Tag Archives: North Korea

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.

MISCHIEF IN MOSCOW, CRISIS IN WASHINGTON: WILL CLINTON DEFY CONGRESS ON MISSILE DEFENSE?

Of all the mistakes President Clinton appears poised to
make in his summit with President Yeltsin — including
legitimating Yeltsin’s Stalinesque genocide in Chechnya, his
nuclear proliferation to Iran and his NATO-wrecking operation —
one is in a class by itself: Mr. Clinton’s efforts to impede, if
not preclude, effective anti-missile defenses threatens not only
to jeopardize U.S. national security interests; it could also
produce a constitutional crisis.

Summit Shenanigan

This singularly portentous problem arises from communique
language the Clinton Administration has developed with the
Russians. The plan is for the two presidents to pronounce the
1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty the
“cornerstone” of U.S.-Russian relations and strategic
stability.

The Administration hopes with this statement to lock-in the
United States’ commitment to an agreement that effectively bans
missile defenses for the American people, notwithstanding the
facts that it was forged with a country (the Soviet Union) that
no longer exists and it was drafted in a strategic environment
that no longer pertains (namely, one in which essentially only
the Soviets’ nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles posed a
threat to the U.S. and its troops and allies overseas). Despite
these dramatic changes, the United States remains without
deployed, effective anti-missile defenses. And, if the Clinton
team has its way, this will remain the case indefinitely.

Worse yet, the summiteers are expected to embrace written
commitments that would have the effect of dramatically expanding
the ABM Treaty’s scope. By agreeing not to deploy “regional
defenses” against each other’s ballistic missiles and to
assure “non-circumvention” of the treaty, Mr. Clinton
would give the Kremlin important rights. Three key leaders of the
House of Representatives — Appropriations Committee Chairman
Robert Livingston, National Security Committee Chairman Floyd
Spence and Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chairman Bill
Young — wrote the President the attached
letter last Thursday. It warns that:

“[These limitations] suggest unacceptable
geographical limitations on U.S. theater missile defenses
(TMD) and could open the door for Russia to oppose any
U.S. TMD deployments. In addition, the reported
‘non-circumvention’ language could cause Russia to challenge
our international cooperative theater defense programs.”

The legislators went on to note their continuing opposition
to the Clinton Administration’s efforts to negotiate the
“multilateralization” of the ABM Treaty. That
initiative would open the Treaty to additional signatories, a
step calculated to make it more difficult to change its terms in
the future. They also reiterated their opposition to the current
U.S. negotiating position which would “place velocity limits
on TMD interceptors…[and] hamstring our ability to provide the
most capable missile defenses to our forward-deployed
forces.” Messrs. Livingston, Spence and Young concluded by
observing:

“…President Yeltsin must be made to realize that we
are ready to act cooperatively [with Russia] if we can, but
unilaterally if we must when it comes to missile defenses.
The importance of this issue to U.S. security is simply too
great to extend Russia or any other nation a veto.”

The Constitutional Question

Such a warning to the President of the United States from
senior members of the House of Representatives who control the
government’s purse-strings cannot prudently be ignored. It would
be more than foolish, however, for the Administration to ignore a
letter, also attached, which
was sent on May 2nd by fifty members of the U.S. Senate —
including Majority Leader Robert Dole and virtually every other
member of the Republican leadership. This letter served formal
notice on Mr. Clinton:

“We are deeply troubled by indications that you
intend to proceed, in the face of clearly stated
congressional opposition, to make commitments in Moscow that
would impede U.S. efforts to provide American troops with
effective protection against missile attack. We find
particularly troubling press reports describing the draft
communique language being developed for that meeting….We
want you and the Russians to be fully aware of our
determination to prevent the creation of new impediments to
missile defenses.”

The fifty signatories to this letter represent more than
enough to defeat any new missile defense treaty or ABM amendment
that President Clinton might submit for Senate advice and
consent, as required by the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, the
Administration seems to believe that it can do as it did with the
notorious North Korean “agreed framework” — namely,
ignore altogether the Senate’s role in treaty-making. Senator
Dole and his colleagues must not allow an Administration bent on
“dumbing-down,” if not altogether precluding, U.S.
missile defense capabilities to dumb-down the Constitution in the
process.

The Bottom Line

It is noteworthy that in addition to Senator Dole, three
other Senate Republicans — Phil Gramm, Dick Lugar and Arlen
Specter — who share Mr. Dole’s desire to bring an early end to
the Clinton presidency, are among those who signed the May 2nd
letter. If Mr. Clinton will not be deterred from making a
serious mistake on missile defenses at the summit by virtue of
either the strategic dangers or the potential constitutional
crisis it may precipitate, perhaps the political risks associated
with leaving the United States exposed to missile attack will do
the trick.

After all, the President has been at pains in the wake of the
Oklahoma City bombing to promise the populace that he would take
every step to protect it. Does he really mean that he will do so unless
the attacker uses a ballistic missile, in which case the
public is on its own? If so, Mr. Clinton will be roughly as
vulnerable politically as he would leave the American people.

‘CHEERS!’ PERRY LAUNCHES, THEN TOASTS THE ‘PLUTONIUM TRIANGLE’ — THE EMERGING MOSCOW-TEHRAN-PYONGYANG NUCLEAR AXIS

(Washington, D.C.): Arguably, one of the most
ignominious moments in recent American diplomacy occurred when
the Bush Administration’s National Security Advisor Brent
Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger
toasted the Butchers of Beijing in the immediate aftermath of the
Tiananmen Square Massacre. But the moment captured yesterday by
Agence France Press in a wire-photo that appeared in today’s Washington
Post rivals that sycophantic act of kow-towing to brutal
autocrats: It showed Secretary of Defense William Perry lifting
his glass to his Russian counterpart, Defense Minister Pavel
Grachev, whose steely gaze was fixed not on Mr. Perry but on the
camera and whose hands held no beverage, conveying unmistakably
his utter contempt for the man toasting him.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

It is not hard to understand why: After all, Secretary Perry
had just undergone a thrashing at the hands of Pavel Grachev on
several scores:

  • Moscow told Secretary Perry to drop dead regarding U.S.
    objections to Russian’s commitment to provide Iran with
    key ingredients of a nuclear weapons production complex
    in the guise of a nuclear power reactor deal.

  • Grachev dismissed Dr. Perry’s pitch to halt Russia’s
    genocidal campaign against Chechnya — a campaign being
    run by Marshall Grachev.

  • The Defense Minister served notice that Russia was
    prepared to withdraw from the Conventional Forces in
    Europe (CFE) Treaty if NATO proceeded with an eastward
    expansion deemed unacceptable to the Kremlin. This threat
    comes on top of Russia’s incipient violation of that
    accord as it maintains levels of forces in its southern
    region that exceed the CFE Treaty’s limits.

Shades of Jim Baker

Grachev’s disdain for Secretary Perry — and the American
administration he represents — could only have been further
intensified by the Bakeresque concessions proferred in the face
of such a wholesale rebuff. First, Dr. Perry compromised the
Clinton Administration’s fall-back position that was supposed to
be unveiled at the upcoming Moscow summit: He signalled that the
United States would be willing to accept Moscow’s assurances that
safeguards would be put in place to prevent Tehran from diverting
Russian-supplied nuclear technology or materials for
weapons-related purposes. Even Secretary Perry could not bring
himself, however, to say that he thought such promises would
prevent Iranian diversions.

