EXPORT DECONTROLLERS MAKE THE ‘COUNTER’ IN U.S. COUNTER-PROLIFERATION POLICY STAND FOR COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE

(Washington, D.C.): Efforts by Reps.
Sam Gejdenson (D-CT) and Toby Roth (R-WI)
to eviscerate any effective export
control arrangements have become among
the hardiest perennials on Capitol Hill.
As they have in each of the past three
Congresses, the chairman and ranking
minority member of the House Foreign
Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy,
Trade and Environment have introduced
legislation designed to accomplish this
objective under the guise of
“reauthorizing” the Export
Administration Act. In fact, as with
their previous initiatives, this year’s
bill — H.R. 3937 — would more
accurately be described as a vehicle for
“deauthorizing” the
administration of exports for national
security purposes.

Unfortunately, the Clinton
Administration has already done much to
help Messers. Gejdenson and Roth achieve
their goal of dismantling strategic
export controls. As a result of these
combined executive and legislative
efforts, the United States may be in the
process of repeating the pre-World War II
folly of selling scrap metal to Japan —
only to receive it back in the deadly
form of bombs used to kill U.S.
servicemen in the ensuing conflict.

What Clinton Hath Wrought

The Clinton Administration’s
contribution to this deplorable state of
affairs is particularly remarkable in
light of the vitriol correctly heaped on
President Bush by the Clinton-Gore
campaign for his sale of militarily
useful technologies to Saddam Hussein’s
regime. Once in office, however, the
Clinton-Gore team has taken steps that
make even the Bush record of
irresponsible decontrol and licensing of
sensitive dual-use technologies look
modest by comparison.

Indeed, during its first 18 months in
office, the Clinton Administration has
nearly destroyed what it inherited in the
way of U.S. export controls.⁽¹⁾
A case in point is its liquidation of the
Coordinating Committee for Multilateral
Export Controls (COCOM) at the end of
March 1994. This step was taken even
though there is no replacement
organization in prospect.
Worse yet, in a sense, is the
Administration’s expectation that any
such successor would have to include two
of the world’s most egregious diverters
of strategic technology — Russia and
China!⁽²⁾

In building on misguided Bush export
control policies, the Clinton
Administration has taken a number of
ominous technology transfer decisions.
These include the following:

• Virtually all
  technology incorporated in
  current operational U.S. defense
  systems, including advanced
  conventional weapons, has been
  decontrolled. Thanks to
  the decontrol of computers
  capable of performing up to 500
  MTOPs⁽³⁾,
  all 21 critical technologies
  identified by the Department of
  Defense as being essential to
  future U.S. weapons systems and
  national security will be
  compromised.

This decision will, for
example, enable other nations to
erode America’s present, decisive
lead in such areas as acoustic
anti-submarine warfare, low
observables (“Stealth”)
and command, control,
communications and intelligence
(C³I). It will also
greatly facilitate the foreign
development of nuclear,
biological and chemical weapons.

• The Bush Administration’s
  decision to decontrol
  microelectronics manufacturing
  technology finer than 2 microns
  was a strategic error. The
  Clinton Administration’s further
  decontrol of such technology to
  0.75 microns is nothing less than
  a strategic disaster.

Soviet-supplied military
equipment utilized by Iraq was
produced with microelectronics
manufacturing devices no better
than the 3 micron level. Thanks
in part to its great advantages
in this area, the United States
was able to bring to bear an
array of superior
electronics-based technologies
(e.g., for precision guided or
“smart” munitions,
intelligence, telecommunications
and electronic jamming and
countermeasures systems) that
proved decisive in Operation
Desert Storm.

