Tag Archives: Mexico

Sovereignty levees breached?

(Washington, D.C.): Since it seems the only news that is fit to print (or air) these days has to do with Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, finding a related angle to call needed public and leadership attention to something else happening in the world requires a little ingenuity. Since the stakes associated with another, largely unremarked story – involving a drama that will reach its denouement at UN headquarters this week – may be nothing less than the future sovereignty and character of the United States, however, a way must be found.


LOST in New Orleans


As it happens, the answer lies in the toxic liquid now being pumped out of New Orleans into waterways that will, inexorably, contaminate the international reaches of Gulf of Mexico, and perhaps beyond. The United States has unilaterally determined that this potentially huge environmental damage is justified by the need to recover and restore a major American city, its population and economy.


Interestingly, shortly before Katrina precipitated this crisis, a gaggle of former senior government officials wrote Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist demanding that he swiftly effect the ratification of a controversial accord known as the Law of the Sea Treaty (or LOST). The authors dismissed concerns expressed by conservatives that LOST would impinge upon U.S. sovereignty and vital interests.


If the United States were a party to the Law of the Sea Treaty today though, it is very likely America would be enjoined from dumping New Orleans’ toxic stew into Lake Ponchartrain and the Mississippi River . For one thing, this action would violate the Treaty’s environmental obligations to protect marine life and its habitats, obligations whose sweep makes those of the Kyoto Treaty seem modest by comparison.


For another, the Law of the Sea Tribunal – the sort of multilateral legal institution whose tendency for politicization and anti-American actions has prompted the Bush Administration to reject the International Criminal Court – has already established a relevant precedent. In a case brought by Ireland against Great Britain, the Tribunal has established that its jurisdiction extends to activities on sovereign member states’ soil that can arguably affect international waters. (An important question for Senators to put to Chief Justice nominee John Roberts would be whether, like some other justices, he would regard such an internationally dictated injunction to trump America’s domestic jurisprudence?)


Unfortunately, since Ronald Reagan’s day, American governments have tended to pay too little attention to sovereignty-sapping treaties and institutional power-grabs by the United Nations and other multilateral organizations. To his credit, Mr. Reagan recognized the Law of the Sea Treaty for what it was intended to be by the World Federalists and so-called non-aligned movement types who had a significant hand in shaping its supranational International Seabed Authority and related entities: a highly precedential, and undesirable, vehicle for establishing world-government mechanisms to control the “international commons” (in this case, the oceans) at the expense of sovereign states.


President Reagan refused to agree to LOST’s ratification in part because he found anathema the idea of empowering an international organization to raise its own revenues through what amount to taxes on seabed mining and energy exploitation. Regrettably, the Bush Administration has to date chosen to overlook this and the Treaty’s other adverse implications for U.S. sovereignty, and says it supports LOST’s ratification.


Meanwhile, Back at the UN


The good news is that President Bush seems in no mood to go along with the logical extrapolation of the Law of the Sea Treaty – the so-called “Draft Outcome Document” for the UN General Assembly meeting on September 14th through 16th. The document has been the focus of intense negotiations ever since Mr. Bush succeeded in getting his representative, John Bolton, in place at Turtle Bay. Despite fresh evidence from former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker that the UN is scandal-ridden, corrupt, poorly organized and managed and incompetently led, Secretary General Kofi Anan wants the American and other world leaders to ratify this week what amounts to his wish-list.


As of this writing, however, Amb. Bolton has registered strong U.S. objections to language that would bind America to actions that, under this President, it has firmly opposed: ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; opening negotiations on space arms control; creating what amounts to a standing UN army; and foregoing systemic UN reforms, in favor of cosmetic ones.


Of arguably greatest importance is the U.S. refusal to empower the United Nations to levy taxes – a step that would, as with the Law of the Sea Treaty, advance the organization’s ambitions to promote world government. Globotaxes would also eviscerate what remains in the way of American leverage to effect real reform of the UN and to punish its misbehavior. It is estimated that one proposed tax on international currency transactions alone would be able to generate a staggering $13 trillion in revenue.


The Bottom Line


Just as Hurricane Katrina ruptured the levees protecting New Orleans, the UN’s concerted assault on the barriers to further erosion of American sovereignty threatens to swamp our freedom of action and our founding principle of “no taxation without representation.” It behooves President Bush to reject any Outcome Document that leaves the door open to globotaxes, let alone one that endorses them outright. Rather than lend his authority to such an exercise, he should be willing to refuse to attend the UN summit meeting this week that Mr. Anan hoped would be the biggest fund-raiser in the history of the world.


 

The national security case for CAFTA

The Senate’s pending decision to consent or reject ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) will be influenced by many factors – economic, political and strategic. In the final analysis, however, the consideration that should trump all others is the fact that CAFTA will contribute to America’s national security – and its defeat would significantly and adversely affect our security interests in the region and beyond.

Specifically, CAFTA affords an important vehicle for strengthening America’s dwindling number of reliable friends in the hemisphere, denying diplomatic and economic victories to our adversaries, contributing to conditions that can discourage illegal immigration to this country and even aiding a distant ally, Taiwan.

