Tag Archives: New Deterrent Working Group

Accept No Substitutes: Clinton Address On Iraq Signals Continuing Failure To Grasp Need For Toppling Saddam

(Washington, D.C.): In his remarks to a Pentagon audience and the Nation today, President
Clinton made a persuasive case — up to a point.

He described authoritatively the malevolent character of the Iraqi leadership, its determination
to
pursue weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs and its attendant, repeated violation of
Iraq’s obligations under various cease-fire accords and UN resolutions. The President
impressively asserted his Administration’s determination to prevent Saddam Hussein from once
again wielding such deadly weapons.

Unfortunately, Mr. Clinton rendered his address ludicrous — if not contemptible —
by
repeatedly emphasizing that if only Saddam would make new promises, the crisis
would
pass. No serious observer can believe that any future commitment from Saddam’s
government to
allow “free, fair and unfettered access” to all locations in Iraq, as demanded by President Clinton
today, will be worth more than the earlier, repeatedly violated ones.

What is Wrong With This Picture?

Holding out the prospect of a “diplomatic solution” in circumstances like these — where
diplomacy can only postpone the day of reckoning, not prevent its occurrence — signals to friend
and foe alike that the United States lacks the strategic vision, will and/or military power to use
force effectively. Matters are made worse by the repeated contention that such power as the U.S.
does command is going to be sent on a fool’s errand: “We want to seriously diminish the threat
posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program. We want to seriously reduce his capacity
to threaten his neighbors.”

The truth is that such an objective, even if it could be made less nebulous and more
achievable,
would be utterly ephemeral as long as Saddam Hussein and his ilk rule Iraq. It is in
the nature of
chemical and particularly biological weapons programs that within weeks — if not within days
or
hours — of an attack that “seriously diminished” Iraq’s WMD program, new dual-use and
covertly
stockpiled dedicated military equipment can resume production of lethal agents, toxins or viruses.

Far from bringing Saddam to heel, military action with this limited purpose will only
embolden the
Iraqi despot and his ruling clique. This is not conjecture; it is a forecast born of hard experience.
As syndicated columnist Tony Snow recalled in an article published in yesterday’s
Washington
Times: “Intelligence officers report that in the waning hours of the Gulf War,
Hussein asked
two questions: ‘Will they kill me?’ and ‘Will they cross the Euphrates?’ Upon hearing
that the answer to both queries was ‘no,’ he reportedly smiled and said, ‘Then I
win.‘“
(Emphasis added.)

Key Congressional Figures Get It, Why Not Mr. Clinton?

This reality is increasingly understood by leading Members of Congress. As the Center has
noted
in recent weeks, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Senate
Majority Leader Trent
Lott (R-MS) have made clear their view that Saddam is the problem. href=”#N_1_”>(1) On 12 February,
Republican Representatives Dan Burton (IN), Chris Smith
(NJ), Dana Rohrabacher (CA)
and Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham (CA) added their influential voices in a letter
President Clinton.
It said, in part:

    “…In order to be effective, any military action must not target the innocent
    people of Iraq, but instead must be aimed at Saddam and the underpinnings of
    his blood-stained regime    ….A critical objective…must be to get rid of Saddam. And
    how we do that is to assist the Iraqi people so they will have the freedom to select
    leadership that is not threatening to their neighbors and their own well being.

    “To this end, and consistent with the national objective that you articulated in
    your State of the Union address, there are three fundamental pillars of
    Saddam’s strength and his ability to destabilize the region: 1) weapons of
    mass destruction; 2) the Special Security and Special Republican Guard
    security forces; and 3) a close circle of political and military decision-makers.

    “These three components of Saddam’s power pyramid can be put at risk
    using a combination of TLAMs, stealth F-117 and B-2(2)
    bombers using their
    most capable weapons, and B-52s with stand-off cruise missiles.     We are
    concerned that relying on non-stealth, non-standoff systems is a recipe for U.S.
    and allied airmen being sacrificed and potential hostages to be paraded before the
    media by Saddam. To risk mass casualties by blowing up chemical and biological
    weapons bunkers, which would put at risk civilians, Iraq’s neighbors and
    American troops stationed in the region, while leaving Saddam in power is
    foolhardy. This would turn public opinion against the operation and threaten the
    stability of our regional allies.

    “There is no guarantee that air strikes will eliminate Saddam’s chemical and
    biological stockpile or prevent him from replenishing his arsenal. A sounder
    objective would be to disable Saddam. To this end, an intensive psychological
    operation should be integral with military action. A psy-ops campaign may
    include overriding Iraq’s national radio and television signals with programming
    to assure that Iraqi people understand that we are trying to help them….

    “…We now understand that we will never resolve the weapons of mass
    destruction issue so long as Saddam remains in power. We will support
    strong action. But it must be strategically sound and decisive, with the
    ultimate goal to free the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.    “
    (Emphasis added.)

The Military Gets It, Why Doesn’t Bill Clinton?

Today’s Washington Post reports that such an assessment is shared by senior
military leaders, if
not by all the President’s political appointees(3):

    “Defense and foreign policy officials said the President’s national security team
    remains divided over the aims and expectations of the intended bombardment, and
    frustrated senior officers said the target lists accumulating in the converted Bedouin
    village of Eskan in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Central Command’s forward air
    headquarters, are still subject to daily revision….

    “As bombing plans have expanded to encompass what one senior flag officer
    described as ‘thousands of aim points’ in Iraq, a large share of the intended
    violence is now directed at the apparatus maintaining Iraqi President
    Saddam Hussein in power, from networks of secret police to Baath Party
    organs.     Apart from the long-shot hope of a change of government, officials said,
    the aim is to crush Saddam Hussein’s defiance by threatening his most
    valued assets of internal control.

    “The 1991 Persian Gulf War featured a similar but largely abortive effort to
    target Saddam Hussein’s power base. But the objectives of that war’s six-week
    air campaign were largely elsewhere    , and target planners then devoted less than
    1 percent of their bombing missions — 260 of 36,046 ‘strike sorties’ — to the
    category they designated ‘L’ for leadership.

    “‘The emphasis is not just on chemical and biological [weapons],’ a top flag
    officer said. ‘The emphasis is on, you’re going to make it hurt, and the best
    way to hurt him is his core infrastructure.     We’re not going to leave that alone
    as we have in the past….If he feels threatened enough with his regime’s stability,
    then he has no choice but to acquiesce. It’s typical dictator mentality that the
    biggest thing that drives him is holding onto power.'”

    The Military Bridles at Administration Disingenuousness

It is ironic that, according to the Post, “The administration does
not wish to advertise
this intention, according to several accounts, because it fears the plan may not work. ‘In
our
public discourse of this we need to focus on an achievable
objective,’ said one senior
administration official.”

Like the growing chorus in Congress, the U.S. military understands that “seriously
diminishing”
Saddam’s WMD program is, if anything, less achievable — and certainly less
efficacious — than
disrupting his “core infrastructure” or security apparatus. As the Post put it:

    “But President Clinton’s stated intention — to damage forbidden weapons stocks from
    the air, rather than compel Iraq to give full access to United Nations inspectors charged
    with discovering them on the ground — has been challenged by some in Congress and
    elsewhere as too limited. When critics in and out of government noted that Iraq could
    quickly reconstitute its biological and chemical weapons programs, Secretary of State
    Madeleine K. Albright declared last week that, ‘We reserve the right for a follow-up
    strike.’

    “There is broad dissatisfaction with that strategy in the military
    establishment, several senior officials said    . ‘We pay such a huge price
    politically that we have fewer friends next time and even fewer the time after
    that,’ said one military planner. ‘Every six months doing maintenance strikes on
    Iraq for the next 10 years doesn’t seem to be good foreign policy or military
    strategy.'”(4)

Another Presidential Blind Spot: Russia is No ‘Partner for
Peace’

In his remarks today, President Clinton glossed over one other natty problem with his Iraq
policy:
His continuing confidence that, as he put it, “the international community does have the wisdom
and the will and the way to protect peace and security in a new era.” This formula ignores the
fact that three out of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — Russia, China
and France — are actively running interference for Saddam Hussein, or worse. href=”#N_5_”>(5)

Take, for example, the case of Russia. Even before Boris Yeltsin started warning that
U.S.-led
military action against Iraq could precipitate “World War III,” the Russians were materially
contributing to the problem posed by Iraq. According to the 12 February 1998 Washington
Post,(6) “United Nations inspectors in Iraq last fall
uncovered what they considered highly
unsettling evidence of a 1995 agreement by the Russian government to sell Iraq
sophisticated
fermentation equipment that could be used to develop biological weapons, according to
sources.” What is more:

    “The evidence of an illicit deal is [but] one element of a close collaboration
    between Moscow and Baghdad on matters of interest to the United Nations
    Special Commission on Iraq    ….U.S. intelligence agencies have privately warned U.N.
    officials that Russian intelligence operatives are spying on the commission and its
    personnel in New York and overseas,     the sources said. They have further warned
    that the Russian spy agency, which was formerly headed by Foreign Minister
    Yevgeny Primakov, may have passed some of the information it collects directly
    to Iraq.