• In the process of decontrolling
  microelectronics manufacturing
  technology, moreover, the Clinton
  Administration also decontrolled
  two other crucial technologies:
  those involved in the production
  of microsensors and micromachines.
  Mask-making, ion beam- and
  wafer-manufacturing and
  implantation technologies will be
  indispensable for the
  “brilliant” weapons of
  the future. They will be of great
  importance for civilian
  applications and the future
  competitiveness of American
  industry, as well.
• As a quid pro quo to
  gain Japanese support for
  Washington’s bid to decontrol
  powerful computers, the
  Clinton Administration agreed to
  liberalize greatly transfers of
  advanced carbon fibers
  used, among other things, for
  ballistic reentry vehicles. Such
  fibers permit controlled ablation
  upon reentry, significantly
  improving the accuracy — and,
  therefore, the deadliness — of
  nuclear or conventional warheads.
  And
• Pump-laser diodes have
  been decontrolled. These
  devices have a demonstrated
  ability to be placed into
  man-portable, battery-powered
  laser systems capable of
  inexpensively defeating
  multimillion-dollar aircraft by
  blinding their pilots.

Lowlights of the
Gejdenson-Roth Bill

Reps. Gejdenson and Roth claim that
H.R. 3937 is designed to
“update” the Cold War-era
system of export controls and help U.S.
manufacturers compete for world markets.
In fact, the principal
beneficiaries of their efforts
— and those of the Clinton
Administration — are the world’s
pariah nations. These rogue
states are unmistakably bent on upgrading
their military arsenals and degrading the
deterrent and war-fighting effectiveness
inherent in the qualitative edge enjoyed
by today’s U.S. armed forces. The pariahs
are clearly delighted to pursue these
purposes with the help of American
companies as parochial and short-sighted
as the scrap-metal merchants of
yesteryear vis à vis Japan.

Among some of the more egregious
elements of the House bill to reauthorize
the Export Administration Act are the
following:

• Creation of a
  License-Free Zone (Sec. 105 (e)):
  No export licenses would
  be required for the sale of U.S.
  dual-use technologies to
  countries who are either members
  of such informal regimes as the
  Missile Technology Control Regime
  (MTCR) or the Australia Group.
  This rule would apply as well to
  those who are not members but who
  are “cooperating”
  with such regimes. Russia, for
  example, which is said to be
  “cooperating” with the
  MTCR, would thus become a part of
  the license-free zone.
• De Facto
  Elimination of Unilateral
  Controls (Sec. 106 (a)): Unilateral
  export controls would be
  effectively eviscerated by
  limiting the imposition of such
  controls to six months. At the
  end of that time, they could only
  be extended if the controls have
  also been adopted multilaterally,
  have been made part of a total
  embargo, or unless the President
  certifies to Congress that the
  control is essential to U.S.
  national security.
• Indexing of Export
  Control Thresholds (Sec. 105
  (l)): Another technique
  for automatically eliminating
  U.S. export controls contained in
  the Gejdenson bill would peg the
  threshold for U.S. export
  controls to technological
  advances in particular
  technologies. The traditional
  standard — i.e., the
  technology’s usefulness in the
  manufacturing or testing of
  weapons of mass destruction —
  would thus be discarded.

H.R. 3937 places a special
emphasis on decontrolling
computer equipment and technology
and requires that indexing be
applied rigorously to this
sector. Such indexing places a
premium on controlling computers
based on their life-cycles
— that is, their position
relative to what is considered
state-of-the-art — rather than
on their functions and
capabilities relative to the
production of weapons of mass
destruction. Additionally, any
computer equipment that has
acquired “mass market”
status, defined as the
installation outside of the
United States of at least 100,000
units, is automatically
decontrolled.

• Proliferating Encryption
  Software: Despite strong
  opposition from the National
  Security Agency, the Gejdenson
  bill would remove export
  restrictions on encryption
  software. Such action would
  greatly inhibit the United
  States’ ability to fight
  terrorists, drug traffickers,
  spies, money-launderers and other
  criminals. According to Rep. Ben
  Gilman (R-NY), the Ranking Member
  of the House Foreign Affairs
  Committee, who filed additional
  views with the Committee’s
  report:

“A provision
currently in the bill that
would mandate the decontrol
of commercially-available
encryption software could
threaten our ability to deter
terrorist threats against the
United States or our allies
and needs to be substantially
modified before this
legislation is considered on
the House floor.”