Illegal Immigration: A National Security and Economic Issue

The Bush Administration and other proponents of CAFTA contend that this trade agreement will increase markets in Central America for U.S. products. Critics counter that CAFTA will undermine certain U.S. industries and serve as a back-door to more Chinese imports.

The truth of the matter is that the CAFTA region – the five Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica plus the Dominican Republic – accounts for an almost imperceptible fraction of U.S. trade. Most dollars going to Central America are spent on consumer goods chiefly made in Japan, Korea and China. The United States does not compete appreciably with the region’s main indigenous exports – coffee, cacao, cane sugar and banana production.

Central America’s most problematic export to the United States is illegal immigrants. Since Washington has shown itself generally unwilling or unable either to enforce existing immigration statutes nor enact more effective laws and border security measures, it is in the U.S. interest to create more incentives for Central Americans to stay in their native lands.

CAFTA would help create jobs in the region – especially in the area’s much sought-after maquiladora assembly industry as well as future industrial development – affording many Central Americans an opportunity to stay home with their families. Almost invariably, when queried about their preferences, Central American workers, both those still in their own countries and those who have illegally immigrated to the United States, declare that they would prefer to remain in their countries if only they had dependable and better-paying jobs there.

Consider the case of El Salvador. El Salvador is the CAFTA region’s largest source of illegal immigrants to the United States. It is also the one country in the region that has done the right things to privatize and otherwise dismantle most of the previously government-controlled economy. The Wall Street Journal and Heritage Foundation rate El Salvador to be the third freest economy in the hemisphere after the United States and Chile. El Salvador is one of only five countries in all of Latin America with an investment-grade economy, and after more than 15 years of conservative, market-oriented political leadership, it is starting to build a viable and competitive industrial and service sector. CAFTA is vital to El Salvador’s continued economic success – a success that would both mitigate Salvadorans’ needs to emigrate to the U.S. while benefiting American investors.

It’s Time to Stop Penalizing Our Friends and Rewarding Our Adversaries

Failure to ratify CAFTA would be seen as another case of the United States punishing its friends and benefiting its foes. The Central American countries, El Salvador in particular, have been small but staunch U.S. allies in a range of national security areas – notably, in matters where like Mexico and Chile have not:

  • CAFTA nations are strong proponents of continuing the inter-American security system that has been in place since the 1940s. Mexico, the greatest beneficiary of NAFTA, has been trying to undermine that system both prior to and since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
  • CAFTA nations immediately announced solidarity with the United States after 9/11. Mexico under President Vicente Fox and his Marxist then-foreign minister was one of the last countries to express condolences to the U.S., waiting a full two weeks after 9/11 to show official opposition to the terrorist attacks.
  • CAFTA nations sent military forces into Iraq – the only countries in Latin America to do so. Among the most experienced armies in the world at detecting and deactivating land mines, the armies of El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Salvadoran troops fought the only known hand-to-hand combat in the war, saving the life of an American governor and defeating fully armed Iraqi terrorists with nothing more than bayonets. In 2004, El Salvador was one of the only countries in the coalition publicly to announce a renewal of its military commitment in Iraq.
  • Earlier this year, CAFTA nations nominated a pro-U.S. candidate to become secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), the 57 year-old intergovernmental hemispheric collective security organization that includes all governments in the Americas (except Cuba). The United States was unable to muster a single additional vote for that candidate, the former president of El Salvador, and instead cut a deal to elect an anti-U.S. socialist from Chile as OAS chief.

Anti-U.S. Forces in Region Want CAFTA to Go Down

Venezuela ‘s Hugo Chavez and other anti-U.S. figures in the hemisphere are hoping that the Senate refuses to consent to CAFTA’s ratification. They understand the extent to which CAFTA’s rejection would undermine the pro-American politicians and parties in the region. Such a step would greatly facilitate the efforts the Venezuelan dictator is making through covert funding and training of anti-U.S. political parties and organizations throughout Central America to bring about an electoral ouster of the pro-U.S. governments in the region.

Chavez’s main targets for the moment are Nicaragua and El Salvador. Those who would take power there – and who also oppose CAFTA – are the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), the terrorist group-turned-political party that leads the chief opposition bloc in El Salvador. Both the Sandinistas and the FMLN were allies of the Soviet Union in the Cold War; both retain their obsolete Marxist-Leninist ideology; both were responsible for the slayings of American military and intelligence personnel; both were part of the Cuban terror network; and both vocally and materially continue to support international terrorists today.

In addition to Chavez’s subversive activities on the CAFTA region’s political front, a large competing trade bloc, known as MERCOSUR, has been offering membership to our would-be partners in an alternative economic arrangement. The South American free trade organization is not simply a tariff-free community; under the leadership of the Workers Party government of Brazil, it is taking a strongly ideological approach that challenges not only U.S. trade interests but empowers political constituencies that are unfriendly, and even hostile, to the United States.

America ‘s Interests Beyond the Region

Central America is one of the last regions in the world where the governments recognize the democratic Republic of China on Taiwan to the intense chagrin of the Communist regime in Beijing. Through its increased trade, diplomacy, and bribery, the PRC is assiduously trying to buy the loyalties of politicians and business leaders. To date, it has been unsuccessful.

