CLINTON’S CANARD: HIS PHONY ‘INTERNATIONALISM’ IS A SURE-FIRE FORMULA FOR A ‘NEW AMERICAN ISOLATIONISM’

(Washington, D.C.): Richard Nixon would be proud: A
conference jointly sponsored by his presidential library and
think-tank yesterday helped ensure that foreign and defense
policy — an area to which he personally ascribed the highest
priority throughout his long career of public service — was
featured at the very outset of Campaign 1996. If, as a result,
the American people are afforded a clear and understandable
choice in that area, this Nixon legacy achieved posthumously may
come to rival in importance those he accomplished while living.

Unfortunately, in remarks to the “After Victory:
Defining an American Role in an Uncertain World” conference,
President Bill Clinton was at pains to confuse and impede
public understanding of the true character of his foreign
and defense policies. In particular, the President wrapped
himself and his administration in the banner of committed
“internationalists.” He claimed that they were
creatively pursuing policies that would resist a “new form
of American isolationism” and assure that the U.S. would
prevail in the ongoing battle between freedom and tyranny. In an
astounding bit of Orwellian doublespeak, Mr. Clinton even
assailed those who he said were given to “trumpet the
rhetoric of American strength, while denying the resources”
necessary to protect this country’s interests.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that there has
rarely been a presidency more given to the uncertain trumpeting
of American power and the reckless reduction of resources
necessary to support and exercise that power. Far from the
stuff of a committed and credible internationalist, Bill
Clinton’s security policies can better be described as those of a
multilateralist — a man prone to: unilateral disarmament;
the willful pursuit of utopian and dangerous arms control
initiatives; various feckless diplomatic non-solutions to the
world’s crises; and the subordination of U.S. freedom of action
to foreign vetoes.

Watch What He Does, Not What He Says

Each of these tendencies was in evidence in Mr. Clinton’s
remarks to the Nixon conference last night. Consider, for
example:

• The President announced the unilateral “permanent
  removal” of 200 tons of fissile materials from the
  U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. This action is but the
  latest in a series of steps intended to accomplish what
  he and other Administration officials have described as a
  policy of “denuclearization.” Other such
  steps include: the dismantling of the infrastructure
  required to produce and maintain the American nuclear
  stockpile; the permanent cessation of nuclear testing
  necessary to a credible, safe and reliable nuclear
  deterrent;⁽¹⁾
  the termination at one of the Nation’s two national
  laboratories of critical, competitive nuclear weapons
  design work; and the reduction of U.S. nuclear forces at
  a pace far faster than called for by arms control
  agreements, than the Russians are implementing their own
  reductions and than is prudent under present
  international circumstances. The cumulative effect of
  these measures is disastrous for the American nuclear
  deterrent.
• The most immediate rationalization for the Clinton
  “denuclearization” policy is that such steps
  will promote its goal of obtaining a permanent extension
  of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Mr.
  Clinton said last night that “there is nothing more
  important than” this objective. By his actions,
  he has made clear his view that the need to maintain the
  effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent is a lesser
  priority.
• The President also rattled off in a mantra-like fashion
  his other arms control objectives: getting the Senate to
  rubber-stamp the seriously flawed START II Treaty;
  obtaining its advice and consent to a treaty that
  fraudulently promises to “rid the world of chemical
  weapons”; “strengthening” an inherently
  unverifiable and widely violated ban on biological
  weapons; giving a new lease on life to the obsolete and
  ever-more-dangerously absurd Anti-Ballistic Missile
  Treaty by expanding its scope and signatories; achieving
  arms control agreements in the Middle East; and —
  perhaps most utopian and addled of all —
  prohibiting the world-wide production and use of
  land-mines. Should Mr. Clinton succeed in these
  endeavors, the United States’ national security posture
  will be even more out of synch with the real-world
  threats to America’s interests than it has become in the
  wake of his Administration’s so-called Bottom-Up Review.
• Mr. Clinton used the occasion of the Nixon conference as
  well to aver yet again that his Administration’s amazing,
  shrinking agreement with North Korea ⁽²⁾ “does
  stop North Korea’s nuclear program.” In actuality,
  of course, it does no such thing: Thanks to the
  Carter-Clinton deal, North Korea will have traded out the
  capability to produce sufficient plutonium to make a
  couple of nuclear weapons per year for reactors that will
  enable it to manufacture several weapons a week. The
  technology for accomplishing this is widely available; it
  is foolish to believe that the North will not have it by
  the time one or both of the new reactors come on-line.

As with his contention that the choice is between his
version of internationalism or isolationism, the
President creates a false choice between his agreement and
alternatives that are either “unworkable,”
“foolhardy” or inadequately supported by the South
Koreans and Japan. At a bare minimum, it is certainly not
foolhardy to insist — as the chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), has done
recently — that this agreement be formalized as a treaty
and submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent.
It is inconceivable that either South Korea or Japan could
object to such a step since it can only help to maximize the
chances for securing the North’s compliance. And there is no
reason why this should be unworkable unless North
Korea has not really agreed to what the Clinton
Administration claims it has, something the United States and
its allies is better off establishing sooner rather than
later.

• President Clinton also leveled a broadside at those he
  cast as “isolationists” who “would
  eliminate any meaningful role for the United
  Nations…deny resources to our peacekeepers and even to
  our troops and instead squander them on Star Wars. And
  they would refuse aid to the fledgling democracies and to
  all those fighting poverty and environmental problems
  that can literally destroy hopes for a more democratic,
  more prosperous, more safe world.”