• Essentially Eliminating
  the Defense Department’s Export
  Control Functions: The
  Gejdenson legislation would
  virtually eliminate the role of
  the Department of Defense in
  reviewing licenses or assessing
  the composition of the Control
  List. As a result, there is even
  less likelihood that adequate
  weight will be given to national
  security considerations of
  strategic exports.
• Foreign Availability
  (Sec. 105 (i)): This
  provision imposes unrealistic
  deadlines on the U.S. government
  in making foreign availability
  assessments and eliminates any
  requirement that the Commerce
  Department consult with other
  agencies, such as the Pentagon,
  in making such assessments. For
  example, if an advisory committee
  of manufacturers submits a claim
  that a controlled item is widely
  available from other sources, the
  Commerce Department has only 90
  days to confirm or refute such a
  claim. If the Commerce Department
  has failed to do so, at the end
  of that period, the technology in
  question would be automatically
  decontrolled.
• Identification of
  End-Users (Sec.
  104 (c)): The bill would
  require the Commerce Department
  to identify for every item on the
  Control List in very specific
  terms what countries and
  end-users are prohibited from
  obtaining U.S. dual-use
  technologies. Publicizing such a
  list may simply prompt end-users
  who find themselves in a
  “denied party” category
  to resurface under another name
  or front company organization.
• Yet Another NAS Study
  (Sec. 105 (n)):
  The legislation calls for yet
  another study of export controls
  by the National Academy of
  Sciences (NAS). In the past, the
  NAS has served as a vehicle for
  largely discounting the national
  security benefits of export
  controls. Two successive reports
  — Balancing the National
  Interest issued in 1987 and Finding
  Common Ground issued in 1991
  — also were exploited to
  legitimate the Gejdenson-Roth
  agenda aimed at dismantling the
  export control regime. Both
  studies were sharply criticized
  by the national security
  community and their
  recommendations generally
  rejected by the Defense
  Department. In a classic
  fox-in-the-chicken-coop gambit, a
  former senior official at the
  NAS, Mitch Wallerstein, is now
  the Clinton Administration’s
  Deputy Assistant Secretary
  responsible for overseeing the
  Pentagon role in export
  administration.

What the Export Decontrol
Agenda Will Mean

The decontrolled technologies now
available to proliferating countries will
act directly as a force multiplier for
their militaries. Countries of concern
will be able much more easily to develop
countermeasures necessary to degrade U.S.
weapons systems over the next three to
five years.

Importantly, U.S. defense
budget planning covering the next three
to five years does not take into account
the billions of dollars needed to develop
new technologies for U.S. weapons systems
to counter projected technology gains
caused by U.S. decontrol measures.
Worse yet, decontrol in computers and
telecommunications far exceeds current
and projected U.S. military capabilities
in such areas as early warning, tactical
and theater ballistic missile defense
systems, the new battlefield imagery
exploitation system, the Navy’s advanced
tactical computer and laser weapons.

The decontrol of critical dual-use
technologies also inevitably decontrols
their manufacturing technologies, making
it highly likely that manufacturing of
the relevant commercial products
will shift abroad where labor and
production costs are cheaper than in the
United States. Such decontrols,
therefore, are resulting in job creation
overseas and job losses in the United
States.

Finally, Adult Supervision
from the Armed Services Committee

It is obvious that the problems caused
for U.S. security interests by the
international proliferation of dangerous
technologies are only going to grow in
the years ahead. Of particular concern
should be the mounting evidence that
Russia is still developing and producing
new chemical and biological weapons even
as the Yeltsin government has shown
itself unable to prevent related
technologies — and others useful in the
production of weapons of mass destruction
— from leaving its borders.⁽⁴⁾

The United States should,
consequently, be redoubling its efforts
to implement forceful export controls
which would either slow down the transfer
of technologies of weapons of mass
destruction or augment the time the U.S.
needs to develop effective
countermeasures. It is imperative that
the qualitative advantages America enjoys
thanks to its superior military
technology be preserved in light of the
drastic reductions being made in defense
spending, force structure and combat
readiness. Under present and foreseeable
circumstances, this country
cannot afford to pay the immense sums
that will be required to preserve or
restore that qualitative edge as the
effects of ill-advised export decontrol
decisions come home to roost.