Communist China’s increasingly alarming efforts to penetrate and exercise influence in Central America, as in other parts of Latin America, are certain to continue, however. CAFTA is an instrument that can help neutralize the growing economic presence and power of the PRC in the region and, among other things, strengthen the pro-Taiwan sectors. It is heartening that Taiwan has recently been able to invest significantly in El Salvador’s infrastructure, including notably for the purpose of modernizing the country’s sole significant seaport.

The Bottom Line

From a U.S. perspective, CAFTA is an economic agreement with profound national security implications. While CAFTA will make little difference to America’s trade posture, it will make a great deal of difference to our few remaining allies in Latin America.

CAFTA will benefit the economies of nations in the region, particularly in countries that follow the policy changes being pioneered by El Salvador. It will reward those who followed U.S. development recommendations on economic reform, incentivize other countries to make similar reforms and deny diplomatic, political and economic victories to U.S. adversaries in the region.

By providing more quality jobs in Central America, CAFTA will reduce the need for people to emigrate illegally to the United States. Ratification of CAFTA will also show other countries that there are still tangible benefits to standing by the United States. By contrast, failure to ratify will allow hostile political forces to "prove" that there is no reward for being Washington’s friend – and, no less ominously, confirm that there is no penalty for being America’s foe.  

Amnesty by any other name

Hundreds of "Minuteman" volunteers are fanning out this week across the Arizona-Mexico border. They hope, by so doing, to help the authorities reduce somewhat the human tsunami of illegal aliens crossing into America. More importantly, perhaps, they seek in the process to call to the attention of our leaders the public’s rising anger about this invasion of our territory – and its huge national security, social, economic and other costs.

The full extent of those costs may yet to be tallied. By some estimates, there were 75,000 "other-than-Mexican" illegals among those who sneaked into the United States last year. A growing number of them are known to be from the Middle East and may well be Islamists using well-established alien-smuggling routes as the first step to perpetrating new acts of terror in this country.

Lest there be any lingering doubt, however, that politicians need the sort of pointed reminder the Minutemen are currently offering that, as they say in the movies, the American people are "mad as hell and not going to take it any more," consider the likely scenario on the floor of the United States Senate this week.

How the Troops’ Bill Became a Vehicle for the Craig-Kennedy AgAmnesty

The scheduled business is urgent action on an emergency supplemental appropriations measure meant to provide funding needed now by our troops in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the absence of such funding, critical war materiel will begin to run short – jeopardizing the mission, and possibly the lives, of our servicemen and women on the front lines.

This priority legislation became the vehicle the House of Representatives used last month to fulfill a promise made in December by its leadership and by President Bush: In exchange for passing last year a bill intended to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, but that failed to address several of the most important ones – in particular, those dealing with the need to enhance the authenticity and security of driver’s licenses, the "REAL ID" bill fixing the latter would be given expedited consideration.

The REAL ID legislation is aimed at denying future terrorists the ability exploited by the 9/11 hijackers (even those in this country illegally) – namely, to hold numerous valid driver’s licenses, which they used to gain murderous access to airports and their targeted aircraft. It is no small irony, therefore, that the presence of the REAL ID provisions on the military’s supplemental funding bill is being cited by the Senate parliamentarian as grounds for Senator Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho, to try to attach to it legislation that would help eviscerate what currently passes for restrictions on illegal immigration.

Rewarding Illegal Behavior, Again

Sen. Craig, an otherwise very sensible and responsible Republican legislator from Idaho, has an idee fixe which he shares with, his co-sponsor, Sen. Teddy Kennedy: The agricultural sector of the U.S. economy needs cheap labor. So, let’s legalize the presence in this country of anyone who can claim to have once worked for a little more than three months in that sector.

If that were not bad enough, their families would be allowed to become legal residents, too, even if they are not currently in the United States. The same would apply for illegals who had ostensibly been agricultural workers here in the past, but who have gone home. They can all become "temporarily" legit, a status the notoriously left-wing, yet federally funded, Legal Services Corporation will be happy to help them subsequently adjust to permanent resident status.

In short, S.359, the Craig-Kennedy Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act of 2005 (better known as the AgJobs bill), amounts to an amnesty for a class of illegal aliens. While the proponents insist it is something else – for example, "hard-earned legalization" – there is no getting around the fact that it hugely rewards people for coming to this country illegally. And, as we have seen with previous, misbegotten immigration amnesties, the effect is to encourage more people to do so.

That will surely be the case with the Craig-Kennedy AgJobs bill, too. Even though it requires the illegal alien’s 100 days of agricultural work in the U.S. to have occurred during any 12 month period between February 2002 and August 2003 – and, therefore, is not something new "invaders" could cash in on – this legislation further reinforces the expectation that, if you can get into this country by whatever means, you will at some point likely be allowed to stay legally.

Interestingly, Messrs. Craig and Kennedy have significantly fewer co-sponsors (43) on their legislation this year than they did in the last session of Congress (62). At this writing, it is unclear whether many of those Senators who no longer want to be publicly associated with this amnesty bill will nonetheless vote for it.

