Is the Administration Lying to the Senate About Kyoto's Adverse Impact on National Security - Or Just Kidding Itself?

(Washington, D.C.): Today, Rep. David McIntosh (R-IN) will chair an
important hearing of his
House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee to consider the implications of the
Kyoto Protocol on Global Climate Change. Such congressional oversight is particularly timely in
light of evidence that the Clinton Administration is beginning to implement this flawed treaty
without its submission to — let alone its approval by — the United States Senate.

Of particular concern is the impact this unratified treaty might have upon the
American
military and, therefore, upon the national security it is sworn and maintained to
defend.⁽¹⁾
This concern was only intensified by what was, at best, peculiar and at worst thoroughly
disingenuous testimony received last month on the other side of Capitol Hill from a senior
Clinton
Pentagon official.

Enter Sherri Goodman

On 11 March, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) convened a hearing of his Armed
Services Readiness
Subcommittee to consider, among other things, the status, character and impact of the Kyoto
Protocol on the U.S. military. The principal witness on this subject was Ms. Sherri
Goodman,
Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Environmental Security.

Ms. Goodman has been the Pentagon’s point person on the Kyoto Protocol. In fact, on 5
September 1997, Ms. Goodman circulated a shocking memorandum identifying some of the
deleterious effects arbitrary reductions in CO₂ emissions would have on the
readiness and future
war-fighting capabilities of the U.S. military.⁽²⁾
Interestingly, on the basis of this assessment, the
Deputy Under Secretary proposed a blanket waiver for “military tactical and strategic
systems used in training to support readiness or in support of national security,
humanitarian activities, peace keeping, peace enforcement and United Nation’s actions.”

Unfortunately, after the Clinton Administration agreed — at the insistence of the Joint Chiefs
of
Staff — to such a waiver in the run-up to the Kyoto conference, Vice President Al Gore’s
National Security Advisor (and the enforcer of the Veep’s appalling order to U.S.
negotiators to
exhibit “more flexibility” during that negotiating session), Leon Fuerth, ordered
that the blanket
waiver be abandoned.

Not surprisingly, what emerged instead was a manifestly more limited exemption applying to
only
some military activities. Specifically, the Protocol says:

“The Conference of the Parties … [Paragraph 5] decides that emissions resulting
from multilateral operations pursuant to the United Nations Charter shall not be
included in national totals

Emissions related to other
operations shall be included in the national emissions totals of one or more parties
involved

“

Ms. Goodman’s Puzzling and/or Misleading Testimony

Despite the clear meaning of this language, Ms. Goodman made the following extraordinary
representations before Sen. Inhofe’s subcommittee on 11 March:

This includes not only multilateral operations
expressly authorized by the UN Security Council — such as Desert Storm, Bosnia,
Somalia — but also, multilateral operations not expressly authorized, but
consistent with the UN Charter, such as Grenada and Panama.

It will be recalled that, at the time, a great many countries argued that the United States’
operations in Grenada and Panama were not consistent with the UN Charter and
roundly
condemned the Reagan and Bush Administrations, respectively, for mounting these unilateral
actions.

Ms. Goodman nonetheless went on to declare:

if we were to undertake, for some reason, a completely unilateral operation, we
do not need an international treaty to tell the United States how to operate
unilaterally. That is a matter of the United States sovereignty.

She elaborated on this statement with the following remarks:

we
construe that phrase very broadly to include even should we purchase fuel from a
host nation

“But as I said, I will — it’s our view, certainly, that it’s a matter of United
States sovereignty as to what it conducts, what it does unilaterally, and we
did not need an international treaty to tell us how to do that.“

In other words, the Administration told the Senate last month that, despite the
obvious
limitation established by the treaty on other-than-multilateral operations, there will be no
impact
on the U.S. military because it doesn’t engage any more in unilateral operations. Against the
possibility that such a contention might be seen as implausible or just plain inaccurate, however,
Ms. Goodman makes the mystifying statement that we would “not need an international treaty to
tell us how to do” unilateral operations. Of course, that is not the point: What is, instead, at issue
is whether an international treaty — specifically the unratified Kyoto Protocol — might effectively
prevent, or at least significantly compound the costs involved in or other disincentives to
unilateral action.

What About Domestic Military Operations?

Even more remarkable than Ms. Goodman’s interpretations of the meaning of the Kyoto
Protocol’s language for U.S. military operations overseas was its position — dramatically unveiled
at the Inhofe subcommittee hearing by the Deputy Under Secretary — concerning the armed
forces’ domestic operations. As Ms. Goodman put it:

“I’m pleased to report to you today, Mr. Chairman, that the administration has
decided that it will oppose efforts to impose emissions limits or constraints on
domestic military operations and training. That is new news I am announcing
here for the first time. This decision means that our military readiness will be
protected due to climate change policy.”

