Jim Inhofe, Tom DeLay and Nina Shea: Legends in Their Own Time

(Washington, D.C.): Three individuals deserve special recognition for waging sometimes lonely fights against long odds on behalf of the national security. Each has, in their way, earned the gratitude of their fellow citizens for service similar in quality if not in kind to that of the ancient Roman, Horatius, who, according to legend, spared his city from destruction at the hands of its enemies by his singlehanded defense of a critical bridge.

Senator Jim Inhofe

The Oklahoma Republican has tirelessly worked to prevent political operatives in San Juan and the Clinton White House from colluding to deny the Navy and Marine Corps use of a unique, live-fire training facility on the island of Vieques off Puerto Rico. Sen. Inhofe serves as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Readiness Subcommittee. He takes very seriously his responsibilities to oversee and provide the U.S. military with the personnel, resources, equipment and realistic experience to provide the combat capability needed to deter aggression and, if deterrence fails, to prevail in the Nation’s wars.

In this connection, he has made countless visits to American units and bases all over the world. These visits have, among other things, persuaded him of the indispensability of the Vieques range to the qualification of Navy and Marine forces for combat operations. He will be testifying about his findings tomorrow in an Armed Services Committee hearing, together with the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Jay Johnson, and the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James Jones, who have advocated a referendum of the people of Vieques as the fairest and most accurate means of establishing whether those most immediately affected would support resumed live-fire training on the island.

Interestingly, the Puerto Rican politicians — who have shamelessly exploited the accidental death of a civilian guard at the base and its subsequent illegal occupation by leftist protesters to advance their agenda of statehood, if not outright independence from the United States — oppose a plebiscite of the people of Vieques.¹ They have vilified and even threatened Sen. Inhofe for resisting their efforts to euchre a deal that would compromise the national interest. To his lasting credit, the Senator is standing firm, immeasurably helping the Navy and Marine Corps to do the same, in the face of intense political pressure to capitulate.

Tom DeLay

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas (R-TX) has, together with Representatives Chris Cox (R-CA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and International Relations Committee Chairman Ben Gilman (R-NY), fashioned and will bring to a vote perhaps as early as tomorrow the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act (TSEA). This legislation is designed to restore a balance to the United States’ relationships with Communist China and democratic Taiwan that is more strategically sound and consistent with American values and interests than the Clinton Administration’s Sino-centric policy.

Specifically, the TSEA would set the stage for substantially increased defense cooperation between the armed forces of the United States and those of Taiwan. It calls for improved communications between the two. The bill would also clear the way for the sale of improved defensive capabilities of the sort needed to offset the massive upgrades China has been making in its offensive weaponry aimed at the state across the Taiwan Strait — whose de facto independence and sovereignty Beijing refuses to acknowledge and seems poised to try to liquidate by force.

Especially urgently needed by Taiwan are AEGIS air defense destroyers. These ships’ radars would help rectify Taipei’s most serious current shortfall: its lack of effective early warning of missile or aircraft attack. They also would provide the infrastructure for sea-based anti-missile defenses of the sort that the United States needs every bit as much as Taiwan — and whose developmental costs could be partially defrayed by the latter, Japan and perhaps other allied nations faced with threats to their territories from ballistic missile-wielding adversaries.

It is to be hoped that Rep. DeLay’s success in creating bipartisan support for the TSEA — in the face of stiff opposition from China and its friends in the Clinton Administration — will not only secure enactment of this important legislation but encourage him to play an equally decisive role in energizing congressional oversight and action in other national security areas, as well.

Nina Shea

Ms. Shea is the highly respected director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House and an influential member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. She has most recently played a leading role in forging a coalition of human rights, religious leaders and national security experts opposed to the penetration of U.S. capital markets by select Chinese and other foreign entities engaged in unacceptable activities.

The first targets of Ms. Shea’s coalition have been two firms — Talisman Energy, Inc. of Canada and PetroChina, a spin-off of China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) — engaged in oil exploration and development in Sudan. The proceeds help the odious government in Khartoum prosecute its efforts to enslave or exterminate Christians and others living in that country’s oil-rich south, support terrorism and procure weapons of mass destruction.

Under Ms. Shea’s leadership — with technical counsel from, among others, Roger Robinson, the chair of the William J. Casey Institute of the Center for Security Policy — this coalition has in recent weeks taken several momentous steps. First, over two-hundred of its members and friends (including former National Security Advisor William Clark and former Treasury Secretary William Simon), wrote President Clinton last month urging that he block efforts by CNPC or its subsidiary to issue an expected $5-7 billion Initial Public Offering on the New York Stock Exchange. The Administration is properly nervous about doing otherwise.²

Second, a divestment campaign promoted by Ms. Shea and other activists has resulted in a huge sell-off of Talisman shares by four of the Nation’s leading investment funds — TIAA-CREF, the California and New Jersey public employees’ pension funds and of Texas teachers. In recent months, Talisman’s connection to Sudan has reportedly resulted in a decline of the stock’s value of over 20 percent.³

Then last week, nine of the coalition’s leaders wrote over 240 executive directors and CEO’s of many of this country’s largest public pension funds and private mutual fund families, as well as all fifty state treasurers. The letter called on these leading money managers and state officials to forego the purchase of PetroChina stock, should it become available, on the grounds that mechanisms purported to prevent U.S. and other investor proceeds from finding their way to Khartoum represented an unworkable “contrivance.” Notice has thus been served that purchase of such CNPC stock will probably precipitate a divestment campaign like that which has hounded Talisman.⁴

The Bottom Line

Every American owes a debt of gratitude to these individuals who, like Horatius at the bridge, are not only protecting their national security interests but, in so doing, are displaying a steadfastness, courage and commitment to principle that serves as an inspiration to us all.

¹Patrick Ortega, a courageous Hispanic-American who is president of the Civic Family Institute in Los Angeles, described the real and troubling agenda of the anti-Navy agitators in an excellent op.ed. article published in the Washington Times on 4 January 2000. See the Center’s Press Release entitled A Democratic Solution to the Vieques Stand-off (No. 00-P 02, 4 January 2000).

²See the Casey Institute Press Release entitled A New Era: 200 U.S. Leaders Call on President Clinton to Prevent China Petroleum’s Sudan-Tied Initial Public Offering (No. 99-R 143, 10 December 1999).

³See Casey’s Robinson Testifies Before California Legislature on Prospect of Global “Bad Actors” Penetrating State Portfolios (No. 00-R 04, 14 January 2000).

⁴See Washington Post Article Could Prove a Turning Point in Efforts of Problematic Chinese Entities Seeking to Penetrate U.S. Capital Markets (No. 00-F 08, 28 January 2000) and Human Rights and Religious Leaders Urge Hundreds of Pension and Mutual Funds To Forego Imminent PetroChina IPO on NYSE (No. 00-C 9, 28 January 2000).