The Bottom Line

We can only hope that they have heard the Minutemen’s message on behalf of the vast majority of Americans of just about every walk of life and political persuasion: The time has come to take effective action to secure our borders against the swelling tide of people trying to get into this country illegally; to find ways to decrease, not increase, the numbers already here unlawfully; and to ensure that documents needed to access airports, government buildings, bank accounts, etc. are valid and held only by those entitled to carry them. And get all this done now, without hurting our troops.

 

A Different Approach to Nonproliferation (2005)

A Different Approach to the 2005 NPT Conference

By Robert R. Monroe*

This paper develops an “outside the box” approach to the 2005 Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference.  It first examines the current degraded state of theU.S.nuclear weapons enterprise, a condition which results largely from the moratorium on nuclear weapons testing.  It then discusses the increasing importance of preventing proliferation and summarizes the ineffective nature of most international nonproliferation efforts.  The paper concludes by outlining aU.S.approach to the 2005 NPT RevCon which will enable our nuclear arsenal to perform its essential deterrence function and will significantly strengthen proliferation prevention.

 

U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPONS ENTERPRISE

 

The most dominating “fact of life” in theU.S.nuclear weapons world today is the continued existence of a moratorium on underground nuclear testing.

The U.S. announced the moratorium in 1992, in the general euphoria over the Cold War’s end.  There was a perceived absence of serious threats to our nation and a vision of peace for the foreseeable future.  The moratorium was one of a series of unilateral disarmament actions taken at that time, which included the 1993-94 legislation prohibiting design of low-yield nuclear weapons and the 1995-96 agreement on a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).  Today it’s clear we overshot the mark in that era.  A decade later the nuclear threat levels are high and diverse, with dangers that are quite different in nature and much less predictable.  The law prohibiting low-yield weapon design has been repealed, and the CTBT has been shelved after the Senate refused–by a wide margin–to advise and consent to its ratification.  However, the testing moratorium is still in effect, and our twelve-year experience without nuclear weapons testing provides convincing proof that this limitation is an unsound practice, unsustainable for the long term.  In the absence of testing, U.S. nuclear weapons capability has deteriorated–across the board–to a significant degree.  A few examples:

  • Our ageing nuclear weapons stockpile, designed during the Cold War to deter Soviet attack by threatening massive retaliation, is ill-suited to deterring the more diversified–but still deadly–threats we now face.  It simply lacks credibility of use against today’s threats.  Deterring rogue states and terrorist groups from using weapons of mass destruction is still possible, but only with nuclear weapons designed for these new threats–weapons with greatly increased accuracy, much lower yield, reduced collateral damage, specialized capabilities (such as deep earth penetration), and tailored effects (such as ability to neutralize chemical and biological agents).  Achieving these capabilities will require testing.
  • Moreover, our confidence in the reliability and performance of our existing, overage, high-yield weapons is declining.  Ageing causes changes, and our ability to judge their seriousness, in the absence of testing, is uncertain.  When we do replace components, as in life-extension programs, we cannot be sure, again without testing, that the weapons will perform as designed.
  • In this age of terrorism it is of utmost importance thatU.S.nuclear weapons incorporate the very best and latest in safety, security, and controllability features.  Yet in a great many cases this cannot be done without testing.  Only one of the nine warhead designs in our current stockpile incorporates all available safety and security systems.  And, during the twelve years (to date) of the test moratorium, much advanced development on improved surety systems was simply not done because there was no prospect of doing the essential testing.
  • Since the dawn of the nuclear age no nuclear weapon design has entered the stockpile without having the pit (the plutonium core) certified through underground nuclear testing.  New-design pits will surely be required in the future, and despite years of work during the moratorium there is still no agreed method–other than testing–to certify new pits, or today’s pits manufactured by different processes.
  • The NNSA scientists, designers, engineers, and test personnel on whom we depend for continuity of experience are ageing and retiring.  The luster of a nuclear weapons career has been so diminished that recruiting outstanding new graduates into a lab and plant career is much more difficult.  And, without testing, effective training for this next generation of designers is highly questionable.  Today, very few active designers atLos AlamosandLivermorehave ever gone through the enlightening–and humbling–experience of having their designs tested underground.
  • For over a decade the ability of our nuclear weapons scientists to pursue a robust, wide-ranging, forward-looking research program into advanced nuclear weapons concepts has been brought to a virtual halt by administrative, legislative, and funding restrictions.  In this era of mushrooming technological advance in virtually all fields of science, the test moratorium has denied us not only the knowledge of “what’s possible?” but also an understanding of the diverse and growing threats we may face from known and unknown adversaries.
  • U.S.capability to field a full design-test-production team for rapid, efficient management of a new nuclear weapons system from concept to stockpile is seriously doubtful.  We have lost much of our experience in the complex and hazardous business of testing; and we have no capability to manufacture new pits in quantity (a situation which cannot be corrected for some fifteen years).  Our nuclear warhead manufacturing complex is antiquated and deteriorated, and modernization is experiencing serious capital shortfalls.
  • DOD’s central nuclear weapons infrastructure in the former Defense Nuclear Agency  and in the military services has largely been disassembled.  Few young officers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force are motivated to seek advanced degrees in nuclear physics/engineering, or to become nuclear weapons specialists.  Within DOD as a whole, little attention is given to education and training in nuclear weapons employment, to strategic thinking about use of nuclear weapons, to development of nuclear weapon tactics, and to strategy games involving nuclear weapons use.
  • Without nuclear testing, the survivability of DOD’s conventional and nuclear weapons systems and C4ISR systems to nuclear weapons effects is largely unproven.  Scientific research into nuclear weapons effects has atrophied to a great extent, and laboratory simulation facilities have significantly declined, resulting in our having little ability to testU.S.systems against nuclear effects.
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‘Kerry Republicans’

