FRATERNIZING WITH THE ENEMY SHOULD BE THE LAST MISCHIEF PERPETRATED BY BILL CLINTON’S FAVORITE GENERAL
(Washington, D.C.): Last Saturday, one of the
highest-ranking officers in the Organization of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff — Lieutenant General Wesley Clark,
Director for Strategy, Plans and Policy — consorted with
one of the most despicable war criminals on the planet:
the Bosnian Serb commander, General Ratko Mladic. The
visit occurred in the Serbian enclave of Banja Luka,
scene of horrific and continuing ethnic
cleansing; it was captured on film by Serb propagandists
delighted at being able to portray Gen. Clark jovially
exchanging military caps with the man responsible for
many of those atrocities and accepting gifts of brandy
and an inscribed pistol.
An unnamed, but clearly disgusted U.S. official is
quoted in today’s Washington Post as saying that
this episode “is like cavorting with Hermann
Goering.” Actually, it is more like palling around
with Adolf Eichmann, Hitler’s chief executioner.
Friend of Bill
Gen. Clark’s conduct becomes all the more unforgivable
given his special status: He is President Clinton’s
favorite general. A fellow Arkansan and Rhodes Scholar,
this officer is widely understood to have unparalleled
access and intimate ties to the White House.(1) As a result,
the symbolic impact of the Clark-Mladic seance is on a
par with an odious foreign excursion by a man who had
also been a political Lieutenant General — Brent
Scowcroft. In 1989, Gen. Scowcroft visited China as
President Bush’s National Security Advisor in the
immediate aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre
and actually toasted the Butchers of Beijing who
perpetrated it.(2)
Even the U.S. State Department, hardly a hotbed of
anti-Serb sentiment,(3)
appreciated the undesirable signals that would be
conveyed to the Bosnian Serbs should someone with Clark’s
rank and unique connections visit Banju Luka. On two
different occasions, American embassy staff in Sarajevo
told Gen. Clark’s party on instructions from Washington
not to meet with Gen. Mladic. Whether Clark had contrary
instructions from his friend the President — or simply
believed that that friendship would insulate him from any
adverse repercussions that might arise if he defied those
orders — cannot be established at this time.
UNPROFORTHESERBS
What can be determined, however, is that the
Clark-Mladic meeting was strongly encouraged by another
Lieutenant General, Sir Michael Rose, the British
commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia (UNPROFOR).
According to the 31 August edition of the London Daily
Telegraph, Gen. Rose wanted to provide Gen. Mladic a
chance to convey to President Clinton’s friend additional
Serb arguments against lifting the arms embargo:
“[Mladic told Clark that he] would launch
pre-emptive strikes against the Muslims” and that
“the area would be plunged back into full-scale war
with the United Nations caught in the middle.” Gen.
Rose’s midwifing of this meeting is perhaps the clearest
evidence to date of UNPROFOR ‘s perceived community of
interests with the Bosnian Serbs — and its determination
to defer to the Serbs in virtually all circumstances.
Whether by design or inadvertently, the Clark-Rose
maneuver also encouraged allied hopes that the United
States was not going to persist in its current efforts to
press the Bosnian Serbs to accept the so-called
“Contact Group’s” terms for the division of
Bosnia. In fact, the visuals from the meeting in Banja
Luka were so dramatic as to prompt some European nations
formally to question whether Washington was planning to
reverse its policy which holds the Serbians as the
aggressors in the Bosnian conflict. Suspicions on
this score can only serve to intensify pressure from
those quarters against the expected U.S. effort in
mid-October to lift the arms embargo.
Selling Out Theater Missile Defense
Regrettably, undermining the U.S. position on the
Bosnia conflict is not the only damage Gen. Clark has
been doing. Over the past several months, the Clinton
Administration has been negotiating with the Russians on
theater missile defenses that will be permitted under the
ABM Treaty. During the course of those negotiations, the
Clinton Administration has repeatedly caved in to Russian
demands to prohibit effective TMD systems — over the
objections of the uniformed military.
Notably, on 14 June 1994, Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili
personally opposed the Clinton Administration’s on-going
give-away of U.S. theater missile defense options at an
interagency “principal’s meeting.”
When he was outvoted, Gen. Shalikashvili
indicated that he would exercise his right to take the
matter up personally with the President.
The Chiefs’ alternative was to offer Moscow the
promise of technical cooperation in the development of
effective theater ballistic missile defenses in lieu of
additional constraints on such systems. When Deputy
Secretary of Defense prevailed upon the JCS to go along
with new restrictions on theater defenses provided
they were “temporary,” Clark was charged
with drafting the memo from Gen. Shalikashvili describing
the revised DoD position.
