstances? More
Reckless U.S. Disarmament (No. 98-D 150, 24
August 1998).

4. See Irate Senate Supporters of the ‘AEGIS Option’
for Missile Defense Demand Release of
Favorable Pentagon Study (No. 98-D 119, 25 June
1998), Words to Live By: Speaker Gingrich
Asks Clinton to Use Speech to the Nation to Begin Protecting It From Missile
Attack (No.
98-D 15, 23 January 1998) and Validation of the Aegis Option: Successful
Test Is First Step
From Promising Concept to Global Anti-Missile Capability ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_17″>No. 97-D 17, 29 January 1997).

5. See Critical Mass # 2: Senator Lott, Rumsfeld
Commission Add Fresh Impetus to Case for
Beginning Deployment of Missile Defenses (No. 98-D
133, 15 July 1998).

6. See House Blocks Clinton Plans to Implement New
ABM Accords as Evidence Grows of
Enormous Public Support for Missile Defense (No.
98-D 143, 7 August 1998).

7. Congressional complaints about the politicization of this study
evident in its contorted
assumptions and pre-determined conclusion and the contorted assumptions required to reach it
prompted the chartering of a blue-ribbon panel chaired by former Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld. The Rumsfeld Commission laid waste to this flawed analysis and concluded that the
United States may already face a “zero-warning” missile threat. (For more on this
NIE, see the
Center’s Transition Brief entitled It Walks Like A Duck:
Questions Persist that Clinton CIA’s
Missile Threat Was Politically Motivated (No.
96-T 122, 4 December 1996).

8. This interview is one of dozens conducted in connection with a
documentary about America’s
vulnerability to ballistic missile attack currently being prepared by the Center for Security Policy.
For more information about this important project, contact the Center.

Shame, Shame: By One Vote, Minority of Senators Perpetuate America’s Vulnerability to Missile Attack

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, forty-one Senators — all Democrats — voted to block a
motion
to permit debate on S. 1873, the American Missile Protection Act of 1998.
This bipartisan
legislation, co-sponsored by Senators Thad Cochran (R-MS) and
Daniel Inouye (D-HI),
would, for the first time in history, make it the policy of the U.S. government “to deploy
effective anti-missile defenses of the territory of the United States as soon as technologically
possible.”(1)

As a result of the filibuster led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), a majority of
fifty-nine of his
colleagues — every Republican Senator and four respected Democrats, Sens.
Inouye*, Fritz
Hollings* (SC), Joseph Lieberman (CT) href=”#N_2_”>(2) and Daniel Akaka (HI) — were denied the
opportunity to debate S. 1873 and, presumably, to have it approved by the Senate. The following
were the forty-one who heeded the urging of the Clinton Administration, ensuring the legislative
sandbagging of this critical bill:

Max S. Baucus (D-MT)
Joseph R. Biden (D-DE)
Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
Barbara Boxer (D-CA)*
John Breaux (D-LA)*
Richard Bryan (D-NV)
Dale Bumpers (D-AR)
Robert C. Byrd (D-WV)
Max Cleland (D-GA)
Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Thomas A. Daschle (D-SD)*
Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT)*
Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND)*
Richard J. Durbin (D-IL)
Russell D. Feingold (D-WI)*
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Wendall H. Ford (D-KY)*
John Glenn (D-OH)
Bob Graham (D-FL)*
Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Tim Johnson (D-SD)
Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA)
Robert Kerrey (D-NE)
John F. Kerry (D-MA)
Herbert Kohl (D-WI)
Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA)
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT)*
Carl Levin (D-MI)
Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD)*
Carol Moseley-Braun (D-IL)*
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY)
Patty Murray (D-WA)*
Jack Reed (D-RI)
Harry Reid (D-NV)*
Charles S. Robb (D-VA)
John D. Rockefeller, IV (D-WV)
Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD)
Robert Torricelli (D-NJ)
Paul Wellstone (D-MN)
Ron Wyden (D-OR)*

* Senators in bold with an asterix are standing for re-election in 1998.

The arguments made against the Cochran-Inouye legislation ran the gamut from the absurd to
the
ridiculous. For example, some of the same Senators who were willing within the past
fortnight to vote for NATO enlargement — even though Russian officials swore that doing
so would doom the START II Treaty’s chances in the Duma — stridently argued that S.
1873 had to be rejected lest it have that effect. Then there was the argument advanced
by Sen.
Levin that it would be too soon to make a commitment to deploy ballistic missile defenses
because the U.S. intelligence community would be able to provide at least three years warning of
any threat that would necessitate such a deployment. Incredibly, this vote of confidence in the
prescience and infallibility of U.S. intelligence was being heard even as the
Senate was in full cry
over the CIA’s failure to anticipate the Indian nuclear test!

The Bottom Line

Despite this latest setback, yesterday’s Senate action on the American Missile
Protection Act
represents great progress in what might be called the “longest-sought, hardest-fought”
national security issue of the past 15 years: the campaign to end the United States’
vulnerability to missile attack. Not so long ago, only a relative handful of legislators could be
counted upon to vote to defend America. Today there is a clear, strong bipartisan majority in the
Senate for doing so.

It will not escape the notice of the voters in the states of those names bolded above
that
their Senator was the decisive vote. But for his or her adherence to the party line laid
down by
the Clinton Administration and enforced by the Senate’s Democratic Caucus — with the laudable
exception of the four courageous men who broke ranks to put the national interest before that of
their leadership — the Cochran-Inouye bill would be on its way to becoming law. The record is
now clear as to who is responsible for perpetuating America’s vulnerability, an act that cannot be
forgiven and will not be forgotten next November.

– 30 –

1. For more on the Cochran-Inouye legislation, see
Senate Should Vote to Defend America ‘As
Soon As Technologically Possible’ (No. 98-D 79, 6
May 1998).