(Washington, D.C.): The American people seem likely to decide who will be their next President on the basis of whose policies will best provide for their security. Unfortunately for George W. Bush, four senior congressional Republicans are taking steps that will make it harder for him to differentiate the GOPs defense agenda from that of his challenger. Presumably, none of the four wish to be known as “Kerry Republicans,” but unless they change course, the effect of their actions could be not only to weaken U.S. security, but to undermine their partys hopes to hold onto the White House for another four years.

Senator Larry Craig and the “AgJobs” Bill

Last week, John Kerry pandered to radical Hispanic interest groups by promising an “amnesty” for illegal aliens, the preponderance of whom come from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. This week, Sen. Craig – an otherwise loyal Bush legislator from Idaho – may try to foist upon the Senate, over the strenuous objections of his leadership and the Bush Administration, his own version of an amnesty.

While the Craig Agriculture Jobs bill purports to limit the reward it offers for breaking our immigration laws to those illegal aliens who can prove they worked for a few days in the agricultural sector, the reality is that it will have a vastly multiplied effect. It would, for example, apply not only to those sometime agricultural workers who are currently in the United States but to others who have left the country. All those thus allowed to gain temporary worker status (and, in due course, permanent status and then citizenship) would be able to bring their families, as well. Terrorists could well be among the beneficiaries of such an ill-advised amnesty.

President Bushs ability to appeal to the vast majority of Americans who oppose rewarding those who violate our immigration laws will be undercut if no perceptible difference exists between his partys amnesty and the more sweeping one John Kerry promises promptly to enact if elected President.

Rep. David Hobson and the U.S. Nuclear Deterrent

In recent days, Senate Republicans beat back several Kerry-favored Democratic anti-nuclear legislative initiatives. These would have precluded research and other work needed to ensure the future safety, reliability and effectiveness of the American arsenal as called for by the 2003 Bush Nuclear Posture Review. Although the Senate GOP successfully mustered a majority each time to stave off the proposed budget cuts, funding restrictions and other impediments, even more draconian action was being taken on the House side – at the behest of a Republican appropriations subcommittee chairman, Rep. David Hobson of Ohio.

Thanks to Congressman Hobson and a failure of either the House leadership or the Bush Administration vigorously to oppose his actions, the House-passed appropriations bill eliminates all funding for research concerning a new, robust earth penetrating warhead and low-yield nuclear weapons, for increased readiness to conduct nuclear test made necessary by the obsolescing of our existing arsenal and for a facility to manufacture the cores (or “pits”) of modern thermonuclear weapons – precisely the outcome favored by those like John Kerry who have long favored unilateral U.S. restraint and disarmament.

Sen. Ted Stevens and Space-control Programs

Kerry-style Democrats have also sought unilateral disarmament in another, equally strategic arena – Americas ability to use outer space for military purposes, and to deny such use to others should the need arise. Even though both the Clinton and Bush administrations declared the importance of space-control as part of their respective national security strategies, the former eschewed programs that would provide the required capabilities. The latter has, surprisingly, not done much more.

Regrettably, in the defense appropriations bill hastily enacted by the Senate before the July 4 recess, Chairman Ted Stevens of Alaska failed to provide funding for even the Bush Administrations modest space control-related programs. Needless to say, this GOP-led action can only have heartened those in the Kerry campaign and its allies who are now inveighing against the “militarization of space” – in the fatuous expectation that such U.S. restraint will prevent potential enemies from exploiting the vulnerability of Americas civilian economy, as well as its defense posture, to space-denial attacks.

Senator John McCain and the Selective Service Systems Director

The growing strains upon the U.S. military are giving rise to intensified speculation about the need to reinstitute compulsory service. If Democrats, like Kerry-supporter Rep. Charles Rangel, are willing to address this prospect at all, however, it seems to be transparently for the purpose of embarrassing President Bush and encouraging public opposition to the war on terror.

There are plenty of reasons to hope that it will not be necessary once again to augment volunteers in the U.S. military with draftees. One of the regrettable realities, however, about the global war in which we find ourselves is that such a step may well be unavoidable – particularly if we wind up losing the “battle of Iraq” or suffering catastrophic acts of terror at home. At the very least, the Selective Service System must be fully prepared and staffed up.

