SUMMIT POST-MORTEM: CLINTON DOES GIVE AWAY U.S. MISSILE DEFENSE OPTIONS

(Washington, D.C.): At his summit meeting last week
with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, President Clinton
took one of the most reckless steps of an Administration
riddled with such actions: In a “Joint Statement on
Strategic Stability and Nuclear Security,” he
formally committed the United States to “complete
agreement…in the shortest possible time” on an
accord that will effectively preclude the last option for
effective missile defense — global protection against
shorter-range (or theater) missile attack. This was done
explicitly in the name of “preserving the
viability and integrity of the ABM Treaty” by
building on the “recent progress made on the issue
of ABM/TMD demarcation and multilateralization of the ABM
Treaty.”

In layman’s terms, this statement means that
Washington is pledged swiftly⁽¹⁾
to finalize an agreement that modifies the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in two fundamental ways: 1)
by imposing new and prohibitive arms control constraints
upon a currently unlimited class of weapons, i.e.,
theater missile defenses (TMD); and 2) by modifying the
ABM Treaty so as to transform Russia, Belarus and Ukraine
— and perhaps other Soviet successor states (such as
Khazakstan) — into formal successors to the USSR’s legal
obligations under the Treaty.

Pursuant to this agreement, Mr. Clinton is expected
shortly to instruct his SCC negotiators to agree to
performance limitations that will effectively preclude
further development and deployment of the most highly
leveraged options for theater missile defenses:
space-based interceptors, the Navy’s “Upper
Tier” program and the Air Force’s Airborne
Boost-Phase Interceptor system. The instructions also
allow the acting U.S. Commissioner to solicit ideas from
his interlocutors about further constraints that
they might like to see imposed on space-based sensors.
Even the system ostensibly “protected” by this
new agreement, the Army’s Theater High Altitude Area
Defense (THAAD) will be adversely affected — at the very
least through the imposition of constraints on its future
growth options.

Congress Be Damned

Republican ‘Platform’: As ever,
President Clinton’s timing was astounding. Even as he was
fashioning this agreement with Mr. Yeltsin, Republican
House candidates unveiled a “Contract With
America” — a firm, detailed commitment as to what
they will try to accomplish in their first 100 days
should they be given control of the lower chamber of
Congress. In the national security arena, their most
important pledge is to defend America. In its operational
form, this pledge reads as follows:

“I recognize that the world-wide
proliferation of mass destruction weapons — nuclear,
chemical and biological — represents a current and
growing danger to the United States, our military
forces overseas and our allies.

“I recognize the fact that today we cannot
protect the United States, our troops overseas or our
allies against even one ballistic missile
armed with a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon.

“If elected, I will support a vigorous U.S.
effort to develop and deploy effective defenses
against such weapons as an immediate national
priority.”

Key Democrats Concur: Importantly,
sensible Democratic candidates who are looking for every
possible means of distancing themselves from Mr. Clinton
appear to be embracing this commitment, as well; if so,
conditions may at long last be created in Washington
conducive actually to building missile defenses,
not just talking about it. On 19 September 1994, five
leading Democratic representatives (Reps. John
Murtha, Dave McCurdy, Norm Sisisky, Sonny Montgomery
and Dick Swett) signed a bipartisan and
strongly worded letter to President Clinton. They urged
him “to use the upcoming summit to create
new latitude to develop and field effective theater and
global anti-missile systems and to reject any initiative
that would further impinge upon the early acquisition of
such systems.”

The Senate on Record: The futility of
Mr. Clinton’s effort to slip just such an initiative past
the American people and their elected representatives was
made even more stark by a letter signed out the same day
by 39 U.S. Senators, including Minority Leader Robert
Dole and the rest of the Senate’s Republican leadership.
It warned: “In our view, any agreement that hinders
our advanced TMD [theater missile defense] programs would
constitute a bad agreement.”

