General Donn Starry Takes on Senator Leahy’s Landmine Ban As New Small Arms Negotiations Demonstrate Anew Its Folly

(Washington, D.C.): On 8 July, the Senate’s prime-mover behind an ill-advised ban on
anti-personnel landmines (APLs) — Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) — was
sharply challenged for the
third time in a week by one of the U.S. armed forces’ most highly regarded ground combat
commanders: General Donn A. Starry (U.S. Army, Ret.), former Commander,
U.S. Army
Training and Doctrine Command and former Commander-in-Chief, United States Readiness
Command. Gen. Starry’s powerful, five-page letter to Sen. Leahy (see href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-P_129at”>the attached excerpts)
follows similar warnings about the premises and likely repercussions of the Leahy APL ban by
Generals Frederick J. Kroesen and Louis C. Wagner (both
U.S. Army, Ret.) drawing upon
their extraordinary records of military service including their assignments as Commander-in-Chief,
U.S. Army, Europe and Commanding General, U.S. Army Materiel Command, respectively. href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

This flurry of correspondence began with an Open Letter to the Senate that Gens. Starry,
Kroesen
and Wagner and 13 of their fellow retired four-star colleagues sent on 19 June. The signatories
included five former Commandants of the Marine Corps, a Chief of
Staff of the Army and a
former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (who happens also to be a former
Secretary of
State).⁽²⁾

In an impassioned appeal to Senator Leahy — or at least to his more responsible colleagues —
General Starry concluded his letter with the following paragraph:

“Remember, the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are all volunteers now.
None of them enlisted with the idea that their lives could be casually disregarded
for political expediency. They will be the first to remind that those who make ill-conceived
solutions to imperfectly understood military problems, especially for
political reasons, are never those who have to pay the price for their
capriciousness. They resent that. So do I. So should you.“

As it happens, the concerns expressed by many of America’s most highly decorated and
highly regarded ground combat commanders were underscored yesterday by the launch
of yet-another dubious international arms control effort. Some of the same folks who
brought about
the APL ban — notably the Canadian and Norwegian governments and various non-governmental
activist groups — started talks on, in the words of the New York Times “halting the
spread of
assault rifles, pistols, hand grenades, small mortars and other so-called light weapons.” This
initiative, which is being explicitly modeled on the anti-landmine campaign, is no more verifiable,
no more realistic and no more effective than the APL ban. Unless such nonsensical
exercises in
wishful thinking are rejected by the executive and legislative branches they will come
seriously to impinge upon U.S. interests, without contributing materially to international
security.

– 30 –

1. See General Kroesen Rebuts Senator Leahy on
Landmine Ban (No. 98-D 123, 7 July 1998)
and Sen. Leahy’s Landmine Ban Takes Another Hit: General Wagner Urges
CINCs’ Advice
Be Heeded and Ottawa Treaty Rejected (No. 98-P
125, 9 July 1998).

2. For a text of the Open Letter
, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Fourteen of America’s
Most Respected Military Figures Urge Senate to Protect U.S. Troops From Dangerous
Landmine Ban (No. 98-D 111, 16 June 1998). See
also the Press Release entitled Generals Al
Gray, David Maddox Join Call for Senate to Protect U.S. Troops by Opposing Leahy
Landmine Ban (No. 98-P 114, 19 June 1998).