In so doing, Gen. Clark made matters worse by giving
away more than the service chiefs and Chairman had
surrendered. For one thing, Clark’s version of the memo
was addressed to National Security Advisor Anthony Lake
— not the President — reducing the bureaucratic impact
of its concerns and caveats. Worse yet, Gen.
Clark added insult to injury by offering the Kremlin
technical cooperation and restrictions that will
terminate U.S. work on the most promising theater
systems. Gen. Clark then abused his position in
the Joint Staff paperwork system to manipulate and limit
the opportunity to evaluate and respond to his draft. The
effect was serious new erosion in the American
negotiating position — and, far more
importantly, in the opportunity to develop and field
effective defenses against shorter range missile attack.(4)
Riot Control Agents
Another episode has recently come to light in which
White House pressure apparently resulted in the dramatic
abandonment by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of strongly held
military views on a pending policy matter. As has
recently been documented in several Center for Security
Policy products,(5)
the Clinton Administration decided to interpret very
narrowly a provision of the Chemical Weapons Convention
now awaiting Senate advice and consent.
If permitted to govern U.S. military operations, this
provision would impose bizarre and undesirable
limitations on the use that might be made of Riot Control
Agents (RCA). In the words of a former senior Defense
Department policy-maker, Victor Rostow, “[The
Clinton Administration’s interpretations] would require
the use of deadly force in situations where, currently,
humanitarian considerations and the safety of U.S. armed
forces would dictate the use of tear gas.”
(Emphasis added.)(6)
Understandably, the uniformed military has no interest
in being put in such positions. It was for precisely that
reason that the service chiefs insisted on a broader
interpretation of Article I (S) throughout the
negotiation of the CWC, during the period subsequent to
its signature and up until the moment this Spring when
they were overruled by the Clinton White House. What is
more, it is a documentable fact that the Chiefs were
repeatedly assured that such a broad interpretation was and
would remain the U.S. government’s position. In June
1994, however, those assurances were effectively
repudiated and the new, restrictive interpretation
adopted by President Clinton.
What role General Clark played in “rolling”
the JCS position on RCAs cannot be determined at this
writing. It would hardly be surprising, however, if —
given the conduct of this political general in other
areas — he were involved in preventing the President
from getting unvarnished, and therefore unwanted,
military advice or in otherwise advancing positions
contrary to U.S. national interests.
The Bottom Line
Gen. Clark’s appallingly poor judgment in Bosnia
simply reinforces the impression that he is not suited to
the responsibilities of his present position — to say
nothing of the more exalted ones (e.g., Army Chief of
Staff or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) to which
he evidently aspires. Congressional hearings should be
promptly held to examine his misconduct in this and other
matters and to establish what steps, in addition to his
early separation from the U.S. armed forces, are
necessary to undo the damage Gen. Clark has caused.
– 30 –
1. Speaking with ill-concealed
disdain to a Washington Post reporter in January 1994,
one military official said “[Clark] has lunch with
President Clinton when he comes through town, just like
any other major general.” Since then, Clark was
appointed to the politically sensitive Commission on
White House Fellows (staffed by grand slam Friend of Bill
Brooke Shearer, wife of Deputy Secretary of State Strobe
Talbott and sister of U.S. Ambassador Derek Shearer),
given a third star and assigned to a sensitive position
in the Pentagon.
2. There is a certain irony to
this comparison. Gen. Scowcroft’s partner in kowtowing
was then-Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger
— the individual who subsequently identified Gen.
Clark’s crony, Mladic, as a war criminal.
3. An astonishing number of
Foreign Service Officers have demonstrated the courage of
their convictions in the past few years by refusing to be
party to the State Department’s efforts under this
Administration and its predecessor to treat the Serb
aggressors and their victims in a morally equivalent
manner.
4. For more on the Clinton
Administration’s reckless foreclosure of key defensive
technologies, see the Center’s recent Decision
Brief entitled More Steps on
the Slippery Slope Toward Terminating U.S. Theater
Missile Defense Options (
5. For example see, ‘Enough
to Make Grown Senator’s Weep’? Will Absurd Clinton Limits
on Tear Gas, Non-Lethal Weapons Go Unchallenged?
(No. 94-D 90, 31 August 1994).
6. This interpretation could have
even more far-reaching implications for other promising
non-lethal weapons technologies whose development is now
being given high priority by the Pentagon.
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