‘FORKED TONGUES’: CLINTON TEAM OPPOSES ARMS FOR BOSNIANS BUT HAPPILY CORRUPTS OTHER SANCTION REGIMES

(Washington, D.C.): On Thursday, 28
April the U.S. Senate is scheduled to
hold a major debate on the question of
lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia. The
Clinton Administration has expressed
sympathy for the objective of ending what
is, in effect, a one-sided sanction that
denies the Bosnian government the means
to defend its people against Serbian
aggression. The Administration has
nonetheless opposed this bipartisan
initiative (S. 2041), sponsored by Senate
Minority Leader Robert Dole (R-KA) and 27
other senators, on the grounds that it
would undermine a multilateral sanctions
regime — with adverse implications for
other embargoes the U.S. supports.

This position on Bosnia would
be coherent,
if
reprehensible
, were
the Clinton team systematically working
to maintain the integrity and
effectiveness of sanctions elsewhere.

It is, instead, absurd — as well as
odious — in light of the
Administration’s behavior on a number of
other embargoes and sanctions around the
world. Consider the following
illustrative examples:

  • Eroding the embargo on
    Iraq:
    Yesterday,
    Secretary of State Warren
    Christopher announced that the
    United States, France and the
    United Kingdom would end their
    enforcement of a naval blockade
    against the Jordanian port of
    Aqaba. While Secretary
    Christopher maintained that this
    would represent no weakening of
    the sanctions against Saddam
    Hussein’s Iraq, the reality is
    altogether different.
  • Aqaba is a major transshipment
    point for Jordanian smuggling
    operations that have helped keep
    Saddam in business. Ending the
    blockade not only eliminates the
    easiest and most effective means
    available of enforcing the
    internationally imposed
    sanctions; it also signals an
    evaporating Western will to
    sustain the embargo. This is
    especially true given that the
    alternative means Secretary
    Christopher proposes to use of to
    monitor Jordanian traffic with
    Iraq — i.e., land-based
    inspectors — are nowhere in
    sight.(1)

    The truth — as noted in the
    Wall Street Journal last week by
    Laurie Mylroie, a distinguished
    member of the Center for Security
    Policy’s Board of Advisors (see
    the attached
    op.ed. article
    entitled,
    “Unfinished Business with
    Iraq” href=”#N_2_”>(2))
    — is that America’s allies have
    no interest in enhancing the
    effectiveness of the embargo
    against Iraq: “France has
    bolted from the anti-Iraq
    coalition and is working
    hand-in-glove with Baghdad to get
    sanctions lifted.” It is
    dishonest to suggest otherwise.
    It is despicable to do so while
    claiming that the West’s success
    in maintaining the embargo on
    Iraq justifies the continuing
    embargo on arms to Bosnia.

  • Coddling Greece on its
    sanction-busting help to Serbia,
    its crippling sanctions against
    Macedonia:
    Last week,
    President Clinton met with Greek
    Prime Minister Andreas
    Papandreou. The meeting appears
    to have perpetuated the U.S.
    government’s rank appeasement of
    Greece over its ongoing
    violations of the United Nations
    embargo (by exporting oil and
    other goods to Serbia) and its
    devastating unilateral embargo
    against the neighboring former
    Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. href=”#N_3_”>(3)
  • In an op.ed. in the New York
    Times
    of 21 April 1994
    entitled “Athenian
    Games,” Robert Kaplan makes
    the following important
    observation:

    “If Mr. Clinton hopes
    to retain any shred of
    credibility he may have left
    in the Balkans, he must get
    Mr. Papandreou to stop
    strangling Macedonia and
    aiding Serbia. Otherwise, if
    war erupts in the next few
    years in Macedonia and
    neighboring Kosovo, the
    Clinton-Papandreou meeting
    will appear in hindsight much
    like the 1990 meeting between
    Saddam Hussein and the U.S.
    Ambassador to Iraq, April
    Glaspie, that inadvertently
    gave Iraq a green light to
    invade Kuwait.”

  • Looking the other way on
    economic aid to North Korea:
    As
    noted in several recent Center
    for Security Policy Decision
    Briefs
    , href=”#N_4_”>(4)
    Japan, China and other nations
    are continuing to provide
    invaluable economic life support
    to North Korea. In the case of
    Tokyo, this aid has taken the
    form of: remittances from Korean
    expatriates in Japan;
    rescheduling of Iranian debt
    (along with other European
    nations), allowing Tehran to
    continue using its oil to secure
    arms from Pyongyang instead of
    having to sell it on the world
    market; and technology transfers
    to North Korea.
  • By ignoring these activities,
    Washington signals its lack of
    seriousness about North Korea’s
    nuclear weapons program. It
    certainly undermines any case for
    imposing new economic sanctions
    against Pyongyang in response to
    that country’s violation of its
    obligations under the Nuclear
    Non-Proliferation Treaty.

