COVERT ACTION: CLINTON IDEOLOGUES USE ABM TREATY TO GAROTTE THEATER AS WELL AS STRATEGIC MISSILE DEFENSES

(Washington, D.C.): At a little
noticed negotiating forum in Geneva, the
Clinton Administration has been
systematically foreclosing important U.S.
options for the development of advanced
theater missile defenses. This initiative
parallels — and ominously complements —
the Administration’s much more visible
effort to deny the United States and its
people effective defenses against
long-range, or strategic, missile attack.

The latter campaign started in
February 1993, when the Clinton team
revised the Bush FY1994 defense budget so
as to strip $2.8 billion from the
Strategic Defense Initiative’s accounts.
Since coming to office, it has reduced
the Bush Administration’s plan for SDI by
more than half.

Then, on 13 May 1993, Secretary of
Defense Les Aspin announced the “end
of the ‘Star Wars’ era. He directed that
the SDI program be formally reoriented
from one designed — first and foremost
— to protect the American homeland and
people to one designed to defend U.S.
forces and allies overseas against
shorter-range (or theater) ballistic
missiles.⁽¹⁾
The stated rationale for this radical
change in priorities was that the latter
represented a nearer-term threat.

A further — and arguably decisive
— consideration, however, is that SDI’s
plans for developing and deploying
“homeland” defenses ran up
against the restrictions of the ABM
Treaty, an arms control accord to which
many in the Clinton Administration have a
powerful attachment.⁽²⁾
Theater anti-missile systems, on the
other hand, are not expressly limited by
the Treaty; in principle, their
development and deployment could occur
without jeopardizing the agreement
governing strategic defenses.

When taken together, the
practical effect of these actions has
been not only to scuttle all serious
efforts to defend America but also to
scale back dramatically the most
effective theater defense programs, as
well.

Killing Off Promising
Theater Defenses, Too

Only now is the full extent of the
damage being done by the Clinton
Administration to which the most
promising theater missile defenses
becoming clear. The affected systems
include: space-based theater
missile interceptors; the Navy’s
“upper-tier” anti-missile
program, utilizing the widely deployed
AEGIS air defense system; and the Air
Force’s airborne boost-phase anti-missile
program. Even the Army’s Theater
High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system
is being adversely affected by the
Clinton team’s machinations in three
areas:

1. Subordinating Theater
   Missile Defenses to the ABM
   Treaty

On 30 November
1993, Robert Bell, a senior
member of the National Security
Council staff, briefed the
Russian delegation to the
Standing Consultative Commission
(SCC) about the Administration’s
desire to clarify the ABM
Treaty’s terms so as to ensure
the permissibility of the U.S.
THAAD system. In so doing, the
United States opened a pandora’s
box: For the first time,
it breached the firewall between
Treaty-limited
“strategic” systems and
theater defenses that are not
covered by the ABM Treaty.

This was the inevitable result
of using the SCC — a forum
established by the ABM Treaty
that has been employed to examine
compliance disputes and to arrive
at modifications to the Treaty’s
terms. It is also the upshot of
negotiations, subsequently begun
in the Standing Consultative
Commission, aimed at defining
performance characteristics that
would allow missile defenses to
be judged to be theater and not
strategic systems.

Fears that such a step would
result in a whole new set
of constraints on promising and
urgently needed anti-missile
weapons were initially
allayed somewhat by the Clinton
Administration’s assertion that
the relevant standard should be “demonstrated
performance,” rather than
assessed inherent capability.
According to this standard, as
long as a defensive system like
THAAD was tested only against
non-strategic (i.e., less than
intercontinental-range missiles),
it would be considered to be a
theater system.

The Russians have rejected
this approach. With support from
the small but voluble community
of American ABM Treaty devotees,
Moscow has insisted that
demonstrated capability is not an
acceptable test. Instead, Moscow
is insisting on negotiating in
the SCC stringent conditions that
would apply to theater systems,
ostensibly so as to prevent the
surreptitious acquisition of
prohibited strategic
defenses. The real
objective, however, appears to be
to develop constraints that will
effectively preclude promising
U.S. space-, sea- and air-based
options for effective theater
anti-missile programs and
substantially degrade the
performance of land-based systems
like THAAD.