Then, the Secretary of Defense took an even more astounding
step. He cleared the way for the Kremlin to secure one of its
most prized global objectives — allowing it to muscle in on a
Western-financed supply contract for significant components
associated with the two light-water reactors Pyongyang has been
promised by Washington. This commitment, enshrined in a so-called
“Agreed Framework” between the United States and North
Korea, was already a highly dubious one. After all, it will
allow, according to former Science Advisor to President Reagan,
William Graham, Pyongyang to:

“produce 300 times as much plutonium as the 20
megawatt reactor [which it had under construction]. Running
at full power, the large reactors the Administration proposes
to give North Korea would produce enough plutonium when
separated from the uranium by chemical extraction, to make
several nuclear weapons each week!”(1)

Debacle Watch

If Moscow is allowed to participate in this reactor deal,
several consequences — all seriously detrimental to U.S.
interests — are predictable:

  • The U.S.-South Korean relationship — already under
    severe strain as a result of Washington’s go-it-alone
    negotiations with the North — would be further
    undermined if the United States blatantly double-crosses
    Seoul on its oft-stated pledge that the North Korean
    reactors would, for all intents and purposes, be built by
    the South Koreans.

  • The most important part of this mutual agreement — that
    is, the United States’ ability to withdraw from it if
    Pyongyang does not comply — would be seriously
    compromised. It would be tricky enough to cancel the
    reactor construction project if only Western corporate
    equities are on the line (e.g., once construction of the
    enormously expensive reactor vessels begins). It will, as
    a practical matter, become impossible once Moscow is
    inserted as a significant “subcontractor.”

  • Moscow will be able to position itself as a major nuclear
    supplier to both Iran and North Korea — two countries
    that not only share a common commitment to acquire
    nuclear weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems
    but that are actively cooperating with one another in
    these (and other) areas pursuant to a strategic marriage
    of convenience. An American blessing on — to say nothing
    of sponsorship of — this Plutonium Triangle
    between Moscow, Tehran and Pyongyang will greatly
    complicate U.S. options for staunching the hemorrhage of
    nuclear weapons technology, even as it exponentially
    increases the need for such options.

The Bottom Line

Regrettably, Secretary Perry’s deplorable performance in
Moscow is reminiscent of the Bush Administration’s worst moments
in one other way: In the Clinton team’s drive to finesse
short-term tactical problems, it is undermining fundamentally the
United States’ vital, long-term security interests. As a
result, America is now in the business of brokering nuclear deals
with both North Korea and Iran which will ultimately
enhance their respective (and cooperative) nuclear weapons-making
and -delivery capabilities. Worse yet, the United States may
actually help finance — directly or indirectly — these
insidious activities.

While the U.S. exposure on the North Korean deal is fairly
clear-cut, the American taxpayer’s role in the Iranian deal is
less obvious. Based on Moscow’s past practice of offering
supplier credits to its more destitute client states — and
Tehran’s bankrupt condition — it is reasonable to assume that
the Kremlin has offered such credits to Iran to nail down the
reactor deal. If this proves to be the case, then U.S. tax
dollars supplied through Russia’s front-door (in the form of
foreign aid, defense conversion or Nunn-Lugar funds) could wind
up exiting the back door to help underwrite Iran’s nuclear
weapons program.

Now that the first 100 days of the Contract With America is
completed, the Congress must turn to another urgent order of
business: Preventing the Clinton Administration from formulating
or executing dangerous new contracts with members of the
Plutonium Triangle.

– 30 –

(1) From a forthcoming op.ed. article by
Dr. Graham, a distinguished member of the Center for Security
Policy’s Board of Advisors, entitled, “Going from Bad to
Better: An Alternative to the North Korean Nuclear Reactor
Deal.”

RESTORATION WATCH #2: RUSSIA’S ORGANIZED CRIME

(Washington, D.C.): One of the most
portentous indications of where Russia is
headed was provided to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee yesterday by CIA
Director James Woolsey. Of particular
concern is the picture painted by Mr.
Woolsey of the cancerous growth of
Russia’s organized crime in recent months
— and the current and potential impact
of these criminal elements on U.S.
national security interests.

Highlights of the Woolsey testimony
included the following:

  • “According to the Russian
    Ministry of Internal Affairs,
    there are roughly 5,700 organized
    crime groups in Russia, with an
    additional 1,000 in the former
    Soviet republics. [Of these],
    200, approximately, are large,
    sophisticated criminal
    organizations engaged in criminal
    activity throughout the former
    Soviet Union and 29 other
    countries.”

  • “A recent report prepared by
    President Yeltsin’s staff
    concluded that 70 to 80
    percent of privatized enterprises
    and commercial banks have been
    victims of extortion [by
    organized crime].

  • “Russian criminal groups are
    actively involved in the illegal
    transport and sale of narcotics,
    antiques, icons, raw materials,
    stolen vehicles, illegal
    immigrants, weapons, and some
    nuclear materials….[T]hese
    groups have the resources with
    which to bribe nuclear weapons
    handlers or employees at
    facilities with weapons grade
    nuclear material.     They
    also have established smuggling
    networks that could be used to
    move such material out of the
    former Soviet Union.”

  • “Criminal groups are also
    targeting the financial sector
    where economic reforms have led
    to explosions in the number of
    banks, in the complexity of their
    transactions, and in the
    geographic scope of their
    activities. ..[T]hese banks have
    become a particular target for
    money-laundering schemes. Indeed,
    links have been forged between
    Russian and Italian organized
    crime groups to move money
    through the Russian banking
    system. In addition to taking
    advantage of these banks,
    organized crime groups have set
    up front companies throughout
    eastern Europe and Russia.”

  • “The power of
    Russian organized crime is
    largely due to their ties to
    corrupt government officials    ….Criminal
    groups may be spending as much as
    30 to 50 percent of their profits
    trying to buy off well-connected
    government officials, including
    Customs, militia, and police
    officials.

  • “[The ramifications are
    enormous. For Russia
    itself there’s a real threat that
    the surge in crime will sour the
    Russian people on President
    Yeltsin’s reform program and
    drive them into the arms of
    Russia’s hard-line political
    forces.    …Beyond the
    threat to Russian reform, the
    growth of organized crime could
    seriously affect our efforts
    worldwide to combat international
    crime.

As it happened, Roger W.
Robinson, Jr., formerly Chief
Economist at the Reagan National Security
Council and a distinguished member of the
Center for Security Policy’s Board of
Advisors, yesterday issued similar
warnings about the security implications
of emerging organized crime operations.
Speaking before the World Affairs Council
of Pittsburgh, Robinson made the
following observations:

  • “At a time when the
    traditional firewall insulating
    market fundamentals is already
    being routinely breached by
    unpredictable political
    shockwaves and tremors — like
    the Colosio assassination in
    Mexico and the ominous directions
    of the North Korean nuclear
    crisis, Whitewater, bilateral
    trade relations with both Japan
    and China, and an increasingly
    revanchist Russia — the witting
    or unwitting disruption of these
    markets by the coordinated acts
    of crime syndicates becomes ever
    more perilous.”