With this in mind, the House Armed
Services Committee has departed from past
practice by insisting on the right to
review the Gejdenson-Roth bill prior to
its consideration on the House floor.
This occasion offers more responsible
Members of Congress a chance to treat the
issue of export controls as it should be
— namely, as a subject vital to U.S.
national security rather than as the
exclusive preserve of would-be exporters
and their parochial commercial interests.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
encourages the House Armed Services
Committee in its mark-up of H.R. 3937
currently scheduled for Wednesday morning
to amend this legislation so as
to restore to the Department of Defense a
key role in the development and
implementation of export control-related
policies and decisions. This is,
to be sure, a necessary — but not always
sufficient — condition for
sound export administration.

Congress must also hold the Pentagon
accountable in the export control area,
particularly under circumstances like
those that currently apply in which the
Secretary of Defense and a number of his
key subordinates are philosophically
ill-disposed toward export controls.
Toward this end, the Center encourages
the Committee to adopt a statutory
requirement for a report that was
requested last year, but that has not
thus far been prepared by the Pentagon: A
strategic assessment of the implications
of the Administration’s decontrol
decisions for the future effectiveness
and affordability of the U.S. armed
forces.

In addition, the Department of
Defense should be required to report to
Congress — notably the Armed Services
Committees — on those occasions when it
recommends further liberalizing of export
controls and/or agrees to delegate to
other agencies (e.g., the Commerce
Department) the authority for making such
decisions. These reports should
identify the rationale for applicable
recommendations or delegations of
authority together with an evaluation of
the future costs, if any, expected to
arise to the national security and to the
defense budget as a result.

– 30 –

1. See, for
example, the Center’s Decision Brief
entitled ‘Penny Wise, Pound
Insane’: Clinton’s Export Control Bill
Will Abet Global Proliferation, Increase
Defense Costs ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-D_26″>No. 94-D 26, 9
March 1994) and an important article in
the current issue of the American
Spectator by Michael Ledeen and
Stephen Bryen entitled, “Decontrol
Freaks: The Bush and Clinton
Administration’s Unprecedented Giveaway
of Secret Military Technology.”

2. For an analysis
of the strategically reckless
contribution to an ever more dangerous
China being made by the Clinton
Administration, see the Center for
Security Policy’s recent Decision
Brief entitled, The
Ultimate ‘China Card’: Right Response to
the Odious Chinese Behavior is
Recognition for Taiwan, ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=94-D_54″>No. 94-D 54, 26
May 1994).

3. The government
measures computers in terms of CTPs
(Composite Theoretical Performance),
expressed in MTOPS (millions of
theoretical operations per second). The
impact of this decontrol step is hard to
exaggerate. Former Deputy Under Secretary
of Defense Stephen Bryen puts it this
way:

“The popular 486 personal
computer, for example, is 12.5 MTOPS,
which was the decontrol level until
1992. Anything from 200 up was
considered a ‘supercomputer.’ The
[American] computer companies had
asked that the decontrol level be
raised to 110, which would have made
available to any U.S. enemy highly
advanced work stations with CAD/CAM
or signal-processing capabilities
superior to anything then in use by
the American military.

“For example, a country like
Iraq could design and ‘test’
ballistic or cruise missiles until an
actual flying prototype was
available, and — unless the U.S. had
somebody able to report to it on the
activities at secret Iraqi work
stations — it wouldn’t have a clue
about their operations. Worse still,
since computers can be expanded
rather easily (much as we might add
memory chips to our PCs), there would
be a magnifier effect on the
decontrol. For instance, a typical
Sun SpaceServer 2000 computer has a
basic CTP of 96 MTOPS, but it can
easily be expanded to 860, and a
Silicon Graphics Challenger is
classified at 119 MTOPS, but can be
expanded to 3300.”

4. See the
Center’s Decision Brief, Restoration
Watch #2: Russia’s Organized Crime
(No. 94-D 39,
21 April 1994).