    “In some cases, Moscow has made little effort to conceal efforts to learn what
    the commission is doing and to influence the scope and timing of certain sensitive
    inspections, according to sources….In the summer of 1996, for example, a team of
    inspectors retreated to a remote English town for a training exercise to prepare
    for a surprise visit to a highly sensitive Iraqi site. After checking into a local
    hotel, an inspector recognized a Russian official later identified as the London
    resident for the Russian foreign intelligence service, according to three sources.
    Each night, the official was observed attempting to debrief Russian
    members of the inspection team, the sources said. When inspectors
    eventually tried to reach the site targeted by the commission, they were
    blocked by Iraqi military forces.

    “In another incident cited by several sources, commission officials in charge of
    another highly sensitive inspection in March 1996 deliberately disseminated false
    information to members of their own team about which Iraqi site they had
    targeted. Shortly afterward, a Russian political counselor in New York, Gennadi
    Gatilov    , who is now Moscow’s chief expert in New York on commission
    matters, approached a senior commission official to complain that inspecting that
    site would be highly disruptive.

    “Gatilov further threatened that if the inspection went forward, Moscow would
    oppose implementation of a U.N. plan for long-term routine monitoring of
    imports and exports to Iraq related to weapons of mass destruction — a threat that
    commission officials ignored, sources said.” (Emphasis added throughout.)

These are the sorts of problems that must be expected to intensify
if the Clinton
Administration allows a new “diplomatic solution” to be brokered by UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan that will permit representatives of the “Perm Five” (read, Russians,
Chinese
and French “diplomats”) to accompany UNSCOM inspectors on some or all of their future on-site
visits in Iraq.

The Bottom Line

The American people, their elected representatives and those who have volunteered to put
their
lives on the line for their country will readily support President Clinton in his bid to end the
danger posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction — provided he addresses that
danger systemically, and not in a symptomatic, if not completely phony, fashion.

Should he chose, once again, to do otherwise, however, Mr. Clinton should be under no
illusion:
He will secure for himself no real, let alone durable, diminution in the threat from
Iraq. Instead,
he will likely secure a place in that circle of the Inferno reserved for those who recklessly sacrifice
their country’s interests and servicemen by compromising with, rather than effectively resisting,
unappeasable tyrants.

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Clinton’s Huffing-And-Puffing On Iraq — But Lack
of a Coherent Strategy — Looks Like a Formula for Disaster ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_22″>No. 98-D 22, 4 February 1998).

2. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
What’s Wrong With This Picture? Clinton Doesn’t
Get the Need for Strategic Air Strikes — Or the Right Tool for Conducting Them
(No. 98-D
26, 9 February 1998).

3. See “Raids May Strike At Power Structure,” Barton Gellman,
Washington Post, 17 February 1998, p. A1.

4. A good policy in this area requires in addition to the military
strikes and psychological warfare
campaigns described above, what Richard Perle has called a “serious political program.” As
described in a Washington Post op.ed. article by former Assistant Secretary of
Defense Perle (See
No. 98-D 26) such a program would involve a concerted effort to
foster, empower and legitimate
a provisional government of Free Iraq and to delegitimate Saddam Hussein and his ruling clique.

5. A.M. Rosenthal’s syndicated column in today’s New York
Times brilliantly describes the double
travesty of so-called allies who subvert efforts to stop Saddam on the one hand and that of
an
American government that tries to conceal this practice: “Our real difference with Russia, China
and France [is] their decision to put lust for Mideast influence and Saddam’s trade above concern
about his chemical and biological weapons. The decision besmirches all countries who take it.
Prettifying it besmirches us.”

6. See “Did Russia Sell Iraq Germ Warfare Equipment?” by R.
Jeffrey Smith, p. A1.

THE ‘ROSENBERG OPTION’: WILL THE NUCLEAR SUMMIT IN MOSCOW PRODUCE A MELTDOWN FOR U.S. SECURITY?

(Washington, D.C.): President Clinton is expected to arrive in
Moscow today to attend a summit on nuclear safety. This summit is
designed, in part, to offer an opportunity for President Clinton
and Russian President Boris Yeltsin to boost their respective
political campaigns by appearing to grapple with the threat posed
by the proliferation of deadly nuclear materials and
technologies.

Just as the recent anti-terrorism summit actually had the
effect of whitewashing a principal practitioner of terrorism,
Yassir Arafat, this summit meeting may wind up contributing
to the nuclear threat facing the United States. That appalling
prospect arises not least from the possibility that President
Clinton could exercise an option prepared for his Moscow visit —
an option that would entail the greatest transfer of U.S. nuclear
secrets to the Kremlin since the Soviet spies, Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, supplied Joseph Stalin with information about this
Nation’s fledgling nuclear program roughly fifty years ago.

In an op.ed. article which appeared in yesterday’s Washington
Times (a copy of which is attached),
the Center for Security Policy’s director, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.,
warns of the dangers associated with what he calls the
“Rosenberg Option.” This option would offer Boris
Yeltsin’s government the “crown jewels” of America’s
nuclear weapons program.

These include sophisticated computer programs that allow
precise modeling of implosion physics and other exotic phenomena
that must be understood to validate existing weapons designs and
to create new ones. Also proposed for release to the Russians are
test cases that would allow the Kremlin to confirm the
performance of these models. Thanks to earlier, reckless Clinton
Administration decisions to ease export restrictions, Russia will
also have the use of powerful supercomputers needed to run such
demanding software.

Since Russia continues to modernize its offensive
nuclear arsenal and to sell nuclear-weapons related technology to
nations like China and Iran, it is entirely possible that the
“Rosenberg Option” would actually abet the military
capabilities of potential U.S. adversaries. The Center
for Security Policy believes that so portentous a step must not
be taken without careful consideration by the Congress and an
informed public debate. Toward that end, it calls upon the
Clinton Administration to refrain from offering to transfer such
sensitive information at this time. Should it refuse to exercise
such restraint, the Center urges the Congress to ensure that no
such transfers will be allowed to occur without express
authorization from the legislative branch.

EARLY RETURNS: WASTEFUL U.S., WESTERN AID HELPS ASSURE VICTORY OF ANTI-WESTERN FORCES IN FORMER SOVIET UNION

(Washington, D.C.): The American public is about to
get a rude awakening. In the wake of the expected victory
of Communists and other hard-line, anti-Western
revanchists in this weekend’s parliamentary elections in
Russia, reality should sink in: The bad-old-days of the
Cold War may not have been left behind permanently, after
all. As a harbinger of the likely results of the more
important presidential election currently scheduled for
June 1996, hard questions will surely be asked on Capitol
Hill and elsewhere about who lost Russia and why.

Candid answers to such questions will reveal an
unpalatable truth: The bulk of U.S. assistance flows
has not gone to support genuinely pro-democratic and free
market reformers. It has, instead, gone directly or
indirectly to the political infrastructure of the
Communists, their Agrarian Party allies, and the
so-called Party of War that orchestrated the year-old
genocidal campaign in Chechnya. This has been
particularly true of billions of American tax dollars
provided to Moscow through international institutions
like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Rather than
supporting genuine structural change, the IMF seems bent
on undermining it.

With ‘Enemies’ Like Us…

This travesty has been chronicled by a respected
analyst in the field, J. Michael Waller of the
American Foreign Policy Council. His research reveals
that the IMF has transferred billions into the Russian
Central Bank, literally making it possible for the
Central Bank to provide cash subsidies to the completely
unreformed state agricultural sector, to sustain the
still-vast military-industrial complex, to underwrite the
war in Chechnya, etc. Despite repeated calls from the
Center for Security Policy and sensible legislators, IMF
funding, along with Western debt rescheduling
arrangements, have not been linked to anything other than
economic criteria.

As a result, the United States, as the largest IMF
donor, has participated in the funding of the following,
debilitating developments:

  • Perpetuating a grossly inefficient
    Soviet-style agricultural system:     A major
    employer and political support base for the
    Communists and their allied Agrarian Party,
    Russia’s sprawling state and collective
    agricultural system continues to receive huge
    subsidies from the Central Bank. The 1996 federal
    budget increases agricultural subsidies to the
    point that the proto-communist Agrarian Party
    actually says it no longer opposes IMF loans.

