‘Don’t Go There’: The Joint Chiefs of Staff Get Squeezed By Clinton White House to Capitulate to Bad Landmine Ban

(Washington, D.C.): At an 8:00 a.m.
session today in their Pentagon
conference room known as “The
Tank,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff
were apprized of White House interest in
making further, ill-advised compromises
concerning a ban on the production,
stockpiling and use of anti-personnel
landmines (APLs). The changes in position
would directly contravene at least two of
the “red lines” to which the
Chiefs reluctantly agreed just a few
weeks ago to accommodate those
demanding U.S. participation in the Oslo
negotiations aimed at producing such a
ban.

Specifically, the following areas
bearing on the Chiefs’ core concerns seem
at risk of fatal erosion under the White
House’s latest gambit:

• The definition of
  anti-personnel landmines
  — or, more specifically
  “anti-handling devices”
  — would be left sufficiently
  ambiguous so as to try to paper
  over fundamental disagreements.
  These are of particular concern
  because a broad definition will
  assuredly capture a great many
  weapon systems other than
  landmines “primarily
  designed to” act as
  anti-personnel systems.
• As the JCS learned to their
  regret during the end-game
  negotiations concerning Riot
  Control Agents (RCAs) in the
  Chemical Weapons Convention,⁽¹⁾
  unless the U.S. position
  is reflected in the treaty, it is
  unlikely to be respected
  subsequently. To the
  contrary, it is predictable that
  other parties will insist that,
  since the treaty language more
  closely reflects their
  interpretation, the United States
  did not prevail and must
  therefore conform to that, more
  restrictive, interpretation.
• There would be no exception
  allowing the use of
  anti-personnel landmines —
  including long-duration ones on
  the Korean peninsula
  as long as there is no
  alternative means of performing
  their mission and as long as the
  North Korean regime remains a
  threat. Collapse on this front in
  favor of a “nine-year
  transition” that anticipated
  finding substitutes for landmines
  and creating merely “more
  stable” conditions in Korea
  was telegraphed last night by an
  appearance on ABC News
  “Nightline” by the
  National Security Council’s arms
  control czar, Robert Bell.
  (Other guests were the Center’s
  director Frank J.
  Gaffney, Jr. and Bobby
  Muller of the Vietnam
  Veterans of America.)

What’s At Stake

As Mr. Gaffney observed in the course
of the Nightline broadcast, the
unverifiable, unenforceable and
ineffective ban on anti-personnel
landmines now being finalized in Oslo
will not be approved by the U.S. Senate absent
the Chiefs’ strong support.
As 10 of their most distinguished former
comrades-in-arms reiterated yesterday⁽²⁾
and Charles Krauthammer, one of the
Nation’s preeminent syndicated
columnists, observed in an article in the
Washington Post today (see href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_133at”>the attached), such
a defective treaty should be rejected, not
accommodated.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff must also
bear in mind that decisions on
this treaty cannot be made in isolation.
Early next month, a meeting likely to
lead to new negotiations to ban so-called
“fragmenting”
small-caliber ammunition (i.e.,
those small-caliber rounds used by the
U.S. military) is scheduled to occur in
Interlaken, Switzerland. Anti-tank
mines, depleted uranium rounds,
non-lethal weapons are among the
other arms slated for abolition by folks
like the International Committee of the
Red Cross now clamoring for an
unacceptable anti-personnel landmine ban.
And it appears that President Clinton is
still intent on giving a top position in
the Office of the Secretary of Defense to
Rose Gottemoeller, a self-declared
proponent of delegitimizing and
ultimately abolishing nuclear
weapons.

The Bottom Line

There will be no better time
than the present for the U.S. military to
draw the line against such schemes which
inevitably translate, as a practical
matter, into acts of unilateral
disarmament.⁽³⁾
Naturally, the temptation to agree to
just one or two more seemingly minor
concessions is almost irresistible. Yet, it
must be resisted and
resisted now, because
good men and women in uniform will
otherwise be asked to pay a high price —
perhaps with their lives — for what
always prove to be futile efforts to
appease the unappeasable: the
sanctimonious activists and professional
negotiating cadres who will never be
satisfied until the militaries of
law-abiding nations have been rendered
substantially, if not totally, incapable
of doing their jobs.

– 30 –

1. But for
corrective action taken in the U.S.
Senate’s resolution of ratification on
the CWC, that Convention would have had
the bizarre — and perverse — effect of
denying the American military the right
to use tear gas and other non-lethal
weapons in combat search-and-rescue and
certain crowd-control situations where
such use would be highly desirable. For
more on this problem, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Why
the Senate Must Not Approve the Chemical
Weapons Convention ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_45″>No. 96-D 45,
9 May 1996).

2. See the
Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Former Military Leaders Urge
President To Hold That (Red) Line On The
Emerging, Defective Landmine Ban
(No. 97-D 132,
11 September 1997).

3. This is
patently the case with treaties like the
Oslo/Ottawa landmine ban where the
most dangerous nations on the planet —
such as Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North
Korea — are not even participating.
Having some 100 countries (the vast
majority of whom are of no strategic
consequence) may make this treaty a
multilateral one; it does not change the
“unilateral” effect of the
disarmament that would be required of its
Western adherents.