* * *

“I did not have that information at the time I submitted my written statement to you.
So it is not contained in my written statement. It is contained only in the oral remarks I
made to you this morning, which is that the Administration has determined that it
will oppose any attempts to put emissions limits or constraints on our domestic,
military operations in training.

“You and I have discussed how important that is before. Secretary Cohen is
already on record as saying we must protect the ability to conduct domestic
military operations and training. And so this is a very good news for us.”

What is Needed Now

This would indeed be good news for the American military and for those concerned
that it
will be impaired by the Kyoto Protocol. It probably will be news of a different kind to
the
United States’ negotiating partners, however. At the very least, since there is likely to be
confusion about why the U.S. is not adhering to the clear language of the treaty, two
things
should be done forthwith:

First, the Clinton Administration should supply an official, written notification to the
Congress waiving the application of the Kyoto Protocol’s limitations on the Pentagon’s
domestic CO₂ emissions. For that matter, a clear statement to the effect
of Ms. Goodman’s
testimony — namely that overseas emissions will not be constrained either href=”#N_3_”>⁽³⁾ — would also be
desirable. Chairman Inhofe made such a request directly to the Deputy Under Secretary in the
following exchange:

as I go back to
the document, it just appears to me that we’re talking only about multinational
operations [being exempted] and not unilateral [domestic or overseas ones]

Sec. Goodman: “I will provide that to you for the record.”

Sen. Inhofe: “In what form will that be?”

Sec. Goodman: “It will be in the form of a memo from the National Security
Council.”

Inexplicably, some six weeks later, Sen. Inhofe has yet to receive this memo.
It is
impossible to determine at this writing whether this extraordinary fact means that: 1) the National
Security Council misled Ms. Goodman, just as she was about to give important testimony to the
Senate on the Kyoto Protocol; 2) Ms. Goodman misled the Committee about the Administration’s
interpretation of that treaty’s constraints upon the U.S. military; or 3) the U.S. government has
misled its negotiating partners about the nature of the agreement it has reached with them —
despite the clear meaning of the relevant words and its negotiating history and record.

This uncertainty simply reinforces the urgency that attends a congressional initiative making it
clear that there must be no implementation of the Kyoto Protocol in the absence of the
Senate’s advice and consent to its ratification. While Ms. Goodman told stated flatly
that
“The administration does not intend to implement the Kyoto protocol,” href=”#N_4_”>⁽⁴⁾ there is much evidence
to the contrary.⁽⁵⁾

Second, in the interest of avoiding future problems, the Congress should at the very
least
incorporate into the next Defense Authorization bill language capturing the substance of
Ms. Goodman’s testimony. Neither the Pentagon nor America’s negotiating partners
should be
under any illusion that the Kyoto Protocol will ever apply to — and be allowed to constrain — U.S.
military operations overseas or domestically. Neither should the Protocol’s emissions reduction
targets be permitted to become a factor in future American force structure decisions, a distinct
possibility in the absence of clear executive and legislative branch guidance. href=”#N_6_”>⁽⁶⁾ It would certainly
be instructive to see whether the Clinton Administration has any objections to the adoption of
such a legislative initiative.

– 30 –

1. For more on these concerns, see the Center for Security Policy’s
Decision Brief entitled
Eco-Disarmament: Clinton-Gore’s Global Warming Crusade Threatens U.S.
Military — As
Well As The Nation’s Economy (No. 97-D
135, 15 September 1997).

2. See the Casey Institute’s Perspective entitled
Effects of Clinton’s Global Warming Treaty on
U.S. Security Gives New Meaning to the Term ‘Environmental Impact ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-C_149″>No. 97-C 149, 6
October 1997).

3. Ms. Goodman declared that, in addition to the broad interpretation
of “multilateral” operations
being used by the Administration, the United States will retain “flexibility” with respect to the
accounting for greenhouse gasses emitted in the course of overseas training: “Emissions
associated with training U.S. forces at overseas bases may be attributed either to the host nation
or the nation producing the emissions giving us the flexibility to do what is best for us in a
given
situation.” As a practical matter, it is hard to believe — absent some categorical U.S.
statement or
bilateral understanding before the fact that the American military will actually be able
to exercise
this “flexibility” when the crunch comes.

4. Ms. Goodman actually went so far as to tell the Inhofe
Subcommittee: “There is no effort to
measure our emissions in compliance with something that we’re not implementing at this point. I
can tell you because we know what our energy consumption is and that our emissions are down.”

5. For more on this evidence, see the Casey Institute
Perspective entitled Clinton Tries To Steal
A March On Kyoto Treaty: Will The Senate Allow Implementation Without
Ratification? (No.
98-C 42, 9 March 1998).

6. After all, as Ms. Goodman noted in her testimony: “[The
Defense Department] might
actually have permits to sell because our emissions are lower in 1998, and maybe in 2000 —
whatever — than they were in 1990. So the baseline year of 1990 is right now quite
favorable
to the Department of Defense because 1990 is the approximate end of the Cold War.
The
military was much larger. It’s smaller today.”