  • Morton Halperin pursues
    his own sanctions-busting agenda:

    The Center for Security Policy
    has learned that the National
    Security Council’s Senior
    Director for Democracy, Morton
    Halperin, has played an active
    role in recent days in shaping
    legislation that would
    significantly circumscribe the
    president’s authority to impose
    and enforce embargoes. The
    vehicle for this initiative is
    the conference report on the
    State Department authorization
    bill, H.R. 2333. Its language
    closely conforms to that of the
    “Free Trade in Ideas
    Act,” legislation Halperin
    as Washington Director of the
    ACLU promoted to the bill’s
    principal sponsor, Rep. Howard
    Berman (D-CA).
  • Halperin personally reviewed and
    approved the language adopted by
    the conference committee,
    colluding with his former deputy
    at the ACLU, Amit Pandya, now
    working for Rep. Berman — over
    State Department objections. It
    features statutory language that
    denies the President the
    authority to:

    “regulate or
    prohibit, directly or
    indirectly, the importation
    from any country or
    exportation to any country of
    any information or
    informational materials,
    including but not limited to
    publications, films, posters,
    phonograph records,
    photographs, microfilms,
    microfiche, tapes, compact
    disks, CD ROMs, art works,
    new wire feeds…”

    This legislation would
    also deny the President the
    authority to regulate or prohibit
    travel to or from any country.

    It would, in short, create
    important statutory loopholes in
    existing or future sanctions
    regimes — to the benefit for
    example of nations like Serbia,
    Libya, Iran and Iraq — all in
    the name ostensibly of furthering
    “Free Trade in Ideas.”
    Its sponsors’ true and much less
    benign objectives were evident,
    however, when Rep. Berman
    threatened to halt funding for
    Radio Marti —
    an
    important instrument for bringing
    freedom of ideas to Castro’s Cuba

    — unless Cuban-American critics
    of his initiative dropped their
    opposition
    to his
    initiative. href=”#N_5_”>(5)

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy calls
on the U.S. Senate — as it considers the
question of arming the Bosnians — to
give no greater weight to
concerns about the sanctity of
international embargoes than the Clinton
Administration appears to be giving to
other embargoes elsewhere around the
world
. If the Administration is
disposed, as a practical matter, to ease
sanctions against the world’s bad actors,
the least it can do is to stop opposing
the long-overdue termination of an
obscene embargo on some of the world’s
sorriest victims: the Bosnian Muslims and
others currently defenseless in the face
of Serbian aggression.

– 30 –

1. This flim-flam
is reminiscent of the Clinton
Administration’s assurance that a new
technology transfer regime would replace
the Coordinating Committee for
Multilateral Export Controls, COCOM. The
latter was dismantled on 1 April; the
former is but a gleam in the eye.

2. The Center has
long believed that the removal of Saddam
Hussein is an essential prerequisite to
completing the United States’
“unfinished business” with
Iraq. In this connection, the Center
urged in June 1991 that “a bounty
should be placed on Saddam Hussein — a
sizeable cash reward for anyone who can
end the reign of terror he and his ruling
clique are evidently determined to
perpetuate indefinitely. See Wanted:
Saddam Hussein, Dead
or Alive
, ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=91-P_49″>No. 91-P 49,
12 June 1991). Interestingly, the
Associated Press reported on 6 April 1994
that State Department spokesman Michael
McCurry recently acknowledged that Iraq
has offered a bounty
for anyone
who murders U.N. and other international
relief workers. Turn-about surely is now
fair play.

3. This U.S. policy
is evidently much influenced by the rank
parochialism of President Clinton’s
senior policy advisor, Greek-American
George Stephanopoulos. It is positively
bizarre, however, in light of the risk
the Administration has assumed on behalf
of Macedonia’s independence and
territorial integrity by deploying
hundreds of American servicemen as human
“trip-wires” there.

4. See, for example
Look Who’s Helping Underwrite the
‘Radical Entente’: Why Are Tokyo, Bonn
Bailing Out Teheran, Pyongyang?

(No. 94-D 8, 26
January 1994).

5. In the end, Rep.
Berman agreed to “grandfather”
Cuba and North Korea, keeping present
restraints on travel and the
import/export of “information”
in place for the time being with respect
to these two nations. This should be
seen, however, as nothing more than a
tactical retreat; Morton Halperin and his
friends on Capitol Hill are clearly
intent on further eroding what remains of
the President’s nominal support for the
embargo on Cuba and will clearly seek
other opportunities to advance this
agenda. See in this regard, First
Hanoi, Now Havana? Spare Us Morton
Halperin’s Prescriptions for Potemkin
Democracy in Cuba
( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-D_33″>No. 94-D 33, 8
April 1994).

Center for Security Policy

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