2. Sen. Lieberman’s vote was particularly noteworthy insofar as his
position was unclear when
the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 10-7 to recommend the Senate’s adoption of S.
1873 on 24 April 1998.

Sovereignty Surrender Watch # 2: Clinton Multilateralism Eroding American Interests, Rights on All Fronts

(Washington, D.C.): The disastrously ill-conceived deal brokered with Saddam
Hussein by UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan is bad enough. Worse yet is the fact that the Clinton
Administration actively aided and abetted this diplomatic non-solution — the latest proof of its
readiness to surrender U.S. sovereignty in pursuit of mindless multilateralism.

We now know that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her subordinates are fully
implicated in the orchestration and execution of this debacle that has bought Saddam Hussein time
and complicated further the one course of action that everyone from conservative Republican
Steve Forbes to liberal Democrat John Kerry understands has any chance of improving the
situation: the overthrow of Saddam’s regime. href=”#N_2_”>(2)

Unfortunately, the problem is much larger than one odious instance of, in Senate Majority
Leader
Trent Lott’s memorable turn of phrase, “contracting out U.S. foreign policy to the United
Nations.” The fact is that this Administration is subordinating American sovereignty in myriad
ways, to the detriment of our national interests and the rights inherent in our representative form
of government.

The UN ‘Debt’ Scam

For starters, consider the question of the “debt” the U.S. is said to owe the UN. The Clinton
team rarely misses an opportunity to join those who demean the United States for being “the
world’s biggest deadbeat” for failing to clean up some $1.3 billion in American arrears on
“assessments” by the international body. This assertion has recently been used to excuse the
UN’s diffidence to (or, more accurately, its contemptuous undermining of) Washington’s policies
towards Iraq.

The truth is that the U.S. does not owe the United Nations a dime. If anything, the
UN owes
us money, perhaps billions of dollars. According to a Congressional Research
Service study
undertaken at the request of Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, Republican of Maryland, the United States has
paid more than $11 billion for international peacekeeping operations for which it has received
little or no credit from the United Nations.(3)

Even now, for example, the United States is maintaining a substantial military presence in the
Persian Gulf for the purpose, the Clinton team incessantly declares, of ensuring Iraqi compliance
with various UN resolutions. Indeed, in the course of Secretary General Kofi Annan’s
self-congratulatory press conference following his mission to Baghdad, he called President Clinton
and
British Prime Minister “perfect peacekeepers” for the role their credible threat of force made to
his diplomatic “success.”

Although this operation is estimated to have cost the Pentagon as much as $750 million to
date,
such “perfect peacekeeping” is considered a voluntary service by the United States,
not an in-kind
contribution to the UN. Even the nearly $5 billion (by some estimates it is closer to $7 billion)
spent by the U.S. for peacekeeping in Bosnia — an operation specifically mandated by the UN
Security Council — is not credited to our account. Yet it is money that is unavailable to the
Defense Department for necessary readiness and modernization, compounding the deleterious
effect peacekeeping has on the fighting trim and morale of the U.S. military.

MAI Day

Scarcely less injurious to U.S. sovereignty and interests is the secretive effort the Clinton
Administration has been making for the past few years to negotiate a Multilateral Agreement on
Investment (MAI). This accord — which is said to be roughly 90% complete — would
ban any
restrictions on the movement of capital. It would require that all sectors of the U.S.
economy
(including the national security-sensitive broadcasting and natural resource industries) be opened
to foreign ownership. The MAI would require that foreign investors be made whole when their
assets have been expropriated, including as a result of “unreasonable” regulation.

The Multilateral Agreement on Investment would also compel the vitiation of U.S.
laws
that prohibit certain investments overseas, such as those aimed at curbing financial
assistance to the pariah Cuban and Iranian regimes. And the MAI would oblige this
country
to give “national treatment” to foreign investment offerings,
even if their purpose is inimical
to American interests (for example, to raise capital for the Chinese or Russian military-industrial
complexes).(4)

Last, but hardly least, dispute resolution under the MAI would be the responsibility of
international tribunals, rather than American courts. Subordination of U.S. sovereignty in this
manner is a particularly troublesome hallmark of the multilateralizers’ efforts. As the International
Court of Justice’s recent ruling in favor of Libya with regard to the Pan Am 103 bombing vividly
demonstrates, justice surrendered to foreign entities may be justice denied.

Enviro-Supranationalism

Then there is the matter of the Commission for Environmental
Cooperation, a tri-national
creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). At the request of an American
environmental organization, this commission has decided that it has to investigate the water
management problems of the Arizona city of Sierra Vista and its surrounding area. That
area
happens to include Fort Huachuca, an Army intelligence base in the desert. href=”#N_5_”>(5)

The local community is understandably concerned that, on the pretext of assessing the impact
on
migratory birds overflying the region — a matter having nothing to do with trade between the
United States, Canada and Mexico — foreign nationals will be able to demand and obtain access
even to sensitive U.S. military facilities. Sound familiar? Under the Chemical Weapons
Convention it forced through the Senate last year, the Clinton Administration has given
international inspectors bent on espionage for commercial or strategic purposes the right to
conduct intrusive visits to any site in the country.(6) It now
proposes to compound the problem by
authorizing inspections in connection with the still-less-verifiable Biological Weapons
Convention.(7)

The Bottom Line

It is time for a moratorium on further Clinton-approved infringements on American
sovereignty.
Conceptualizing the need for such a step — let alone figuring out a way to accomplish it
legislatively — will only be possible, however, if Members of Congress are able to recognize that
these and other examples are just symptoms of the syndrome of mindless
multilateralism. As
troubling as such examples are, corrective actions to be effective must be aimed at the underlying
malady as well.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Will 1998 Be the ‘Year of Surrendered
Sovereignty’? (2. See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
This Is The Time To ‘Bash’ –Or At Least
Repudiate –The UN; Bipartisan, Bicameral Consensus Emerges That Saddam Must
Go (No.
98-D 36, 24 February 1998) and ‘Serious Consequences’: If Clinton Means It,
Here’s the
Alternative to His Failed Strategy of ‘Containing’ Saddam ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_33″>No. 98-D 33, 24 February 1998).

3. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Credit Where It Is Due: Rep. Bartlett Should Be
Commended, Supported For His Efforts to Show the UN Owes U.S. Money ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_123″>No. 97-D 123,
1997).

4. See the Casey Institute’s Perspective entitled
Sen. D’Amato’s Committee Serves Notice On
Those Who Aid And Abet U.S. Adversaries: No Fund-Raising On American
Markets (No. 97-C 161, 30 October 1997).

5. This is hardly the only instance of a multilateral environmental
agreement impinging upon U.S.
national security. For a discussion of the impact of the Kyoto Treaty see the Center’s Casey
Institute Perspective entitled The Senate Must Insist on an
Early Vote on the Kyoto Treaty
(No. 97-C 193, 15 December 1997).

6. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
C.W.C. Watch # 2: After First Six Months, Fear
About Treaty’s Unverifiability, Unjustified Costs & Ineffectiveness Vindicated
(No. 97-D 163,
1 November 1997).

7. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Clinton Legacy Watch # 18: Assured U.S.
Vulnerability in the Face of a Burgeoning Biological Warfare Threat ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_30″>No. 98-D 30, 20
February 1998).

This Is The Time to ‘Bash’ — Or At Least Repudiate — The U.N.; Bipartisan, Bicameral Consensus Emerges That Saddam Must Go

(Washington, D.C.): In light of press reports that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was,
to a
considerable degree, responsible for the disastrous agreement negotiated by Kofi Annan (her pick
for UN Secretary General), her testy response to mounting criticism of that Faustian deal is
understandable, if indefensible. Still, her defensiveness cannot conceal the emerging reality,
however: Practically everyone with any common sense — from left to right on the political
spectrum — understands that the “business” the Secretary General takes such pride in
having
done with Saddam Hussein is at our expense and a prime example of the dangers of
mindless multilateralism practiced by Messrs. Clinton and Annan and by Mrs.
Albright.

If Not Now, When?

In a press conference following her rather tempestuous testimony before the House
Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary, Mrs.
Albright declared:

    “…This is not a time to bash the United Nations. This is a time to
    understand that
    this agreement is a useful one that needs to have some clarifications. We are dealing
    with those issues and…the proof of it is in the testing. So I think that it is important for
    us to test what the Secretary General brought back. That is what we’re going to do.
    And I think it is — I just have to say that in no way has the United States given away
    anything. We have, in fact, I think, gained, because we have — Saddam Hussein has
    reversed course, and we still have all the options open to us if he fails the test.”

The attached articles, which appeared on the op.ed. page of the Washington Post
over the
past two days, offer powerful rebuttals to the Secretary. They were written, respectively, by
Michael Kelly of the liberal National Journal and href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_36at2″>William Kristol and Robert Kagan of the
conservative Weekly Standard. Despite their differing vantage points, these
thoughtful essayists
share a virtually identical bottom line: The United Nations deserves its fair share of the
blame
for the Annan debacle, but the preponderance of responsibility lies with the Clinton
Administration and its failed policy of containment of Saddam.

As Messrs. Kristol and Kagan put it: “Bad as this deal is…it is the logical conclusion of a
policy
of containment. Seven years of such policies have proven that, in the end, ‘containment’
of
Saddam cannot be sustained, diplomatically, financially or militarily. Over time,
containment of Saddam becomes ‘detente,’ and eventually detente becomes
appeasement.“

The Swelling Call for a Different Strategy — The Overthrow of
Saddam

In recent days, anger over the Clinton Administration’s doomed containment policy has been
expressed from many quarters of Capitol Hill. Particularly noteworthy were remarks by
Senate
Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) delivered yesterday on the
Senate floor. Highlights of Sen.
Lott’s critique included the following:

  • “The deal negotiated by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan with Iraq does not adequately
    address the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. After years of denying that Saddam Hussein had
    any right to determine the scope of inspections or the makeup of inspection teams, this
    agreement codifies his ability to do both. It is, to quote one diplomat, ‘the beginning of the
    unraveling of the inspection process.’

  • “All Americans, and I’m sure people all around the world, are pleased when military force
    can
    be avoided, when our men and women in uniform are not put in harm’s way, and when
    innocent civilian lives are not put at risk. But we must be clear: We cannot afford peace
    at
    any price — peace that could lead to a much more difficult conflict later on down the
    road.
  • “It is always possible to get a deal if you give enough away.

  • “The Secretary General is calling the shots. The United States is not. Secretary Albright
    earlier
    this week objected to my characterization of this episode as ‘contracting out U.S. foreign
    policy.’ With all due respect, I stand by that comment, because it appears that in fact is what
    has happened.

  • “Let’s look at what [Secretary General Annan] has said. ‘Saddam can be trusted.’ ‘I
    think I
    can do business with [Saddam].’ ‘I think [Saddam] was serious.’     These are all direct
    quotes. The Secretary General told reporters he spent the weekend building a ‘human
    relationship’ with Saddam Hussein….These comments are outrageous. They reflect
    someone bent on appeasement     — not someone determined to make the United Nations
    inspection regime work effectively.

    • “The Secretary General thinks that he can trust the man who has invaded his neighbors,
    who has used chemical weapons ten times, and who tried to assassinate former
    President George Bush. This is folly. I cannot understand why the Clinton
    Administration would place trust in someone devoted to building a ‘human
    relationship’ with a mass murderer.