  • Financing life support for Soviet-style
    industrial apparatuses:     Huge industrial
    monopolies largely resembling their Soviet
    Communist predecessors are also benefitting from
    the IMF. A case in point is Gazprom, the natural
    gas giant formerly headed by Prime Minister
    Viktor Chernomyrdin — whose industry-based
    party, ironically, President Yeltsin tries to
    differentiate from “the forces of the
    past.”

    • Gazprom pays virtually no taxes, even though
    Moscow’s agreement with the IMF states that the
    energy sector must pay a given share. The Financial
    Times     reported on 18 September 1995 that the
    IMF released its $500 million-a-month tranches to
    Russia “despite the government’s inability
    fully to deliver on its pledges to raise taxes
    from the energy sector.” In this connection,
    Gazprom was specifically cited. And yet, the gas
    company is far from unable to pay its fair share.
    As the Washington Post noted on 3
    December, “If ranked by the amount of its
    profits, Gazprom would be second on the Fortune
    500 list, just behind the Royal Dutch/Shell
    Group, which had profits of $6.2 billion.”

    The Post added, however, that Gazprom’s hidden
    profits may be even larger. In fact, if Gazprom
    paid its taxes, economist Anders Aslund estimates
    that it would produce up to $30 billion in
    revenues to the Russian government. Instead,
    Moscow relies on the IMF to help make up its
    yawning deficits.

  • Underwriting military modernization: The
    State Duma passed the 1996 federal budget on 6
    December, increasing military spending and
    intending to pay with an expected three-year IMF
    loan of as much as $10 billion. Russia’s military
    modernization continues apace: five new combat
    aircraft, including a new multi-role strategic
    bomber; upgraded Typhoon ballistic missile
    submarines and a new-generation follow-on SSBN
    whose keels have been laid; the new
    Severodvinsk-class attack submarine; the new
    generation submarine-launched ballistic missiles;
    and a new TOPOL-M mobile intercontinental
    ballistic missile. Meanwhile, Russia is
    elaborating a new military doctrine that stresses
    reliance on weapons of mass destruction.
    According to Defense News, this doctrine
    also envisions the United States and its allies
    to be “Russia’s key potential enemies.”

  • Paymaster for Russia’s war criminals in
    Chechnya:     The war in Chechnya broke Russia’s
    1995 federal budget. As a result, the IMF’s April
    decision to loan Moscow more than $6 billion
    arrived just in the nick of time. It went ahead
    despite pleas from pro-Western Russian political
    leaders and groups like Human Rights Watch and
    the International Commission of Jurists who urged
    that the United States condition the IMF loan on
    halting the Kremlin’s aggression in Chechnya.

    • The Clinton Administration refused to insist upon
    such linkage. Indeed, last May, when Senator
    Mitch McConnell asked Treasury Secretary Robert
    Rubin if international loans should be
    conditioned on Russia’s conduct, Rubin responded
    that continued IMF aid would “minimize the
    probabilities of future Chechnyas” and
    should not be conditioned on an end to Russian
    violence there.

  • Enabling aggressive espionage operations:.
    Russia is even using IMF aid to pay for its
    covert operatives in the United States. A
    classified CIA report leaked recently to the Washington
    Times     notes that the Russian External
    Intelligence Service (SVR) paid CIA turncoat
    Aldrich Ames $130,000 in cash in November 1992. His
    SVR case officer, Yuri Karetkin, confirmed to
    Ames that the new, sequentially-numbered $100
    bills had come from the IMF and other Western aid
    sources.

  • The IMF has also effectively rewarded Moscow’s
    hard-line proxy regime in Belarus for its murder
    of two American citizens last September.
    Within days of shooting down Alan Fraenckel and
    John Stuart-Jervis — pilots of a sport balloon
    who had received permission to overfly Belarus in
    an international race — Minsk received IMF
    approval of $293 million in standby credits with
    Washington’s full approval    . Belarus’s air
    defenses are completely integrated with those of
    Moscow, meaning that Russia cannot be exculpated
    for a crime that even the New York Times
    described as “an incident recalling the most
    violent excesses of the Cold War.”

The United States government also participated in and
supported a November rescheduling of Russia’s external
debt. Here again, the Russian military and other backers
of the former Soviet Union’s “red-brown”
political factions are the likely beneficiaries of the
West’s astounding decision to reschedule Moscow’s $130
billion debt and to give the Kremlin a grace period so
that it need not repay part of the principal until the
year 2002. It was no accident, for example, that the
day after this rescheduling was agreed upon, Prime
Minister Chernomyrdin announced that all overdue payments
to the armed forces (totaling more than half-a-billion
dollars) would be paid off shortly.

The Bottom Line

The results of this weekend’s elections in Russia
will come as no surprise to those who — like the Center
for Security Policy — have been closely monitoring these
and other troubling developments there. It is to be hoped
that those who are surprised will add impetus to ongoing
efforts in Congress aimed at ensuring that U.S. aid
policy to the former Soviet Union be founded on the solid
commercial and national security principles of
discipline, transparency, conditionality and collateral.

One such effort has been sponsored by Rep. Gerald
Solomon (R-NY) in the form of H.R. 519. This legislation
would “prohibit foreign assistance to Russia unless
certain requirements relating to Russian intelligence
activities, relations between Russia and certain
countries, Russian arms control policy, and the reform of
the Russian economy are met.”

If such principles had been put into place years ago,
the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars that were
squandered through the Commodity Credit Corporation in
the name of propping up Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet regime
— to name but one example — might have been made
available for other, more worthy purposes. If they were
being observed today, billions more in American tax
dollars might stop being wasted, abused or fraudulently
misappropriated by Moscow through the IMF or through such
direct mechanisms as the so-called Cooperative Threat
Reduction (or Nunn-Lugar) program. But clearly, in the
dark future suggested by the impending Russian elections,
the United States has little choice but to adopt such
principles now — and to avoid, by adherence to
them, further unjustifiable and increasingly reckless
squandering of taxpayer resources.

– 30 –

THE POLITICIZED C.I.A.: THE REAL PROBLEM HAS BEEN UNDER — NOT OVER — ESTIMATING MOSCOW’S WEAPONRY

Precis: The U.S. intelligence
community is under siege. Ironically, to no small extent,
the attack is coming from within — from the senior
leadership of the CIA. A troubling case in point involves
charges that the Agency was tricked into overestimating
the magnitude of the Soviet threat. In fact, the problem
appears to be that the CIA was most misled by planted
information concerning Soviet political affairs, not
military capabilities. Under Clinton Administration
leadership, U.S. intelligence may be making the same
mistake today — a dangerous possibility that requires
urgent attention and corrective action.

(Washington, D.C.): If it were not so serious, it
would be funny: The new Director of Central Intelligence
(DCI), John Deutch, has proven to have a bigger appetite
for currying favorable reviews in the press and on
Capitol Hill than even Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary.
Toward this transparent end, Dr. Deutch has recently been
much in evidence, for example, in: reorganizing his
agency (putting in charge a gaggle of left-leaning
congressional staffers); quantifying and assigning blame
for the Aldrich Ames debacle; and decrying and forbidding
the CIA’s use of unsavory characters as foreign espionage
resources in Guatemala and elsewhere. Judging by the
positive treatment he has received in a Parade
Magazine cover story this past weekend, in myriad news
coverage and in generally favorable op.ed. articles, the
DCI’s P.R. campaign is succeeding.

Far less clear is whether the net effect of such
self-promotion will be the reliable acquisition and
timely, accurate analysis of intelligence on behalf of
the U.S. government. Unfortunately, the early
indicators suggest that the CIA and, to varying degrees,
its sister agencies in the intelligence community are
suffering under a steady diet of heavy-handed,
politically correct micro-management. Morale is
plummeting (the DCI was recently booed by his
employees at a large agency function); sources are
drying up (even those agents deemed pristine enough
to meet Deutch’s standards are understandably growing
increasingly reluctant to share information with the
current Agency team), sensitive collection methods are
being compromised (not least by the indiscriminate
sharing of classified data with the United Nations and
other undisciplined multilateral “users” of
U.S. intelligence); critical counter-intelligence
techniques are being selectively applied (Clinton
political appointees are being excused from routine
polygraphing); and analyses appear to be increasingly
slanted to tell Administration policy-makers what they
want to hear (assuming, that is, they are willing to
listen at all).