The number thirty-nine is of signal
importance: It represents five more votes than would be
needed to block ratification of any new treaty, or
amendment to the existing 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty, that had the effect of “hindering our
advanced TMD programs.” And the Senators
pointedly reminded President Clinton that — thanks to
Section 232 of the Fiscal Year 1995 National Defense
Authorization Act — U.S. law now demands that “any
agreement that substantively modifies the ABM
Treaty” be submitted to the Senate for its formal
advice and consent. They expressed the firm view,
moreover, that what the Clinton Administration has in
mind would represent such a substantive modification.

Growing Dissents Within the Administration

Interestingly, there are some in the Clinton
Administration who appear to be slowly awakening to the
strategic inadvisability of the present course — and/or
the political risks that are becoming associated with it.
The Center for Security Policy has learned, for example,
that shortly before the Clinton-Yeltsin summit, Deputy
Secretary of Defense John Deutch wrote Deputy
National Security Advisor Samuel Berger urging that the
Administration not set a near-term deadline for resolving
the limitations now in prospect for TMD. He was
reportedly swiftly rebuffed.

Others, including Vice President Al Gore’s
National Security Advisor Leon Fuerth, Presidential
Science Advisor John Gibbons and ACDA Associate Director
Michael Nacht, are said to be encouraging adoption of numerical
limitations on TMD deployments. This
approach would have the virtue from their point of view
of avoiding the negative political repercussions of
performance-related constraints while still serving the
same, ulterior purpose — namely, that of killing
effective global theater missile defense options. By
replicating and applying to the TMD context numerical
constraints heretofore only imposed on homeland defenses,
the stultifying anti-defense spirit of the outdated ABM
Treaty would be extended with devastating effect to
American theater systems.

Absurd Insult Added to Injury

Not content with permanently foreclosing U.S. theater
missile defense options, the Clinton Administration seems
determined to help the Russians sell theirs to
the international marketplace. This would be the
practical effect of another dubious commitment made in
the Joint Summit Statement: At the urging of Assistant
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter — one of the
Administration’s most zealous opponents of missile
defenses and a leading proponent of ill-considered
changes to America’s nuclear deterrent posture — the
United States is now pledged to “conduct a joint
exercise of theater missile defenses and early
warning” with the Russians.

Under present circumstances, this means that the
United States will be cooperating with Russia to
demonstrate the relative performance of America’s
extremely limited Patriot system and Moscow’s vastly more
capable SA-12 or S-300 TMD weapons. The exercise will
also establish how Russia’s systems can be integrated
into Western command-and-control and early warning
arrangements. As a result, it stands to reason
that the effect of such demonstrations will be primarily
to encourage overseas sales of the Russian defensive
equipment — with all the attendant political, strategic
and economic implications of such a market penetration.

The Bottom Line

It is incumbent upon all those who are concerned about
the prospect of America, its forces overseas and its
allies having to chose between remaining permanently
vulnerable to missile attack or relying upon Russian
equipment to defend against such attacks (at least from
shorter-range missiles) to express forceful opposition to
the latest Clinton initiatives. Since the Administration
seems intent on defying the expressed will of Congress —
both in substance (i.e., negotiating away the most
promising TMD options) and in form (i.e, in trying to
finesse congressional opposition by presenting its
fundamental changes to the ABM Treaty as executive
agreements, rather than as amendments requiring
two-thirds of the Senate’s approval) — the issue
must be brought to wider public attention.

Toward this end, the Center for Security Policy has
joined the Coalition to Defend America
for the purpose of educating the American people about
the dangers inherent in their present vulnerability in
the face of burgeoning proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction and ballistic missiles with which such
weapons might be delivered. The Center and the
other members of the Coalition urge every candidate for
Congress to sign the Pledge to Defend America and to make
known their strong opposition to President Clinton’s
attempt to leave the U.S., its troops overseas and its
allies defenseless.

– 30 –

1. There is reason to believe that
the Clinton Administration hopes to complete this
negotiation by the end of the next round of the Standing
Consultative Commission (or SCC) — scheduled to start
one week from today.