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
  2. 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.

  3. Skullduggery With the
    “Process”
  4. 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.

  5. Multilateralizing the ABM
    Treaty
  6. 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).

Center for Security Policy

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