  • “The United States has not yet formally announced its support for the deal negotiated by
    Secretary General Annan. It is not too late to reject a deal if it leaves Saddam Hussein
    rejoicing and leaves UNSCOM out in the cold.    “(1)

On the other side of Capitol Hill, a member of the House leadership —
Republican Policy
Committee Chairman Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA) — announced yesterday that
Congress
would seek funding to implement a program designed to remove Saddam from power.
For,
as Rep. Cox, the 1997 recipient of the Center’s “Keeper of the Flame” award, put it: “A policy
based on Saddam Hussein remaining in power indefinitely is doomed to failure.”

Rep. Cox correctly observed that, “A thoughtful policy toward Iraq involves an
active effort
to deal with the root of the problem — not just weapons of mass murder, but the sadistic
despot who has already used them against his own people…. Neither Iraq’s people nor
its
neighbors can enjoy lasting security while Saddam Hussein remains in power.” href=”#N_2_”>(2)

Leading Democrats Agree: Saddam Must Go

The call for a change in policy towards Iraq has also found support among leading
Democratic
Members of Congress. Particularly noteworthy were remarks by two former Vietnam veterans
now serving in the United States Senate:

  • Senator Bob Kerrey (D-NE): “We need a mission that puts
    us in the gap, not just to reduce
    the threat, but to liberate a people and make a whole region secure and
    prosperous….The
    best way to deal with this threat is to remove it completely by replacing this dictatorship
    with a democracy.”
  • Senator John Kerry (D-MA): “I think there is a disconnect
    between the depth of the threat
    that Saddam Hussein presents to the world and what we are at the moment talking about
    doing. If indeed he is as significant a threat, as you heard him characterized by the president,
    the secretary of state, the secretary of defense — can threaten London, threaten the peace of
    the Middle East, that he is really a war criminal who is already at war with the civilized world
    — then we have to be prepared to go the full distance, which is to do everything possible
    to disrupt his regime and to encourage the forces of democracy.” href=”#N_3_”>(3)

The Bottom Line

These prominent Americans, who may disagree on many other issues, have all recognized the
error of Mrs. Albright’s contention that bringing about conditions which would precipitate the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein “would require a far greater commitment of military force, and a
far greater risk to American lives, than is currently needed to contain the threat Saddam poses.” href=”#N_4_”>(4)
They are to be commended for rejecting the policy of appeasement that has evolved from the
unsustainable and rapidly mutating strategy of containing Saddam.

It is now time for those who subscribe to the necessity of liberating Iraq from the
tyranny
imposed upon it by Saddam and his clique to join forces behind a specific program of
political and military action. Such a program — which was elegantly outlined in a
recently
released Open Letter to the President circulated by former Democratic Rep. Stephen Solarz and
former Reagan Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle href=”#N_5_”>(5) — would involve the empowering
and legitimating of a provisional government of Iraq and the delegitimating and undermining
Saddam Hussein’s regime. It is to be hoped that this formula will be drawn upon by Rep. Cox
and other legislators of both parties who share his determination to protect American interests
from the mismanagement of the Clinton Administration and the not-so-tender mercies of the UN
multilateralists.

– 30 –

1. Senator Trent Lott (R-MS), Floor speech, 105th Congress, 2nd
Session, 25 February 1998.

2. News release, House Republican Policy Committee, 25 February 1998.

3. Senator Kerry appearing on ABC This Week, February 22, 1998.

4. Testimony before the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State
and Judiciary of the House Appropriations Committee, 25 February 1998.

5. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
‘Serious Consequences’: If Clinton Means It,
Here’s The Alternative To His Failed Strategy of ‘Containing’ Saddam ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_33″>No. 98-D 33, 24
February 1998).

‘Serious Consequences’: If Clinton Means It, Here’s the Alternative to His Failed Strategy of ‘Containing’ Saddam

(Washington, D.C.): If the past seven years have taught us nothing else, one lesson is clear:
Saddam will never permit his weapons of mass destruction programs to be permanently
eliminated. As a result, the agreement forged by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is
doomed
to fail. To be sure, Saddam may comply with the agreement initially — during the period when
President Clinton is “testing” his compliance. This is particularly true to the extent that there
continue to be indications that the sanctions regime will be lifted. In due course, however, Iraqi
cheating will occur. It will involve interference with the inspection regime (at first at the margin,
then in material ways) and/or circumventing it via continued covert production and stockpiling of
chemical, biological and/or nuclear arms and weapons with which to deliver them.

Thus, even if there were no new problems arising from the language of the text or the
as-yet-unfinished “detailed procedures” — and there certainly appear to be grounds for serious
concern
about at least some of these scores(1) — the UN-brokered
deal would be a mug’s game for the
United States. America’s vital interests in the Persian Gulf and beyond will not be safeguarded by
this new Chamberlainesque formula for “peace in our time.” The aggressive multilateralists who
evince such sympathy for Saddam’s sensibilities about Iraqi “sovereignty” and security cannot be
relied upon to look after ours.

It behooves the United States to pursue a dramatically different course. And there is
an
emerging consensus that Saddam Hussein and his ruling clique must be removed from
power. Even one of the U.S. Senate’s most liberal members, Sen. John Kerry
(D-MA),
endorsed this idea in an interview on ABC New’s “This Week” program last Sunday. He said:
“We have to be prepared to go the full distance, which is to do everything possible to disrupt
[Saddam’s] regime and to encourage the forces of democracy.”

For several months, Steve Forbes — an ever-more influential figure in
Republican circles — has
been arguing for a similar course of action. Yesterday, he endorsed the href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_33at”>attached letter for
implementing the program that has been developed by a distinguished bipartisan group led by
former Representative Stephen Solarz, Democrat from New York, and
President Reagan’s
Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, Richard Perle.

