DISCREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE: CHRISTOPHER’S MEA CULPA ADDS TO URGENCY OF DEBATE ON SECURITY POLICY

(Washington, D.C.): The lead editorial
in today’s Washington Post
justifiably flays Secretary of State
Warren Christopher for stunning
admissions he made in the course of a
recent interview with the newspaper’s
foreign affairs editor, Michael Dobbs. So
damning is Mr. Christopher in criticizing
his own performance and that of the
Administration he has served that, as the
Post put it: “Nothing that
Sen. Bob Dole or his surrogates have said
about the Clinton record bites so deep as
the Secretary’s own evaluation of
it.”

For the past four years, the Center
for Security Policy has been as
unstinting as anyone in its critique of
the Clinton Administration’s inept,
misbegotten and/or ideologically driven
foreign and defense policies. Most
especially, the Center has assailed Mr.
Christopher and his colleagues for
failing to appreciate “how essential
U.S. leadership is” to the
satisfactory evolution of international
affairs. The Post rightly
compares the Secretary of State’s
remarkable admission to Mr. Dobbs that
the Administration has “come some
years late” to this insight to one
of the most politically ruinous
confessions in memory — “Jimmy
Carter’s own admission that the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979
drastically changed his opinion of the
Kremlin.”

The Washington Post caustically
notes that this “epiphany on the
necessity for American leadership”
is all the more extraordinary since
“Mr. Christopher before he became
Secretary of State, had been the Deputy
Secretary in the Carter Administration
and had been in and around government at
a high level for years.” In a
damning indictment of the hapless Warren
Christopher, the editorial asks
rhetorically: “Would you not have
expected someone with those credentials,
serving a president whose primary
experience lay in other policy quarters,
to bring a firm and informed view of the
requirements for an American global
lead?”

What is most striking about the
Christopher admission, however, may be
the insight it provides on the
absurdity of the Clinton team’s
contention that there are no fundamental
differences between the Republican and
Democratic tickets on matters of defense
and foreign policy. The
Administration would have the electorate
believe that it shares Senator Dole’s
stated commitment to a strong America,
prepared to assert and defend its
interests world-wide and — by dint
of the credible capability to do so
— able to lead effectively in
international affairs. As Secretary of
State Christopher has now acknowledged,
little of Mr. Clinton’s tenure has been
marked by such a commitment. While the
Christopher statement may simply be part
of a cynical Administration
damage-limitation strategy designed to
“disown” past mistakes, the Washington
Post, to its credit, notes that “there
are some things you can’t disown.”

This is particularly true with respect
to matters of security policy since it
may take the United States many years and
untold treasure to contend with the
repercussions of the Clinton
Administration’s mistakes. As
the attached
column published yesterday in the Washington
Times by the Center’s director,
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., makes clear, there
are a number of emerging security policy
crises that have been encouraged — if
not precipitated — by the very
shortcomings Mr. Christopher is now
acknowledging.

The Bottom Line

The Center believes that — if nothing
else — Secretary of State Christopher’s
extraordinary mea culpa must
precipitate an earnest debate about the
policies that have led the Nation to the
precipice of one or more serious
international crises likely to threaten
vital U.S. interests in the years if not
months ahead. The American people are
entitled to know what the next President
is going to do to correct the policies
that have contributed to these crises,
and to minimize the dangers they present
to the United States. Tonight’s town
hall-style meeting in San Diego is not
too late a moment to begin such a debate.