G-WHIZ: TECHNOLOGY FIRE SALE IN PARIS AND OTHER U.S. RESPONSES TO THE GORBACHEV SHAKEDOWN

(Washington, D.C.): Senior U.S. officials and their counterparts from 16 allied nations are scheduled to meet in Paris over the next two days to finalize plans for a further, massive liberalization of multilateral export controls. These meetings of COCOM, the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls, will affect the list of strategically sensitive, "dual-use" technologies to be made available to the Soviet Union, China, the Middle East, China and virtually every other region.

Among the militarily relevant high technologies expected to be decontrolled or made far more available to potentially hostile end-users are:

• advanced semiconductor manufacturing technology (which will, among other applications, permit the Soviet Union to produce customized integrated circuits for their arms industry);

 

• advanced digital and hybrid computers (including VAX and "ruggedized" computers used extensively in: U.S. military research, development and testing; telemetry; command, control, communications and intelligence; digital mapping; image analysis; weapons design; space and missile programs; and tactical weapon systems);

 

• specialized microprocessors (vital, for example, to the next generation of fighter aircraft);

 

• advanced sensors and optics (used, among other things, to measure gravity fields around missile silos — a key data point for calculating missile trajectories);

 

• underwater sensor systems and related equipment (of considerable significance in anti-submarine warfare activities);

 

• remote-controlled underwater robots (used to retrieve warheads, rocket casings and other weapons parts from the ocean floor);

 

• night-vision equipment (one of the technologies that represented a decisive U.S. advantage in the war with Iraq, enabling allied armed forces to score major victories in the ground offensive in Iraq while greatly reducing casualties);

 

• advanced jig grinders and diamond turning machines (used in the production of nuclear weapons);

 

• specialized digital displays (used in digital mapping for cruise missiles, satellite imagery and intelligence image analysis, tactical air traffic control); and

 

• certain sophisticated telecommunications switching equipment (with enormous utility in various military, intelligence and supporting industrial activities).

As these examples suggest, a number of the dual-use technologies slated to be governed by liberalized export controls — if not complete decontrol — have considerable potential to be used to threaten future U.S. national security interests. Amazingly enough, this fact seems largely to have escaped the attention of those responsible for assessing the security risks inherent in such technology transfers. For example, it was reported last week that the U.S. delegation to COCOM had only recently discovered to its shock that the organization was poised — with American consent — to eliminate controls on night-vision goggle technology!

"With 20/20 hindsight, many in the executive branch and Congress wish they had acted differently in promoting the proliferation of dual-use technology to Iraq," said Frank J. Gaffney, the Center’s director. "What is even more needed is a little 20/20 foresight, the sort of vision that should enable us to avoid making some of the same — if not vastly more serious — mistakes with transfers of strategic technologies to the USSR, China and other potential adversaries."

If any evidence of the shortsightedness of current U.S. policy-making in the technology security arena were required, one need look no further than today’s meeting of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on International Economic Policy and Trade. Rather than seize an opportunity to prevent additional, vital "horses" from getting out of the West’s barn, Chairman Sam Gejdenson (D-CT) and his colleagues elected to complain bitterly about horses long since gone to Iraq. (Ironically, the subcommittee bears no small amount of responsibility for the sorry congressional oversight that permitted such transfers to Iraq to go on for so long.) As a result, it appears likely that an assessment of the damage being done to U.S. interests by the impending decontrol actions will have to await yet another, embarrassing post-mortem.

Tragically, the fire sale on dual-use technology scheduled to begin at COCOM tomorrow is just one part of the massive and multifaceted aid package the United States and its allies are now assembling for Mr. Gorbachev. The following are the other elements of the financial, economic and technology shakedown the Center predicts will take place at Moscow’s behest over the next few months:

• The U.S. delegation sent to the Soviet Union by President Bush last week will shortly return to report — wonder of wonders — that a basis has been found to justify extending as much as $1.5 billion in additional Commodity Credit Corporation guarantees to the USSR. This will be the first installment in the so-called "Grand Bargain" being cooked up by academics at Harvard and Soviet economists angling for Western aid now in exchange for promises of future Soviet reforms. Interestingly, Prof. Marshall Goldman of Harvard’s Russian Research Center said Monday, "The odds of this thing [i.e., the "Grand Bargain"] working out without the collapse of the Soviet Union are unlikely…. There’s no guarantee the Soviets can do [their part]. I am not sure anyone is in control in the Soviet Union."

 

• Assurances that emigration rights will be granted to Soviet citizens in 1993 will be deemed sufficient grounds for a presidential certification that the USSR has satisfied the terms of the Jackson-Vanik amendment; accordingly, the Soviet Union will be granted Most Favored Nation status, probably in early June. (For additional information concerning this scam, see the Center’s paper of yesterday, More Potemkin Reforms: Soviets Want MFN Now in Exchange for Right to Emigrate in 1993, No. 91-P39.) This development would, in turn, facilitate the elimination of the Stevenson and Byrd amendments which currently limit U.S. Export-Import Bank credit exposure to the USSR to $300 million with an even more restrictive sub-limit on energy-related assistance.

 

• A U.S.-Soviet summit will likely in the last two weeks of June, designed to provide yet another opportunity to showcase the Bush Administration’s attachment to Mikhail Gorbachev and a platform to facilitate his campaign to be a player in the London Economic Summit meetings in July.

 

• These meetings of the Western industrialized nations is likely to be the piece de resistance of the Gorbachev bailout campaign. The Center understands that the British government has no stomach for resisting German, French and U.S. pressure to include the Soviet leader in some fashion and is prepared to extend an invitation to Moscow. Presumably, what will follow will be the ultimate shakedown, possibly to the tune of the $150 billion over five years as envisioned by The Grand Bargainers.

 

• The big loser at such a meeting is likely to be the participant with the deepest pockets — the Japanese government — and its taxpayers. Not coincidentally, they continue, correctly, to show little enthusiasm for bailing out a Soviet regime that will, when all is said and done, likely remain fundamentally unreformed.