President Clinton Should Heed Security-Minded Advice, Not Strobe Talbott’s

(Washington, D.C.): Senior U.S. officials have reportedly broken the code: According to
today’s
Washington Post, at least some of them recognize that this is no time for
President Clinton to be
traveling to Moscow and are urging that the trip be “delayed or canceled.” Unfortunately, Mr.
Clinton is getting the opposite advice from a man whose judgement about the Kremlin and
American relations with it has been consistently flawed for nearly three decades — long-time
friend of Bill and journalist turned diplomat, Strobe Talbott.

In his capacity as Deputy Secretary of State, Talbott has been in Moscow over the past few
days,
trying to cobble together a summit agenda and holding meetings with senior Russian leaders,
including a visit with President Yeltsin today. In particular, Talbott has been frantically trying to
nail down a new arms control agreement, one that would lock the United States into strategic
force reductions and a permanent adherence to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with which
it — literally — cannot live. If history teaches anything, it is that the Russians are adept at taking
advantage of Talbott and his associates, finding ways even in moments of acute weakness to play
for advantage, to have it both ways.

In important essays published in today’s European and New York editions of the Wall
Street
Journal (a copy of the latter is attached), the holder of the
William J. Casey Institute’s Casey
Chair, Roger W. Robinson, Jr., warns against the dangers of allowing the Russians to have it both
ways — garnering U.S. and other Western nations’ political and economic support while pursuing
policies and military programs contrary to those nations’ vital interests.

Drawing on his experience as an international banker with the Chase Manhattan Bank and as
Senior Director for International Economic Affairs at the National Security Council under
President Reagan, Mr. Robinson offered the following counsel in the longer version of his article
which appeared in the Wall Street Journal Europe this morning:

“Whether officials from the G-7 group of nations like it or not, the desperate state of affairs in
Moscow will require not only fundamental systemic transformation, but also long-overdue
changes in Western policy toward Russia and the region. A central element of this
change
should be the abandoning of the unsustainable firewall that governments in the West
maintain between financial policy and national security.” (Emphasis added.)

Mr. Clinton has no business going to Russia at this juncture. The fact that Strobe
Talbott
believes otherwise is just the latest confirmation of his defective judgement and policy
advice. If, despite the more sensible recommendations of others — both inside and
outside his
Administration — President Clinton goes ahead with his summit in Moscow next week, the
least
he can do is heed Roger Robinson’s wise counsel: The United States must condition any
new,
targeted assistance flows and other political support for the Russian government upon a cessation
of those Kremlin foreign policy and military activities that are inimical to vital U.S. security
interests.