Damage Limitation in the Wake of the New Press Misspokesman

(Washington, D.C.): In the ten days
since James Rubin was formally installed
by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
as the new State Department Press
Spokesman, he has displayed an unsettling
tendency. He has repeatedly made sweeping
statements — some flatly in error, some
simply fatuous and many inappropriately
flippant — that threaten to disserve
U.S. interests. At the very least, they
reinforce the international perception
that the Clinton Administration is not
serious about the conduct of the Nation’s
foreign and defense policies.

Consider the following sampler from
Jamie Rubin’s first days as State’s
Mispokesman:

• As noted by the Center last week,⁽¹⁾
  Rubin disputes any suggestion
  that Yasser Arafat is part of the
  problem, not the solution to
  bringing peace to the troubled
  Middle East, with an increasingly
  unpersuasive mantra:
  “Chairman Arafat was on the
  White House lawn with the
  President. He signed a peace
  agreement with the Israelis. We
  regard him as a partner in our
  effort to find peace in the
  Middle East.”
• Even a veteran State Department
  journalist felt constrained to
  upbraid Rubin a week ago for
  cynically announcing that the
  Clinton Administration takes U.S.
  law seriously but would do
  nothing to prevent the PLO from
  flouting it. That is the
  practical effect of Arafat’s
  organization’s maintaining a
  Washington office and operation
  in all but name — despite the
  expiration of a waiver to
  statutes prohibiting such
  activities in the United States.
• On Monday, Rubin enthused about
  North Korea’s compliance with its
  obligations under an multilateral
  agreement to suspend its nuclear
  operations. He declared that
  there is “major progress and
  significant progress” in
  ensuring that the North’s
  “nuclear program will stay
  frozen and ultimately be
  dismantled.” Indeed, Rubin
  announced that, “We have
  stopped the possibility of a
  major nuclear program breaking
  out in the dangerous Korean
  Peninsula.”
• This is, of course, seriously
  misleading. On August 13, the
  Clinton Administration issued a
  report on compliance with arms
  control agreements that notes
  that North Korea “has not
  allowed ‘special inspections’
  pursuant to the Nuclear
  Non-Proliferation Treaty”
  and continues to “obstruct
  the full implementation” of
  safeguards required by that
  accord. Such behavior
  significantly diminishes the
  value of the multilateral
  “agreed framework” and
  Pyongyang’s selective
  “compliance” therewith.
• What is more, the North is now
  widely believed to have at least
  a few nuclear weapons. It remains
  in a position to utilize the
  by-products of its previous
  nuclear program to make more and
  will, thanks to the new reactors
  being built with U.S., South
  Korean and Japanese help, obtain
  far larger quantities of the
  materials needed to manufacture a
  substantial arsenal of these
  weapons.
• As noted by the Center yesterday,⁽²⁾
  in response to an important
  op.ed. article published in the Washington
  Times by retired Lieutenant
  General Gordon Sumner and Howard
  Phillips on August 18, Rubin
  pooh-poohed concerns about
  ominous developments in Panama.
  For example, he sweepingly
  dismissed concerns about the
  security threat to the Canal
  posed by the apparent interest of
  the People’s Republic of China
  and drug-traffickers to fill the
  vacuum being created by the U.S.
  retreat from the isthmus,
  declaring “…None of the
  activities that may or may
  not be going on there is
  going to affect our national
  security.”

Misrepresenting the New
U.S. Position on Banning Anti-Personnel
Landmines

Perhaps Jamie Rubin’s most
unforgivable gaffe to date occurred when
he mischaracterized an important aspect
of President Clinton’s latest initiative
to appease those pressing for a ban on
anti-personnel landmines (APLs). On
August 18, Rubin amplified on an
announcement issued from the presidential
vacation site in Martha’s Vineyard to the
effect that the Administration had
decided after all to “participate in
the Ottawa process.” This is
diplospeak for a new-found willingness to
reach agreement on a Canadian-sponsored
treaty by the end of December — even
though it will represent a
less-than-global, assuredly unverifiable
and certifiably ineffective ban on APLs.

According to Rubin, the United States
will seek certain changes to the draft
treaty now under consideration. It would
insist, for example, on preserving the
U.S. right to use long-duration
anti-personnel landmines in Korea.⁽³⁾
Rubin also says the Clinton team will
seek to alter the information exchange
provisions and definitions used in the
Ottawa treaty so as to “improve
verification” and prevent non-APL
weapons (for example, anti-tank
landmines) from being captured by this
accord.

Unfortunately, Rubin
mischaracterized the new U.S. position in
one key respect. He declared
three times that the United States would
not insist on an exclusion for
self-destructing/self-deactivating or
short-duration (sometimes called
“smart”) anti-personnel
landmines. In fact, at the insistence of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the
presidentially approved initiative would
allow continued American use of such
weapons, as long as they are packaged
together with anti-tank landmines. This
synergistic practice minimizes the
prospect that enemy forces will readily
be able to clear areas sowed with
anti-tank mines. It represents an
enormous concession on the part of the
Chiefs who, until last Friday, had
correctly maintained that their forces
required the ability to use
short-duration APLs, with or without
anti-tank devices.

The Bottom Line

It remains to be seen how lasting will
be the damage caused by Jamie Rubin’s
pronouncements on the landmine issue.
Presumably clarifications of the U.S.
stance will be forthcoming and the team
being dispatched to Oslo next month to
participate in the fast-track treaty will
have clear instructions. Still, the
combined effect of the eroding American
position and the Press Misspokesman’s
erroneous characterization of what
remains of it will presumably serve to
make all the more problematic the
negotiation of a landmine treaty with
which the U.S. military can literally
live.

The larger question, of course, is:
How much damage will Rubin inflict on
other vital U.S. interests with
ill-considered, intemperate or inaccurate
statements? He evidently enjoys Mrs.
Albright’s confidence; if the first ten
days of his tenure are any guide, he will
not long enjoy that of the rest of the
Nation.

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30 –

1. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Denial Is No Basis
For Securing A Durable Mideast Peace
(No. 97-D_110,
11 August 1997).

2. See the
Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Will The U.S. Cede
The Strategic ‘Path Between The Seas’ To
The People’s Republic Of China And/Or
Narco-Traffickers? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_113″>No. 97-D_113, 18
August 1997).

3. Rubin seemed to
justify this demand as much on the
grounds that that mission was an
internationally sanctioned one as on the
fact that such weapons are deemed by the
American military to be essential to the
defense of South Korea — and the
protection of U.S. troops deployed on the
peninsula for that purpose. Evidently,
the Administration’s multilateralist
impulses cause them to believe that, in
circumstances where the U.S. decides it
has to be prepared to fight without
a UN mandate, APLs cannot be justified.