This bit of petulant demagoguery bears little resemblance
to the sensible internationalist approach being
advanced by the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. What
is more, it is certain (if not intended) to have the effect
of alienating those interested in a genuine bipartisan policy
of American engagement and leadership in global affairs.

The Dole Alternative

An eloquent refutation of President Clinton’s suggestion
that the Nation faced a choice between conducting U.S. foreign
and defense policy his way or isolationism was provided by
Senator Robert Dole (R-KA), the Senate Majority Leader and
incipient presidential candidate. In remarks to the Nixon
conference preceding the President’s, Sen. Dole made clear that
he embraced genuine internationalism even as he rejected
important tenets of the Clinton approach.

The Majority Leader identified a number of serious and
“multifaceted threats” to American interests including:

“…A resurgent Russia, asserting its position around
the globe. China has international ambitions of its own, and
is in the midst of a leadership transition. There are
international terrorists — often state-supported. There are
global crime syndicates. There are extremist movements based
on religion or ethnic origin.”

The following were among the noteworthy items in Sen. Dole’s
critique of the Clinton Administration’s security policies:

• A scathing review of Russian behavior incompatible with
  the Clinton Administration’s cherished notion of a
  reliable partnership with Moscow, including a reference
  to a statement by the Nixon conference’s chairman —
  former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — that
  “…What we dealt with in the Cold War was both
  communism and imperialism, and while communism was
  defeated, the trend toward [Russian] imperialism still
  exists.”
• A condemnation of “The Clinton Administration’s
  ‘Russia First’ policy — which has turned into a ‘Yeltsin
  first’ policy — resulted in the loss of a tremendous
  opportunity to state American concerns forcefully before
  thousands were slaughtered in Chechnya.” He argued
  for “developing a more honest relationship, one that
  does not paper over important policy differences with an
  appeal to personal ties….Our differences with Russia
  should be identified,…negotiated where possible and
  condemned when necessary.”
• A warning that “American and European inaction in
  the face of [Serbian genocidal aggression in the Balkans]
  cannot help but embolden other radical ethno-nationalists
  by giving them a green light for ethnic cleansing.”
• A judgment that “the Agreed Framework has little
  prospect of successfully addressing the North Korean
  threat, and apparently, has already been violated by
  Pyongyang.”
• And, importantly, an endorsement of the need for
  ballistic missile defenses. Sen. Dole noted that:

“There are defensive options…that could provide
the United States and our allies with protection against
accidental and limited ballistic missile strikes. Pursuing
and effective ballistic missile defense capability should be
a top priority for U.S. defense policy now and for the
foreseeable future.”

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy welcomes the joining of the
debate over the present and future course of American foreign and
defense policy. In the best tradition of President Nixon’s latter
years, the “After Victory” conference has obliged those
who might otherwise be inclined to focus on other things to
sharpen positions on an issue the Center believes is likely to
prove critical to the outcome of the next presidential election:
Who best can offer the sort of leadership in international
affairs that will protect burgeoning and vital U.S. interests
overseas, safeguard American security at home and promote through
principled, steadfast policies the spread of freedom around the
world? Such is the stuff of which genuine bipartisan coalitions
— and successful campaigns for the White House — are made.

There should be no confusion on one point, however: The
Clinton Administration may try to dress up its multilateralist
policies as exemplars of a coherent, effective, internationalist
program. The truth is that they are, for the most part,
manifestations of — or contributing factors to — the “new
American isolationism” that the President so glibly decries.
By dismantling U.S. military power, subordinating what remains of
it to the dictates of the United Nations and other multilateral
institutions and fostering the notion that doomed peacekeeping
operations and futile arms control agreements are the best hope
for fostering an acceptable world order, the Administration is
exposing the American people and their interests to grave new
perils even as it alienates them from the pursuit of more
effective solutions.

The Center urges Senator Dole and other Republican leaders —
including House Speaker Newt Gingrich who also presented the
Nixon conference yesterday with a strong endorsement of the need
for a real internationalist approach to American security
policy — to continue to articulate their alternative to the
failed Clinton approach. If they do so, they are sure to be
rewarded with a further mandate for leadership from a grateful
public.

(1) The President continues to suggest
that he can maintain a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent
without nuclear testing. Unfortunately, he is not heeding the
advice of one of his table-mates at last night’s dinner — former
Secretary of Defense and of Energy James Schlesinger. In 12 July
1993, he published an immensely important op.ed. article in the Wall
Street Journal entitled “Clinton Defers a Necessity —
Nuclear Testing.” It said, in part:

“…Reliability testing [of nuclear weapons] is
essential. As time passes, and as [retrofits are made to
correct degraded or failed weapons components], we must be
absolutely confident that this modified device will still
induce the proper nuclear reaction. That is why non-nuclear
testing, valuable as it is, is insufficient. It is why talk
of a test ban with zero nuclear yield is irresponsible.”

(2) The accord with North Korea is still
sometimes referred to as a “treaty” (for example, last
week by Under Secretary of Defense Walt Slocomb in a public
defense of the deal hosted by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies). In fact, it is now officially not even a
“framework agreement” but an “agreed
framework” — a formulation that apparently is intended to
reflect the fact that the deal amounts to little more than a
vehicle to make representations about ostensible North Korean
commitments that are, in fact, already being honored in the
breach. (In this regard, see the article in today’s Washington
Post describing complaints from Senator Mitch McConnell about
Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s lack of candor in
testimony on Capitol Hill regarding Pyongyang’s diversion of fuel
now being bought for it by the U.S. Defense Department.)