A Sign of the Times

A worrisome example of the problem with the new
politicized CIA can be found in Dr. Deutch’s trumpeting
of the allegedly deleterious impact of Soviet
disinformation passed through agents compromised by
Aldrich Ames. As the attached
editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal
notes, the DCI recently told Congress that Soviet double
agents duped the Pentagon into spending billions of
dollars on unduly sophisticated and wildly expensive
weapon systems. Thanks to what Director Deutch called
“inexcusable” and “devastating”
failures to identify reports from such agents as suspect,
the Cold War was won at a vastly higher price than would
otherwise have been required.

The Journal correctly observes that:

“There’s just one thing wrong with this
picture: It was a blueprint for Cold War victory not
by the Russians but by the U.S. It would have
been nonsensical for the KGB to have thought up such
a screwy plot. Yet some in Washington put forward
this preposterous scenario as Cold War history.”

Whether by design or not, this assertion would have
served a clear domestic political purpose. In the
words of the Journal, it would have “prove[d]
that, as liberals wailed at the time, the famous
Reagan-Weinberger defense build-up was
‘unnecessary.'” This purpose was (perhaps
inadvertently) acknowledged in a headline accompanying a
17 November article by Washington Post reporter
Walter Pincus: “Tainted Intelligence Issue Blunted;
Review Can’t Find a Pentagon Decision Based on Soviet
Disinformation.”

The Real Scandal

The truth of the matter is that the most dangerous
disinformation passed on by these double agents was
designed to overstate the secure hold on power and benign
intentions of Mikhail Gorbachev, not to overstate
the capability of his military hardware. Such data
encouraged the West to lower its guard — something it
was all too inclined to do anyway in the thrall of glasnost
and perestroika. The Bush Administration, which
was determined to prop up Gorbachev and preserve the
“territorial integrity” of the USSR, was
uncritical in accepting and acting upon this
disinformation.

An even more serious problem — which seems to
persist to this day — is the failure of U.S.
intelligence accurately to understand that the Kremlin’s
weapons development and procurement program was actually
far larger and more dynamic than the Intelligence
Community (IC) generally believed. According to
working level analysts, many scores of Soviet military
activities escaped detection or were significantly
underestimated. Some of these were even operational systems.
The latter reportedly included a strategic missile that
could travel intercontinental distances underwater until
making, with little warning, its terminal aerial
maneuver.

The Bottom Line

To paraphrase a cliche, those who fail to
understand the Cold War may be doomed to repeat it — or
something worse. If anything, the United States needs
a more competent, aggressive and apolitical intelligence
operation in the present strategic environment. Dr.
Deutch and his cohorts may prove to be a serious
impediment to fielding such a national asset, rather than
a catalyst to doing so.

The problem represented by an IC leadership seemingly
more concerned with good press than good intelligence is
not, unfortunately limited to the present Administration.
As the Ames case demonstrates, damage done to the
integrity and quality of an intelligence service can take
many years to correct. Those interested in ensuring that
the next President is well served in this area
have a powerful interest in limiting the damage being
done by this President and his appointees at the
CIA.

THE MOST IMPORTANT JUSTIFICATION FOR FIRING HAZEL O’LEARY: HER ROLE IN DENUCLEARIZING THE UNITED STATES

(Washington, D.C.): In the wake of an article in
yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, widespread and
welcome calls have been heard for the resignation of
Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary. The reason? Secretary
O’Leary’s department has spent tens of thousands of
taxpayer dollars on a contract intended to improve her
public relations image and assist in communicating the
departmental party line. This contract involved
compiling, among other things, lists of journalists who
have provided favorable and unfavorable coverage. As Mrs.
O’Leary’s press secretary, Barbara Semedo, put it to the Journal:
“[The lower ratings] meant we weren’t getting our
message across, that we needed to work on this person
a little.” (Emphasis added.)

It is, of course, a travesty that Mrs. O’Leary’s
evident preoccupation with good press would be indulged
(with or without her direct approval) at taxpayer
expense. But even more troubling than the appearance that
certain journalists were to be “worked on” if
they failed to provide favorable copy is the further
confirmation provided by this contract that the
content and timing of decisions by the Secretary of
Energy may be influenced by a desire to manipulate press
and public opinion. Two previous examples of this
practice were Mrs. O’Leary’s highly publicized actions in
December 1993 involving the wholesale declassification of
documents pertaining to U.S. nuclear weapons program and
her assertion that tens of thousands of Americans may
have been secretly subjected to dangerous levels of
radiation.(1)

Unfortunately, these decisions reflect more than an
obsession with cultivating positive PR from a generally
anti-nuclear press corps. They are of a piece with many
other steps taken at Mrs. O’Leary’s direction or with her
endorsement that appear to have a far more insidious
purpose: the unilateral denuclearization of the United
States. Taken together, such actions constitute
compelling grounds for securing her immediate termination
as Secretary of Energy.

A Bill of Particulars

Among the recent, troubling denuclearization actions
taken by the O’Leary Energy Department are the following:

  • The denuclearizers’ campaign for the permanent
    cessation of U.S. nuclear testing.     As those
    opposed to the United States remaining a nuclear
    power appreciate, it is not possible to retain
    confidence over time in the safety, reliability
    and effectiveness of the Nation’s deterrent
    posture without periodic underground nuclear
    testing. For this reason, the directors of the
    national laboratories — who are charged with
    certifying that America’s deterrent forces meet
    these rigorous standards — have consistently
    recommended against a Comprehensive Test Ban that
    would preclude all such testing.

    • They did, that is, until this year. In
    the spring of 1995, Hazel O’Leary appears to have
    prevailed upon the DoE laboratories to change
    their traditional view of the necessity for
    nuclear testing. The reason had nothing to do
    with the technical merits of the case, however.
    Instead, it evidently was a function of the
    level of resources the labs could expect to
    receive from the Energy Department    : If they
    continued to support the need for testing, the
    lab directors could take their chances on getting
    the associated resources.

    On the other hand, if the directors chose to
    provide the Administration with political cover
    for its no-testing campaign, their laboratories
    stood to receive a piece of the billions of
    dollars O’Leary and Company propose to put into
    an R&D slush fund for what she
    euphemistically calls “stockpile
    stewardship.” In the case of Lawrence
    Livermore, the inducement was even more dramatic.
    After Livermore played ball on testing, Secretary
    O’Leary dropped her announced intention to close
    the lab down.

  • The denuclearizers’ efforts to dismantle the
    production side of the nuclear weapons complex.
    As a result largely of decisions taken by Mrs.
    O’Leary, the United States could not now perform
    volume production of nuclear weapons. Worse yet,
    at her direction, the U.S. will continue to
    postpone the work necessary to bring on line a
    new, reliable source of tritium — a radioactive
    gas essential to the effective operation of the existing
    American arsenal. Perhaps Mrs. O’Leary hopes that
    — by deferring taking such steps for at least
    three years — she can go beyond simply
    compelling further cannibalization and deep
    unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear
    stockpile. She may come close to realizing the
    denuclearizers’ surreal dream: a world
    “unthreatened” by American
    nuclear power.

    • Fortunately, there is hope that the
    Congress will reject at least the tritium
    dimension of the denuclearization agenda.     A
    House task force commissioned by Speaker Newt
    Gingrich and led by Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
    has offered a valuable “second
    opinion.” It concluded that the United
    States can no longer delay work on a new tritium
    production reactor that is capable of producing
    both tritium for national security purposes and
    electricity for the civilian economy. It is very
    much to be hoped that this finding will be
    translated into legislative action in the near
    future.

    Most recently, the Clinton denuclearizers
    have parlayed regional anger over a series of
    French nuclear tests into a formal American
    embrace of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone —
    an initiative that has been opposed by previous
    U.S. administrations.     Such opposition stemmed
    from the fact that the Treaty is totally
    unverifiable, sure to be violated by potentially
    hostile powers and inconsistent with the Nation’s
    security interests in that part of the world, as
    well as other areas which American forces reach
    by transiting the Pacific.

    While the Clinton team has declared it will
    not observe some of the Treaty’s prohibitions, it
    seems clear that this denuclearizing
    Administration will not long resist demands for
    full, rather than selective, U.S. compliance with
    the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty — or
    appeals to join similar utopian delusions in
    Latin America, the Indian Ocean and elsewhere.

The Bottom Line

The net result of these various initiatives — and
others, such as the purposeful demoralization by Mrs.
O’Leary and her anti-nuclear cohort of the Nation’s
technical experts needed to create and maintain a
credible nuclear arsenal combined with incentives for
them to leave government service — are more serious than
any one taken individually. As things stand now, the
Clinton Administration’s legacy to its successor will be
a world rife with rogue nations equipped with dangerous
nuclear capabilities and a less-than-viable American
deterrent.