  • “Left unchecked, global
    organized crime will not only
    undermine domestic institutions,
    erode U.S. alliance structures
    and provide infrastructure for
    military and other operations
    against the United States. We are
    now on the threshold of such
    nefarious activities contributing
    to significant increases in U.S.
    long-term interest rates,
    inflation and unemployment, in
    part because they create an
    atmosphere of profound
    uncertainty and inflationary
    expectations.

  • “Virtually every American
    borrower will end up paying this
    new tax-equivalent stemming from
    global organized crime over and
    above the already debilitating
    taxpayer costs associated with
    narcotics trafficking, violent
    crime, financial fraud,
    extortion, racketeering, illegal
    immigration, the destruction of
    neighborhoods, the spread of
    communicable diseases, higher law
    enforcement expenditures and
    other existing by-products of
    this scourge.”

  • “It is surely getting
    difficult for the G-7 summit
    partners to ignore some $1
    trillion in laundered funds
    cycling annually through Western
    economies….If this kind of
    ‘sticker shock’ fails to awake
    the G-7, perhaps the new
    strategic alliances being forged
    between terrorist organizations
    and major criminal groups will do
    so. As nuclear materials
    — even plutonium — stream out
    of the former Soviet Union
    through military/KGB
    entrepreneurs and covert weapons
    procurement networks (à la that
    of Saddam Hussein) proliferate
    among the world’s pariah states    ,
    the consequences for Western
    security interests can no longer
    be permitted to fall victim to
    traditional U.S. interagency
    squabbling.”

  • “A Senior
    Interdepartmental Group — Global
    Organized Crime (SIG-GOC) should
    be established — along the lines
    of the Reagan Administration’s
    SIG for International Economic
    Policy    ….Statutory
    members of this group should
    include National Security
    Council, Central Intelligence
    Agency, Department of State,
    Department of the Treasury, the
    Federal Reserve, Customs,
    Department of Defense, Defense
    Intelligence Agency, National
    Security Agency, Federal Bureau
    of Investigation, Internal
    Revenue Service, Drug Enforcement
    Agency and Immigration and
    Naturalization Service.

  • “The private U.S. business
    and financial community must also
    be more sensitized to the
    symptoms of global organized
    crime, with appropriate penalties
    — including the application of
    the RICO statutes — for those
    entities knowingly facilitating
    such operations or compliant in
    the face of ample evidence of
    wrongdoing.

  • “At an alliance level, the
    G-7 Financial Action Task Force
    must share more intelligence and
    prioritize targets of opportunity
    for joint allied action in the
    areas of prevention, preemption
    and enforcement. Not only
    should global organized crime be
    an agenda item at this July’s
    Naples Economic Summit, but a
    classified G-7 task force should
    be created     by the heads
    of state comprised of
    representatives of finance
    ministries, customs, law
    enforcement, the security and
    intelligence communities, foreign
    affairs, defense ministries and
    central banks.

  • “…There is no avoiding the
    need to bring U.S. and allied
    special forces and other military
    assets to bear on international
    crime-related missions.
    Preemptive action, in particular,
    will be essential if
    international economic and
    financial calamities like those
    described today are to be
    averted.”

  • “Despite the courageous and
    dedicated work of U.S. law
    enforcement agencies (e.g., the
    FBI, Customs, DEA, etc.), the
    leadership of this country has
    not yet demonstrated the
    political will to undertake
    seriously this long twilight
    struggle. So long as this is the
    case, these agencies are being
    sent into the fray without the
    resources required for
    victory….In short, these
    international crime lords have to
    be made to pay a far more
    serious, sustained price which
    only the proper and coordinated
    use of our national security
    assets can exact.    ”

The Bottom Line

These insights into the looming
dangers arising from international
organized crime — and the Russian
contribution thereto — merit the urgent
attention of U.S. policy-makers and their
constituents. Otherwise, highly
publicized legislative initiatives like
the crime bill now moving through the
Congress will inevitably be seen as the
equivalent of “pin-prick
bombing” outside of Gorazde.

GIVE US A BREAK: RUSSIAN CONFERENCE ON BOSNIA, CLINTON ENDORSEMENT WILL ONLY APPEASE, EMBOLDEN SERBS

(Washington, D.C.): Just at the moment
when even Belgrade’s most assiduous
apologists (e.g., former Secretary of
State Lawrence Eagleburger) were finding
it impossible to maintain the fiction of
moral equivalence concerning Serbia’s
genocidal aggression, Russia has
introduced a new device for protecting
Serb equities: an “urgent
summit” on the Bosnia conflict. Such
a summit would involve Russia, the United
States, the European Union, the United
Nations; presumably, Serbia, its proxies
and its victims would be represented as
well.

The results of such a summit
at this juncture are absolutely
predictable: The Serbs will view it as
further insulation from the concerted
military action even Boutros
Boutros-Ghali appears to believe is
in order. At a minimum, they
will seek further concessions as the
price for: refraining from further
“ethnic cleansing” in Gorazde
and other parts of Bosnia; ending
deliberate attacks on hospitals, refugee
centers and civilian populations;
liberating United Nations and
humanitarian personnel taken hostage;
returning impounded Serb heavy weapons
removed at gunpoint from U.N. storage
sites; and other odious war crimes. At
least as likely, however, is that the
Serbs will continue such activities as
the new negotiations proceed.

Given the cynical role that the
Kremlin has been playing in Bosnia over
the past few weeks — a role designed to
restore Russia’s prestige and influence
in the international arena as well as to
bail out their Serb allies — it is
hardly surprising that Moscow would try
the “summit” gambit at this
juncture.(1)
After all, they have done so again and
again in the past when confronting the
imminent use of Western military power
against a client (e.g., the Soviet
efforts to derail Desert Storm and
Russia’s proposal for a summit to
forestall action against a nuclearizing
North Korea).

What continues to be
astounding — and appalling —
however, is the Clinton Administration’s
continuing willingness to welcome such
Russian sabotage. Even as he
implicitly acknowledged that Boris
Yeltsin had blind-sided him with his
unilateral call for a summit, President
Clinton essentially endorsed it this
afternoon:

“[President Yeltsin] and I
have discussed [the summit proposal]
on the telephone at least once, maybe
twice, and I think it has some merit.
We both agreed the last time
we talked, before this
development in Gorazde, that we were
making progress doing what each of us
was doing and that it might
be a little premature. That
sort of thing, in effect, can only be
done once and it might be
better to save it for a time
when hopefully the negotiations
between the Serbs on the one hand and
the Croatians and the Muslims on the
other where coming down to an
endpoint.

“I presume from his
statement today that he is
sufficiently concerned about what has
happened over the last couple of days
that he thinks we ought to go ahead
and do it now. I think it
deserves serious consideration and I
want to discuss it with him and with
the other nations that would be
involved. I think in the context of
the statement President Yeltsin made
today, it has to be considered
seriously because it was a
very important, positive statement
that he made.”

The Bottom Line

The West will fully deserve
the contempt that it has earned over the
past two years if it now accepts Serb
cease- fire “breakthroughs,”
promises concerning deployments of fresh
U.N. monitors to Gorazde or other token
gestures. These are sheer cant.
As the U.N. commander in Bosnia, Lt. Gen.
Sir Michael Rose put it today — with
characteristic British understatement
laced with sarcasm:

“The difference between the
stated intentions and the actual
actions in the Bosnian Serb side is
something we will have to look at
again in the future. And I
would certainly say that I would not
believe things the way I have done in
the past.”

