Clinton Legacy Watch #50 : Stealthy Accord With Ru

(Washington, D.C.): In the waning hours of Bill Clinton’s presidency, his Administration stands poised to sign a bilateral agreement with the Russians that is, at a minimum, inconsistent with long-term U.S. national security and commercial interests. At worst, this accord — called the “Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Missile Launch Notification” — will grievously compromise both.

All other things being equal, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will sign this MOU on Monday, 27 November, with her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minsiter Igor Ivanov on the margins of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe meeting in Vienna. With her signature — and without benefit of congressional debate, Senate advice and consent or public scrutiny — the United States will become legally bound to provide the Russians with “pre-launch and post-launch notifications for launches of ballistic missiles [whose planned flight range is in excess of 500 kilometers or the planned apex altitude is in excess of 500 kilometers].” It will also be obliged, “with rare exceptions,” to give Moscow “pre-launch and post-launch notifications for launches of space launch vehicles.”

Assault on U.S. Space Power

The sort of information exchanges such an accord will require in the name of “transparency” have profound and adverse implications for the United States’ ability to act on the Clinton-Gore Administration’s own space policy. As stated in A National Security Strategy for a New Century released by the White House in December 1999, this policy says:

We are committed to maintaining U.S. leadership in space. Unimpeded access to and use of space is a vital national interest….We will deter threats to our interest in space, counter hostile efforts against U.S. access to and use of space and maintain the ability to counter space systems and services that could be used for hostile purposes against our military forces….We will maintain our technological superiority in space systems….” (Emphasis added.)

In his Annual Report to the President and Congress for 1999, Secretary of Defense William Cohen put an even finer point on what is required: “Access to, use of, and control of space are fundamental to this strategy [i.e., the Department’s strategic vision for the 21st century]….Space systems are an integral part of the deterrent posture of the armed forces, and they confer a decisive advantage upon U.S. and friendly forces.”

Given the inextricable connection between “unimpeded access to space” and the “use of and control of space,” however, one truth should be self-evident: The United States will simply not be able to exercise space power if it must provide between 30 days and twenty-four hours advance notice of space launches to a foreign government — especially one that may prove hostile or at least allied with those who are. To do so would be a formula for compromised operational security, intelligence debacles and probably mission failure.

More to the point, the exercise of space power in the future will require the United States to move in the direction of far less costly, more reliable and more timely — if not actually on-demand — means of getting into space. The Clinton-Gore MOU is at cross-purposes with this wave of the future. To the contrary, this Luddite accord will have the effect of adding layers of unhelpful international bureaucratic rigamarole to the already-too-great impediments (notably, huge boosters that take thousands of people weeks to assemble and launch from a few fixed — and highly vulnerable — launch facilities) that presently preclude ready and efficient access to space.

The Pentagon Non-Concurs’

The genesis of this initiative lies in the 1995 flight of a sounding rocket out of Norway carrying a scientific experiment. The Norwegians sent notification of the launch to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow which failed to pass the information on the Ministry of Defense. When Russian sensors detected an ambiguous but potentially threatening situation, the standard procedures were followed, leading to a heightened state of alert and preparations for ordering a retaliatory strike. In the event, the situation clarified itself before any launch orders were issued.

Pressure for “deliverables” for President Clinton’s legacy nonetheless produced an agreement in September 1998 — when he and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin each found themselves in domestic political difficulty — on a “cooperative initiative regarding the exchange of information on missile launches and early warning.” The first effort to commit the United States to such an arrangement in a legally binding way came a cropper in late 1999, when military and civilian officials in the Clinton Pentagon insisted that only a voluntary agreement would be supportable.

In the months that followed, however, a closely held negotiating effort was mounted without the knowledge of or inputs from virtually any of the relevant Defense Department organizations. Not surprisingly, when word that a legally binding agreement was again in the offing finally came to the attention of responsible figures in the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and armed services in October 2000, their opposition to the draft accord was strong and virtually unanimous. In fact, the Air Force, Marines and Army and the three-star directorates responsible for plans, policy and requirements in the OJCS all formally rejected it (or, in Pentagonese “non-concurred”). For their parts, the Navy and National Reconnaissance Office expressed strong reservations about the agreement.

While wording changes were belatedly introduced so as to mollify the military, the reality is that these fixes were of limited practical utility and do not begin to correct the underlying reality: Obligatory launch notifications as required by this MOU are ill-advised in the extreme.

The PLNS Agreement’s Serious Defects

Consider a few of the abiding problems with the MOU (emphasis added throughout):

• It won’t address the ostensible problem. Since most sounding rockets fly over ranges less than 500 kilometers and to altitudes of less than 500 kilometers, they would not be covered by the PLNS MOU. And, since the MOU is bilateral in nature, it will not cover Norwegians, Swedish or other sounding rockets that might alarm the Russians. Furthermore, it is far from self-evident how creating yet another information center (in addition to the already extant Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers) will eliminate an internal Russian data dissemination problem like that of 1995.