If such a frightening circumstance is to be
avoided, the Congress had better chart a new course. An
appropriate first step would be to secure a thorough
housecleaning at the Department of Energy, starting with
Hazel O’Leary’s resignation.

– 30 –

(1) Interestingly, when a
presidential commission charged with examining this
evidence issued its report last month, the findings were
decidedly anti-climatic. After an exhaustive review of
tens of thousands of cases, it turns out only about
thirty instances were discovered in which participants in
experiments were exposed to radiation in a manner that
is, by today’s standards, deemed ethically problematic.
While those few episodes may warrant opprobrium, they
hardly justify the witchhunt, hysteria and recriminations
apparently deliberately precipitated by Secretary O’Leary
in furtherance of her denuclearization agenda.

CASPIAN WATCH: RUSSIAN POWER-PLAYS ON ‘EARLY OIL’ HALLMARK OF KREMLIN EXPANSIONISM PAST — AND FUTURE?

(Washington, D.C.) One week from today,
representatives of the Caspian Sea Oil Consortium —
representing oil companies from, among other countries,
the United States, Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan, are
scheduled to make a strategically monumental decision: Through
which countries will the Consortium export the vast
quantities of Azeri and other oil deposits it expects to
tap from Caspian Sea reserves estimated to rival those of
the North Sea and Alaskan North Slope, combined?

At issue is whether Russia will enjoy monopoly
control over these oil flows — and the attendant revenue
streams? Or will there ultimately be a southern,
Western-oriented pipeline, for example, through Georgia
to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan?

‘Great Game’ Redux

Moscow clearly understands the long-term strategic
significance of this choice. Consider just a few of the
recent developments in which it appears to have had at
least an indirect hand, if not a very overt and violent
role: A genocidal Russian war in Chechnya; a
Russian-supported Armenian political and military
campaign against Azerbaijan; Russian violation of the
Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty so as to retain many
hundreds of pieces of heavy armor beyond the levels
permitted by the CFE Treaty; nurturing an ominous
strategic partnership with Iran (including providing it
with an advanced nuclear program and training Iranian
security services); Kremlin pressure tactics against
Turkey, exacerbated by Kurdish terrorist attacks
supported by Syria, Iran and other Russian clients; and
an assassination attempt against Georgian leader Eduard
Shevardnadze shortly after he agreed to support a
southern pipeline across Georgia.

Doesn’t Washington Recognize that Enormous U.S.
Interests Are At Stake?

In stark contrast, the Clinton Administration
seems to be at best passive, if not actually acquiescent,
concerning Moscow’s multifaceted effort to wire the deal
and consolidate its position in the oil-rich Caucasus
region. Under the direction of the reflexively pro-Moscow
Deputy Secretary of State, Strobe Talbott, and the clubby
Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, the United States has
largely ignored the latest Kremlin imperial gambit.

Administration apologists claim that the Clinton team
has simply been distracted. Its distractions would seem
to be no accident, however. In fact, the Yeltsin
government has choreographed the denouement of its push
to lock up the Caspian Sea with two elegant diversions:
shrill opposition to NATO’s eastward expansion and
insistent demands for a prominent role in Balkan
peacekeeping/making. Extreme sensitivity in Washington
and allied capitals to Moscow’s purportedly wounded
feelings has served as a backdrop, if not a pretext, for
largely accommodating Russian demands for monopolistic
control over the export of Consortium products.

The Clinton Administration’s mishandling of this
issue is all the more appalling in light of the obvious
U.S. interests at stake in the decision to be announced
in Baku on 9 October. These include:

  • Ensuring the free movement to international
    markets of oil and gas from the Caspian Sea and
    Central Asia;

  • Preserving the independence and economic
    viability of former Soviet republics in the
    region — and avoiding the de facto or de
    jure     reconstitution of a southern-tier Soviet
    Union;

  • Thwarting political/military initiatives by
    Russia and Iran to wield inordinate influence
    over pipeline routing decisions and other issues
    fundamental to the development of these huge
    reserves    ;

  • Strengthening secular Muslim societies
    (notably, Turkey and Azerbaijan) against the
    predations of Islamic extremism;     and

  • Protecting against further deterioration of
    the sensitive ecosystems and waterways of the
    region (e.g., Turkey’s imperilled Bosphorus
    Straits)    .

Blame Enough to Go Around

Unfortunately, the Republican-controlled Congress has
not adequately focused on the United States’ equities in
this regional drama, either. For example, Senate Majority
Leader Robert Dole (whose affection for Armenia
reportedly stems from the nationality of the doctor who
helped him recover from his nearly fatal war wounds) has
encouraged the Clinton Administration to hold Azerbaijan
at arms length. Instead, he has promoted ties with an
Armenia closely linked to Moscow and Tehran — including
some $500 million in U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance over
the past five years, a head-of-state visit by Armenian
president Ter Petrossian to Washington earlier this year
and a second visit to Capitol Hill later this month —
benefits thus far denied a secular, Western-oriented
Azerbaijan.

Such treatment is all the more remarkable in light of
the fact that Armenia recently signed a 25-year military
basing agreement with Moscow that gives Russia
responsibility for security of Armenia’s border with
Turkey. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, recently concluded
a 25-year multi-billion dollar deal with American oil
companies, a development evidently considered of little
political importance in Washington.

Relevant congressional committees have also failed to
give due consideration to the strategic implications of
the pending decisions concerning “early oil”
extracted from the Caspian Sea region. This is a
particularly regrettable oversight insofar as the
near-term decisions will have momentous long-term
repercussions: To name one, who will control the
world’s second- largest oil supplies for the
industrialized democracies in the 21st century?

The Bottom Line

In light of the high stakes and the inadequate
attention this issue has received to date from senior
U.S. policy-makers, the Center for Security Policy will
be producing a “Caspian Watch” of periodic Decision
Briefs dealing with the upcoming decision and the
repercussions that flow from it over time. Meanwhile, the
Center urges the executive and legislative branches in
Washington to accord the strategic Caspian Sea oil region
the priority it deserves — and to start safeguarding
U.S. interests increasingly in jeopardy there.

CONGRESS SHOULD SAY ‘NYET’ TO EITHER U.S. OR RUSSIAN GROUND FORCES AS BOSNIAN PEACEKEEPERS

(Washington, D.C.) The message President Clinton
should hear from members of the congressional leadership
meeting with him on Bosnia at the White House today
should be very simple: No U.S. forces should be put on
the ground in Bosnia in the hope of sustaining an
unsustainable peace agreement. And no attempt should be
made to find command-and-control arrangements or other
means of introducing Russian forces as peacekeeping units
in territory currently controlled or to be relinquished
by Bosnian Serb units.

Such positions appear consistent with the sentiments
expressed in a letter to Mr. Clinton dated 25 September
and signed by Senators Robert Dole, John Warner, Thad
Cochran, Jim Inhofe, Bob Smith, Dirk Kempthorne, Jesse
Helms, Jon Kyl, Arlen Specter and Kay Bailey Hutchison.
They wrote, in part: “…We have serious concerns
about the commitments you and your administration
reportedly have made with respect to U.S. participation
— to include thousands of ground forces — in enforcing
a possible Bosnian peace settlement.“

The Senators’ concerns are evident in thirteen
questions posed to the Clinton Administration in their
letter. They asked to be informed about such fundamental
information as:

  • What specific commitments concerning U.S. troops
    have been made to NATO and the Bosnian
    government?

  • How many troops would be involved — and how many
    reservists would be required, if any, to be
    called up to meet these force levels? Where will
    they be deployed? And for how long?

  • When would the troops go in — immediately upon
    an agreement being signed or later on? And what
    would happen to these plans if fighting between
    the parties continued?

  • What would be the rules of engagement?
  • What are the estimated costs of this operation
    and what would be the U.S. share?

What ‘Command-and-Control’?

A particularly important line of questioning
related to elementary command-and-control arrangements:

  • “Would this be a NATO-only operation or
    would Russian troops and/or other troops, from
    Islamic countries, for example, also be a part of
    that total force enforcing a settlement?”

  • “Would NATO be in complete command of all
    forces involved in an enforcement operation? Or
    would Russian forces and non-NATO forces be under
    different command arrangements? If so, how would
    these varied command arrangements be ultimately
    integrated in order to achieve unity of command?
    Is there to be another dual-key command?”
    (Emphasis added.)

‘Thank You For Your Interest in National
Security….’