The United States and its allies must
similarly reject the Russians’ summit
stalling tactic and instead put
Moscow to the test. If President
Yeltsin is sincere in his condemnation of
the Serbs and his insistence, as he put
it today, that “the international
community ought to take decisive measure
to ensure a political solution to the
Bosnian crisis,” then Russia should
stop opposing NATO’s use of air strikes
against Serb targets as mandated by the
U.N. and sought by its Secretary General.

– 30 –

1. For more on the
Kremlin’s machinations on behalf of the
Serbs see the Center for Security
Policy’s Decision Brief entitled
Guernica, 1937; Gorazde, 1994,
(No. 94-D 36,
18 April 1994).

RESTORATION WATCH #1: THE KREMLIN REVERTS TO FORM

(Washington, D.C.): With the possible
exception of the Clinton Administration’s
ideologists, like Strobe Talbott, and
their equally out-of-touch counterparts
on the editorial board of the New
York Times, the reality about Russia
is now generally acknowledged: The
Russian Federation is unlikely to be
transformed into a reliable, pro-Western
nation governed by democratic and free
market principles within the next decade
— if ever. Such a conclusion
has appeared warranted for some time; it
has seemed incontestible since the
departure from government last January of
virtually all reform-minded officials
from President Yeltsin’s cabinet.(1)

Lest U.S. policy-makers nonetheless
persist in misconstruing the true nature
and purposes of the present Russian
regime — and, for that matter, those of
any that might succeed it in the
foreseeable future — the Center for
Security Policy is with this Decision
Brief launching a new series of
papers: Restoration Watch.
This series, like its predecessors Crackdown
Watch (documenting the
Gorbachev efforts to resist democratic
change) and Transformation
Watch (monitoring
post-Gorbachev Russia’s spasmodic and
ultimately unsuccessful progress toward a
genuine democratic and free market
society), will track instructive
developments in the former Soviet empire
that might otherwise be given inadequate
attention.

Restoration Watch
will focus on evidence of the restoration
of authoritarian, and probably quite
dangerous, central control in Moscow.
Among such recent developments are the
following:

  • Russia and the West:
    On 8 April, Yeltsin’s chief
    spokesman Vyacheslav Kostikov
    explicitly told reporters that
    Russia’s “romantic
    embrace” with the West was
    over. Instead, “Russia
    increasingly sees itself as a
    great power which has its own
    strategic, military and political
    interests, different from those
    of the United States and
    Europe….It has started saying
    this loudly.” (2)

    • Such notions (together with
    Russia’s fabled ability to pry
    political, strategic and economic
    advantage from Western
    governments at its moments of
    greatest weakness) are clearly in
    evidence in the latest Russian
    decision not to join the
    Partnership for Peace. This
    is an eminently desirable outcome
    but it is unlikely to be allowed
    to stand. Instead, it is
    predictable that Talbott and
    other Clinton Administration
    officials — who have wildly
    overinvested in this half-baked
    alternative to expanded NATO
    membership for East European
    democracies — will seek to find,
    as Foreign Minister Andrei
    Kozyrev put it yesterday,
    “the right solutions.”
    By this, Kozyrev means that
    Moscow must be accorded a
    “special status” that
    permits it to prevent
    “surprises and unilateral
    action.”

  • Russia’s Unhelpfulness in
    Bosnia:     Despite the New
    York Times    ‘ contention that
    “Russia continues to play a
    constructive role in the
    world…trying to coax the Serbs
    away from confrontation,” it
    is increasingly clear that Moscow
    is playing a much more complex
    and insidious game in Bosnia. As
    with the uncoordinated
    introduction of Russian troops
    into Sarajevo in February, the
    present diplomatic maneuvering of
    Vice Foreign Minister Vitaly
    Churkin seems designed to shore
    up the Serbs’ position and
    insulate the perpetrators of
    heinous aggression from effective
    and long-overdue countervailing
    Western pressure.

    • These purposes seem
    particularly apparent in
    President Yeltsin’s posturing
    following NATO’s recent air
    strikes against Serb positions in
    Gorazde. Describing his
    conversation with President
    Clinton to reporters, President
    Yeltsin said that he had
    “insisted to Clinton time
    and again that such decisions cannot
    be taken without prior
    consultation between the United
    States and Russia    . They
    cannot be    . And
    we shall insist on this.”

    Lest there be any doubt about
    Russia’s determination to stand
    with — and protect — the Serbs,
    the Duma voted 262 to 2 on 13
    April to condemn the air strikes.
    Russia’s Prime Minister Victor
    Chernomyrdin also called for the
    lifting of economic sanctions
    against the rump Yugoslavia as
    soon as there is a
    “ceasefire from all the
    conflicting sides” —
    something Churkin continues to
    claim he has accomplished.

  • Russia Abets North Korea.
    According to the 30
    March edition of RFE/RL Report,
    Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister
    Aleksander Panov warned on 29
    March that Russia would assist
    North Korea in the event of
    “unprovoked
    aggression.” It would be
    required to do so, according to
    Panov, by dint of the Soviet
    Union’s     1961 Friendship
    Treaty with Pyongyang, a document
    which Russia has professed an
    interest in bolstering — despite
    its odious associations with the ancien
    communist regime.

    • This warning comes on the
    heels of Russia’s 24 March call
    for an international conference
    on North Korea’s nuclear weapons
    program. That proposal was
    universally regarded as an
    unhelpful Russian gambit aimed at
    slackening U.S. and Western
    pressure on Pyongyang’s nuclear
    weapons program. Secretary of
    State Warren Christopher
    nonetheless has insisted, as
    recently as last Sunday, that
    Russia’s actions on North Korea
    are “very supportive”
    and “[the Russians have
    been] very cooperative with us at
    the United Nations and elsewhere
    in trying to put pressure on the
    North Koreans.”

  • Renewed Russian
    Imperialism in the “Near
    Abroad” (The Baltics):
    On 5 April, President Boris
    Yeltsin issued a directive
    endorsing a Defense Ministry
    proposal to allow Moscow to
    establish military bases “on
    the territory of CIS and Latvia
    to ensure the security of the
    Russian Federation and the above
    named nations, as well as to test
    new weapons and military
    machinery.” Last February,
    Russia’s Chief of the General
    Staff, Col. Gen. Mikhail
    Kolesnikov, had outlined Moscow’s
    intention to establish 30
    military bases     in the
    so-called “near
    abroad.”

    • At the very least, such
    intentions clearly violate an
    agreement reached with Latvia on
    15 March. Interestingly, on 7
    April, senior Russian officials
    from the Foreign and Defense
    ministries denied that Russia had
    any intention of establishing a
    military base in Latvia, stating
    that the President wrongly signed
    an earlier draft of the
    directive.

    On 8 April, however, Latvian
    President Guntis Ulmanis
    postponed indefinitely a 20 April
    trip to Moscow planned for the
    signing of agreements on Russian
    troop withdrawals. In doing so,
    he said that the terms were
    “incomplete and unfavorable
    for the Latvian side.”