Constraints under active
discussion include, in addition
to certain definitional
limitations (e.g., a requirement
that theater defenses may not be capable
of intercepting incoming missiles
with velocities greater than 5
kilometers per second — a
reentry speed associated with
shorter-range ballistic
missiles): sensor restrictions;
interceptor velocity limits;
exclusion zones governing
deployment; basing restrictions;
and limits on allowable
quantities and the range of such
weapons.

The Clinton Team —
Willing to Accept Theater
Constraints? Those in
the Clinton Administration who
are opposed to missile defenses
and enamored of the ABM Treaty
appear only too willing to
acquiesce to such restrictions, if
not invite them. For
example, on the grounds that it
needs to “protect” the
THAAD program, the Administration
seems poised to accept
interceptor velocity limits
(i.e., 3 kilometers/second) that
would accommodate THAAD’s baseline
capability.

Such limits would, however,
preclude possible future
enhancements to this near-term
system. Worse yet, the
Administration has also agreed —
or at least signalled a
willingness to accept —
limitations on other promising
systems being pursued by the
Ballistic Missile Defense
Organization (successor to the
Strategic Defense Initiative
Organization), the Navy and the
Air Force.

What is more, even the Clinton
Administration’s putative
commitment to the Theater
High-Altitude Area Defense system
may be much less than it appears.
Last March, a senior ACDA
official, Mary Elizabeth Hoinkes,
declared that the baseline THAAD
would be a violation of the ABM
Treaty — a view shared by the
Treaty’s rabid proponents at such
organizations as the Arms Control
Association, the Union of
Concerned Scientists and
Federation of American
Scientists.

In deference to such
sentiments, the Administration
has directed that critical
developmental tests of THAAD’s
engines, scheduled to begin in
November 1994, be postponed until
such time as an agreement on
theater ballistic missiles is
reached with the Russians.
In this way, Moscow is
afforded an effective veto over
what is, nominally at least, the
Clinton team’s top priority
program for theater missile
defense.

In short, the
practical effect of the Clinton
approach would be to invite the
introduction of a whole new
treaty regime governing currently
unconstrained theater missile
defense systems. It
would, to be sure, be based upon
the precepts of the ABM Treaty
(i.e., that vulnerability to
missile attack is good and
defenses bad) and its constructs
(e.g., that treaty-limited items
fall into three categories —
interceptors, launchers and
radars — an approach that is
prejudicial to more exotic
technologies based on so-called
“other physical
principles”). Still, for the
first time, theater anti-missile
systems currently unconstrained
by the existing strategic arms
accord would be limited.

2. Skullduggery With the
   “Process”

In pursuit of such constraints, the
Administration is playing fast
and loose with its own internal
coordination process and with the
Senate’s constitutionally
mandated role in treaty-making. A
case in point is the
Clinton team’s decision to
foreclose the option of
space-based theater missile
interceptors.

Internal
Decision-Making: This
very significant concession to
the Russians was tabled at the
last session of the Standing
Consultative Commission, held in
March-April 1994. It was adopted
as the American position: without
formal interagency coordination;
over the strenuous objections of
Gen. Charles Horner, former
commander of coalition air forces
in Desert Storm and current
Commander-in-Chief of the U.S.
Space Command; and without formal
congressional consultations.

Instead, the NSC staff —
claiming that artificial
deadlines precluded the normal
meetings of National Security
Council principals and their
senior-level deputies —
promulgated far-reaching
negotiating instructions without
an opportunity for agency comment
or appeal. The available evidence
suggests that the NSC
deliberately manipulated the
release of these instructions
foreclosing space-based
interceptor options so as to
blind-side agencies opposing such
restrictions. It also appears to
have been “no accident”
that this step was taken on 23
March 1994, the eleventh
anniversary of President Reagan’s
speech unveiling the SDI.

As noted on 3 May 1993 by
Senator Malcolm Wallop (R-WY), a
distinguished member of the
Center for Security Policy’s
Board of Advisors, “We
apparently have given Russia [a
commitment not to pursue]
space-based [interceptors for]
nothing in return.” To the
contrary, the Russians
responded to this
something-for-nothing concession,
by pocketing it and then
demanding that all
space systems and sensors for
theater missile defenses should
be similarly banned. At
this writing, such a proposal is
being actively considered by the
U.S. government and may well
be adopted as the American
negotiating position at the next
round of the SCC, expected to
occur in July 1994.

