Is Kosovo Clinton’s Most Dangerous Wag-the-Dog Exercise?
(Washington, D.C.): Friday’s effort by Slobodan Milosevic to launch air attacks on NATO
peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the worsening genocide in Kosovo is but the latest
evidence that the stakes involved in President Clinton’s decision to launch air strikes against Serb
targets are very high and getting higher. Unfortunately, as was predictable (and
predicted
because the object of NATO’s bombing campaign is not the one outcome that might
actually
contribute to peace in the Balkans — namely, the overthrow of Milosevic’s brutal dictatorship —
there is virtually no chance that U.S. interests (to say nothing of those of the
Kosovars) will be
served by this step. That being the case, there is renewed urgency to the question: Why
are
we “in” Serbia?
Appalling as it may be, the answer that seems increasingly
unavoidable is that Mr. Clinton’s
decision to intervene over Kosovo was motivated more by his well-established
determination to save his own skin than a concern about the fate of the ethnic Albanians
who
are the target of Milosevic’s current round of “ethnic cleansing.” It is, in the vernacular, but the
latest in example of a Clintonian “wag-the-dog” exercise, of a piece with his earlier highly
debatable uses of military power in Afghanistan, Sudan and Iraq to divert attention from domestic
travails that appeared to threaten his presidency.
Can’t ‘Sit Idly By’?
In recent days, starting with extemporaneous and ridiculous remarks
Tuesday, President Clinton has made much of the humanitarian rationale for his intervention in
Kosovo at this juncture. As he put it on 24 March: “If we and our allies were to allow this war
to continue with no response, President Milosevic would read our hesitation as a license to kill.
There would be many more massacres, tens of thousands more refugees, more victims crying out
for revenge.”
The problem is that the same could have been said for much of the
past six years as the
United States and its allies largely ignored the “massacres” and the “tens of thousands of
refugees” and the additional “victims crying out for revenge” first in Bosnia and more
recently in Kosovo. Why had Mr. Clinton not worried before now about Milosevic
“read[ing]
our hesitation as a license to kill”? To the contrary, with the notable exception of the brief NATO
bombing campaign in the run-up to the 1996 election that helped stop the fighting in Bosnia — but
only at a point where the Bosnian-Croat forces were about to inflict a decisive defeat on
Milosevic’s proxies, the Clinton policy has been one of treating with and appeasing the Serb
dictator, rather than denying him a “license to kill”?
The Most Serious Threat of All to the Clinton
Presidency
It appears that the real reason why, after six years of effective indifference to
Milosevic’s
predations, Mr. Clinton suddenly chose to “kiss the tar baby” of Balkan conflict — implicating
the United States in a war that has the potential to become every bit as intractable and more
dangerous than Vietnam — was the emergence of a genuinely mortal threat to his tenure
in
office: The unfolding scandal involving Communist China.
In the days leading up to the initiation of hostilities with Serbia, it had
become increasingly
apparent that the usual Administration damage control techniques (official denials, misleading
statements, obstruction of inquiries, attacks on the accusers, etc.) were not working in the face of
cascading revelations that the Clinton team had abysmally failed to address penetration of
America’s nuclear weapons laboratories. In fact, a series of front-page news articles, witheringly
critical editorials, insistent congressional investigations and polls reflecting growing public alarm
threatened to unmask the full nature of the Three P’s — Mr. Clinton’s
policies towards
Communist China, his Administration’s appalling security practices and dismal
personnel
appointments to positions charged with responsibility for these policies and practices.
option: Change the subject, regardless of the cost in American lives, national treasure and
long-term interests.
Notwithstanding Mr. Clinton’s costly dog-wagging, three recent
developments indicate that the
China scandal will not go away and may yet prove this President’s undoing:
- Apparent Espionage at Los Alamos — on Mr. Clinton’s
Watch
On 24 March, James Risen — the New York Times’
investigative correspondent who,
together with Jeff Gerth, has done so much to blow the lid off the Clinton Administration’s
machinations with China — published a front-page, above-the-fold article entitled “Suspect
Scientist Led Key Los Alamos Program.” In it, Mr. Risen laid out the following astounding facts:
- “Los Alamos National Laboratory chose a scientist who was
already under investigation
as a suspected spy for China to run a sensitive new nuclear weapons program, several
senior Government officials say.”
- “The scientist, Wen Ho Lee, eager for the new post, asked that
he be allowed to hire a
research assistant, the officials said. Once in the new position, in charge of updating
computer software for nuclear weapons, Lee hired a post-doctoral researcher who was a
citizen of the People’s Republic of China, intelligence and law-enforcement officials
said.”
- “Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation had said that a wiretap on Lee, a computer
expert born in Taiwan who is an American citizen, would allow the bureau to keep close tabs
on him in the new position, the bureau never won approval for the electronic
monitoring,
the officials said.”
- “Now, two years later, Lee has been fired for security breaches at Los Alamos and senior
Government officials say he remains a suspect in the F.B.I.’s continuing investigation of
allegations that China stole nuclear secrets from America’s weapons laboratories. He is under
suspicion of having stolen the data for one of America’s most advanced nuclear warheads.