Unfortunately, accomplishing that has been complicated by the fact that the Presidents nominee to run the System, William Chatfield, has been denied a confirmation vote in the Senate because Sen. John McCain is holding up his nomination – along with those of a number of senior Defense Department officials – over an unrelated fight concerning a now-shelved aerial-refueling modernization program.

The Bottom Line

Sensible, bipartisan national security-minded policies are needed with respect to immigration reform, maintaining a nuclear deterrent, protecting U.S. interests in space and ensuring the ready availability of a draft if one is required. President Bush should be able to run a formidable campaign, contrasting his support for such policies with the opposition to them from John Kerry and many Democrats. To do so, however, he needs to be able to count on the support of all Republicans.

Mexico: Not ‘with us’ in the war on terrorism

It’s way too early to do any favors for the Mexican government and its president, Vicente Fox. Though most Americans haven’t noticed, Mexico has been going out of its way to snipe at the US and undermine US national security interests since September 2001.

Fox’s government views migrant workers as a “tool" against the US, as a means of transferring billions of dollars a year in federal Social Security payments into Mexico, and as a way of exercising political influence against American politicians.

His administration has taken what for Mexico is an unusually aggressive foreign-policy line. Fox has been working to undermine the 57 year-old hemispheric mutual security system, announcing days before 9/11 that Mexico would pull out of the 1947 Rio Treaty and encouraging others to do the same.

Mexico was one of the last nations on Earth to express solidarity with the United States after the 9/11 attacks. Even Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez at least showed symbolic sympathy. Fox dismissed 9/11 as an internal American problem.

Fox’s lieutenants have been talking of limiting the American "hyperpower," working with second-echelon Cuban Communist Party officials to help perpetuate the Party’s rule after Castro leaves the scene, praising Marxists from Chile to Nicaragua, and unsuccessfully trying to save the FARC narcoterrorists in Colombia.

Fox used Mexico’s new seat on the UN Security Council to try to save Saddam Hussein’s regime. Mexico sided with France, Russia and the Iraqi Ba’athists. Now it wants favors from Washington, and in an election year, is using the migrant issue to force concessions from both parties. Instead of lifting a finger for Fox, the US should apply President Bush’s "if you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists" standard south of the border.

Deja vu all over again in North Korea

(Washington, D.C.): In today’s editions, the Wall Street Journal forcefully editorialized about what the Center for Security Policy has described as “unhelpful freelancing” by a long-time critic of President Bush’s fully justified, hard-line stance towards Communist North Korea. Unfortunately, the mission to Pyongyang being undertaken this week by Charles “Jack” Pritchard will be more than a platform for a proponent of the sorts of irresolute policies that enabled the North to realize its nuclear ambitions.

As the Journal observes, such a trip will inevitably offer the North Korean regime an opportunity to complicate U.S. efforts to contain the threat from that quarter, to put their “thumb in Mr. Bush’s eye” politically and to “embarrass” the administration – even as Mr. Pritchard once again promotes the idea that further concessions should be made to Kim Jong-Il and Company. The result: a lose-lose outcome for the United States.

With an apt reference to the deja-vu-all-over-again theme of the movie “Groundhog Day,” the Journal‘s editors remind us that this is not idle speculation. We have tried this approach and demonstrably gotten the short end of the stick. In fact, for six years, the Clinton Administration tirelessly “engaged” and appeased North Korea in the hope that the rogue regime would finally, actually eschew nuclear weapons. The failure of the Pritchard strategy was unmistakable when the so-called “Agreed Framework” was effectively eviscerated by the North’s admission last year that it possessed nuclear weapons.

As the Center for Security Policy argued yesterday, the sort of “freelancing” being undertaken by Mr. Pritchard “is utterly inconsistent with the very nature of democracy” which requires that “diplomacy [not] be practiced by individuals other than those charged with such responsibilities by their government – and accountable to it.” For this reason, among others, the Bush Administration should not only disassociate and the U.S. government from diplomatic missions by self-appointed emissaries like Jack Pritchard; it should take such steps as are necessary to preclude them from occurring.

Groundhog Day in Pyongyang
The Wall Street Journal, 6 January 2004

So Jack Pritchard is finally getting those bilateral talks with the North Koreans he’s long been promoting. We trust, however, that when Kim Jong Il’s minions sit down with the former State Department official and the delegation he’s traveling with to Pyongyang this week, they’ll notice something very different: This time the only one Mr. Pritchard will be speaking for is himself.

That will be healthy for everyone to keep in mind while Mr. Pritchard visits at the invitation of Pyongyang with a ballyhooed private delegation that also includes Stanford professor John Wilson Lewis and Sigfried Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Reports suggest that the North Koreans may allow the delegation into the Yongbyon nuclear facility. This would be the first time the site was opened to foreigners since the North expelled United Nations nuclear inspectors in 2002.

Their visit comes at a particularly delicate time, scarcely a month after the breakdown of the planned six-party talks (with U.S., China, Russia, Japan, North Korea and South Korea) that the White House insists is the proper venue for resolving the nuclear standoff. Though the Bush Administration did not stop the visit, a State Department spokesman did warn that the Administration was leery of anything that might “complicate” these multilateral talks.