    Meanwhile, during his recent
    trip to Helsinki, the front-man
    for much of the nationalist
    restoration effort, Vladimir
    Zhirinovsky, pronounced that the
    Baltics would be reincorporated
    into Russia by economic means and
    predicted that Estonia would
    remain independent for two years
    at the most: “You must
    forget about Baltic
    States…[there is only a] Baltic
    region of Russia.” (3)

  • Renewed Russian
    Imperialism in the “Near
    Abroad” (Beyond The
    Baltics):     The Kremlin is
    exhibiting a similar sentiment
    toward other parts of the former
    Soviet empire, as well. For
    example, a prominent foreign
    policy adviser to President
    Yeltsin, Sergei Karaganov, wrote
    in an op.ed. article in the 21
    March edition of the London Financial
    Times     that: “Russia
    will also have to continue to be
    a local peace-keeper or peace-enforcer.”
    Interestingly, U.N. Secretary
    General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
    told the Russian television
    program Itogi on 4 April: “I
    don’t see any obstacles for
    Russian troops to participate in
    peacekeeping operations on the
    territory of the former [Soviet
    Union] under the Russian
    flag.”

    • Meanwhile, on 29 March,
    ITAR/TASS reported that a
    presidential commission studying
    the questions of citizenship for
    Russian minority populations in
    the Baltics and elsewhere has
    concluded that such Russians
    should be protected in the former
    Soviet Union through a system of
    bilateral treaties. A
    “special economic
    policy” is proposed to
    assist in implementing such
    arrangements. In the Soviet
    lexicon, terms like
    “treaties” and
    “special economic
    policies” typically were
    euphemisms for inequitable,
    coercive arrangements dictated by
    Moscow to the objects of its
    imperial desires.

  • Russia vs. Ukraine:
    The proverbial push seems to be
    coming to shove between Moscow
    and Kiev as a result of incidents
    involving military forces in
    Crimea and the electoral
    successes of pro-Russian factions
    there. The former were
    precipitated by Russia’s
    commandeering of a naval research
    vessel based in Odessa. After
    Ukrainian air and sea forces
    failed to prevent the removal of
    this ship to Sevastopol, 120
    Ukrainian special forces
    commandos reportedly stormed
    facilities of the 318th Russian
    Division in Odessa, wounding some
    Russians military and civilian
    personnel and taking three senior
    naval officers into custody.
    Ukraine has substantially
    increased the number of its
    deployed troops in Crimea and the
    chances for bloodshed appear
    high.

    • The election in January of a
    Russian puppet, Yuri Meshkov, as
    “President of Crimea”
    and the strong showing of
    communists in this month’s
    polling in eastern Ukraine have,
    moreover, only served to
    intensify that prospect. Since
    coming to power, Meshkov has:
    restricted local conscripts from
    serving elsewhere in Ukraine —
    effectively creating a separate
    Crimean military; refused to
    accept the installation in Crimea
    of a presidential representative
    from Kiev; and substituted his
    own personnel for Kiev’s in the
    Crimean offices of two key
    national ministries. Such
    provocative steps are clearly
    being taken in the expectation
    that Moscow will intervene to
    protect its proxies in Ukraine —
    if not at the Kremlin’s
    direction.

    The Center has learned that some
    members of the U.S. intelligence
    community believe that bilateral
    conflict between Ukraine and
    Russia could occur at any point.

  • Russian Arms Control
    Violations:     It is
    particularly ironic that the New
    York Times     would
    editorialize that “Russia
    is…fulfilling its arms control
    commitments” at the very
    moment that it is blatantly
    violating several solemn
    international treaty obligations.
    For example, Moscow has
    redeployed its troops withdrawn
    from Central Europe to the St.
    Petersburg and Caucasus regions
    exceeding the 1995 troop levels
    set by the CFE Treaty, according
    to NATO and U.S. officials. These
    violations take on particular
    significance in light of the
    concomitant pressure the Kremlin
    is bringing to bear on its Baltic
    and southern neighbors.

    • According to the 8 April
    edition of the Washington
    Post    , U.S. officials have
    also concluded that “there
    is still an offensive biological
    weapons program underway” in
    Russia in violation of the 1975
    Biological Weapons Convention.
    Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed
    on 28 March that it is neither
    developing nor producing
    biological weapons. Instead — in
    a crude throw-back to the
    Kremlin’s Cold War disinformation
    activities, Moscow has suggested
    that an American pharmaceutical
    company, Pfizer, is involved in a
    program to maintain a U.S.
    capability to manufacture
    biological warfare agents.

  • Amazing Shrinking
    Commitments to Democracy and Free
    Enterprise:     Aleksei
    Kazannik, who was appointed as
    Russia’s Prosecutor General last
    fall, resigned on 8 April stating
    that “the president has no
    intention of observing the
    constitution and laws.” He
    warned of an imminent “open
    dictatorship.”

    • Foreign investors in Russia
    are now being subjected to a 23
    percent tax on investment
    capital, according to the 12
    April edition of the Journal of
    Commerce. A January decree issued
    by President Yeltsin, which is
    now being implemented, will
    effectively tax almost one-fourth
    of all investment capital
    entering the country, including
    loans by overseas parent
    companies to their Russian units.

    Russia has announced plans to
    impose currency controls for all
    imports as of 1 July effectively
    requiring all foreign currency
    transactions to be channeled
    through a designated Russian
    bank. While the move is aimed at
    guaranteeing repatriation of
    Russia’s hard currency earnings
    and to stem capital flight,
    estimated at some $1 billion per
    month, this gambit will further
    hinder the growth of a free
    market and open up a new area for
    government abuse of power.

    Finally, the mayor of Moscow,
    Yuri Luzhkov, has suspended any
    further privatization of property
    in Russia’s capital, according to
    a 6 April report by Interfax and
    ITAR-TASS. Luzhkov has been a
    prominent opponent of
    Privatization Minister Anatoly
    Chubais’ nationwide privatization
    campaign.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy agrees
with former President Richard Nixon,
former National Security Advisor Zbigniew
Brzezinski and other thoughtful observers
who are issuing strong warnings about
Russia and its activities. For example,
in the current issue of Foreign
Affairs, Dr. Brzezinski writes:
“Regrettably, the imperialist
impulse remains strong and even appears
to be strengthening.”

These judgments simply serve to
reinforce the Center’s longstanding view
that undisciplined Western aid to Russia,
Russia’s inclusion in NATO or ersatz
NATOs, the elimination of controls on the
exports of strategic technologies, the
denuclearization of Ukraine and an
uncritical devotion to Boris Yeltsin and
“see-no-evil” acquiescence to
his demands — come what may —
are profoundly ill-advised and
potentially quite dangerous policies.
They must be swiftly replaced with more
sensible strategies if U.S. and Western
security interests are to be safeguarded
as the Soviet restoration proceeds.

– 30 –

1. In this
connection, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled, Who Lost
Russia? The Same People Who Are Taking It
Back — The Soviets and Their Friends,
(No. 94-D 06, 24
January 1994).

2. This statement
— and the policies that appear to be
giving it force and effect — make a
mockery of the central claim in a lead
editorial in yesterday’s New York
Times entitled “No Time for
Bear-Baiting”: “Authority is
still in the hands of people like
President Yeltsin and Foreign Minister
Andrei Kozyrev, whose strategy remains
cooperation with the West.”

