Clinton Legacy Watch # 43: Hard Questions About Effort to Bribe Russia into Amending the A.B.M. Treaty

(Washington, D.C.): Fresh from its problematic efforts to purchase North Korean restraint
on the
development of threatening long-range ballistic missiles, the Clinton Administration has decided
to try to purchase Russia’s acquiescence to its plan to build defenses against such missiles.
According to officially backgrounded reports published in yesterday’s New York
Times, if the
Russians will agree to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty so as to permit the
United States to deploy very limited ground-based anti-missile interceptors,¹the United States is
prepared to “help Russia complete a large missile-tracking radar” in Siberia and “upgrade a
Russian-operated radar” in Kazakhstan.

Why Now?

For seven years, the Clinton-Gore Administration has assiduously delayed, dumbed-down
and
otherwise sought to undermine the deployment of effective anti-missile systems. As recently as
last January, the National Security Council and State Department repudiated Secretary of
Defense William Cohen for his temerity in suggesting that the threat now justified the
deployment of missile defenses, that the decision to deploy them would be taken and that the
ABM Treaty would not be allowed to stand in the way. ²

The question occurs: Is the Administration’s new-found desire to defend the American
people
against missile attack genuine? Or is it but the latest in a series of cynical maneuvers — this time
designed to protect only Vice President Gore against a field of Republican presidential
candidates who have declared their determination to begin defending America from ballistic
missile attack as an immediate priority?

The answer may be determined by the Administration’s attitude toward the following:

• Why pay the Russians to amend a treaty that no longer exists? A
  rigorous legal analysis
  performed earlier this year for the Center for Security Policy by former Deputy
  Assistant
  Secretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith and former Justice Department attorney
  George
  Miron has established that under international legal practice and precedent, the ABM
  Treaty
  lapsed when the other party — the Soviet Union became extinct in 1991. ³ Neither the Clinton
  Administration nor its supporters among the Nation’s anti-defense, pro-arms control elite have
  yet found persuasive grounds to rebut the Feith-Miron study’s central conclusion: We have
  spent the past eight years observing the ABM Treaty not as a matter of legal
  necessity, but as
  one of political choice.

Before the U.S. taxpayer is asked to spend a plug-nickel — let alone pouring
tens, if not
hundreds, of additional millions of dollars into Russia’s black hole — to build up the
Kremlin’s already quite formidable territorial anti-missile defense system,⁴ the
Administration must explain why such bakshish is required to purchase relief from a
treaty that can no longer be in force. If the Clinton-Gore team continues to be unable to
explain how the ABM Treaty could legally bind the United States, it may nonetheless wish to
make a case for improving Russia’s ABM radar capabilities. But the Congress would then be
able to judge such an idea on its merits, not as a necessary precondition to building
the missile
defenses that the legislative branch has made it U.S. policy to deploy as soon “as technologically
possible.”

• Why settle for less than the most effective, most flexible, earliest and least
  expensive way
  to begin defending America? The Clinton Administration is seeking the Russians’
  permission to deploy a National Missile Defense system that would give the United States
  very limited protection against ballistic missile attacks — and some parts of the country
  probably none at all. It would certainly not be useful in defending American forces or allies
  overseas. According to the March 1999 report of the Heritage Foundation’s blue-ribbon
  Commission on Missile Defense, ⁵ the first ground-based
  site alone “would be likely to cost
  about $25 billion and take eight-to-nine years to build….A multi-site system could cost an
  additional $25 billion and take another five-to-seven years to complete, depending on how
  many sites were to be built.”

Even the Clinton Pentagon has belatedly begun to acknowledge the merits of an
alternative
approach recommended repeatedly since 1995 by the Heritage commission — a sea-based missile
defense built upon the 55 cruisers and destroyers currently equipped with the AEGIS fleet air
defense system. ⁶ Using Navy data, the panel members
estimated that the Nation could adapt
these existing assets and achieve an initial deployment of 650 missiles starting within 3 years or
so at an additional incremental cost of $2-3 billion (expended over the next five years). The
United States would thus achieve a highly mobile and flexible missile defense for
both its own
territory and for its forces and allies overseas. The difference between the “AEGIS
Option”
and the Clinton NMD system may prove to be the difference between having an effective
missile defense system in place before we need it, rather than after.