The Bottom Line

Yesterday, President Clinton declared that “Whether [the policy of containing Saddam]
should
continue to be our strategy depends in no small measure, I believe, on whether this agreement is
honored.” Since this agreement will not be honored, the building blocks for
implementing the
strategy recommended by the Solarz-Perle group and Steve Forbes — starting with the
establishment of a provisional government drawing upon the principles and leaders of the Iraqi
National Congress — should be implemented at once.

– 30 –

1. These include the expanded opportunity provided for Russian and
other diplomats sympathetic
to Iraq to sabotage the work of the newly constituted “Special Group” and the UNSCOM
inspectors. This has been a serious problem, to date, as noted in the Center’s Decision
Brief
entitled Accept No Substitutes: Clinton Address on Iraq Signals Continuing Failure
to Grasp
Need for Toppling Saddam (No. 98-D 29, 17
February 1998).

2002 National Security Scorecard

(Washington, D.C.): The Center for Security Policy today released an important contribution to accountable government — its second annual National Security Scorecard. This scorecard evaluates 20 key votes in each chamber and gives every legislator a CSP rating for the first session of the 104th Congress. Highlights include: the list of Senators and Representatives who received perfect ratings of 100% (nine and eighty-four, respectively); the sizeable number of freshmen Members of Congress who received this distinction (three in the Senate and twenty-seven in the House); and the seven U.S. Senators up for re-election who received a score of less than 30% (Sens. Max Baucus, Joseph Biden, Tom Harkin, John Kerry, Carl Levin, Jay Rockefeller and Paul Wellstone).

 

National Security Measures: Tallying The Score

 

The forty key votes tracked for the CSP National Security Scorecard span the spectrum of security policy issues. Among those examined were votes intended to: cut critical defense spending (including funds earmarked for ballistic missile defense, the B-2 stealth bomber, the F-22 advanced tactical fighter aircraft and nuclear weapons research, including critical tritium production); lift the immoral and counter-productive arms embargo against Bosnia; limit the control exerted by the U.N. over U.S. armed forces; strengthen economic sanctions against Cuba and encourage democratic reforms in that communist country; and cut funding for intelligence-related programs.

 

A CSP National Security rating of 100 indicates that the elected official consistently cast his or her vote in a manner supportive of national security on these representative issues. By contrast, a score of 0 indicates that the member did not support U.S. national security in any of the test votes.

 

Honor Roll

 

The nine Senators who received a perfect 100 score — indicating the greatest commitment to the security of our Nation — are: Larry Craig of Idaho, D.M. (Lauch) Faircloth of North Carolina, Phil Gramm of Texas, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Dirk Kempthorne of Idaho, Center Board of Advisors member and recipient of its 1994 "Keeper of the Flame" award Jon Kyl of Arizona, Don Nickles of Oklahoma, Fred Thompson of Tennessee and John Warner of Virginia.

 

Among those in the House of Representatives receiving a score of 100 are: Center Board of Advisors members Christopher Cox of California and Henry Hyde of Illinois; House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia; Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas; the chairmen of the National Security Committee’s Military Personnel, Military Installations and Facilities and Military Procurement subcommittees (respectively, Bob Dornan of California, Joel Hefley of Colorado and Duncan Hunter of California); and the chairmen of the International Relations Committee’s Western Hemisphere and International Operations subcommittees (respectively, Dan Burton of Indiana and Christopher Smith of New Jersey).

 

What a Difference a Year Makes!

 

As it happens, the release of the Center’s National Security Scorecard coincides with the publication in yesterday’s Washington Post of an article suggesting that the large bloc of Republican newcomers to Congress is less committed to robust security policies than were its predecessors. When the standard utilized for evaluating the sentiments of the 104th Congress in these areas is defined properly — namely, in terms of the enhancement and judicious use of U.S. power in the service of protecting Americans’ security at home and advancing their interests abroad — it is clear that this Congress scores very favorably.

 

For example, only 43 legislators in the 103rd Congress achieved a perfect CSP National Security Rating, in contrast to the 93 who did so in the first session of the 104th Congress. During the 103rd Congress 13 Representatives and Senators — including Reps. Ron Dellums of California and Pat Schroeder of Colorado and Sen. Dale Bumpers of Arkansas — achieved the distinction of garnering a 0 score; during the 104th Congress, 1st Session only two legislators garnered a 0 score: Rep. John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan (the only Member of Congress to score a zero in both scorecards) and retiring Sen. Clairborne Pell of Rhode Island. The average score of all Representatives for the 103rd Congress was 52; in 1995, it rose to 62. The counterpart statistics for the Senate side are 51 in the 103rd Congress and 57 for 1995.

 

Thus, the trend is clearly in the right direction, although considerable progress remains to be made. The Center for Security Policy hopes to encourage such progress by educating the American people — through the distribution of its National Security Scorecard and via its many other publications — about the records of their representatives with respect to vital national security issues. By so doing, it expects to encourage greater accountability on the part of Members of Congress for their votes in this field and, in turn, to assure better performance in the future.

 

 

To view the full version of the 1995 National Security Scorecard click on the following link: Full 1995 Scorecard (PDF)

NOT ‘GOOD ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK’: SENATE NEEDS TO HEAR ABOUT RUSSIAN CHEMICAL WEAPONS FROM RUSSIAN EXPERTS

(Washington, D.C.): Tomorrow afternoon the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee will take secret testimony
from senior Clinton Administration officials concerning
Russian violations of agreements concerning the
development and stockpiling of chemical and biological
weapons and its likely violation of the Chemical Weapons
Convention (CWC) now awaiting Senate advice and consent.
The Center for Security Policy has long urged the Senate
to give these issues close examination prior to acting on
the CWC(1); it
welcomes this hearing as the first step toward doing so.