The President’s response, dated 28 September
1995, speaks volumes about the lack of coherent thought
or systematic preparation that has gone into the Clinton
Administration’s decision to commit up to 25,000 U.S.
troops to a Bosnian peacekeeping operation. It
answered none of the Senators’ questions.
Instead, Mr. Clinton took refuge in the shifting sands of
the Bosnian peace negotiations. The presidential letter
opined: “We cannot know the details of the required
implementation force until we know the details of a
settlement. But NATO planning is proceeding, and as it
evolves, we will provide detailed answers to your and
other questions.”

The truth of the matter is that the
Administration’s policy-makers have no idea what the
answers to the Senators’ questions should be —
let alone what they will be if and when the
parties actually reach an agreement. The square peg
of Russian troops on the ground simply cannot be fit in
the round hole of a NATO operation. Neither can the
Administration have confidence that it will be able to
pull out all U.S. ground forces in time for the November
election as its perceived political imperatives dictate.

The Real Rub

The Senators also addressed an even more intractable
problem with the Clinton-Holbrooke peace plan:

“Should [U.S. forces] be deployed to
partition a sovereign and independent country into
two entities….Do we want to place our soldiers in
harms’ way to defend the compromise of our
principles? We must also ask whether or not any
settlement reached has been agreed to freely by the
Bosnian government and without coercion. We are
concerned about news reports that senior
Administration officials gained Bosnian government
agreement on the first set of ‘Agreed Principles’ by
threatening a halt in NATO bombing.

“Finally, we must ask whether it would
not be more just and more wise to lift the arms
embargo on Bosnia and Herzegovina, and allow the
Bosnians to fight until there is a stable military
balance — the precondition for any settlement
which would not require the deployment of thousands
of American and NATO troops to police it.”
(Emphasis added.)

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy finds unpersuasive the
President’s assurances that the United States is
“not partitioning a sovereign and independent
country.” No less convincing is the Administration’s
claim that this “peace process” — in
contrast to all those that have proceeded it – – will
prove more likely than the approach favored by Senator
Dole et. al. to prevent “more bloodshed and avoid
another round of fighting.”

The Center commends the href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_69at”>attached editorial which
appeared in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal to the
attention of the legislators meeting with the President
today — and to all those concerned that the Clinton
Administration is at the threshold of making matters still
worse in Bosnia. It underscores the dangers of
proceeding willy-nilly into portentous deployments and
multinational command-and-control arrangements before
there are firm answers to the sorts of serious questions
posed by Senator Dole and his colleagues.

‘Having It Both Ways’: Clinton’s Assault On National Security Would Gut Nuclear Deterrent And Prevent Missile Defense

(Washington, D.C.): President Clinton’s announcement Friday that he has decided to overrule the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other defense experts by forswearing all future nuclear testing capped a week of serious damage inflicted by him and his Administration on national security. The cumulative, adverse effect of Clinton actions will represent a "double whammy" for America: an inevitable erosion in the safety, reliability and effectiveness — in other words, the credibility — of the U.S. nuclear arsenal at the very moment that the President is trying to postpone indefinitely the deployment of anti-missile defenses, systems that might lessen somewhat the risks associated with such a step.

 

Double Whammy, Doublespeak

The convergence of these two developments demonstrates Mr. Clinton’s real disregard for the Nation’s long-term security interests, to say nothing of his utter disingenuousness. After all, the JCS know all too well the important role realistic nuclear testing has played in ensuring that U.S. nuclear weapons work properly when they are supposed to and — will not go off under other circumstances. According to an analysis produced by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, "one third of all the [nuclear] weapon designs placed in the U.S. stockpile between 1958 and 1987 required and received post-deployment nuclear tests to resolve problems." It goes on to say: "In three-quarters of these cases, the problems were identified as a result of nuclear testing."

To be sure, the President has glibly promised to spend "billions of dollars" for something euphemistically known as nuclear "stockpile stewardship." In this connection, significant sums will be expended to develop an array of exotic scientific techniques and facilities. It is hoped that they will, over time, be roughly as useful as nuclear testing, particularly in understanding the changes old nuclear weapons are undergoing. This is a priority since the average age of U.S. nuclear arms is already at a historical high, and going higher.

Still, to get the Joint Chiefs of Staff to drop their opposition to a permanent ban on all nuclear testing, President Clinton had to promise them an out: In essence, he pledged to include an escape clause in the Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) Treaty now under negotiation. Mr. Clinton says, if it once again turns out that we have to conduct nuclear tests because "the safety or reliability of our nuclear deterrent [can] no longer be assured," he would exercise the U.S. right to withdraw from the CTB, citing its "supreme national interests."

Risky Business

This is a stunning pronouncement insofar as it belies the oft-asserted claim by opponents of nuclear testing, namely that the stockpile’s safety and reliability can be assured indefinitely without conducting further tests. At the very least, President Clinton is implicitly acknowledging the truth — to abandon testing is to take real, if hard-to-quantify, risks with the Nation’s deterrent.

Consider, for example, the implications of a test ban for nuclear safety. Today, roughly five thousand weapons in the U.S. stockpile contain an explosive material that is prone to accidental detonation. In the event one of these devices is exposed to fire or dropped, it could go off. Such an event would probably not cause a nuclear explosion, but it could catastrophically disperse radioactive material far and wide.

 

Thanks to past nuclear testing and developmental efforts, however, approximately one-third of the stockpile has already been equipped with material known as Insensitive High Explosive (IHE) that is far less susceptible to such dangers. For safety’s sake, most — if not all — of the remaining two-thirds of the arsenal should be modified with IHE, as well.

 

Unfortunately, given the exacting specifications associated with nuclear weapons designs and significant differences between the behavior of IHE and conventional high explosive, the former cannot simply be substituted for the latter. Appreciable design changes are required, the sort of changes whose effects on weapons performance can today only be confidently verified through nuclear tests. As recently as last month, the JASONs — an influential government-sponsored scientific advisory panel — cautioned that "discipline" will be needed in a no-test environment to avoid design changes that could compromise stockpile reliability.

 

In short, if all nuclear testing is foreclosed, the United States will have to choose between making its aging arsenal as safe as it knows how to or sacrificing confidence in the reliability and performance of its weapons. As the JASONs put it: "…Testing of nuclear weapons at the 500-ton yield level…[conducted on an ongoing basis] can add to long- term stockpile confidence."

 

Testing and Proliferation

 

Unfortunately, the JASONs nonetheless conclude in their recent report that the United States can dispense with testing. "…In the last analysis, the technical contribution of such a testing program must be weighed against its costs and its political impact on the non-proliferation goals of the United States." There are, of course, two problems with this conclusion. First of all, the contention that nuclear testing is incompatible with restraining proliferation is a political judgment, not a technical one. Consequently, while the JASONs are entitled to their opinions on this score, those opinions should not be accorded particular weight simply because they are held by individuals with scientific expertise.

 

Second, such a "grain of salt" approach is all the more necessary given that there has yet to be demonstrated any connection between U.S. nuclear testing and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This is so notwithstanding the mantra-like assertion for decades by anti-nuclear activists that such a correlation exists.

 

The truth is that Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima fifty years ago last week, had not been tested before its operational use. Pakistan, Israel and North Korea are widely believed to have nuclear weapons, yet they are not known to have conducted tests of their devices. And no one has plausibly demonstrated that the status of the U.S. nuclear test program has been a factor in decisions to "go nuclear" made by these countries — or, for that matter, those taken by Iran, Iraq, Syria, South Africa, Brazil or other once-or-future nuclear wannabes. Instead, local strategic considerations have been the preeminent consideration in each case.

 

In fact, history suggests that U.S. nuclear testing is not necessarily inconsistent with restraint in nuclear proliferation. After all, as admirers of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are wont to point out, the first three decades after the NPT came into effect saw only a handful of states become nuclear powers, far fewer than President Kennedy and others feared might be the case. Throughout this period, however, the United States engaged in a program of routine testing of its nuclear arsenal.

 

What ‘Escape Clause’?

 

President Clinton’s promise to the Joint Chiefs of Staff to withdraw, should the need arise, from a Comprehensive Test Ban is preposterous for one other reason. Even as he was formally announcing that commitment, Mr. Clinton was insisting that the United States could not get out of another arms control accord — the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty — despite the fact that it too has a "supreme national interests" clause. Could esoteric (and inevitably debatable) technical arguments about the need for testing to fix suspected problems with U.S. nuclear weapons possibly be more compelling than the present arguments for ending American vulnerability to missile attack in the face of a large and growing proliferation threat? It will take an extraordinarily courageous and principled leader to resist the pressure that will exist then, as now, to give greater weight to the diplomatic and arms control costs entailed than the security benefits made possible by a treaty withdrawal.