3. RFE/RL Daily
Report, 6 April 1994.

EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY FRANK J. GAFFNEY, JR. AT A CATO INSTITUTE FORUM ON NORTH KOREA

WHAT TO DO ABOUT NORTH KOREA’S NUCLEAR THREAT: HOLD THE ‘CARROTS,’ APPLY THE ‘STICK’

 

I believe that — if power remains in the hands of the communist totalitarian Kim Il Sung and his son and anointed successor, Kim Jong Il — it is just a matter of time before North Korea acquires fully operational nuclear weapons. For all we know, they may well have them today.

We are already seeing the sort of political, economic and/or strategic advantage the Kims will try to make of this nuclear weapons capability — or even an incipient one. Unfortunately, the signals currently being sent by the United States and its allies appear likely, at best, to encourage uncertainty about the West’s determination to thwart Pyongyang’s ambitions. Lest we forget, the last time such confusion existed about America’s commitment to its ally on the peninsula, Kim Il Sung launched a costly war of aggression. Three factors cause much higher stakes to be associated with North Korea’s designs and the U.S. response this time around, however:

 

  • First, if Pyongyang is allowed to acquire nuclear arms — as well as the capacity to deliver them over long distances with ballistic missiles — South Korea will no longer be the only nation at risk from a devastating, short-notice North Korean attack. As a result, the strategic situation in Northeastern Asia will become vastly more volatile, practically overnight.

    •  

  • Second, if as now seems likely, the United States is perceived as having abdicated its decades-long commitment to defend its friends and allies in the region — or as having lost the capability to do so — it is predictable that Japan, South Korea and probably Taiwan and perhaps other Asian Rim states will "go nuclear." Such a development would have lasting, and possibly highly deleterious, implications for U.S. security interests. And

    •  

  • Third, North Korea’s established propensity to sell its weaponry to anyone with the hard currency to pay for it, virtually assures that ballistic missiles and nuclear front ends will be made available to a host of bad actors in the Middle East and perhaps elsewhere. Likely recipients include Iran, Syria and Libya all of whom would be, as a result, substantially more capable of threatening devastating, no-warning attacks against Israel and pro-Western Arab states.

 

With so much at stake, the United States cannot afford to ignore or otherwise accommodate North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. As with Iraq, there are risks associated with taking forceful action — but they pale by comparison with those sure to arise if Pyongyang can wield "The Bomb."

* * *

[The United States must] prepare to prevent North Korea from achieving the credible capacity to threaten the use of nuclear weapons. At the very least, selected military strikes designed to neutralize those facilities associated with Pyongyang’s covert nuclear weapons program must be prepared. Israel’s brilliant preemptive strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak should serve as a model for this form of "assertive arms control."

Center’s Gaffney Joins Krauthammer In Urging Clinton to Apply The Stick — Not More Carrots — To North Korea

In a brilliant column in today’s Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer excoriated the Clinton Administration for its general inattention to the immense strategic problem posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons program — and for the fecklessness of such attention as it has paid the issue. This column (a copy of which is attached) should serve as a clarion call for the security-minded in Congress and the public at large about the dangers that attend the present policy of appeasing Pyongyang — which Krauthammer correctly ridicules as "all carrot and no stick."

Unfortunately, this morning’s Wall Street Journal reports that more appeasement is in store: "…The United States continues to hope for a diplomatic solution; [Secretary of Defense Les] Aspin says the U.S. is ‘not prepared to set any deadlines’ now." The paper goes on to say that:

 

"[U.S.] allies and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) complain that the U.S. stance creates a precedent for other rogue nations. Disgruntled IAEA officials say that the U.S. has even tried to create a special, truncated inspection process to help Pyongyang save face."

 

Mr. Krauthammer’s analysis and conclusions are entirely shared by the Center for Security Policy. In fact, at a symposium on foreign policy sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute last Wednesday, Center director Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. argued for the United States to "hold the carrots; apply the stick." Excerpts of Mr. Gaffney’s remarks are also attached.

Among Mr. Krauthammer’s many important observations is one with which the Center has particular sympathy:

 

"The single most dangerous problem in the world, the impending nuclearization of North Korea, is not yet on the national radar screen. Peter Rodman calls it the ‘crisis that ought to be happening but isn’t.’ It will be. By next summer, every political talk show in the country will have special editions devoted to the sudden emergence of the Korean emergency." (Emphasis added.)

 

In keeping with its practice of focussing on issues that will be making "tomorrow’s headlines," the weekly public television show hosted by Mr. Gaffney — "The World This Week" — produced a program on 3 April 1993 entitled, "North Korea and the Bomb" The discussion featured the South Korean Ambassador to the United States, Hyun Hong-Choo; former Assistant Secretary of Defense and U.S. Ambassador to China and South Korea James Lilley and former Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-NY), past chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Pacific and Asian Affairs.

At What Price Yeltsin’s ‘Victory’: A Blank Check To Military To Restore Soviet Empire, Endanger West?

As the West rejoices in Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s apparent triumph over his unreconstructed communist adversaries in parliament, a dangerous prospect is being entirely ignored: If Yeltsin does in fact prevail, his "victory" will be primarily thanks to the support he enjoyed from the successors to the Soviet military and internal security services — or more precisely, the failure of these organizations to throw their support behind Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov and the hardline Congress of People’s Deputies.

The presumption in most quarters seems to be that the Russian military, its supporting industrial complex and the intelligence community have backed Yeltsin over the parliament out of a preference for democracy and free market reform with which the President has generally been associated. This premise, unfortunately, has no basis either in logic or in fact.

Indeed, a genuine structural transformation of Russia along democratic and free market lines is a serious menace to the future viability of the ex-Soviet military-industrial complex and intelligence apparatus, their access to resources and freedom of operation. What is more, most available evidence suggests that these institutions are, at best, exploiting the weakness of the Yeltsin regime to pursue nefarious objectives, in the process enriching their leaders and preserving robust, offensive capabilities. At worst, they are engaging in these activities with Yeltsin’s approval and assent.

Either way, in the aftermath of the pivotal role they have played in the latest "constitutional" crisis, the former Soviet security establishment and its allies will certainly be in a position to dictate key elements of policy to Boris Yeltsin under no illusions about his still-precarious political position.

Up to No Good

As the Center for Security Policy has observed in a number of recent papers, the Russian military services are engaged in a number of activities highly inimical to Western security interests. For example, as noted in the Center’s Decision Brief of 15 September 1993 entitled Will the Senate Give Russia a Subsidy to Serve as the Radical Entente’s ‘Fed-Ex’ Service? (No. 93-D 79), Russia’s sizeable airlift fleet is being utilized to provide rapid, secure transport of North Korean extended-range Scud-C missiles to Syria.

The military-industrial complex has also been directly involved in such activities as: the sale of rocket propellant to countries like Libya; the transfer of missile technology and manufacturing know-how to India; and massive, destabilizing arms transfers to developing nations in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Other behavior associated with the threat posed to the West by the Soviet Union during the Cold War are not slackening, either. Published reports indicate that nuclear attacks against the United States are still being exercised (see the Washington Times, 14 September 1993) and Russian espionage activities in Germany are being conducted as aggressively as ever (see the New York Times, 14 September 1993).

Restoring the Empire?

There are also troubling indications that the Russian armed forces are intent on reestablishing the bulk of the Soviet Union’s former imperial holdings. The Center for Security Policy has recently received a number of indications that ominous threats of military action against Ukraine were employed a few weeks ago to induce Kiev to relinquish half of the Black Sea fleet to which it had laid claim and all ex-Soviet nuclear weapons still on Ukrainian territory.