Tomorrow’s hearing must, however, be followed
by at least one more session — a
hearing that should be held in an unclassified setting so
that the American people might have an opportunity to
learn first-hand about the facts in this area. The
witnesses for such a hearing should not be American
officials providing guesses and other intelligence
assessments about what Moscow is up to or conveying
assurances about Russian compliance tendered by President
Yeltsin in the course of last week’s summit.

Hear From the Real Authorities

Instead, testimony should be taken from
Russian scientists who have been directly involved in the
Kremlin’s ongoing chemical and biological warfare
programs. In particular, the Senate should ensure that it
hears from Vil Mirzayanov, an individual who —
like Andrei Sakharov — broke with his employers in the
old Soviet military-industrial complex to protest its
misdeeds and alert the West to the peril they represent.
Mr. Mirzayanov is the subject of a stunning profile by
Michael Waller published in the October 1994 editions of Reader’s
Digest. No responsible U.S. Senator could
read that article and not insist upon an opportunity to
discuss Russia’s frightening and ongoing efforts
to develop ever more effective, undetectable and deadly
chemical agents. And no Senator can responsibly consider
voting on the Chemical Weapons Convention without having,
at a minimum, read Mr. Mirzayanov’s story.

Fortunately, on 9 June 1994, the Foreign Relations
Committee’s ranking member, Sen. Jesse Helms
(R-NC) served notice — in the course of the one hearing
the Committee held with critics of the CWC — that he
would insist on just such a hearing. In response to
testimony on this point by the Center for Security
Policy’s director, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Sen. Helms
said:

“This hearing should not be the end of it,
base on what you have just said. And I thoroughly
agree with you on that. [Mr. Gaffney] made the
suggestion that we have a further hearing. And I
agree with that. I will formally request such a
meeting in writing, Mr. Chairman.”

Sen. Helm’s concerns — and those of other responsible
legislators — should only be amplified by three newly
released documents: a 202-page critique of the Chemical
Weapons Convention issued by the Senate Intelligence
Committee, which is properly alarming on the question of
the unverifiability of this agreement; href=”#N_2_”>(2) a withering
12-page analysis of the Convention by the Senate
Republican Policy Committee; and an unclassified report
to Congress by the Clinton Administration which confirms
that it has “concerns” about the continuing
Russian work in the chemical and biological weapons
arenas, about the accuracy of Moscow’s representations
regarding such work and about the erroneous data supplied
concerning the former Soviet Union’s massive chemical and
biological weapons stockpiles.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy believes that tomorrow’s
hearing will represent an important test of the
conscientiousness of members of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee: In the first place, will
they exhibit sufficient concern about their
responsibilities to provided informed advice and consent
to treaties even to attend that session? And,
more importantly, will they have the intellectual rigor
and honesty to insist, along with Senator Helms, that
people who really know what is going on with the Russian
chemical and biological weapons programs be called to
testify as well?

The Center notes that two leading Democratic members
of the Foreign Relations Committee — Sens. John
Kerry (MA) and Daniel Patrick Moynihan
(NY) — along with Sen. Bill Bradley
(D-NJ) previously expressed concerns in writing about Mr.
Mirzayanov’s fate when it appeared that he might be
subjected to brutal Stalinist “justice” for his
revelation of “state secrets.” It can
only be hoped that such constructive Senatorial
intervention will extend to hearing what Mr. Mirzayanov
has to say, not just to his safeguarding his right to say
it at home.

– 30 –

1. The most recent example of this
effort is contained in the href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-D_100at”>attached op.ed. article
by the Center’s director, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.,
published in the 29 September 1994 Wall Street
Journal.

2. The Intelligence Committee
states, for example, that it “largely
accepts the Intelligence Community’s pessimistic
assessment of U.S. capability to detect and identify a
sophisticated and determined violation of the Convention,
especially on a small scale….It is likely that some
countries that ratify the CWC will seek to retain an
offensive chemical weapons capability. While it is
unlikely that they would do so by diverting declared CW
stocks, the covert stockpiling agent or munitions could
well occur.”

‘VOODOO FOREIGN POLICY’: HOW NOT TO INVADE HAITI

In 1980, George Bush introduced into
the political lexicon a term with real
staying power. To this day, America’s
political elite delights in using the
Bush phrase “voodoo economics”
to deride Ronald Reagan’s supply-side
theories of painless deficit reduction
through tax cut-induced economic growth.

One could be forgiven for expecting
that the same elite would exhibit no less
skepticism about what can only be called
“voodoo foreign policy” — the
idea that a U.S.-led invasion of Haiti to
put Jean-Bertrand Aristide back in power
will “restore” democracy to
that troubled island and do so virtually
painlessly.

Fact Versus Fiction

To be sure, if ordered to do so, even
the increasingly demobilized
American military will be able to invade
Haiti.(1)
The sort of “massive” use of
force being called for by Sens. John
Kerry (D-MA) and Bob Graham (D-FL), among
others, should enable the seizure of all
key facilities within very short order.
Of course, doing so may entail casualties
— quite possibly in excess of the
eighteen that proved an unacceptable
price to pay for American
“nation-building” in Somalia.

What is more, a credible case can be
made that it is in the United States’
interest to undertake an invasion of
Haiti. That case would not,
however, be based on the contention that
Haiti is a major transfer point for
narcotics trafficking. This assertion is
apparently being manufactured out of
whole cloth so that the Panama
precedent for U.S. military action
against drug-dealing despots might be
cited. The one place in the world
through which drugs are exceedingly
unlikely to be reaching the United States
at the moment is the embargoed, blockaded
island of Haiti.