Importantly, the Administration has used just this argument to persuade the U.S. Senate to abandon an initiative aimed at defending the American people against missile attack. This initiative was specifically approved by a majority of Senators no fewer than three times within the past ten days. (1) As a result of negotiations conducted on the Administration’s behalf by Democratic Senators Sam Nunn and Carl Levin with Republican Senators John Warner and William Cohen, though, a "bipartisan compromise" has been developed as a substitute for the Senate-blessed language in S.1026, the FY1996 Defense authorization bill. When reduced to its essence, the compromise satisfies the Clinton objective of assuring the United States’ continued vulnerability to missile strikes for the foreseeable future.

Getting It ‘Both Ways’?

As it happens, on 4 August — the day after the Senate defeated two separate attempts to strike S.1026’s plan for deploying anti-missile defenses — it also debated the issue of nuclear testing. The latter fight was over whether to approve the use of $50 million in funds authorized for the Department of Energy so as to allow preparations for low-yield "hydronuclear" tests. The Senate voted 56-44 to approve such preparations.

This action, however, preceded (and perhaps impelled) the President’s announcement last Friday. His decision to ban all nuclear tests would preclude the U.S. from conducting even extremely low-yield tests (for example, those that produce as little of a blast as the equivalent of four pounds of high explosive) as part of the nuclear stockpile stewardship program. The absurdity of such restraint is evident from the fact that, if such tests are conducted by others, they will be undetectable. Interestingly, one of the Senate’s most rabid CTB enthusiasts, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) told the Senate in 1992 that these low-yield tests "need not be limited under a Comprehensive Test Ban."

 

In the course of the debate on testing, Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican freshman from Arizona who has already established himself as one of the institution’s most formidable experts on national security matters, made the following trenchant observation:

 

"…I…find it ironic that some people on the floor [yesterday] were suggesting that the reason we did not need missile defenses is because we could rely upon our Triad, our nuclear Triad. You cannot have it both ways. If you are not going to test [the] reliability and safety of the Triad, then you should be supporting missile defense. If you are not going to support missile defense, then you ought to be supporting the effectiveness of our nuclear Triad."

The Clinton Administration, of course, does want to have it both ways. On the one hand, it wants to continue its self-declared policy of "denuclearization." If left to its own devices, its pursuit of this policy — of which the complete cessation of nuclear testing is but one, small part — will ensure that President Clinton bequeaths to his successor: a nuclear deterrent that is the oldest in our history; an obsolete and non-functioning infrastructure for producing nuclear weapons; and a demoralized and inadequate work-force that may be incapable of ensuring that the Nation’s nuclear arsenal remains safe, reliable and effective. As Senator Richard Bryan, a Democrat from Nevada, told his colleagues on 4 August: "The combination of an aging stockpile and the decaying nuclear weapons expertise at the Nevada test site and at the [national] labs poses a direct threat to the safety and reliability of our stockpile." Were the Senate to reconsider and reverse its 4 August vote on nuclear testing, it would be contributing to such a threat.

On the other hand, the Administration wants to deny this country the sort of insurance policy that missile defenses might offer as a hedge against a precipitous, risky "denuclearization" program. Mr. Clinton does not want to deploy any kind of missile defenses that might protect the American people and homeland. He is intent upon negotiating new agreements with the Russians that will both make such deployments still more problematic and greatly complicate the fielding of effective theater missile defenses. And the President wants no part of withdrawing from the ABM Treaty — or any other arms control accord — despite the threats unilateral U.S. compliance entail to this country’s supreme national interests. Regrettably, the Nunn-Levin-Warner-Cohen "compromise" would provide Clinton and Company political cover for each of these undesirable agendas.

The Bottom Line

Neither the Joint Chiefs of Staff nor the Congress should be under any illusion: The Clinton Administration is intent upon subordinating clear national security requirements to utopian arms control notions. Each failure by the military and/or the legislative branch to resist such efforts makes it that much harder to do down the road.

 

The Senate should stick by its guns: As long as the United States relies upon nuclear weapons for deterrence, it will have to conduct some periodic tests of those weapons. If one wishes to lessen the need for deterrence based upon nuclear weapons, then one must ensure there is an alternative; active defenses to missile and other attacks can contribute to such an alternative security posture. A policy that provides neither for the nuclear testing necessary to support the first nor the funding and programs necessary for the second is simply irresponsible. That reality is not altered, merely obscured, by defective arms control agreements like an unverifiable Comprehensive Test Ban accord and the obsolete ABM Treaty.

 

– 30 –

 

(1) For more on the Senate’s initial efforts to begin defending America, see the Center for Security Policy’s Decision Brief entitled, Profile in Courage: Dole’s Leadership Keeps Senate on Track to Defend America, Contrasts Sharply With Clinton (No. 95-D 54, 11 August 1995).

Vive La France! French Determination To Perform Necessary Nuclear Testing Should Be Wake-Up Call To US

(Washington, D.C.): On Bastille Day, it is appropriate to salute an instance of courage and principled pursuit of sound national security policy all too rare among Western leaders today. In the face of nearly universal condemnation, the new French government of Jacques Chirac has decided to resume limited underground nuclear testing. The backdrop for this decision is an unavoidable reality: To maintain an effective, safe and reliable — and therefore credible — nuclear deterrent, it is necessary to perform periodic detonations of actual weapons.

 

 

Those responsible for U.S. deterrent policy have a duty to follow the French lead. The new Congress should join them in rejecting the current anti-testing policy which is, together other Clinton "denuclearization" measures, leading inexorably to unilateral American nuclear disarmament.

 

An Incomprehensible Test Ban

 

Unfortunately, the Clinton Administration remains wedded to the approach largely forged by Mr. Chirac’s predecessor, Socialist Francois Mitterand. It seeks a permanent Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB). The Chirac government announced its intention to conduct a series of eight underground detonations at its Pacific test site, so as to perform reliability- and modernization-related experiments that would be essential if France were to become party to a CTB. The Clinton team is determined to ignore the compelling arguments being made by the current French government that higher yield nuclear testing is necessary at the very least to prepare a nation’s arsenal for the sort of environment in which all such testing is prohibited.

 

The Law Permits U.S. Testing

 

Ironically, such a series of American underground tests is specifically authorized by statute. In 1992, legislation was adopted by the then-Democrat-controlled Congress and signed by President Bush endorsing a Comprehensive Test Ban. This law also directed a moratorium on U.S. testing after up to fifteen tests were conducted to help prepare the American nuclear arsenal for a permanent cessation of underground detonations. The legislation also expressly provided for a resumption of U.S. nuclear testing in the event that other nuclear powers conducted tests.

 

Upon coming into office, the anti-nuclear zealots put into senior Administration posts in the Department of Energy, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, State and Defense Departments, Office of Science and Technology Policy and National Security Council saw to it that the United States would forego any further testing. They also ensured that the continuation of nuclear testing by communist China would not be reciprocated by renewed U.S. testing.

 

The Clinton team has argued that such steps are justified since an end to U.S. underground testing is an essential factor in dissuading would-be nuclear powers to give up their ambitions. It repeated this dubious contention with mantra-like regularity in the course of its campaign to achieve a permanent extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). And now, with the successful conclusion of that campaign, the Administration’s denuclearizers are citing commitments made in the course of it to prevent even a revisiting of the no-testing decision — to say nothing of conducting any U.S. tests.

 

Whether such a policy materially advances the cause of non-proliferation appears, frankly, to be a secondary consideration. The real reason for the Clinton insistence on no American nuclear tests appears to be more straightforward: Without periodic, realistic underground tests, the U.S. arsenal will over time inevitably become unreliable. At that point, it will be problematic to resist implementation of even the most radical, unilateral disarmament agendas.

 

Back to First Principles

 

The Center for Security Policy believes that the fiftieth anniversary on Sunday 16 July of the world’s first nuclear test — the "Trinity" experiment in Alamogordo, New Mexico is an appropriate moment to reflect upon the reasons why the Clinton Administration’s no-test policy is irresponsible. Toward this end, it is instructive to review the findings of one of the most comprehensive official U.S. government studies done on the subject of nuclear testing, a report submitted to Congress in September 1988 by the Reagan Administration. This report, entitled The Relationship Between Progress in Other Areas of Arms Control and More Stringent Limitations on Nuclear Testing, concluded that:

 

"Nuclear testing is indispensable to maintaining the credible nuclear deterrent which has kept the peace for over 40 years. Thus we do not regard nuclear testing as an evil to be curtailed, but as a tool to be employed responsibly in pursuit of national security." (Emphasis added.)