But complicating U.S. policy is exactly what the North Koreans have in mind by choosing to invite this entourage. Mr. Pritchard is the former Clinton official and later Bush State Department special envoy to North Korea who went out with a media bang back in August. As he was quick to make both clear and public, he favors two things that President Bush has ruled out: bilateral negotiations with the North Koreans, and concessions to get them back to the table.

Given this background it’s hard to read his invitation to Pyongyang as anything but a North Korean thumb in Mr. Bush’s eye. Just in case the ever-subtle Korean Communists might be misunderstood here, they have at the same time announced that the only way they’ll ever come to the negotiating table is if the U.S. first agrees to cough up some new economic aid. The North Korean negotiating position boils down to this: Trust us that this time we really will abandon our nuclear programs, and we will agree to let you pay us even more money.

If all this is beginning to sound like the North Korean version of “Groundhog Day” — the movie in which Bill Murray is forced to relive the same day over and over — it’s because this has been North Korean procedure from the get-go. And until Mr. Bush arrived on the scene and vowed there’d be no more rewards for bad behavior, the North Koreans had done pretty well by it.

So well that the deal they are offering now is essentially the same one they offered us back in 1994, the last time they manufactured a nuclear crisis. Come to think of it, it was a similar private initiative back then, by former President Jimmy Carter, that helped force a deal at a moment when Bill Clinton was taking a harder line.

We all know how that Agreed Framework turned out. In exchange for promising to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, the U.S. promised to help build them some reactors to alleviate their energy needs. For a while everyone was happy as the real problem — North Korean lack of compliance — was papered over.

But in 2002 the deal came crashing down when North Korea unilaterally expelled U.N. inspectors from its facilities at Yongbyon, turned off the TV cameras that were monitoring the nuclear fuel, withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and then sat back and began threatening to manufacture nuclear weapons (with the unsubtle threat of proliferating them to our enemies) unless Uncle Sam rushed in and offered them even more money to start renegotiating.

It is this same path that Mr. Pritchard and his intellectual and political allies now propose to take us down again. To his credit, while at State he evidently made no bones about his disagreement with the change in direction that President Bush was pursuing. Last April, he finally offered his resignation. The really interesting question is why someone so at odds with official Bush policy was kept on so long, but then again much of the State Department often seems to be a Dean Administration in waiting.

Maybe by opening the door to Mr. Pritchard and Co. the North Koreans figure they can embarrass Mr. Bush or play into the Presidential campaign. But for those who believe that the North Koreans can be sweet-talked into a new deal — and that we should believe them this time — the irony is that this high-profile invitation to one of the Administration’s leading critics may only stiffen the Bush resolve. We hope so.

Unhelpful freelancing

The Bush Administration takes a dim view of the freelance diplomacy that will inevitably attend visits to North Korea now being undertaken by several former government officials and congressional staffers. White House spokesman Claire Buchan said last week that the visitors were not “acting on behalf of or with the approval” of the U.S. government. Her State Department counterpart, Adam Ereli, added that, “Certainly any efforts that complicate prospects or undertakings to reconvene the six-party talks and to achieve forward movement in dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program aren’t helpful.”

Grounds for Concern

The Administration is right to be concerned about the potential for mischief attending the trips by former Los Alamos National Laboratory director, Siegfried Hecker, former National Security Council staffer Charles “Jack” Pritchard and two senior staff members one Republican, one Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The North Koreans are past masters at using such delegations to “divide and conquer,” or at least to confuse and undermine, Western governments with whom they are negotiating.

Notable examples were missions to Pyongyang in 1994 by former President Jimmy Carter and then-Congressman Bill Richardson. Their North Korean interlocutors told the self-appointed emissaries what they wanted to hear: Concessions by the United States would be rewarded with better behavior on the part of the Stalinist “Hermit Kingdom.”

The American freelancers benefitted handsomely from their respective missions. Carter got a Nobel Peace Prize for his (although the chairman of the awarding committee in Oslo made clear that an even more important reason was to poke a finger in George Bush’s eye). The relentlessly self-promoting Richardson parlayed his diplomatic fandango in Pyongyang into posts at the UN, as Secretary of Energy and now as Governor of New Mexico.

More importantly, North Korea was rewarded for its dalliance with the freelancers. The Clinton Administration agreed to make the sorts of concessions Messrs. Carter and Richardson argued would secure new promises from the North to forego nuclear weapons. Predictably, the North Korean leadership pocketed the proffered billions of dollars in nuclear technology, oil and humanitarian assistance, then lied about its intentions. It wound up using the succeeding decade to build a small nuclear arsenal thought sufficient to deter attack when Pyongyang formally renounced last year its past non-proliferation pledges, then declared its intention to acquire additional bombs to wield and to sell.

Even if past freelancing had not had such unsatisfactory repercussions, the Administration would be justified in worrying about the visitors now in North Korea. In particular, during his stint at the NSC, Jack Pritchard adamantly opposed President Bush’s fully justified hard line vis a vis the world’s last Stalinist regime and repeatedly sought to scupper it by urging negotiations on Pyongyang’s terms. It is a safe bet that at least he, if not others there now, will use whatever access (say to the North’s declared Yongbyon nuclear facility) and blandishments are served up by the “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-Il, to advance this agenda.