This is the more remarkable
because such a
restriction would not only
foreclose all spaced-based
defensive options. It would
seriously impinge upon the
effectiveness of non-space based
theater defense systems,
as well, since — as was
demonstrated in Desert Storm —
cuing from space sensors can
greatly enhance the performance
of terrestrial anti-missile
radars and interceptors. For
example, at a hearing before the
Senate Armed Services Committee
on 20 April 1994, Gen. Horner
observed that the range of the
THAAD and AEGIS systems could be doubled
and their area defense capability
greatly enhanced by supplying
them with mid-course guidance
from space-based sensors. The
value of this enhancement
increases as interceptor
velocities improve.

“Dissing”
the Senate: Although
members of the U.S. Senate across
the political spectrum have
warned the Clinton team against
making far-reaching changes to
the ABM Treaty without obtaining
Senate advice and consent to
those changes, the Administration
seems at the moment to be
pursuing just such a strategy. It
evidently hopes to formalize
these new restrictions through an
executive agreement, so
as to circumvent the requirement
to obtain the approval of
two-thirds of the Senate for
treaties.⁽³⁾

Worse yet, as the recent
Clinton SCC initiative on
space-based TMD interceptors
suggests, the Administration is volunteering
concessions that are serving
greatly to expand the scope and
breathe new life into the ABM
Treaty — even as they promise
permanently to close off
important theater anti-missile
defense options.

3. Multilateralizing the ABM
   Treaty

This objective
is also evident in the Clinton
effort to invite non-Russian
successors to the Soviet Union to
become signatories to the Treaty.
Already, representatives of
Ukraine and Belarus are present
at the SCC negotiations. As
background briefings by
Administration officials
revealed, the purpose of the
addition of non-Russian Soviet
successor states is to prevent a
future loosening of the ABM
restrictions even
if Moscow might agree.

The former Soviet states seem
to be making common cause also
when it comes to adding
constraints to that regime so as
to encumber the development and
deployment of advanced theater
ballistic missile defenses. One
motivation appears to be a
cynical and selfservingly
pecuniary one: Negotiated limits,
whose principal effect is to
preclude advanced American
theater defense programs, will
eliminate competition for the
potentially lucrative
international market in such
systems. Russian officials have
described this market as a
“gold mine”; Moscow
clearly would like to ensure that
its highly capable and
deployed SA-10, 11 and 12
air-defense/ATBM systems remained
best positioned to exploit it.

Among the ABM Treaty zealots
who populate the Clinton
Administration, Cold Warriors in
the former Soviet Union have
found willing partners — both in
perpetuating American
vulnerability to missile attack
and in preserving Russia’s
ability to offer would-be buyers
what will, as a result, remain
the world’s most sophisticated
defensive systems.

The Real
‘Artifact of the Cold War’

There is considerable irony in
the fact that the Clinton Administration
is aggressively dismantling
tried-and-true institutions, arrangements
and capabilities it regards to be
“artifacts of the Cold War,”⁽⁴⁾
even as it is bending every effort to
shore up a real
Cold War artifact — the ABM Treaty.
As Richard Perle, a former Assistant
Secretary of Defense and founding member
of the Center for Security Policy’s Board
of Advisors, noted in the 3 May 1994
editions of the Wall Street Journal:

“The extraordinary thing
about the opposition to an American
strategic defense is its resilience.
The now obsolete (and perhaps always
misplaced) concern that the
development of an American missile
defense would deepen a U.S.-Soviet
arms race has managed to survive the
end of the Cold War and the
dissolution of the Soviet Union with
no loss of fervor.”

“Administration success in
ruling out the use of space-based
components capable of intercepting
missiles early in their flight will
guarantee that we face future Kim Il
Sungs without effective means of
defense. It will also sacrifice some
of the most promising options for
theater defense. This will force us
to rely on threats to use nuclear
weapons in retaliation, as President
Clinton has hinted we would do
[against North Korea]. But in nearly
all contingencies such threats are
unlikely to be convincing.