The fundamental reasons for nuclear testing are matters of thermonuclear physics and other relevant facts that have not changed since this report was sent to Congress:

 

  • "First, we do so to ensure the reliability of our nuclear deterrent."

    •  

  • "Second, we conduct nuclear tests in order to improve the safety, security, survivability, and effectiveness of our nuclear arsenal. Testing has allowed the introduction of modern safety and security features on our weapons. It has permitted a reduction by nearly one-third in the total number of weapons in the stockpile since 1960, as well as a reduction in the total megatonnage in that stockpile to approximately one-quarter of its 1960 value."

    •  

  • "Third, the U.S. tests to ensure we understand the effects of a nuclear environment on military systems."

    •  

  • "Finally, by continuing to advance our understanding of nuclear weapons design, nuclear testing serves to avoid technological surprise and to allow us to respond to the evolving threat."

The Bottom Line

 

Advocates of a Comprehensive Test Ban blithely assert that advances in computer simulation technology can reliably substitute for "live" tests. However, the current U.S. nuclear stockpile was created on the assumption that actual weapons testing would continue to be available. Although technological advances may theoretically permit other effective means of testing the reliability and safety of our stockpile, the demonstration of such capability is still years down the road. If a structured program of nuclear tests does not resume, the Nation’s nuclear deterrent — something that the American people and their allies continue to depend upon for their security — will undoubtedly degrade.

 

It is past time for Congress to take a hard look at the debatable premises of the Clinton nuclear testing policy and its dire implications should the United States fail, at a minimum, to follow France’s lead by conducting tests aimed at making the Nation’s nuclear arsenal less susceptible to the pernicious effects of a nuclear test ban. Hearings should be convened at once by sober-minded legislators like Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Strom Thurmond (R-SC) and Representatives Floyd Spence (R-SC) and Ben Gilman (R-NY), who have supported in the past a robust nuclear deterrent. These hearings should explore the evident irrelevance of U.S. testing policies to the programs of nuclear minipowers or wannabes like India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Algeria, etc. Such hearings should also investigate the sorted history of how this country came to abandon nuclear testing, the only reliable means of insuring the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons.

 

At the very least, the relevant congressional committees must reckon with this unhappy reality: A continued U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing will result in a sharp erosion in the Nation’s deterrent posture. Under present and foreseeable circumstances, such a degradation would be intolerable and irresponsible.

THE RISING ‘CRIMSON TIDE’ LIFTS THE CASE FOR MISSILE DEFENSE

(Washington, D.C.): In darkened theaters across the United
States over the past week, millions of Americans — perhaps as
many as one out of twenty of the entire population — have been
exposed to a singularly powerful argument for missile defense: In
the hit movie “Crimson Tide,” the world teeters
on the brink of nuclear holocaust because a rogue Russian has
seized and begun to prepare intercontinental-range ballistic
missiles for launch against the United States. A U.S. submarine
is ordered to fire its nuclear-armed missiles so as to preempt
the Russian attack. For the better part of two hours, the
audience joins Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman as they wrestle
(literally) with whether it is too late or too soon to
unleash their sub’s deadly salvo.

Although it is never mentioned in the movie, there is only
one reason why such a nightmare scenario might arise: The
United States has no defense against ballistic missile
attack. If it did, the unauthorized use of Russian ballistic
missiles could be prevented by some means other than a preemptive
U.S. nuclear strike. Alternatively, if Washington faced a
circumstance like that portrayed in “Crimson Tide,” it
could intercept any of its own missiles that might have been
fired when they should not have been.

It is true, of course, that the case for correcting America’s
abject vulnerability to ballistic missile attack is being more
powerfully made with every passing day. The CIA estimates that
twenty-five countries are acquiring chemical, biological and/or
nuclear weapons, together with the ballistic missiles with which
to deliver them. And the horrifying potential of such weapons is
being shown in microcosm as Tokyo’s subways fill with nerve gas,
incurable viruses attack African populations and a relatively
tiny amount of explosives devastate a federal office building in
the heartland of America and its community.

‘What, Me Worry?’

Still the Clinton Administration remains incredibly
insouciant about the possibility that rogue actors in Iraq, Iran,
Syria, North Korea, China — to say nothing of Russia — might
threaten or use deadly, ballistic missile-delivered
weapons of mass destruction against this country. On 17 May, a
senior Pentagon civilian, Jan Lodal, told a breakfast audience on
Capitol Hill (sponsored by the National Defense University
Foundation) that the United States would not begin to deploy an
anti-missile defense unless and until Iran obtained the
capability to attack America with ballistic missiles — a
development he believed to be many years away. What is more, if
deploying an appropriate defensive system should require the U.S.
to exceed limits imposed upon such weapons by the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense
Lodal averred that Washington would seek Russia’s permission to
protect the American people. Should the Kremlin not agree,
presumably after a sufficient period for negotiation had elapsed,
the United States would then, and only then, proceed to
defend itself.

These are not, regrettably, merely the rantings of a single,
addled bureaucrat. This notion of perpetuating American
vulnerability and subjecting U.S. missile defense options to a
Russian veto is of a piece with President Clinton’s performance
in Moscow as reflected in the joint communiqué he and Boris
Yeltsin issued at the conclusion of their summit meeting. (A more
detailed analysis of the bitter fruits of the summit appears in
the attached op.ed. article
by the Center for Security Policy’s director Frank J. Gaffney,
Jr., which appears in today’s Wall Street Journal).

Meanwhile, Back on the Hill

Next Tuesday, the House National Security Committee will
have an opportunity to adopt legislation that would give the
United States a global, effective and remarkably inexpensive
alternative to the Nation’s present vulnerability to missile
attack — and to the Clinton Administration’s head-in-the-sand
approach to extending and compounding that vulnerability. As
it prepares the Fiscal Year 1996 defense authorization bill, the
Committee is expected to add at least two hundred million dollars
to give the Navy’s formidable AEGIS fleet air defense system the
capability to defend against ballistic missiles, as well as
aircraft and aerodynamic cruise missiles.

Unless the National Security Committee directs otherwise,
however, these funds will be used exclusively to build a
system capable of defending America’s allies and such forces as
we continue to deploy abroad. It will be either physically
“dumbed-down” or procedures will be utilized to ensure
that it is precluded from protecting the United States, too.
Should this step be taken, the commander of a Navy AEGIS cruiser
off the coast of North Korea could be put in the position where
he can shoot down ballistic missiles which Pyongyang launches at
Japan, but not at the United States.

Enter ‘Team B’

Fortunately, an important new study by a blue-ribbon
committee sponsored by the Heritage Foundation has concluded that
this program, known as the Navy Upper Tier system, can and
should be optimized so as to provide not only highly effective
anti-missile defense of U.S. forces and allies overseas, but also
the American people. This study by “Team B”
(comprised of sixteen former senior civilian and military
officials and top government scientists) concludes that — thanks
to the nearly $50 billion the United States has already invested
in the AEGIS program — virtually the entire infrastructure
(platforms, launchers, sensors and missiles) needed for a
flexible, mobile global missile defense is already in place. For
just $2-3 billion more over the next five years, this
infrastructure could be adapted to kill missiles of virtually
any range. The first two Upper Tier-capable cruisers would be
configured and on station within three years’ time.

Team B recommends that this first increment of global defense
be complemented as soon as possible with a constellation of
space-based sensors (called “Brilliant Eyes”) that will
maximize the capability of the Navy Upper Tier — and every other
anti-missile system the United States develops. Ultimately, the
country would also want to utilize space to deploy the most
militarily effective and cost-effective defenses possible.

The Bottom Line

The National Security Committee’s leadership, Chairman Floyd
Spence and Reps. Curt Weldon and Duncan Hunter (chairmen of the
Research and Development and Procurement Subcommittees,
respectively) were prime-movers behind the Contract With America
and its commitment to provide anti-missile protection to both
the American people and their forward-deployed force and allies.
Regrettably, in the absence of a specific, clearly affordable
program to implement that commitment, Rep. John Kasich and
twenty-three other Republicans balked at voting to fulfill it.

Now, armed with a programmatic approach that enjoys the
support of a wide cross-section of the pro-missile defense
community — and one that even “cheap hawks” can love
— it should be a different ballgame. The Committee is
well-positioned to put forward legislation that will keep what
was the most strategically important promise made in the Contract
— to provide for the common defense by ending the Nation’s
vulnerability to missile attack. It must do no less.