These threats, combined with successful economic warfare measures, were evidently sufficiently credible to prompt Ukraine’s President Leonid Kravchuk to take the immensely unpopular step of acceding to Russia’s demands. With Ukrainian renunciation in the past few days of this coerced agreement, however, the stage may be set for Russian military strikes (nominally at the invitation of "threatened ethnic minorities" in Eastern Ukraine) — the sort of aggression on the part of the former Soviet armed forces that Boris Yeltsin may be unwilling or no longer able to prevent.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy has long believed that the elimination of the Soviet-era constitution and the undemocratic, reactionary parliament it legitimated was a necessaryDecision Brief issued on 21 September(1) — while news of Yeltsin’s move against the parliament was breaking — this step was not, however, sufficient. condition for the genuine structural transformation of Russia along pluralistic and free market lines. As noted in its

The decisive role played by the military-industrial complex and intelligence apparatus in saving the Yeltsin government clearly has strengthened their hands in decisions the Kremlin will shortly have to make concerning such policies as:

  • relations with non-Russian majorities in former parts of the Soviet empire;

    •  

  • access to and use of sensitive Western technologies (notably those that will flow as a result of the new space cooperation agreement with the United States and recent cuts in U.S. export controls);

    •  

  • control over the $2.5 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds now awaiting Senate approval. In this regard, Yeltsin’s reappointment today of the hardline Viktor Geraschenko — a long-time ally of the Parliament and subversive opponent of market economic reform — as head of the Russian Central Bank and Yeltsin’s appointment this week of General Nikolai Golushko — a fixture of the old-Guard KGB — as the new head of the security ministry are deeply worrisome signs; and

    •  

  • the sale or transfer of weapons of mass destruction and related technologies to dangerous nations and possibly even terrorist organizations around the world who are prepared to pay cash for the service.

 

These considerations underscore the concerns expressed in the Center’s 21 September Decision Brief: Now more than ever, discipline, transparency and accountability are essential in Moscow’s dealings. Accordingly, the Center believes that the recommendations it made in that Brief have taken on all the greater urgency and should be adopted without further delay by the U.S. executive and legislative branches:

  • Suspend further action on large-scale U.S. and multinational aid flows to Russia, particularly those directed toward the strategic energy sector — which is still effectively controlled by, and which primarily benefits, the old military-industrial sector. The Center finds totally incomprehensible in this regard the Clinton Admnistration’s contention that the latest multi-billion dollar aid package now awaiting Senate approval should go forward irrespective of the outcome of the power struggle now underway.

    •  

  • Serve notice on all parties that there will be harsh penalties associated with interference with the elections President Yeltsin has called for 11-12 December.

    •  

  • Arrest the free-fall in U.S. investment in military preparedness and power projection capabilities.

    •  

  • Insist that the autocratic character of the Yeltsin alternative constitution approved last April be modified to provide for a system of genuine check-and-balances between elected executive and legislative branches.

    •  

  • Put on ice further planning for or implementation of the recently signed bilateral space cooperation agreements and liberalization of remaining export controls.

    •  

  • Express support for the democratically elected — and possibly endangered — governments of the nations recently liberated from the Soviet empire.

 

 

– 30 –

1. See Yeltsin Finally Moves Against the Communist Parliament; Clinton Titters When Serious U.S. Response is Needed (21 September 1993, No. 93-D82).

Sorry Boris: Cocom Restrictions Are Not Cold War Relics But Vital Anti-Proliferation Measures

(Washington, D.C.): On 12 June, Russian President Boris Yeltsin served notice that one of his major agenda items for the coming Tokyo Economic Summit would be the final dismantling of multilateral restrictions on the transfer of militarily sensitive high-technologies forged during the Cold War. In the face of severe political and economic constraints that will inhibit their ability to respond to Yeltsin’s demands for new financial assistance, his G-7 hosts may be inclined to accommodate him on eliminating these restrictions and the organization established to monitor and foster them — the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (or COCOM).

Can Russia Safeguard Critical Western Dual-Use Technologies?

The Center for Security Policy believes that before the United States and its allies stop controlling the flow of dangerous dual-use equipment and know-how to Russia(1), Moscow must demonstrate not only a willingness to safeguard technologies of mass destruction, but also a capacity to do so. Such a precondition was expressly stated in the Charter for American-Russian Partnership and Friendship signed on 17 June 1992 by Presidents Bush and Yeltsin. It stipulates that:

 

"The United States and Russia agree that the process of normalization of technology trade is based on Russia’s determination to adhere strictly to world standards of export controls in the area of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and related technologies, missiles and missile technology, destabilizing conventional armaments and dual-use goods and technologies."

 

The truth of the matter is, however, that the Russian government is wholly unable to implement and enforce this commitment to "adhere strictly to world standards of export controls." As then-Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Robert Gates put it in a speech before the Comstock Club in Sacramento, California on 15 December 1992:

 

"Russia’s economic problems provide new opportunities for those who seek to acquire sensitive technology. Whereas in earlier years, weapons were distributed to client states to gain political influence, these days they are exported for hard cash. For example, Russia has sold missiles and advanced aerospace technology to China, diesel submarines and aircraft to Iran and rocket boosters to India.

 

"Moscow publicly opposes the illegal transfer of technology that would lead to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But the economic incentives are great — especially if the equipment for sale is dual-use with civilian applications. As a consequence, financially strapped defense industries may hide some questionable transfers from Moscow to gain badly needed sales. Also, with the breakup of the Soviet Union, national boundaries have become more porous to illegal transfers — and this has further complicated efforts by Moscow to prevent the flow of sensitive technology to third countries."

 

Russia’s Ineffectual Export Control Regime

The following are among the systemic problems that prevent Russia from exercising reliable control over technology exports:

Customs: While the Soviet Union once had a strict system of border controls, the break-up of the USSR created 15 new independent states and 5,400 miles of new frontiers. In addition to abutting such proliferation threat nations as North Korea and China, corridors to former Soviet client states and nations aspiring to nuclear weapons capabilities such as Iran, Iraq and Pakistan are now more easily traversed by smugglers.

Although Russia’s custom service has created 100 new border posts over the last two years, officials concede that they still require an additional 750 border stations and another 35,000 personnel and officers to provide a competent level of inspection on incoming and outgoing shipments. It would take years to train such a cadre of officers properly.

Export Licensing: In addition to the serious manpower shortfalls in its customs program, Russia has profound shortcomings in other areas as well. While the United States employs approximately 600 export licensing officials, Russia’s export licensing staff numbers a paltry 15 persons — none of whom are trained in accordance with international standards. What is more, Russia’s export licensing system is not yet computerized, easily lending itself to error or fraud.

Even the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) — which in the past has repeatedly demanded radical reductions in U.S. export controls — concedes that there remain serious shortcomings in Russia’s export control policies and practices. On 1 April 1993, the NAS in conjunction with the Russian Academy of Sciences issued an instructive report entitled Dual-Use Technologies and Export Administration in the Post Cold War Era. Among its findings:

 

"The United States continues to maintain a number of significant concerns regarding the willingness and actual ability of the Russian Federation, as the largest republic of the former Soviet Union, to control militarily sensitive dual-use technologies….[A major] set of concerns relate to the existence of a competent civil authority with the will and capabilities to enforce the laws, decrees, operating regulations, licensing procedures, and enforcement practices recently adopted by the Government of the Russian Federation."