“In the end, nuclear
coercion, especially as part of a
politico-military strategy, is bound
to triumph over deterrence. For, in
the end, coercive threats coming from
a Kim Il Sung who defied the world
and managed to get a bomb are more
likely to be believed than deterrent
threats coming from an American
president who decided we should not
develop the means to intercept
it.”

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
strongly believes that:

• The United States, its
  people, vital interests and key
  allies will be increasingly at
  risk from ballistic missile
  attack.
• It is eminently desirable — if
  not strategically essential — to
  take steps that may
  dissuade nations from acquiring
  such threatening ballistic
  missile capabilities,
  rather than trying to neutralize
  them after such capabilities
  are acquired.
• The United States is obliged by
  economic realities and plain
  common sense to utilize
  technologies now in hand that
  would permit such a defense on
  a global basis and at the lowest
  possible cost — namely,
  space-based interceptor and
  sensor technologies derided as
  “Star Wars” by the
  Clinton Administration and
  virtually defunded by its FY94
  and FY95 budgets.

The recent use of deadly ballistic
missiles in the Middle East — from
Saddam Hussein’s attacks against Iran,
Saudi Arabia and Israel to the exchanges
between northern and southern Yemen — is
a reminder that the time has clearly come
to get on with defending the American
people, their forces and their allies
against these threats.

To the extent that the ABM
Treaty is today an obstacle to such
steps, this obstacle must be removed.
Under no circumstances should it be
transformed into an even greater, more
costly and more comprehensive impediment.

The Center believes that the Congress
must, accordingly, insist that all
these substantive changes to the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty must be
submitted to the Senate for its formal
advice and consent. Notice
should promptly be served — on both the
Russians and the Clinton Administration
— that, in the absence of a duly
ratified amendment, any new limits on
theater ballistic missile defense
programs will not be binding on the
United States.

In particular, consistent with the
terms of the Missile Defense Act of 1991
(which called for the rapid development
and deployment of effective anti-missile
systems) and the Clinton Administration’s
own, stated commitment to meet the
near-term threat posed by short-range
ballistic missiles, the Congress
should direct that no further delays be
made in the THAAD test schedule awaiting
a future agreement with Moscow on the
permitted capabilities of theater
defenses.

– 30 –

1. For more on the
implications of the Aspin announcement,
see the Center for Security Policy’s Decision
Brief entitled, Going,
Going, Gone: Clinton/Aspin Condemn Nation
to Permanent Vulnerability to Missile
Strikes, ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=93-D_39″>No. 93-D 39,
14 May 1993).

2. An early
indication of the ideological attachment
to the ABM Treaty felt by many officials
in the Clinton national security
bureaucracy occurred on July 14, 1993.
That was the date the Administration
announced that it believed “the ABM
Treaty prohibits the development, testing
and deployment of sea-based, air-based,
space-based and mobile land-based ABM
systems and components without regard to
the technology utilized.” With this
pronouncement, the so-called “broad
interpretation” of the ABM Treaty,
formally embraced — though never
operationalized — by the Reagan and Bush
Administrations, was jettisoned. The
opportunity provided by such an
interpretation to conduct considerable
development and testing of advanced
strategic defensive technologies (i.e.,
those based on “other physical
principles”) without having to
abrogate the Treaty was thus
foreclosed.

3. The prospect of
Senate ratification is significantly
clouded by a letter to President Clinton
signed by 44 Republican members of the
Senate on 22 March 1994. In it they
warned against accepting the Russian
position that would “add constraints
on TMD interceptor and sensor
characteristics.” The Senators told
the President that would

“…undermine the
‘demonstrated standard’ and likely
preclude several promising U.S. TMD
efforts. By so precluding a class of
TMD systems, the U.S. would assume
new legal obligations under the ABM
Treaty — constraints that were not
envisioned or intended when the
Treaty was ratified. It is unlikely
that we would be able to support any
such agreement.”

4. The extent and
implications of this dangerous campaign
are discussed in a recent speech by
Center for Security Policy director Frank
J. Gaffney circulated in excerpt form
with a press release entitled, ‘What’s
Really Wrong With This Picture’: Center’s
Gaffney Dissects Clinton Security Policy,
(No. 94-P 47,
10 May 1994).