From The Folks Who Brought You Somalia, Haiti — Clinton Is Botching The Russian Account, Too: The ‘Friendship ‘R Us’ Act

To counter the nearly universal impression that the Clinton Administration is systematically failing in its execution of U.S. foreign policy, senior officials, from the President on down, have made the following argument: Difficulties with policies toward Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia are exceptions to the rule; on the really important issues — like relations with Russia — the Administration has been brilliantly successful.

Unfortunately for the Administration, there is now fresh evidence that its foreign policy team has proved no more skillful in managing the Russian account than the debacles it has been party to elsewhere on the international front. Indeed, "success" regarding U.S. dealings with Moscow seems to amount to little more than doing whatever Boris Yeltsin demands. This principle seems to have become nearly as much of an idée fixe for Mr. Clinton and his subordinates as their devotion to Jean-Bertrand Aristide or the United Nations.

At the moment, the Administration’s determination to accommodate Mr. Yeltsin is on display in its insistence that Congress dismantle virtually the entirety of five decades of legislation governing relations between the United States and the former Soviet Union. This would be the effect of H.R. 3000, dubbed the Act For Reform in Emerging New Democracies and Support and Help for Improved Partnership with Russia, Ukraine and other new independent States (a.k.a., if you can believe it, the "F.R.I.E.N.D.S.H.I.P. ‘R. U.S." Act) recently approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and scheduled to be marked-up by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, 9 November 1993. Incredibly, neither committee — nor any of the dozen or so others whose jurisdiction is affected — have bothered to hold hearings on this sweeping legislative initiative.

The pretext cited for such haste is the fact that the Administration wants to have this legislation in hand to present President Yeltsin at the January summit meeting in Moscow. Mr. Yeltsin — and the Russian military-industrial complex and security apparatus to which he is increasingly beholden — have asserted that the repeal of statutes derided as the "legacy of the Cold War" is a litmus test of the U.S. commitment to Russian reform. The Clinton team (many of whose members were vehemently opposed to these statutes even during the Cold War) is now only too happy to seize upon this excuse to press for their immediate elimination.

The following are among the dubious ways that H.R. 3000 would alter existing U.S. law. It would:

• eliminate prohibitions on the transfer of military research and development to Russia(1);

 

• eliminate statutory restrictions on communist activities in the United States including prohibitions on the operation of front activities, employment by the U.S. government, contribution of funds or services to communist organizations by employees of defense facilities and granting of tax-exempt status to such organizations;

 

• eliminate prohibitions on Moscow’s use of the controversial Mt. Alto site for its Washington embassy — long believed to be ideally suited for electronic espionage — and the requirement that Moscow pay for the costs incurred by its efforts to bug the new U.S. embassy in the Russian capitol;

 

• eliminate the statutory provisions governing reciprocity in numbers of personnel and other aspects of diplomatic missions and limiting the employment of Soviet nationals in the U.S. missions in the former Soviet Union;

 

• eliminate (vice modify) the congressional finding that:

 

"The conduct of espionage activities (including the collection of classified and unclassified technological information by the diplomatic and consular missions of the Soviet Union and certain other foreign diplomatic and consular missions within the United States (as well as by certain employees of international organizations acting on behalf of the Soviet Union or certain other foreign countries) represents a grave threat to the security of the United States."

 

• effectively reinforce what is, at the moment at least, a quite controversial 1961 congressional statement of policy concerning the United Nations:

 

"The Congress of the United States reaffirms the policy of the United States to achieve international peace and security through the United Nations so that armed force shall not be used except for individual or collective self-defense."

 

• effectively rewrite history, for example, by striking the finding that:

 

"The diversion of advanced milling machinery to the Soviet Union by the Toshiba Machine Company and Kongsberg Trading Company has had a serious impact on United States and Western security interests."

 

• eliminate the requirement for an assessment of risks associated with scientific exchanges with citizens of the former Soviet Union;

 

• add impetus to the wholesale gutting of multilateral export controls on strategic technologies by striking the congressional finding that:

 

"The acquisition of national security sensitive goods and technology by the Soviet Union and other countries the action or policies of which run counter to the national security interest of the United States, has led to the significant enhancement of Soviet bloc military-industrial capabilities. This enhancement poses a threat to the security of the United States, its allies and other friendly nations, and places additional demands on the defense budget of the United States."

 

In short, the "FRIENDSHIP ‘R US" act amounts not only to an attempt to establish that the Cold War is over. It would have the U.S. Code read as though it never existed!

PLO Gambit Redux

The broad scope of the Clinton Administrations’s legislative initiative in this area is reminiscent of its recent efforts to effect wholesale and permanent dismantling of statutory restrictions concerning the Palestine Liberation Organization.(2) In both cases, the Administration has insisted that Congress act precipitously to effect sweeping changes in the law of the land. In both cases, the Congress has been asked to do so without hearings and with a view to marking up and scheduling floor debate on the relevant instruments in a manner that all but forecloses real deliberation.

Fortunately, the Congress declined to be railroaded on the PLO legislation. It acted, instead, to permit only limited and temporary relief from existing statutory restrictions. In so doing, Congress has established a basis upon which performance by the PLO can determine future steps toward expanded access to U.S. resources and territory by an organization that has, at best, only recently ceased its advocacy of terrorism against this country, its nationals and allies.

The Bottom Line

The Center strongly believes that a similar approach should be adopted regarding the Russian counterpart to the PLO initiative. Under no circumstances should the Congress be railroaded into acting on so vast a rewriting of the law of the land without so much as a single hearing into the implications and advisability of doing so.

If the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is determined not to take testimony about H.R. 3000 prior to the mark-up of this legislation next Tuesday, at the very least other Senate committees whose jurisdiction is affected should do so. These include the Armed Services, Judiciary, Intelligence, Banking and Government Affairs Committees. (Interestingly, the House counterparts of each of these Senate committees — with the notable exception of the House Armed Services Committee — formally waived the right to consider H.R. 3000 in the interest of expediting its enactment.)

Such hearings should, at a minimum, involve a thorough examination as to whether the demise of the Soviet Union has, in fact; eliminated the danger posed by communist subversion and the need for statutory protections against it; ended the need to safeguard U.S. secrets — both commercial and governmental — against the largely undiminished espionage operations of the KGB; or obviated concerns about the uses to which strategic Western technology might be put by the Russian military-industrial complex.

If the answer to any of these questions is — as the Center believes to be the case — "no," then significant changes to H.R. 3000 are urgently needed. This is particularly true in light of recent evidence of the growing political power and influence of the Russian security forces. Such evidence includes:

• the "New Military Doctrine" unveiled by President Yeltsin yesterday — which Secretary of State Warren Christopher and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) correctly describe this morning as a "new Brezhnev Doctrine";

 

• Moscow’s determination to thwart efforts to punish Libya for its continued impeding of the prosecution of individuals involved in the murder of American citizens aboard Pan Am 103; and

 

• the Yeltsin government’s announced intention to provide natural gas to the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic — notwithstanding international sanctions imposed on Belgrade in response to its aggression in Croatia and Bosnia.

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1. It is particularly striking that neither the House nor Senate Armed Services Committees have been asked to consider the implications of the repeal of the relevant statutory provision, Section 709 of the Department of Defense Appropriations Authorization Act of 1975.

2. For more information about this initiative, see the Center for Security Policy’s recent Decision Brief entitled, ‘Time Out’ Administration Efforts to Railroad Congress on Pro-PLO Legislation is Bad Process, Bad Policy, (No. 93-D 84, 24 September 1993).