• There appears to be some confusion about whether all space launches have to be pre- and post-notified or not. In one section, provision is made for “rare exceptions”; in another, the language makes reference to the first section but says “all launches of…space vehicles” from a party’s territory are to be notified.






• Potentially significant new obstacles will be created to commercial innovation and competitiveness: “Each Party shall provide notifications in accordance with paragraph 2 of this Memorandum…of all …launches of ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles owned, possessed or controlled by that Party or by any corporation, partnership, joint venture, association or other legal or natural person (either government or private, including international organizations), organized or existing under the laws of that Party.” Issues about proprietary information add to concerns raised by these notification requirements.






• It will likely capture future space systems. “If methods are subsequently developed for launching objects into space that are fundamentally different from those which exist at the time this Memorandum enters into force, the Parties will discuss how the PLNS might apply to notifications of such launches.”






• It will capture missile defenses. Some supporters of the development and deployment of U.S. anti-missile systems take comfort from the other part of Paragraph 3: “Once the PLNS is in full operation, the Parties shall consider the possibility of, and need for, exchanging information on missiles that intercept objects not located on the earth’s surface.” Unfortunately, even if the “arms control process” that will inevitably begin with the promulgation of this accord fails to impose launch notifications on missile interceptors, the fact that the ballistic missiles that are used as targets for such inteceptors will be covered means that the Russians will be able to interpose further obstacles in the way of American anti-missile systems.
  

  What is more, the notification arrangements that will apply to such ABM tests appear to represent a back-door effort by the Clinton-Gore team and the Russians to foist upon the United States “confidence-building measures” contained in the so-called “demarcation agreements” signed in September 1997 but never submitted to the Senate (out of a legitimate concern that they would be rejected).







• Space launch concepts that envision allowing forward deployed forces rapidly to launch and, if necessary, to re-launch small, reusable rockets for theater reconnaissance, strike and other purposes are among those that would be effectively foreclosed. “Notification shall be provided by the Party from whose territory that launch is conducted. If the launch is not conducted from the territory of a Party, the Parties shall hold consultations to determine which Party will provide the notification.”






• The duration is effectively permanent, notwithstanding a withdrawal clause. The MOU “shall remain in force for ten years” and “may be extended by agreement by the Parties…for successive five-year periods.” Although “a Party may withdraw from this Memorandum upon six months written notice…,” as a practical matter — as the ongoing experience with the ABM Treaty demonstrates — exercising this right is so difficult as to render it inoperative.






• Last but hardly least, this initiative is explicitly envisioned to become part of a multilateral endeavor known as the Global Action Plan that has as its explicit purpose weaning the world from ballistic missile and, even more bizarre, from space launches. “The PLNS and the Joint Data Exchange Center (JDEC) design, when implemented, will create the conditions for the preparation and maintenance of a unified database for a multilateral regime for the exchange of notifications in accordance with paragraph 2 of this Memorandum. The Parties shall seek the participation of other countries in providing such notifications. The Parties shall seek, as soon as possible, agreement on how the PLNS will be opened to the voluntary participation of all interested countries, and shall coordinate this activity with other national, bilateral and international efforts to enhance strategic stability and curtail missile proliferation.
  

  Unexplained is why the United States should be bound by a legal commitment but others, who may have access to the data the U.S. has to provide, are allowed to participate on a “voluntary” basis.

The Bottom Line

The United States is already suffering from a profound, and potentially quite dangerous disconnect between its stated space policy and its actual capabilities. The Memorandum Mrs. Albright is expected to sign next week will only exacerbate this strategically ominous problem.

For the Clinton-Gore Administration to commit the Nation to an understanding with such long- term and potentially fatal implications at a moment when its mandate has run out and its successor is not yet in a position to express forceful objections is reprehensible in the extreme. It is, of course, hardly coincidental that the Administration is doing so in the Thanksgiving weekend window and during a period when Congress is in recess.

Especially insidious is the fact that the Administration is effectively preempting a congressionally chartered commission chaired by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and tasked with assessing what the U.S. needs to do in space and what America requires to do it. All other things being equal, the second Rumsfeld Commission stands to be every bit as influential with respect to the need to rethink and reorient American policy and capabilities for space power, as was the first panel Secretary Rumsfeld which addressed the long-range ballistic missile threat in 1998.

The Clinton-Gore Administration must not be allowed to get away with this preemptive strike on the Rumsfeld Commission, especially insofar as it would, in so doing, oblige the Nation to adhere to approaches and practices with respect to space clearly at odds with American military and commercial interests in space. Mrs. Albright should be directed to stand down and the Rumsfeld Commission should be given an opportunity to take stock of the implications of this agreement for the recommendations it is preparing and undertake thorough review with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others about the wisdom of entering into a legally binding agreement on missile launch notification.