National Interest

Instead, a respectable case
for invading Haiti would rest on the fact
that the United States has a legitimate
national interest in finding a more
humane and effective means of stanching
the human hemorrhage from Haiti, a
tragedy that is imposing great costs on
American taxpayers and communities
obliged to deal with it.
Arguably, economic and political
conditions on the island needed to
encourage people to stay, rather than
flee, cannot be created absent the
termination of repressive military rule.

But two conclusions follow from this
contention:

First, if the U.S. interest is
indeed so compelling as to justify the
possible loss of American lives and the
expenditure of additional national
treasure associated with
invading Haiti, then this country must be
prepared to act alone. The
blessings of multilateral institutions
may or may not be desirable — depending
on the price we must pay to obtain them
— but, in the end, if the job is worth
doing, the United States has to be
willing to do it itself.

Such a proposition is, however,
anathema to the Clinton’s foreign policy
team. They want no part of unilateral
military action and profess a willingness
to consider an invasion of Haiti only
if it is sanctioned by the U.N. or the
Organization of American States and if
other nations are prepared to send
troops, too. At this writing, people like
Morton Halperin — the NSC’s point man on
“democracy” — are in a pickle,
however, since the French, Canadians and
others with an interest in Haiti have
refused to contemplate the use of force
there.

A second and related point is that, if
the United States has enough at stake to
oblige it for the second time this
century to invade Haiti, it had better
plan on being there for a long time.
There can be no cutting and running after
we have “restored order” à
la Somalia. There can be no fobbing
off on the United Nations or others the
daunting responsibility for creating —
to say nothing of sustaining — the
political and economic institutions
necessary to a stable society in Haiti.

What will be required — like it or
not — is a form of U.S. colonialism, a
long-term occupation entailing intimate
involvement in the internal affairs of
Haiti. Security will have to be
maintained, probably by force, during the
critical and probably quite lengthy
period needed for democratic and free
market institution-building. In addition,
Americans must display a commitment to
nurture the conditions necessary for such
developments in the face of potentially
explosive race, cultural, religious and
language problems.

Complicating matters further is the
risk that more casualties will be
sustained by any such colonial force as
recalcitrant anti-Aristide forces carry
out hit-and-run attacks against American
personnel. The toll may actually prove,
moreover, to be substantially higher over
the longer term: Significant health
problems must be expected to arise from
the open-ended assignments of U.S.
servicemen and women in a nation like
Haiti that completely lacks basic
sanitation and potable water services and
that is afflicted with airborne viruses
and AIDS.

Needless to say, the prospect
of the United States engaging in
neo-colonial activities is fully as
abhorrent to Clinton’s Haiti team and
their supporters as is the idea of
unilateral U.S. military action. More
importantly, this scenario entails
burdens that the American people have
expressed little enthusiasm for assuming.

‘You Do That Voodoo’

This is where the voodoo
comes in. The legislators, former
officials and activists who are
championing the military option claim
that all will be well if the invaders
simply put Aristide back in power. This
seemingly straightforward objective
allows them to argue that the use of U.S.
forces can be limited and of finite
duration, the arduous follow-on tasks
conveniently left to someone else.

Nothing could be farther from the
truth. As Elliott Abrams, a former
Assistant Secretary of State for
Inter-American Affairs and distinguished
member of the Center for Security
Policy’s Board of Advisors, noted in the
attached op.ed. published in the Wall
Street Journal on 6 May 1994:

“…Restoring power to Mr.
Aristide…would require the complete
destruction of all institutions of
power in Haiti that now reject him
(including the Parliament) and then
the systematic building up again of
all these institutions around just
one, destabilizing figure.”

In fact, it is absolutely predictable
that — assuming the U.N. could actually
return Aristide to Haiti and somehow
assure his survival in office for
even a few months — he would, in
short order, return to form: whipping up
nationalist anger at the U.S. and those
who may be “occupying” his
country, compounding Haiti’s economic
morass and suppressing real democratic
institutions there. Still worse might be
expected if intelligence reports that
Aristide is mentally unbalanced prove
true. In any event, it is clearly not
worth risking the lives of American
servicemen and women to accomplish such
undesirable outcomes.

The Bottom Line

It would be tragic if the Clinton
Administration’s persistent, wrong-headed
notions of “nation-building” —
to say nothing of a perceived need to
divert attention from Mr. Clinton’s own,
myriad personal and public difficulties
— were to precipitate in Haiti yet
another doomed American expression of
“mindless multilateralism.” The
people of the United States, and the
armed forces established for their
protection, must not be abused by
“voodoo foreign policy”
initiatives. At a minimum, they are
entitled to know the true
purposes to which the American military
is being used, the full extent of that
use and a realistic assessment of the
prospects for success.

Unless President Clinton strips the
voodoo from his emerging plan to invade
Haiti and “gets real” about
what is at stake and what is required
there, he may just find himself squarely
in what George Bush — in another of his
memorable contributions to the political
vocabulary — once called “deep
doodoo.”

– 30 –

1. That said, the
deployment of even as small a force as
25,000 combat troops — involving perhaps
one out of twelve infantry divisions
envisioned under the “Bottom-Up
Review” force structure, perhaps a
couple of Marine amphibious brigades out
of a total of five and accompanying naval
support — would cause appreciable
dislocation in the rapidly shrinking U.S.
military.

FIRST HANOI, NOW HAVANA? SPARE US MORTON HALPERIN’S PRESCRIPTIONS FOR POTEMKIN DEMOCRACY IN CUBA

(Washington, D.C.): It is appalling —
if not particularly surprising — that an
individual with Morton Halperin’s
checkered background and consistently
poor judgment would welcome to the
National Security Council individuals who
had recently, deliberately and flagrantly
violated U.S. law. On 6 April,
Dr. Halperin and an NSC colleague,
Richard Feinberg, met with
representatives of “Pastors for
Peace” and “Freedom to
Travel” whose organizations had
engaged in activity prohibited under the
terms of the U.S. trade embargo against
Cuba.

