MISCHIEF IN MOSCOW, CRISIS IN WASHINGTON: WILL CLINTON DEFY CONGRESS ON MISSILE DEFENSE?

Of all the mistakes President Clinton appears poised to
make in his summit with President Yeltsin — including
legitimating Yeltsin’s Stalinesque genocide in Chechnya, his
nuclear proliferation to Iran and his NATO-wrecking operation —
one is in a class by itself: Mr. Clinton’s efforts to impede, if
not preclude, effective anti-missile defenses threatens not only
to jeopardize U.S. national security interests; it could also
produce a constitutional crisis.

Summit Shenanigan

This singularly portentous problem arises from communique
language the Clinton Administration has developed with the
Russians. The plan is for the two presidents to pronounce the
1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty the
“cornerstone” of U.S.-Russian relations and strategic
stability.

The Administration hopes with this statement to lock-in the
United States’ commitment to an agreement that effectively bans
missile defenses for the American people, notwithstanding the
facts that it was forged with a country (the Soviet Union) that
no longer exists and it was drafted in a strategic environment
that no longer pertains (namely, one in which essentially only
the Soviets’ nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles posed a
threat to the U.S. and its troops and allies overseas). Despite
these dramatic changes, the United States remains without
deployed, effective anti-missile defenses. And, if the Clinton
team has its way, this will remain the case indefinitely.

Worse yet, the summiteers are expected to embrace written
commitments that would have the effect of dramatically expanding
the ABM Treaty’s scope. By agreeing not to deploy “regional
defenses” against each other’s ballistic missiles and to
assure “non-circumvention” of the treaty, Mr. Clinton
would give the Kremlin important rights. Three key leaders of the
House of Representatives — Appropriations Committee Chairman
Robert Livingston, National Security Committee Chairman Floyd
Spence and Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chairman Bill
Young — wrote the President the attached
letter last Thursday. It warns that:

“[These limitations] suggest unacceptable
geographical limitations on U.S. theater missile defenses
(TMD) and could open the door for Russia to oppose any
U.S. TMD deployments. In addition, the reported
‘non-circumvention’ language could cause Russia to challenge
our international cooperative theater defense programs.”

The legislators went on to note their continuing opposition
to the Clinton Administration’s efforts to negotiate the
“multilateralization” of the ABM Treaty. That
initiative would open the Treaty to additional signatories, a
step calculated to make it more difficult to change its terms in
the future. They also reiterated their opposition to the current
U.S. negotiating position which would “place velocity limits
on TMD interceptors…[and] hamstring our ability to provide the
most capable missile defenses to our forward-deployed
forces.” Messrs. Livingston, Spence and Young concluded by
observing:

“…President Yeltsin must be made to realize that we
are ready to act cooperatively [with Russia] if we can, but
unilaterally if we must when it comes to missile defenses.
The importance of this issue to U.S. security is simply too
great to extend Russia or any other nation a veto.”

The Constitutional Question

Such a warning to the President of the United States from
senior members of the House of Representatives who control the
government’s purse-strings cannot prudently be ignored. It would
be more than foolish, however, for the Administration to ignore a
letter, also attached, which
was sent on May 2nd by fifty members of the U.S. Senate —
including Majority Leader Robert Dole and virtually every other
member of the Republican leadership. This letter served formal
notice on Mr. Clinton:

“We are deeply troubled by indications that you
intend to proceed, in the face of clearly stated
congressional opposition, to make commitments in Moscow that
would impede U.S. efforts to provide American troops with
effective protection against missile attack. We find
particularly troubling press reports describing the draft
communique language being developed for that meeting….We
want you and the Russians to be fully aware of our
determination to prevent the creation of new impediments to
missile defenses.”

The fifty signatories to this letter represent more than
enough to defeat any new missile defense treaty or ABM amendment
that President Clinton might submit for Senate advice and
consent, as required by the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, the
Administration seems to believe that it can do as it did with the
notorious North Korean “agreed framework” — namely,
ignore altogether the Senate’s role in treaty-making. Senator
Dole and his colleagues must not allow an Administration bent on
“dumbing-down,” if not altogether precluding, U.S.
missile defense capabilities to dumb-down the Constitution in the
process.

The Bottom Line

It is noteworthy that in addition to Senator Dole, three
other Senate Republicans — Phil Gramm, Dick Lugar and Arlen
Specter — who share Mr. Dole’s desire to bring an early end to
the Clinton presidency, are among those who signed the May 2nd
letter. If Mr. Clinton will not be deterred from making a
serious mistake on missile defenses at the summit by virtue of
either the strategic dangers or the potential constitutional
crisis it may precipitate, perhaps the political risks associated
with leaving the United States exposed to missile attack will do
the trick.

After all, the President has been at pains in the wake of the
Oklahoma City bombing to promise the populace that he would take
every step to protect it. Does he really mean that he will do so unless
the attacker uses a ballistic missile, in which case the
public is on its own? If so, Mr. Clinton will be roughly as
vulnerable politically as he would leave the American people.