China has denied that it engaged in nuclear espionage. And the research assistant has
disappeared.”
Foxes Minding the Chicken Coop?
In the wake of the New York Times’ initial revelations about
Wan Ho Lee and alleged Chinese
espionage at Los Alamos (and perhaps other sensitive U.S. facilities), the President’s National
Security Advisor, Samuel Berger, became the point-man for
damage-control.
three reasons:
- Berger was a paid lawyer/lobbyist for Communist China
prior to joining the Clinton
Administration in 1993.
- Berger failed to act decisively when first informed about suspicions that
the W-88 warhead
had been purloined by the PRC. And
- Berger was responsible for the appointment to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board (PFIAB)6 of former Rep. Jane
Harman, who in 1984, nine years before she entered
Congress, registered as a foreign agent for Communist China. (Her firm received more than
$100,000 from the PRC in connection with lobbying she did with then-Senator Alan
Cranston (D-CA), aimed at preventing a subsequently enacted legislative prohibition on
U.S.-Chinese nuclear cooperation as long as Beijing engaged in nuclear proliferation activities.)7
- The Next Shoe — the Cox Committee Report
The Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IN)
this week indicated that he expects that
a declassified version of the unanimous, bipartisan report issued by the select House committee
chaired by Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) would be available within the next three
weeks, with or
without the Clinton team’s concurrence.
The Administration — in one of its most blatant acts of politicizing the
intelligence process — has
already delayed the release of this damning report by three months through a seemingly endless
fight over the sensitivity from a “sources and methods” perspective of information contained
therein. At a Heritage Foundation conference this week, Rep. Cox publicly described the process
as one in which the Administration refuses to declassify certain findings, then insists on altering
conclusions drawn from those facts by suggesting that something “might have happened” when
the intelligence establishes that it actually occurred. Given what is at stake, Congress will have no
choice but to declassify this report on its own authority and initiative if the Clinton stonewalling
continues into April.
The Bottom Line
The tragedy is that, with its latest wag-the-dog gambit, the Clinton
Administration may have
subjected the Nation to the worst of both worlds: On the one hand, it is now embroiled in an
expensive, dangerous and, given the multilaterally imposed rules of engagement that protect
Slobodan Milosevic, ultimately unwinnable war in the Balkans. On the other hand, it will
inevitably be confronted with mounting evidence that the Clinton Administration has done
incalculable harm to the national security in its dealings with Communist China.
An urgent course correction on both fronts — i.e., by making Milosevic, and
not the Serbian
people, the target of our military campaign (the object of a legislative initiative offered this week
by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms
review of the Administration’s policies, practices and personnel involving relations
with China — is required if there is to be any hope for minimizing the damage that is now
occurring, and that which will otherwise be inflicted in the future.
Watch #39: Another Day, Another
Fraudulent Deal (No. 99-D
35, 1 March 1999); Clinton Legacy Watch #38: A Debacle
in Kosovo, A Shattered NATO?(
There
(No. 99-D 18, 3 February
1999); and Clinton Legacy Watch #40: A Scandal at the Department
of Energy On His Watch — Grievous Damage Done to Sell the C.T.B.T. (No. 99-D 38, 23
March 1999).
Jim Hoagland, Abe Rosenthal Spell Out
Do’s and Don’ts (No. 99-D
06, 8 January 1999); and Clinton Legacy Watch #
31: Will This
Damaged Presidency Be Able to Mount, Sustain Needed Anti-Terror Campaign?
(No. 98-D
148, 21 August 1998).
brilliantly dissected in a brace of
syndicated columns by Charles Krauthammer and George Will that appeared in Friday’s
Washington Post.
‘Three P’s’ — Reckless Policies, Practices
and Personnel Spell Trouble (No.
99-D 33, 15 March 1999).
apparent misfeasance, see
China’s Nuclear Theft, Strategic Build-up Underscore Folly of Clinton Denuclearization,
C.T.B. Campaigns (No. 99-D
31, 8 March 1999).
Drell. Dr. Drell has provided technical
cover for the Administration’s zero-yield Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty see Clinton Legacy
Watch #40: A Scandal at the Department of Energy On His Watch — Grievous Damage Done
to Sell the C.T.B.T, (No. 99-D
38, 23 March 1999) — among other ill-advised arms control initiatives. He
has also been a longstanding champion of “openness” at the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, a
dubious qualification for
a member of an oversight board charged with vetting that policy.
observed that Rep. Harman’s
appointment to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence represented “the first time
someone from either party has been selected for the Intelligence Committee of either the House or
the Senate who had been a registered foreign agent.” Interestingly, in 1989, her law firm also
filed a form with the Justice Department indicating that Mrs. Harman would be involved in
lobbying on behalf of a West German firm accused of assisting Libya’s chemical weapons
program.
Alert (No. 99-A 10, 25 March 1999).
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