By so doing, the NSC’s Senior Director
for Democracy has conferred a degree of
legitimacy on those determined to aid one
of the planet’s last, repressive
communist regimes. At the very least, Dr.
Halperin has reinforced their expectation
that the Clinton Administration is
prepared to adopt a more conciliatory
policy toward Fidel Castro’s Cuba. In
fact, according to today’s Miami
Herald, the “leaders of
the two organizations… emerged from
talks with White House officials brimming
with confidence that their acts of civil
disobedience are easing U.S. restrictions
toward Cuba.”

This confidence is evidently rooted,
in part, in the Administration’s decision
to return 65 passports confiscated from a
group of Americans who had illegally
travelled to Cuba last October. According
to a report on the Halperin meeting
carried on 7 April by Reuter, a
“Freedom to Travel”
representative, Pam Montanaro, said that
“[her] group interpreted this [step]
to mean that the travel ban would soon
fall, either by Administration action or
in the courts.”

Not surprisingly supporters of the
Cuban Democracy Act — which reinforced
and tightened the original embargo —
like Rep. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) are
“furious that the [Clinton] Justice
Department is failing to enforce”
the law of the land. According to the Herald,
Rep. Torricelli has written to Attorney
General Janet Reno urging prosecution of
the “Freedom to Travel” group.
In an interview with the paper on
Thursday, he warned: “Bill Clinton
needs to convey to the Justice Department
that his foreign policy is being
compromised by an independent Justice
Department that is not acting in his
interests.”

It’s Bigger than the
Justice Department

Unfortunately, the opposition to the
Cuban Democracy Act avowed repeatedly by
candidate and President Clinton is
apparently much more widespread in the
Administration than merely “an
independent Justice Department.”
Certainly, Ms. Montanaro felt reinforced
in her insouciance over flouting U.S. law
by the signals sent by the National
Security Council’s Halperin and Feingold:
She told Reuter that “the
two Clinton Administration officials gave
no hint of their position on” ending
travel restrictions to Cuba,
(read, no criticism, no warnings of
punishment for illegal activity, no
affirmation of the official Clinton
line).

Subsequent, official demurring about
these signals — to the effect that Ms.
Montanaro and her colleagues “may
have misconstrued politeness with an
intimation about a policy direction”
— are further belied by the actions of
yet another U.S. government agency, the
State Department. On Tuesday, 5 April,
the U.S. Coast Guard — for the first
time in years and after consultations
with State — refused to permit 19 Cuban
refugees to enter the United States on a
technicality, (i.e., that they had used
the Bahamas as a transit point on their
flight from Castro’s imploding
despotism). As the Associated Press
reported two days later:

“During the Reagan and Bush
administrations, thousands of Cubans
arriving in third countries were
allowed to come to the United States
under a program sponsored by the
Cuban American National Foundation,
an exile group. Under the program,
the foundation paid all costs that
the U.S. government normally pays for
resettling refugees. The program must
be renewed periodically and has
lapsed under the Clinton
Administration. An official said
the Administration is studying
it.” (Emphasis added.)

The Halperin Agenda

A further basis for concern about the
future course of Clinton Administration
policy toward communist Cuba arises from
Morton Halperin’s personal commitment to
initiatives like those of “Pastors
for Peace” and “Freedom to
Travel.” Specifically, on 16
September 1992, Dr. Halperin testified —
in his capacity as Director of the
Washington office of the American Civil
Liberties Union — on behalf of the
“Free Trade in Ideas” Act
originally sponsored by Rep. Howard
Berman (D-CA).

As noted in a Center for Security
Policy Decision Brief entitled, A
‘No-Brainer’: Rep. Berman’s ‘Free Trade
in Ideas’ Bill Must Not Be Allowed to
Strengthen Tyrants, ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=93-D_44″>No. 93-D 44,
1 June 1993), this legislation
would prevent the President from
enforcing certain multilateral U.N
embargoes — as well as some unilateral
sanctions — even in war time.
What is more, if enacted, it would
provide a convenient cover for a host of
illegal and undesirable financial and
trade transactions. Of particular concern
with regard to the Cuban Democracy Act,
it would prevent the President from
barring the travel of American citizens
to any country under any conditions.

Ominously, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) (a
prime mover behind the effort to
normalize relations with communist
Vietnam) has recently inserted in the FY
1994 State Department authorization bill,
H.R. 2333, “sense of the
Senate” language that tracks with
the Berman bill. The Kerry amendment
calls on the President not to
“restrict informational,
educational, religious, or humanitarian
exchanges…or travel for any such
[purposes]…between the United States
and any other country.” Rep.
Berman reportedly hopes to modify this
language in the upcoming conference on
H.R. 2333 to make it mandatory,
rather than merely hortatory.

The Bottom Line

The Clinton Administration has made no
secret of the fact that U.S. policy
toward Cuba is under review. According to
press reports, Secretary of State Warren
Christopher is to make known the results
of this review within a matter of weeks. The
Center for Security Policy profoundly
hopes that the outcome of this review has
not been signalled — or suborned — by
Morton Halperin’s clear disloyalty to
President Clinton’s stated policy.

As the Administration completes its
analysis, the Center hopes that it will
give greater weight to those making daily
sacrifices to bring about a truly
democratic Cuba — rather than those,
like Dr. Halperin, who while nominally
responsible for promoting
“Democracy” within the U.S.
government, seem determined to prevent
that outcome.

For example, the Administration should
heed the attached,
courageous condemnation of Rev.
Lucius Walker, director of “Pastors
for Peace,” issued from one of
Castro’s jail cells by a political
prisoner, Joel Duenas Martinez. If
it does so, it may yet spare the Cuban
people the open-ended communist nightmare
now in prospect for the recently
abandoned people of Vietnam.