‘Useful’ Idiocy

Unfortunately for the Bush team, its efforts to stymie this exercise in freelance diplomacy cannot have been helped by the enthusiasm it expressed last month for an even more notorious example of the phenomenon. In December, Secretary of State Colin Powell went so far as to meet with two private citizens, Israeli Yossi Beilin and Palestinian Abed Rabbo, who had taken it upon themselves to negotiate the so-called “Geneva Accords” a purported “comprehensive” peace agreement between their respective peoples.

In the face of strenuous objections from Israel that such meetings would not only dignify the freelancers’ accords but advance their avowed purpose namely, to undermine the policies of a democratically elected government of an allied nation Mr. Powell actually said: “I think it’s useful to have different ideas out there percolating for people to take a look at. And we welcomed these…initiatives, but they are just ideas. They don’t represent anyone’s position, other than the authors’. But I think this is a challenging moment for the Middle East and to the extent that there are people who are thinking about these issues and offering ideas, I think they should be welcomed.”

This statement is, of course, wholly disingenuous. If anything, the “useful” initiatives being promoted by Beilin, Rabbo and others are more troubling than Hecker, Pritchard and Company’s activities that “aren’t helpful.” For one thing, the Geneva Accords are not simply ideas; they are represented to be a fully fleshed-out package deal that “resolves” all the issues in dispute between the Palestinians and Israelis. For another, these accords would leave Israel with indefensible borders and, inevitably, an armed Islamist Palestine on the high ground next door. Given Israel’s small security margin-of-error, they would constitute for the Jewish State a death warrant something that even a bad deal with North Korea is unlikely to be for the United States.

The Bottom Line

The truth of the matter is that whether the focus of such “ideas” is the Mideast, North Korea or some other international flashpoint it is utterly inconsistent with the very nature of democracy to let diplomacy be practiced by individuals other than those charged with such responsibilities by their government and accountable to it. For this reason, the Logan Act prohibiting freelance diplomatic missions was adopted early in the life of this Republic. The Bush Administration, and the national interest, would be well served by consistent adherence to the logic of that act.

When the Mexican Army defeated the French

With all the nonsense going on in Old Europe, it’s apropos, as they say in France, to observe Cinco de Mayo alongside our friends in Mexico.

Cinco de Mayo marks May 5, 1862, when a ragtag Mexican force whipped the superior French Army at the Battle of Puebla.

France at the time was a global superpower, ruled by Emperor Napoleon III, its military machine undefeated since the Battle of Waterloo a half-century before. With the United States embroiled in the Civil War, France backed the Confederacy and plotted to install a puppet monarchy in Mexico. France’s ultimate goal was to wrest control of the hemisphere’s new republics that had won independence from Spain.

French troops closed in on Puebla, pummeling the city’s two fortresses with heavy cannon. The Mexican defenders, led by the brilliant cavalryman, General Ignacio Zaragoza, fought back hard. Resisting the onslaught, the Mexicans stampeded a herd of cattle against advancing French lines. Machete-wielding mestizos and Zapotec Indians did the rest. The surviving French ran away.

Paris sent in fresh reinforcements, later squashing the Mexicans, and in two years installed an Austrian archduke, Maximilian Hapsburg, as puppet Emperor of Mexico. He didn’t last long. Within four years the French abandoned the hapless Maximilian to a Mexican firing squad.

Mexico is meddling in US military, claiming jurisdiction over chicano servicemen

Heroic Mexican-American soldiers and Marines have been among the earliest US casualties in Iraq. So it’s not unusual that the Mexican press and government would be paying attention.

However, rather than honor Mexican-Americans liberating Iraq, the Mexican press – and Mexican officials – claim that the US military is using ethnic minorities as cannon fodder. Some newspapers refer to these Americans as “Mexicans.”

And now, the Mexican government, according to the major newspaper El Universal, is taking “a census of persons of Mexican ancestry who belong to the armed forces of the United States and who are stationed in the war zone.” Not just Mexican citizens or dual nationals serving in the US military, but anybody with Mexican ancestry.

The ostensible reason is to help Mexican-American servicemen make contact with relatives living in Mexico. But Allan Wall, an American writer living in Mexico, sees a larger purpose: “The Mexican government is compiling this database for political purposes. It refuses to support the U.S. military. It has refused to honor these Mexicans and Mexican-Americans as American fighting men. But it wants to exploit their situation in the Iraq war, to score political points at home and how can it be doubted? to gain their loyalty.”

Such concerns wouldn’t stand on solid ground were it not for Mexican President Vicente Fox’s policy speech that he claims jurisdiction over all Americans of Mexican descent, and that is goal is to erase the northern and southern borders of the United States.

Many Americans view Fox as a friend of the US. He isn’t. He has been meddling aggressively in US immigration, welfare, education, and social policies, and has retained his predecessors’ tradition of sticking it to the United States in the UN, refusing to support the liberation of Iraq. Now he’s meddling inside the US military in time of war.

What does it all mean? It’s difficult to say. But it’s something that the US must start watching very closely.