 

Rampant Corruption of Licensing and Customs Officials: Apart from the absence of resources, manpower and legal instruments needed to protect against the export or re-export of militarily useful technologies, Russia is at present awash with corruption. According to a report filed by the Associated Press on 11 April, Russian officials acknowledge that at least 40 percent of businessmen and two-thirds of state and commercial institutions are involved in corrupt activities, "including financial and trade organizations, law enforcement agencies, tax and customs services."

Soviet-era apparatchiks and former communist party bosses still control the vast majority of state mechanisms, resources and assets. Of these, one of the most lucrative is the ability to issue export licenses. Russian smugglers have been notoriously successful in crossing borders with the help of both forged export licenses and authentic ones obtained through bribery.

Licensing authorities have not been the only Russian officials to cash in on the bribes and other favors offered for improper export licenses. Police, customs agents and even the military have also gotten a piece of the action. According to the head of the enforcement department of the State Customs Committee, Mikhail Vanin, military officers have been more than eager to moonlight by utilizing military aircraft to help transport illegal exports. "We cannot penetrate the army….The generals give the command for the planes to go and come back."

Indeed the April 1993 National Academy of Sciences report notes that military enterprises in particular are eagerly seeking outside sources of income to make up for reduced state funds:

 

"This process creates a strong incentive for the sale of dangerous technologies (both internally to commercial enterprises and externally to foreign customers) and is especially common in poorly controlled offshore and/or border trade."

 

Strengthening Russia’s Military-Industrial Complex

No less worrisome than the possibility that Russia might recklessly transfer sensitive Western technology is the significant risk that such equipment and know-how might wind up enhancing the offensive power of the Russian military. The former Soviet Union well understood the immense savings that could be realized in this way and there is no reason to believe that the leaders of Russia’s armed forces — many of whom previously led the Soviet military-industrial complex — will miss such opportunities as they confront severe budgetary pressures.

Remarks by Yeltsin Presidential Adviser Mikhail Malei which appeared in the 24 February 1993 edition of the Current Digest of the Soviet Press were instructive on this point:

 

"Conversion does not mean the destruction of high-level technologies for the sake of producing primitive articles. Conversion means the transformation of the military-industrial complex through the sale of its products that are bought on the world market. Conversion means freeing the meager Russian budget from the need to make outlays on the military-industrial complex and supplementing the budget with hard cash."

 

As a practical matter, it will be exceedingly difficult for the foreseeable future to distinguish between Russian military and civilian production activities. As a consequence, it will be nearly impossible to prevent the exploitation of Western dual-use technologies by the Russian military — either for their own purposes or for resale abroad.

Short-run and Shortsighted Economic Interests over National Security?

Although candidate Bill Clinton frequently emphasized the urgent need to arrest the growing problem of proliferation(2), President Clinton has done little since taking office to address the issue meaningfully. Indeed, most of his senior Cabinet officers appear more concerned with expanding — rather than restricting — the supply of militarily-useful high-technologies available to rogue nations and outlaws in the name of advancing U.S. economic interests.

For example, in a speech before the National Association of Manufacturers on 24 March, Robert Rubin, chairman of the National Economic Council said:

 

"I think the economic component of [export licensing evaluations] has had very — relatively little weight — at least as I understand it, in prior evaluations and analyses. We met with the NSC people the other day, and we are going to reevaluate this whole export control issue and work our way toward some kind of a policy that has a balance between the economic and the national security elements of it."

 

On 9 March, Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown informed an Overseas Private Investment Corporation-sponsored conference that U.S. economic interests will take "a higher priority" in the Clinton Administration’s export control policy. Brown noted that he had requested his staff at the Bureau of Export Administration to come up with strategies to change the "perception" that Commerce was playing a "secondary role" to the Departments of State and Defense on export controls.

When asked about the trade-offs between export controls and export opportunities at his Senate confirmation hearings on 25 February, Deputy Defense Secretary William Perry said "We have to draw a clean distinction between defense-unique systems and…dual-use technology….The former we can and should control the sale [of] whenever we think that’s going to damage our proliferation goals. But in the latter, the dual-use technology, I think that’s a hopeless task, and it only interferes with a company’s ability to succeed internationally if we try to impose all sorts of controls in that area."

So far, the only senior Clinton Administration official who has publicly expressed apprehensions about the wisdom of expanding high technology sales to Russia is CIA Director R. James Woolsey. In testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on 24 February, Woolsey warned that while Russia’s leaders have indicated a desire to implement effective export controls, "legal, personnel and funding problems" as well as "the lure of large, illegal profits" were seriously hampering that effort.

Bottom Line

Before it decides to imperil the remaining multilateral export control regime by bringing Russia (and other former "proscribed destinations"(3)) into it, the Clinton Administration should be absolutely certain that Russia is not just paying lip service to such commitments but is adhering to them. In this regard, it is illuminating to reflect upon Russia’s attitude toward another multilateral export regime — the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). Less than a year ago, President Yeltsin blatantly violated Russian obligations under the MTCR by authorizing the sale of cryogenic engine technology to India’s Space Research Organization. More recently, Russia has been promoting the sale of a derivative of the SS-23 ballistic missile at arms shows, which if exported, would be in clear violation of the MTCR.(4)

While it is seductive to believe that removing COCOM restrictions would serve to draw Russia more closely into the family of democratic nations, the practical effect of such a move under present circumstances would be only to exacerbate the transfer of militarily critical technologies to undesirable parties. Without a rigorous Russian export control system in place and a strong degree of confidence that Russia has successfully weathered the challenges to its present democratic path, there is a high degree of likelihood that currently protected dual-use technologies would end up in the wrong hands and put to the wrong uses.

In the final analysis, the problems that President Yeltsin has encountered in advancing his economic reform program have little to do with whether or not Russia is receiving the most advanced state-of-the-art, militarily sensitive technologies from the West. Russia’s estimated 2000 percent inflation, the government’s bloated bureaucracy and crushing deficit-spending will be much more determinative of the success or failure of Yeltsin’s economic program than does access to the relatively few remaining technologies still too sensitive to transfer to Russia.

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1. Under the Bush Administration the list of controlled technologies was sharply curtailed with only the most militarily sensitive technologies still restricted.

2. For example, on 13 August 1992, Clinton said before the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles that "one of the most dangerous new threats is the spread of military technologies, especially weapons of mass destruction. We can’t afford to wait until a host of Third World nations acquire full arsenals of First World weapons….We need to clamp down on countries and companies that sell proscribed technologies. Violators should be punished, and we should work urgently with all countries for tough, enforceable, nonproliferation agreements."

3. The Center for Security Policy has learned that Under Secretary of State Lynn Davis has concluded that the moment has arrived to invite not only Russia but other successors to the former Soviet Union, nations of Eastern Europe and even China into a refashioned COCOM. Ms. Davis evidently is under the illusion that bringing such major proliferators into the COCOM "tent" would help stem the world-wide spread of dangerous technologies — when in fact, it will actually facilitate proliferation efforts.

4. CIA Director Woolsey recently testified: "I think Russia and Ukraine both are likely to step up their efforts to persuade the West to alter or reinterpret those parts of the MTCR" that interfere with planned foreign sales.