There is only one reason why this commonsensical sea-based approach is not the baseline
program for the United States’ near-term missile defense effort — to be complemented by space-
and/or ground-based components over time: Flexible and inherently robust sea-based defenses
are banned by and would be wholly inconsistent with the central idea of the ABM Treaty.

For that reason, it is a non-starter with the Clinton Administration, which insists that that
accord
is and must remain “the cornerstone of strategic stability.” Insult is added to injury by an its
approach that not only denies the United States the most straight-forward, most capable and
cheapest means of providing global anti-missile protection in deference to a lapsed treaty. Now,
it is being asked to pay for the privilege of doing so.

• What will the Clinton Administration do about defending America if the Russians
  continue to say ‘Nyet’ to changing the ABM Treaty? Last January, Secretary Cohen
  responded to a similar question by saying “We can always withdraw from the treaty.” At the
  time, he was sharply rebuked for even broaching that idea. ⁷ And as recently as a month ago,
  Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott — the notoriously pro-Moscow journalist/Friend of
  Bill who has been the Administration’s point-man on U.S.-Russia relations and arms control —
  asserted that it “will be decided by Russia – not the United States” whether we deploy
  missile defenses.

If the Administration is now genuinely convinced that the United States must
have
missile defenses, then the Russians obviously cannot be permitted to exercise a veto.
That
being the case, we need feel no obligation to pay for and/or provide technology to improve their
missile defense capabilities.

On the other hand, if the Administration remains determined to cede to the Kremlin
decision-making responsibility about what kind of missile defense the United States might have,
where it
will be deployed and with what capabilities, the Congress would be well-advised not to
exacerbate such folly by endorsing Talbott’s efforts to reward the Russians for securing such a de
facto veto over America’s security policy-making.

The Bottom Line

The American people and their elected representatives need to remember that the folks who
are
bringing the Nation this dubious proposal — aimed at building up the Kremlin’s (largely illegal)
anti-missile capabilities so as to breath new life into U.S.-Russian negotiations on amending the
ABM Treaty and, thereby to resuscitate the Treaty itself — now have a track record: They are the
same people who tried to foist the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on the United States.

In the wake of the crushing rejection of that fatally flawed accord, the Clinton-Gore
Administration would do well to follow Ambassador Richard Burt’s advice in today’s
Washington Post: “In any arms negotiation, if you want Senate support at the
landing, you had
better arrange for heavy Senate involvement at the take-off.” If the executive branch once again
chooses to go its own way in arms control talks, it risks both another harsh repudiation on
Capitol Hill and allowing the already unacceptable grave danger to this country to
intensify
further.

Since the Administration seems to care more about the former than the latter, it falls to
Senate
leaders of the successful fight against the CTBT to ensure that notice is served immediately:
Efforts to bribe Russia — and, in so doing, that would revalidate the ABM Treaty and
justify more, open-ended negotiations concerning its constraints — will not be
acceptable.

It is time to serve notice that the United States will be defended in the most cost-
and
militarily effective way, as soon as technologically possible and without further regard to
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. If the Russians wish to benefit from the protection
offered by
such an American missile defense system — as opposed to simply gaining access to more U.S.
defense resources and technology (both of which are extremely subject to abuse) — that
proposition could be explored, but only outside of, not within, the obsolete and
increasingly
dangerous ABM Treaty paradigm.

¹ The limited “national” anti-missile system that the Clinton
Administration proposes to
purchase in this fashion would reportedly involve the upgrading of several early warning radar
systems and the deployment over the next decade of two sets of interceptors missiles with Alaska
and North Dakota getting one 100 missiles or less each.

² See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Clinton Legacy Watch # 37: An End to the U.S.
Posture of ‘Assured Vulnerability’? (No. 99-D 12, 27 January 1999)

³ See Definitive Study Shows Russians Have No
Veto Over Defending U.S. (No. 99-P 11, 22
January 1999).

⁴ See The ABM Treaty Charade: A Study in Elite
Illusion and Delusion by William T. Lee,
Council for Social & Economic Studies, Washington, D.C., 1997.

⁵ See The Heritage Foundation’s study entitled Defending
America. This study can be accessed
via the world wide web at the following address:
www.heritage.org/missile_defense/.

⁶ See Mirabile Dictu: Even the Clinton Pentagon
Now Recognizes the Necessity for the
‘Aegis Option’ to Defend America (No. 99-D 95, 2 September 1999).

⁷ A fact that puts into unflattering perspective Mr. Cohen’s claims
that the United States can
always withdraw from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty if it doesn’t work out.